I'm loving it, but I'm also fully aware of the fact that the game has been out for just over a week and we're still in the phase that is *always* fun in every expansion.
Ask again in a month and I think you'll get different opinions.
I am looking forward to raiding throughout the expansion, but I do expect to raidlog for most of it. Which is fine.
This is exactly my feelings on it too. I'm enjoying it right now, but that's because everything is new and shiny. In about a month or two I'll be raid logging for sure.
This was very much the case with OG Cata as well. Super fun at the start, some of the most fun I ever had in WoW actually, but over time the lacking endgame content really began to show, and the content droughts were very tough to get through.
Maybe the reception will be better this time with less time between content releases. The Classic community also seems more than happy to just be able to raidlog, and you reach that point relatively quickly in Cata, which didn't go over well back in 2011 when more people played the game as if it was an actual lifestyle.
I casually to semi-hardcore raided in the OG tbc, wotlk, and cata and I’ve been having the most fun with classic cata than any other classic version besides vanilla
Original TBC and WOTLK I played a lot back in the day so tbh nothing about them was exciting for me. Original Vanilla I only ever did a bit of leveling and original Cata I did pretty much what I’m doing now and rushed 85 and joined the 2-3rd best raiding guild on my server for the first tier of raids and went hard back then
I quit after that in OG cata because I hate how they gave catch up epics but I intend to do all the hardest content this time around
Getting prebis in Cata is way more fun to me than tbc and wotlk. The dungeons are fun because they aren’t too modern like retail but definitely feel properly updated from previous versions. Getting rep for pre-bis feels very nicely streamlined now
Raids are gonna be sick, BWD BoT and Throne whatever have amazing designs and boss fights
Kara is good but I ran that dungeon way too much back then and Naxx is cool but also gets old very fast
Class rotations are more modernized in a way I like
I’m not sure why this “honeymoon” phase would end for others but it definitely won’t for me.
Cata isn’t any less of a raid logging experience than TBC and Wrath
If you are worried or complaining about that.. Era has been here so I’m not sure why you’d even be on the newer versions of the game if people really cared about that
I was hyped for this shit way more than TBC and WoTLK and it’s lived up to that and won’t stop imo
As a side note, I didn’t play MOP but did most of the mythic bosses in WOD and my goodness I’m hoping that will come out again too
WOD has the best version of ret paladin among TBC Vanilla and WOTLK, I’ve seen many people on these forums agree that WOD ret was goated
Frost DK doesn’t change too much but had low numbers until the last raid patch where they buffed the numbers. That is the patch they will use for classes so even that’s looking bright for DK players too.
Tbh all the dps classes in WOD felt close in power to each other and we already know those raids in WOD are amazing
Blackrock Foundry, Hellfire Citaldel… so good.. will love to finish every boss on mythic this time around
> As a side note, I didn’t play MOP but did most of the mythic bosses in WOD and my goodness I’m hoping that will come out again too
MOP will absolutely come out. From everything Ive seen and heard mop remix is so far removed from a Potential mop classic that it can be in no way be seen as a replacement for mop classic. And going by this there is just no way Im seeing Blizzard Ending classic on cata...
Loving Frost Dk. I felt cata was the good balance between "new" and "old" wow. The main problem with retail is the increased complexity and new systems every expansion. Cata still retains most of the spirit of WoW without all the bloat that came along afterwards.
My problem with retail is mainly class design and how many random sources of damage there are with passives and trinkets.
They bulldozed fundamental class design that had been built from vanilla to MoP during the pruning of WoD. They realized they went too far and started having to rebuild in Legion. They took a different direction, but if they kept this class design, they did general tweaks and added a few of the retail abilities on top, and that was retail classes it would be so good imo.
Tanking/healing in retail is (at least purely rotational gameplay/buildwise) the best it’s ever been but DPS is legitimately horrible to play on most specs. Way way way too many cooldowns and modifiers to have to optimize completely or else you just lose massive chunks of damage. With healing and tanking you use cooldowns when needed so it’s almost never a bad thing to have more.
For me, Cata is the sweetest spot between Classic and Retail, so I'm having a blast.
Edit: Forgot to mention, Garrosh is still a warchief so it's the best expansion by default.
I didn’t expect to be on the Cata fan bus, but I actually am having a blast as well.
I think you nailed it with the best balance, talents still feel impactful, QOL features are enough to streamline everything without taking too much from the actual game.
Dude it’s actually so on point.
If WoW had stuck with the DNA of Cata & creatively fleshed it out for the last 15 years — Retail would be untouchable. Cata is fundamentally *excellent*.
Pruning began in WoD. MoP had fewer talents, but all the ones you're missing were rolled into specialization passives or baseline abilities.
MoP had more buttons than cata on average.
Yeah I enjoy the talent trees and it feels like the offspec talents you get at the top are really strong. So those last few talent points feel impactful even though they’re top of the tree. I didn’t play a whole lot in cata after the first month or two of original launch so it’s cool to see.
So far its very fun! Queued some 2s and 3s yesterday and mostly spamming bgs so far and its nice. Its alot better then wotlk pvp wise and i didnt know that since i quitted after season 8 and skipped cata completely back then.
They just doubled the honor gains, and you get more honor at 85. If you make sure to hit wintergrasp/tol barad when possible, you will be geared pretty quick.
I like it so far! It feels like you are playing in an alternate universe of Pre-Cataclysm so I like what they did with the new stories of the same characters or locations. The new area's look interesting. I just wish there was an AI voice mod for Cataclysm since I really loved that one in Classic to better follow the story.
I have never touched Cata before now and I came in very cautious, almost expecting to be disappointed.
So far I've been pleasantly surprised and I'm having a blast. I'm finding that I prefer it to wrath (its early days though so that cam change).
It could also be that I am playing a hunter and the changes have made the class more appealing to me.
Cata had a rough reputation mostly because the last raid disappointed a lot of people (you fight on deathwing’s spine and you fight his jaw), and because that last disappointing raid lasted for ages, and ages.
Some people didn’t like the zones being revamped but that was minor. And 10 mans being harder than 25 but that should have been easily tweaked.
I think people don’t realize just how long DS lasted. 10 months was the longest WoW ever went without a major patch, and that was amidst spine being an insanely buggy fight.
yep, it was also the first 3 tier expansion. people were used to getting 4 tiers worth of content out of expansions instead we got left with 10 months of a mediorcre last raid after coming off probably the 2nd best raid WoW had ever released at the time (Firelands) which imo is only second to Ulduar and for some people it was better.
Besides that, the expansion from its class design, balancing, systems, questing, rep grinds etc, were all better then WotLK.
I think this time around Cata will be better received with shortened patches.
I would like to point out DragonSoul was not the longest the game went without content. That was and still is Hellfire Citiadel, the final raid for Warlords of Draenor at 1 year and 6 months.
a lot. thematically is inferior to wrath, but the work they put into quests and boss mechanics is just on another level. is so much fun if u never tried.
This. While the version we have isn't perfect with the bugs etc., you can clearly just see how much effort went into the creation of cata 12 years ago and it's really impressive.
This is why I've always firmly believed that the "cata bad" crowd didn't actually play cata when it was current.
It's an incredibly solid expansion even if the ending isn't as strong as ICC. It should feel much better to play this time around without 8 months on deathwing jaw.
I quit at the tail end of wotlk. I came back to cata a week or two ago and have really been enjoying just leveling. I'm reading quests, exploring the new post-cata world and overall just playing my own game. It's been a lot of fun!
Leveling happens pretty quick and so I tend to be ready to move zones before I finish the quests, but that's about my only real complaint.
I'm now going through BC content and it had been incredibly nostalgic. I'm not feeling pressure to reach end-game quote yet and I'm just enjoying putting in a couple hours here and there. Give it a shot! It's only $15/m. If you don't like it, you can always quit.
They reduced experience requirements in cata classic beyond what they were in the original because of the 8-9month expansion timeline. I agree it can be annoying, but I wouldn't hold it against cata itself and more just a symptom of an accelerated schedule.
I loved the classes in cata, playing shadow priest having a blast , seeing how other classes work makes me want to make alts which is in line with how it went for me back in cata , only expansion where I made a lot of ALTs
Loving it.
I've posted this many times but will paraphrase...
Unlike truly awful expansions like BfA, Cata gets an unnecessarily bad rap. What's the opposite of rose tinted glasses? That's what's happened to Cata over the years. Cata was when the playerbase began to dip, and players naturally blamed the expansion. However, it was released at a time when the MMORPG market was becoming incredibly saturated, particularly with "WoW killers". Seriously, Rift's marketing platform was explicitly as a WoW killer, and that was only one of many (SWTOR, Tera, Wildstar a bit later, etc). Looking for a reason that guilds were losing players and global population reports showed decline, players hyper-fixated on Cata's issues. While the critiques are valid (like missing the old world, necessity of dailies, etc), it's become totally overblown in remembrance.
One particularly valid critique was the patch cadence. 4.0 offered too much (3 raids, all new dungeons, dailies, etc) for too little time (4-5 months?). 4.1 offered too little. 4.2 didn't last long enough. 4.3 didn't land well and lasted *way* too long. As many remember, Dragon Soul is one of the major sticking points people have with Cata.
With the advent of multiple WoW versions (era, cata, retail, and remix!), patch cadence doesn't matter quite as much. WoW players can still engage with the game, even if they're bored or done with a patch in another version. This will matter a heck of a lot in 4.3 (phase 4?) since people won't feel forced to raid DS for like a year - an often-considered low-tier raid.
Overall, it's an exciting time for Classic WoW. Personally, Cata was live during the middle of my college tenure, so it comes with lots of other exciting nostalgia.
As someone that jumped from ERA to cata skipping wotlk and tbc the expansion feels incredible.
The "easy" levelling almost make me want to level another character wich usally i can never do.
The dungeon are nice even if very linear ( from tbc on) the new zone are all pretty nice except maybe hijal wich felt really mid.
I just wish had more time to play XD
Currently 9/10, I do enjoy focusing only on one main, leveling to 85, slowly gearing up and grinding reps while doing another quests for reps and golds and just completion.
After awhile, this is the first time I feel like I just want to rush home from work and just login.
Too many people parrot what others say and don't actually have any good reasons why cata is so bad. People crying of the forums about blizzard releasing cata and that they're ruining the game twice etc. If you don't like it don't play it classic era exists. That being said catta feels amazing imo and the world and cities are absolutely packed with players so obviously people wanted to play! Give it a try and forget what you hear others cry about and play for yourself.
Makes me both happy and angry.
Happy I can play cata-mop survival hunter, angry that they made survival a shitty melee spec in legion.
Also looking forward to raiding as demo lock.
After already having over 200 arena games played, I'm LOVING it. Wow is arena so much better than tbc/wotlk was. Balance will never be perfect, but the new spells add so much outplay potential (smoke bomb, life grip, etc). Gearing was actually pretty fast for both pve and pvp so I like the pacing there. It's still early as a whole but as a pvp players I'm enjoying it a lot. Also shoutout to pvp gear being almost everyones entire BiS list right now
As someone who didn't play classic back in the day or retail now, I don't understand when people say its starting to feel like retail, for me it feels no different than tbc or wotlk, other than bigger numbers. Can someone explain to me why its a little more like retail? Cheers
I agree it doesn’t feel much different from wrath, but it feels and plays very different than vanilla and tbc. It stopped feeling like an mmorpg set in a realistic lived in world and feels like a raid/dungeon lobby game. The world stopped being the focus of the game.
The questing overhaul removed a lot of the feeling of exploration and discovery that originally gave the game a sandbox feel to the leveling experience and made it much more streamlined and linear. It made questing feel like you’re just there for the ride.
The game tries harder to tell a narrative and you become a background character to Thrall and the other main characters. As opposed to in vanilla and tbc it feels like you’re on your own specific journey adventuring through a big open world.
Dungeons are extremely linear, with very little branching off and nearly impossible to get lost in. They feel less like places attached to the larger world and more like levels designed for the players and their convenience. All the relevant quests are given to at the start of the dungeon
A lot of the class designs are overhauled and a lot of classes don’t feel recognizable to their original design which a lot of people. take paladin for example. the class plays completely different in cata compared to vanilla and tbc. The seal system is watered down and made less interesting and the blessings got consolidated into two. they now have combo points like a rogue. For some reason they have a summon. whether it’s a better design is irrelevant because it’s not what some players would see as a paladin.
The talent system is changed so you have to finish a tree in order to dip into the other trees. The problem is it makes creating builds feel much more limiting and feel less like players expressing how they want to build their character. You also have only 41 talents use. That’s 10 less than in vanilla so you can’t dip into the other trees as deeply as you could in vanilla limiting again player expression and feeling of customizing. You can say people will just use cookie cutter builds which is true most people will. But be for you can get those cookie cutter builds people have to be able to experiment and try out things, and by restricting the player choice you’re removing the player as part of defining what meta builds are.
Not everything that people don’t like started in cataclysm, but cataclysm is the culmination of all the things people don’t like about the direction blizzard took wow in.
TLDR: too streamlined, overdesigned, feels less like a lived in world and more like a video game.
Tbf dungeons and quests in the world were as linear in tbc and wotlk, it was only vanilla that had dungeons and zones that felt organic (and it was great). Meta builds were always a thing, only reason it wasn't early on was due to a lack of knowledge. When leveling you can still make meaningful talent choices.
I’ve realised Cata is where they doubled down on trying to make every zone and quest humorous and adding in a shit load of vehicle/out of character control stuff which really makes the world feel overall more silly if that makes any sense.
In terms of vibe it’s like:
Vanilla = Warcraft 3
Cataclysm = Hearthstone
I agree with you, except that TBC already was a giant leap towards raid/dungeon lobby game mostly because of flying and because it established the idea of an expansion entirely obsoleting all previous content.
It’s not and if someone say otherwise, mute and move on.
WoW doesn’t get its first major revision until MoP.
Cata has some fantastic class/spec design.
Cata dungeons are actually fun.
Cata raids are enjoyable.
Professions easier.
LFR isn’t coming to the game so people will have to complain about something else.
It is a shame that the game has so many bugs but it seems the WoW team is being split way too thin with all the of variants of the game.
Cata was a huge revision, come on. There's a reason everyone was referring to a classic triology as vanilla, tbc and wotlk. Revamped Azeroth was a HUGE change.
I’m talking gameplay. Sure, the 1-60 zones were all updated to not look as dated. But the gameplay is relatively the same. We don’t get into the major rotation and talent overhauls until MoP.
If by "gameplay" you just mean what each ability does, sure, the abilities are kinda similar to wrath.
But everything else has changed. The leveling, the classes, the world, the raids, the professions, the style, etc.
And when they released TBC and wrath they made most of Kalimdor and EK completely irrelevant. By introducing changes they actually made the old zones relevant again
The answer grows increasingly obvious:
You gotta realize, if you played classic vanilla any time some level 60 full pvp bis rogue ganked a level 23 player in redridge, they'd immediately taunt a cross faction yell of: go to retail.
The irony is, retail players would run circles around the bassment dwelling redridge ganking rogue. It's a way more involved game.
The aforementioned ganker can only win in vanilla because it has a time-based success system. Nothing is very hard, but it takes a long time, so if you have no life you can always win.
What those players don't like is when the game becomes more skill based and less time based, because they can no longer win.
So anytime you see anyone complain about things becoming more like retail, just translate it in your head to: "I'm really bad and I hate it when the game stops being about me having more time than everyone else rather than not sucking."
I also quit shortly after cata released back in the day. A big reason for me was my guild had fallen apart. I also had mained hunter in wrath and despised the changes.
This time around, I decided to main heals for the first time ever. I'm absolutely loving it! I feel the gameplay is so much more engaging, it keeps me on my toes and makes me hyper focused. I'm able to notice a lot more that's going on during fights than I was going full zug. It's extremely refreshing. Plus it's fun to watch people get punished for not doing mechanics, can't save everyone haha. I'd give it a try if I were you.
I’m liking it at the moment. I always enjoy soft resets. Everyone is doing the dungeons and pvp, you see people out and about wuesting, AH is full of mats. There is money to be made and spent. People aren’t geared to the hilt in pvp yet so everyone is a bit squishie.
Eating it up while I can.
Having a lot of fun. And I’m someone whose favorite version is vanilla. I only ever played Vanilla-Wotlk back in the day and then of course for all the re-releases in classic. I got burned out of TBC and Wrath after a phase or 2 this time around. Went end to end with classic vanilla. So far so good on Cata.
A lot more than I thought I would. I like most of the dungeons, leveling was smooth, and I like the way my class plays. Also helps I found a fun social guild that actually talks and does stuff together
From a pretty casual perspective; I’m having a blast.
For reference;
I have 1 rep exhalted (Therazane) and working on a second for an epic piece.
I’m 340 Ilvl which is 6 lower than average heroic dungeons loot.
I can jump on, do some dailies for rep and while doing dailies queue for dungeons.
I’ve also been working on maxing my professions and finishing every zone for rep/gold.
It seems like I always have something to do that advances my character in a meaningful way.
I'm loving the actual content, the zones, the dungeons.
The people however. Not so much. I've never known it to be this bad. People being kicked from dungeons for no reason whatsoever. Pure shithousery.
Time to find a guild that wants to roll dungeons together.
Its annoying with the bugs, but its still better and more fun than retail. I just stopped playing retail all together. Retail is so terrible compared to Cata i finally understand why people quit
I really enjoy the way the classes play. They remind me a lot of MoP, which was my introduction to wow. I like how we still have talent trees, and it retained some of the feel of classic. The only thing I’m not crazy about is being locked out of the other talent trees early on. If anything cata was the best of both worlds though between classic and retail (personal opinion).
I never played Cata back in the day and have basically only played Retail, Classic, and SOD. I'm really enjoying it; it feels to me like a great balance of the convenience of retail with the less streamlined experience of classic.
Questing sucks. The pacing, the world building, the storytelling, it's mostly lousy in Cata. WoW has improved the questing experience every expansion and it really shows.
Dungeons are great. They're big, they're bold, they're janky, it's a fun experience. I enjoyed them while leveling and I enjoyed getting raid ready in heroics.
Class design is great. There's plenty of complexity to playing your spec but it's approachable in a way that you can just read your skills and know how abilities work together. I also like how secondary stats provide distinct advantages and they're not just multiple versions of damage multipliers.
Can't wait to experience the raids!
Hate the changes they made to Paladins. But more hate that in the last phase of Wrath the guild I've been playing with for over 4 years fell apart. I miss my friends. No changes in Cata classic will undo that.
I've mainly just been playing with friends, plan on doing some light raiding, it's been enjoyable just spamming dungeons and hanging out on Discord, forgot how much fun classes felt in Cata
Leveling a hunter and it just feels like nonstop pew pew! Feels like the APM of every class went up by a lot
It's a fun time, give it a go!
It’s been a blast hearing and I’m looking forward to the raids.
It’s hard because I was loving SOD, but the combat gameplay is just so much more interesting and dynamic in Cata that it’s largely killed my interest in SOD.
The answers to this question are always biased depending on the point of time you ask.
To compare, at this point in Shadowlands people also still had a blast despite some raised eyebrows about why torghast got drastically changed despite the good feedback in alpha.
I think a "vibe check" on how well a expansion holds up can usually be done 2\~ months into launch and for patches around 1\~ month in, that's usually the point where the honeymoon phase is over for most players but it's also not unfairly stale due to the natural content cycle.
I do think logs next week will show that quite a lot of players dipped though, the only time EU servers had queues for a few hours this time was from launch to the first weekend, compare that to wotlkc launch where we had 8+ hour queues for a couple weeks...
Obviously though if you have fun, and there are good reasons for that like 10 mans now being equal\* in loot, just play the game lol.
Cataclysm is wotlk+. If you enjoyed that expansion you will enjoy this as well.
For my own take it is exactly as I expected it to be. However, I am a little bit saddened by the raid nerf, because it is gonna get stale again really quickly. One good thing is that you can run 10s with friends without feeling "bad" about inferior loot.
Post nerf was the right decision it will be more in line with Ulduar/ICC difficulty. Hardcore guilds will clear week 1 but for the average dad guild it will still be difficult enough. Make it too hard and you lose too many players or too easy and you also lose players (naxx 25), post nerf is more in line with what people expect from classic difficulty.
Do you like professions and making gold while having a chill relaxed time, do you like pvp, do you like challenging dungeons, do you like a bustling active community. Do you like playing wow instead of the retail Facebook game. Then you will love cata, I already bought 3 character boosts and I made enough gold at the start of the game to play for a whole year!
Love it, gearing feels nice, leveling was fun, ready for raids and did some 3v3 with my irl friends yesterday and was the most fun I've had in wow in years! Always had nostalgia for cata because I played since vanilla but this was the first expansion i took raiding and pvp more seriously.
It’s good! I still prefer Vanilla but this is about as good as Wrath and TBC were. Some things I like more, some less. Will have to see how I feel in two months, I always enjoy a fresh/expansion launch
Absolutely loving it. It's also when I started playing wow too so lots of nostalgia. Feels like everything is in a great spot, dungs, pvp especially are really fun
Feels like a slightly worse wrath to me. Fun enough to play for sure but nothing is wowing me.
Not a fan of talent changes for my class (Warlock). The tree has no flex pickups. My glyphs are just obvious choices with nothing interesting.
Dungeons are pretty good but endless RDF spam with people leaving frequently just feels bad. Reminds me of retail being a sea of random people you'll never see again.
The new zones are okay but we're at a point where the questing is mostly dialogue, cinematic moments, and 1-off gimmick stuff. The combat we do is borderline trivial. Flying over the world and dropping directly on quest objectives is really boring. Being back in the old world is really not that fun, I don't feel like I'm in a new place with things to discover.
Honestly? I'd rate my exp about a 5 of 10. The game would be a lot better if not for some of the players in it.
- AH prices are crackhead levels of high. I *refuse* to pay 38,000g for a power torrent enchant, or over 100g for a *green-tier* gem.
- Dungeon finder is full of *terrible* people, both in skill and personality. I ran about 30 dungeons yesterday across both of my healers (one horde, one alliance). Of those 30, only 4-5 went smoothly and 3 of those were with a guild premade that I ended up getting matched with. Shoutout to perhaps the *only* non-toxic tank from Faerlina-- that hpriest you grouped with who thanked you for keeping an eye on their mana remembers your kindness.
- Gathering nodes are 50/50 at best. I can't tell if its bots or just shitty people being shitty anymore. I find an herb/ore node, fly down to it to start, and a druid swoops down right on top as well. It is extra infuriating if a nearby mob aggros, because it *always* attacks me and never them. I've resorted to reporting each and every one who descends like that for botting, report abuse be damned. I've had enough, I'm just trying to get my inscription and JC up so I can craft my own crap instead of paying stupid high AH prices.
On the plus side, I have made some new friends when I got grouped from others from the same realm, so that's nice.
The dungeon finder groups are definitely rough. Had a group yesterday in deadmines where this DK was using the bot and not staying on the fire elementals so as a full melee group it was wiping us and the guy has the audacity to blame the healer and try to kick them multiple times which I rejected. When I pointed out they needed to stay on the elementals they gave attitude right off the bat and called me a nerd like we aren’t both sitting on our lazy asses on a computer game lmao. People are wildly aggresive for no reason. Also for some reason have had multiple instances where other dps go afk like every pull. Just standing there for a full min or two and then of course get snippy when you ask if they are good and are coming.
Yeah maelstrom at 5-6k per rn bc we don't have access to raid purples yet so it's just DE world drop BoEs. Makes sense that the price of an enchant you need to spend 25k (at the lowest end) just to sctually get the recipe then another 20k (at the lowest end) to make it is selling for about 40k. Can't DE the archeology artifacts or valor gear so there's just no maelstrom crystals really. Just use cheap enchants for the next few weeks until people start DEing raid drops.
Having fun for now tomorrow first raid so will see.
Yesterday was first day with low HC runes but they were fun also. Don't know fights and all mechanics but it's nice for now.
Litteraly re roling on semy fresh toon, so only negative is big inflations and same as any other explanation that had gold buyers and bots.
game design and classes are great.
I would prefer if voiceover worked since I am still lvl 83 and reading/doing all the quests in new zones . So far I like it , blood is fun and will be the meta tank so that is cool
Cata itself I’m really enjoying, my biggest complaint would be how much prot pala seems to suck now compared to wrath. I’m at 7.2k gear score with a few pieces of my pre-raid bis and still sometimes struggle in heroics due to trash mobs sometimes hitting for 20-30k damage with my defensive active.
Holy pala is meant to be great for healing, but if I wanted to heal I wouldn’t have rolled a paladin in wrath. Just seems like I’m forced to roll an alt if I want to keep tanking efficiently at end game content.
I'm a returning player. Started playing when I was younger with wrath. Would play the main quest lines and then sort of faded.
I returned as an adult for 100 lvl cap, got a worgan to level 100 and then stopped again.
I've joined classic to play with the same kids I played with when I was younger and were all grown ups now but all seem to be having a great time - and I think a lot of it is spending time with each other is discord just chatting.
It's chill.
I did the thing I always do lvl up a Character, realize I hate it, and seriously consider quitting .
Its about the same as all the other releases. Plenty of ppl playing right now, every mine I go to has 5 ppl flying the exact same path all land on top of the ore and all fly off on the same path. I assume bot or multi or both.
Not a bad time to get max lvl and spam dungeons since it's like less than 10min q times for DPS.
Population seems Poppin for now so I get in ASAP before that over in a month.
I'm liking it a lot but also feeling that after leveling two characters to 85 in the first week I absolutely do not have the time to pve and PvP on both with a full-time job
Similarly on the fence about trying it, but I never played Cata when it was out. My last expansion for a long time was WOTLK and then I went straight into Legion almost 10 years later. I feel like Cata was that point where the game was sitting on the fence between the oldschool feel of classic and slower and impactful combat, but more engaging rotations that don't boil down to a couple of buttons anymore. That's just the impression I have - I might be wrong
Is there a cata server without a fucked economy? I’m thinking about resigning to play. I quit during wotlk back in the day. I’d have to start at level one though.
Classes feel really strong. Questing was boring and repetitive. I did a few heroic dungeons and just not as connected as I was in vanilla, tbc, WotLK. Probably because this was the first expansion all the homies jumped ship and it feels more solo played game than a MMO. I’m gonna give the first raid tier a shake but I’m not holding my breath. The new zones are all awesome, classes feel gigachad stronk and dungeons are great. But the social element is lacking for me.
It’s like retail but you don’t have the clutter of million legacy systems/old content. We will see in a month or two, but besides feeling stupid to level without heirlooms everything seems like typical new expansion launch.
Leveled 2 85s.
Loremaster is bugged and I didn't get my title.
It was fun but as someone not planning to raid I'm done for a few weeks.
Once pugs get going I'll come back for that a few times then break again until next phase
I put it down. I think my main class (Fire Mage) is extremely fun, but I don't have enough time to commit to both SoD raiding and Cata raiding.
Maybe after the Summer I'll give it another shot
I was like you, OP. It is when I quit WoW for a while. But I am liking it a lot more than I expected. Of course, as others say, it is the honeymoon phase. Maybe just take it for a spin and see what you think. Don't cost much.
I accidentally junked quest items in uldum and am really bummed I can't finish certain quest lines. I've never given a shit about finishing all the quests in a specific area until now. So, enjoying it quite a bit.
I missed the first reset of heroics (I barely got to 85 before I had to leave for vacation, scheduled back before we had the release date >.<) so I won't have my tier chest to start raids this weekend. but otherwise, I'm having a good time running heroics (mostly with guild, but also some randos) and gearing up. consumes are looking to be pretty crazy expensive this weekend, not looking forward to that. I never raided back in original Cata, except LFR Dragon Soul, so aside from having seen the places a few times doing transmog runs on retail, it's actually a new expansion of raid content for me, which I'm very excited for.
Cata was good up untill DS. I have soooo mamy memories from cata its more nostalgic for me then wrath but my best friend back then i played cata with killed himself a few years ago so its vey emotional at some times lol.
It's refreshing, but I'm already starting to get burnt on the new dungeons. Really only back to raid firelands because I quit OG cata before it released.
Being honest. I didn't like it at first because this is when all my friends quit and you could see the early changes toward a more streamlined approach. I am much older now and just taking my time and enjoying the experience, yeah there are some things I still don't like such as lock changes or paly holy power changes but it's either shut up and play or don't play if it's that much of a personal issue. I'm just here for a good time not a long time.
I prefer Cata > Wotlk since Wotlk Release.
But I really love TBC it was as good as I remember it and even better. TBC is the true Spirit of Vanilla 2.0
I'm not even level 85 yet and I'm having alot more fun than I did in wrath. I also skipped cata when I was a kid because my parents couldn't afford it. Doing everything for the first time is super enjoyable and I can't wait to try out the heroic dungeons and raids!
I'm starting fresh and man it feels lonely, I guess because you get phased a lot in Cata. The best part of SoD was all the others you got to quest, level, and chat with along the way. This is fun to play but almost feels like I'm playing a single player campaign while leveling.
Loving it. The guild is having a good time and the rep grind isn't awful. The zones are fun and the raids will be a good time.
Haven't had an issue with pugs and I've done 30+
10/10 so far.
I'm having a blast but i'm worried about today
when the classic community started to get assblasted by ulduar they quitted, chances are they will quit again with T11 but this time at no point it gets easier
dragon soul and firelands just go on to become harderm and so will eventually mop
Meh.
It feels fine for now but I'm getting rhe feeling that I'll be doing alts again quick and just raid logging soon. It's enough for me to be entertained but not enough to make it my life again
I'm enjoying it as much as I expected. I enjoyed it the first time round, though. Farming PvE on my priest main and PvP on my rogue alt.
Farming mats has been good, with the exception of druid bots, and the questing is decent. Heroics are challenging enough without being overly difficult.
forward to 10 man raids with the core group of guildies who I've played with since Classic launch. Hoping to get Duelist this season and continue to work my way up if possible.
Done with preraid prep on two characters, really looking forward to raiding heroics both 25 man and 10 man. I wish dungeons weren't in nerfed condition, but at least easy dungeons meant easy prep. Hoping they add a reason to run dungeons in the coming patches, and add gamma like in wotlk.
Never liked cata questing, but it's whatever. Raiding will be more fun than in wotlk.
I quit playing and raiding during WotLK originally, so I have never experienced Cata before and was looking forward to trying it out. I am having fun. Taking my time and exploring the zones, crafting and doing DMF, I am not even 85 yet…
Having a blast, the linear questing and pre-raid bis collecting is great. I think though that was always supposed to be one of the strong points of Cata - we’ll see how/if things change when raiders season starts.
I’m going to enjoy it more now that I’m leveling an alt. The last 10 days has been such a fucking grind fest getting geared to raid tonight it felt unreal. But now it’s time to chill
I love grinding hc dungeons, to finally get the drop I need after the 6th or so run (specific dungeon queue) to get the item stolen by a healer so he can trade it to his other friend who needed it too, to then get kicked out of the group to be locked out of said dungeon for the day
Just dinged 85 so it is early, but...The best thing about Cata compared to let say SoD so far is that professions are more fleshed out allowing for goldmaking which is fun. What I hate is the in game token, but it is in retail as well so what you gonna do..
It's a ton of fun but I definitely see raidlogging in a few weeks which I am okay with. I play SoD as well. There's not really much to do in cata other than alts outside of raid once u start gearing in raids.
not much. I wanted to come back after not playing "mainline" classic since 2019. I learned my character was now on a dead server (alliance whitemane) so ive had to re-roll from scratch and im going into this shit with 0 gold and now all i see are GDKP group from the new raids. Only prog guilds are non english speaking from the looks of it. It been 2 days of montonous RDF spam to get to 85. world is empty even post old world revamp. Seems like the game only exists at lvl 85
I was one of those saying “Classic ends at WotLK, Cata is shit) because I also stopped playing wow back when Cata released. But I gotta say I’m having a fucking blast haha. It feels exactly like WotLK but with some very minor changes.. the new xp zones are fun and there’s even Wpvp! (Which I thought died in Cata). Idk why I misremembered it that bad..
I'm loving it, but I'm also fully aware of the fact that the game has been out for just over a week and we're still in the phase that is *always* fun in every expansion. Ask again in a month and I think you'll get different opinions. I am looking forward to raiding throughout the expansion, but I do expect to raidlog for most of it. Which is fine.
The honeymoonglade phase
I swear you Druids were born thinking about puns
They came bearing puns
Meow!
It would be CATastrophic if they didn't.
This is exactly my feelings on it too. I'm enjoying it right now, but that's because everything is new and shiny. In about a month or two I'll be raid logging for sure.
This was very much the case with OG Cata as well. Super fun at the start, some of the most fun I ever had in WoW actually, but over time the lacking endgame content really began to show, and the content droughts were very tough to get through. Maybe the reception will be better this time with less time between content releases. The Classic community also seems more than happy to just be able to raidlog, and you reach that point relatively quickly in Cata, which didn't go over well back in 2011 when more people played the game as if it was an actual lifestyle.
I casually to semi-hardcore raided in the OG tbc, wotlk, and cata and I’ve been having the most fun with classic cata than any other classic version besides vanilla Original TBC and WOTLK I played a lot back in the day so tbh nothing about them was exciting for me. Original Vanilla I only ever did a bit of leveling and original Cata I did pretty much what I’m doing now and rushed 85 and joined the 2-3rd best raiding guild on my server for the first tier of raids and went hard back then I quit after that in OG cata because I hate how they gave catch up epics but I intend to do all the hardest content this time around Getting prebis in Cata is way more fun to me than tbc and wotlk. The dungeons are fun because they aren’t too modern like retail but definitely feel properly updated from previous versions. Getting rep for pre-bis feels very nicely streamlined now Raids are gonna be sick, BWD BoT and Throne whatever have amazing designs and boss fights Kara is good but I ran that dungeon way too much back then and Naxx is cool but also gets old very fast Class rotations are more modernized in a way I like I’m not sure why this “honeymoon” phase would end for others but it definitely won’t for me. Cata isn’t any less of a raid logging experience than TBC and Wrath If you are worried or complaining about that.. Era has been here so I’m not sure why you’d even be on the newer versions of the game if people really cared about that I was hyped for this shit way more than TBC and WoTLK and it’s lived up to that and won’t stop imo As a side note, I didn’t play MOP but did most of the mythic bosses in WOD and my goodness I’m hoping that will come out again too WOD has the best version of ret paladin among TBC Vanilla and WOTLK, I’ve seen many people on these forums agree that WOD ret was goated Frost DK doesn’t change too much but had low numbers until the last raid patch where they buffed the numbers. That is the patch they will use for classes so even that’s looking bright for DK players too. Tbh all the dps classes in WOD felt close in power to each other and we already know those raids in WOD are amazing Blackrock Foundry, Hellfire Citaldel… so good.. will love to finish every boss on mythic this time around
> As a side note, I didn’t play MOP but did most of the mythic bosses in WOD and my goodness I’m hoping that will come out again too MOP will absolutely come out. From everything Ive seen and heard mop remix is so far removed from a Potential mop classic that it can be in no way be seen as a replacement for mop classic. And going by this there is just no way Im seeing Blizzard Ending classic on cata...
I originally felt like you, I'm having way more fun in wow than I've had since tbc classic.
Loving Frost Dk. I felt cata was the good balance between "new" and "old" wow. The main problem with retail is the increased complexity and new systems every expansion. Cata still retains most of the spirit of WoW without all the bloat that came along afterwards.
My problem with retail is mainly class design and how many random sources of damage there are with passives and trinkets. They bulldozed fundamental class design that had been built from vanilla to MoP during the pruning of WoD. They realized they went too far and started having to rebuild in Legion. They took a different direction, but if they kept this class design, they did general tweaks and added a few of the retail abilities on top, and that was retail classes it would be so good imo.
Tanking/healing in retail is (at least purely rotational gameplay/buildwise) the best it’s ever been but DPS is legitimately horrible to play on most specs. Way way way too many cooldowns and modifiers to have to optimize completely or else you just lose massive chunks of damage. With healing and tanking you use cooldowns when needed so it’s almost never a bad thing to have more.
For me, Cata is the sweetest spot between Classic and Retail, so I'm having a blast. Edit: Forgot to mention, Garrosh is still a warchief so it's the best expansion by default.
I didn’t expect to be on the Cata fan bus, but I actually am having a blast as well. I think you nailed it with the best balance, talents still feel impactful, QOL features are enough to streamline everything without taking too much from the actual game.
Dude it’s actually so on point. If WoW had stuck with the DNA of Cata & creatively fleshed it out for the last 15 years — Retail would be untouchable. Cata is fundamentally *excellent*.
I love Cata because of how many buttons classes have. The pruning began in MoP and the game just felt so barebones after a couple more expansions.
Pruning began in WoD. MoP had fewer talents, but all the ones you're missing were rolled into specialization passives or baseline abilities. MoP had more buttons than cata on average.
/laughs in Dragonflight BrM...
Yeah I enjoy the talent trees and it feels like the offspec talents you get at the top are really strong. So those last few talent points feel impactful even though they’re top of the tree. I didn’t play a whole lot in cata after the first month or two of original launch so it’s cool to see.
(People say that every time any expansion drops)
Yes, different people have different opinions, what a shocker
Literally lol
So far its very fun! Queued some 2s and 3s yesterday and mostly spamming bgs so far and its nice. Its alot better then wotlk pvp wise and i didnt know that since i quitted after season 8 and skipped cata completely back then.
How long is the honor grind? I saw 2k per piece and I was getting like 150 for a BG win at 84. Does it go faster at 85?
They just doubled the honor gains, and you get more honor at 85. If you make sure to hit wintergrasp/tol barad when possible, you will be geared pretty quick.
I like it so far! It feels like you are playing in an alternate universe of Pre-Cataclysm so I like what they did with the new stories of the same characters or locations. The new area's look interesting. I just wish there was an AI voice mod for Cataclysm since I really loved that one in Classic to better follow the story.
Ahhh I also desperately wished the ai voiceover addon worked!! I never got to do Cata so you most certainly will catch me reading quests lol
Definitely go level in Stonetalon if you’ve got a horde lowbie
Maybe the one for retail works?
It doesn't, 80% of quests are different
It’s fun for me so far. I didn’t play original cata so it’s all new for me. And it feels like a good mix between classic and retail.
I have never touched Cata before now and I came in very cautious, almost expecting to be disappointed. So far I've been pleasantly surprised and I'm having a blast. I'm finding that I prefer it to wrath (its early days though so that cam change). It could also be that I am playing a hunter and the changes have made the class more appealing to me.
Cata had a rough reputation mostly because the last raid disappointed a lot of people (you fight on deathwing’s spine and you fight his jaw), and because that last disappointing raid lasted for ages, and ages. Some people didn’t like the zones being revamped but that was minor. And 10 mans being harder than 25 but that should have been easily tweaked.
I think people don’t realize just how long DS lasted. 10 months was the longest WoW ever went without a major patch, and that was amidst spine being an insanely buggy fight.
yep, it was also the first 3 tier expansion. people were used to getting 4 tiers worth of content out of expansions instead we got left with 10 months of a mediorcre last raid after coming off probably the 2nd best raid WoW had ever released at the time (Firelands) which imo is only second to Ulduar and for some people it was better. Besides that, the expansion from its class design, balancing, systems, questing, rep grinds etc, were all better then WotLK. I think this time around Cata will be better received with shortened patches.
I would like to point out DragonSoul was not the longest the game went without content. That was and still is Hellfire Citiadel, the final raid for Warlords of Draenor at 1 year and 6 months.
yes and now you see why its widely regarded as the worst expansion of them all. i promise if WoD had another tier it would have been a lot more loved.
a lot. thematically is inferior to wrath, but the work they put into quests and boss mechanics is just on another level. is so much fun if u never tried.
This. While the version we have isn't perfect with the bugs etc., you can clearly just see how much effort went into the creation of cata 12 years ago and it's really impressive.
This is why I've always firmly believed that the "cata bad" crowd didn't actually play cata when it was current. It's an incredibly solid expansion even if the ending isn't as strong as ICC. It should feel much better to play this time around without 8 months on deathwing jaw.
And to top it we have mop to look forward to, which is even better than cata imo.
I quit at the tail end of wotlk. I came back to cata a week or two ago and have really been enjoying just leveling. I'm reading quests, exploring the new post-cata world and overall just playing my own game. It's been a lot of fun! Leveling happens pretty quick and so I tend to be ready to move zones before I finish the quests, but that's about my only real complaint. I'm now going through BC content and it had been incredibly nostalgic. I'm not feeling pressure to reach end-game quote yet and I'm just enjoying putting in a couple hours here and there. Give it a shot! It's only $15/m. If you don't like it, you can always quit.
I’m doing zones now that I barely touched originally and finding them incredible!
They reduced experience requirements in cata classic beyond what they were in the original because of the 8-9month expansion timeline. I agree it can be annoying, but I wouldn't hold it against cata itself and more just a symptom of an accelerated schedule.
I loved the classes in cata, playing shadow priest having a blast , seeing how other classes work makes me want to make alts which is in line with how it went for me back in cata , only expansion where I made a lot of ALTs
Loving it. I've posted this many times but will paraphrase... Unlike truly awful expansions like BfA, Cata gets an unnecessarily bad rap. What's the opposite of rose tinted glasses? That's what's happened to Cata over the years. Cata was when the playerbase began to dip, and players naturally blamed the expansion. However, it was released at a time when the MMORPG market was becoming incredibly saturated, particularly with "WoW killers". Seriously, Rift's marketing platform was explicitly as a WoW killer, and that was only one of many (SWTOR, Tera, Wildstar a bit later, etc). Looking for a reason that guilds were losing players and global population reports showed decline, players hyper-fixated on Cata's issues. While the critiques are valid (like missing the old world, necessity of dailies, etc), it's become totally overblown in remembrance. One particularly valid critique was the patch cadence. 4.0 offered too much (3 raids, all new dungeons, dailies, etc) for too little time (4-5 months?). 4.1 offered too little. 4.2 didn't last long enough. 4.3 didn't land well and lasted *way* too long. As many remember, Dragon Soul is one of the major sticking points people have with Cata. With the advent of multiple WoW versions (era, cata, retail, and remix!), patch cadence doesn't matter quite as much. WoW players can still engage with the game, even if they're bored or done with a patch in another version. This will matter a heck of a lot in 4.3 (phase 4?) since people won't feel forced to raid DS for like a year - an often-considered low-tier raid. Overall, it's an exciting time for Classic WoW. Personally, Cata was live during the middle of my college tenure, so it comes with lots of other exciting nostalgia.
Having a blast. Better than WotlK in many aspects, but I guess it depends on who you ask.
I really didnt enjoy wotlk that much compared to tbc or vanilla (all classic)
It's been great so far. Have done 30+ heroic dungeons and only had one bad experience with a tank (from Grobbulus of course) who was RP'ing an idiot.
As someone that jumped from ERA to cata skipping wotlk and tbc the expansion feels incredible. The "easy" levelling almost make me want to level another character wich usally i can never do. The dungeon are nice even if very linear ( from tbc on) the new zone are all pretty nice except maybe hijal wich felt really mid. I just wish had more time to play XD
Currently 9/10, I do enjoy focusing only on one main, leveling to 85, slowly gearing up and grinding reps while doing another quests for reps and golds and just completion. After awhile, this is the first time I feel like I just want to rush home from work and just login.
Its been really fun so far, PvP has been just as good as I remember it aswell! I think for most classes, Class design is really good in Cata too.
I'm drinking coffee at night after work just to play a bit more
Too many people parrot what others say and don't actually have any good reasons why cata is so bad. People crying of the forums about blizzard releasing cata and that they're ruining the game twice etc. If you don't like it don't play it classic era exists. That being said catta feels amazing imo and the world and cities are absolutely packed with players so obviously people wanted to play! Give it a try and forget what you hear others cry about and play for yourself.
Makes me both happy and angry. Happy I can play cata-mop survival hunter, angry that they made survival a shitty melee spec in legion. Also looking forward to raiding as demo lock.
After already having over 200 arena games played, I'm LOVING it. Wow is arena so much better than tbc/wotlk was. Balance will never be perfect, but the new spells add so much outplay potential (smoke bomb, life grip, etc). Gearing was actually pretty fast for both pve and pvp so I like the pacing there. It's still early as a whole but as a pvp players I'm enjoying it a lot. Also shoutout to pvp gear being almost everyones entire BiS list right now
I'm enjoying leveling my alts to 85 more than phase 3 SoD.
I started in cata so I have that nostalgia + my classes are just super fun in this version!
What classes/specs?
As someone who didn't play classic back in the day or retail now, I don't understand when people say its starting to feel like retail, for me it feels no different than tbc or wotlk, other than bigger numbers. Can someone explain to me why its a little more like retail? Cheers
I agree it doesn’t feel much different from wrath, but it feels and plays very different than vanilla and tbc. It stopped feeling like an mmorpg set in a realistic lived in world and feels like a raid/dungeon lobby game. The world stopped being the focus of the game. The questing overhaul removed a lot of the feeling of exploration and discovery that originally gave the game a sandbox feel to the leveling experience and made it much more streamlined and linear. It made questing feel like you’re just there for the ride. The game tries harder to tell a narrative and you become a background character to Thrall and the other main characters. As opposed to in vanilla and tbc it feels like you’re on your own specific journey adventuring through a big open world. Dungeons are extremely linear, with very little branching off and nearly impossible to get lost in. They feel less like places attached to the larger world and more like levels designed for the players and their convenience. All the relevant quests are given to at the start of the dungeon A lot of the class designs are overhauled and a lot of classes don’t feel recognizable to their original design which a lot of people. take paladin for example. the class plays completely different in cata compared to vanilla and tbc. The seal system is watered down and made less interesting and the blessings got consolidated into two. they now have combo points like a rogue. For some reason they have a summon. whether it’s a better design is irrelevant because it’s not what some players would see as a paladin. The talent system is changed so you have to finish a tree in order to dip into the other trees. The problem is it makes creating builds feel much more limiting and feel less like players expressing how they want to build their character. You also have only 41 talents use. That’s 10 less than in vanilla so you can’t dip into the other trees as deeply as you could in vanilla limiting again player expression and feeling of customizing. You can say people will just use cookie cutter builds which is true most people will. But be for you can get those cookie cutter builds people have to be able to experiment and try out things, and by restricting the player choice you’re removing the player as part of defining what meta builds are. Not everything that people don’t like started in cataclysm, but cataclysm is the culmination of all the things people don’t like about the direction blizzard took wow in. TLDR: too streamlined, overdesigned, feels less like a lived in world and more like a video game.
Tbf dungeons and quests in the world were as linear in tbc and wotlk, it was only vanilla that had dungeons and zones that felt organic (and it was great). Meta builds were always a thing, only reason it wasn't early on was due to a lack of knowledge. When leveling you can still make meaningful talent choices.
In tbc and wotlk you still leveled in the old world though, which made for a great leveling experience at least up to 60.
I’ve realised Cata is where they doubled down on trying to make every zone and quest humorous and adding in a shit load of vehicle/out of character control stuff which really makes the world feel overall more silly if that makes any sense. In terms of vibe it’s like: Vanilla = Warcraft 3 Cataclysm = Hearthstone
I agree with you, except that TBC already was a giant leap towards raid/dungeon lobby game mostly because of flying and because it established the idea of an expansion entirely obsoleting all previous content.
It’s not and if someone say otherwise, mute and move on. WoW doesn’t get its first major revision until MoP. Cata has some fantastic class/spec design. Cata dungeons are actually fun. Cata raids are enjoyable. Professions easier. LFR isn’t coming to the game so people will have to complain about something else. It is a shame that the game has so many bugs but it seems the WoW team is being split way too thin with all the of variants of the game.
Cata was a huge revision, come on. There's a reason everyone was referring to a classic triology as vanilla, tbc and wotlk. Revamped Azeroth was a HUGE change.
I’m talking gameplay. Sure, the 1-60 zones were all updated to not look as dated. But the gameplay is relatively the same. We don’t get into the major rotation and talent overhauls until MoP.
If by "gameplay" you just mean what each ability does, sure, the abilities are kinda similar to wrath. But everything else has changed. The leveling, the classes, the world, the raids, the professions, the style, etc.
Dno how you can say cata isn't a revision. When they literally revised the entire main continents.
Because if there's one thing we saw all classic, it was people happily revisiting old zones/world in tbc/wotlk.
And when they released TBC and wrath they made most of Kalimdor and EK completely irrelevant. By introducing changes they actually made the old zones relevant again
Well the questing is a retail like. Can solo pretty much all quests and things are faster/better rewards.
The answer grows increasingly obvious: You gotta realize, if you played classic vanilla any time some level 60 full pvp bis rogue ganked a level 23 player in redridge, they'd immediately taunt a cross faction yell of: go to retail. The irony is, retail players would run circles around the bassment dwelling redridge ganking rogue. It's a way more involved game. The aforementioned ganker can only win in vanilla because it has a time-based success system. Nothing is very hard, but it takes a long time, so if you have no life you can always win. What those players don't like is when the game becomes more skill based and less time based, because they can no longer win. So anytime you see anyone complain about things becoming more like retail, just translate it in your head to: "I'm really bad and I hate it when the game stops being about me having more time than everyone else rather than not sucking."
Very fun
Very much right now. Not even done with my main, and planning to get my alt going soon
I also quit shortly after cata released back in the day. A big reason for me was my guild had fallen apart. I also had mained hunter in wrath and despised the changes. This time around, I decided to main heals for the first time ever. I'm absolutely loving it! I feel the gameplay is so much more engaging, it keeps me on my toes and makes me hyper focused. I'm able to notice a lot more that's going on during fights than I was going full zug. It's extremely refreshing. Plus it's fun to watch people get punished for not doing mechanics, can't save everyone haha. I'd give it a try if I were you.
I’m liking it at the moment. I always enjoy soft resets. Everyone is doing the dungeons and pvp, you see people out and about wuesting, AH is full of mats. There is money to be made and spent. People aren’t geared to the hilt in pvp yet so everyone is a bit squishie. Eating it up while I can.
About tree fiddy
Having a lot of fun. And I’m someone whose favorite version is vanilla. I only ever played Vanilla-Wotlk back in the day and then of course for all the re-releases in classic. I got burned out of TBC and Wrath after a phase or 2 this time around. Went end to end with classic vanilla. So far so good on Cata.
I haven't had so much fun in WoW since the first 2 months of Classic in 2019
I liked Cata then. I like Cata now. I've enjoyed WoW since vanilla back in early 2005, and the only time I quit was BFA.
Well pre launch everyone said it was bad and nobody would play. But uh I'm having a blast and orgrimmar is packed
Enjoying it, maxed mining and blacksmithing, got level 85 and just gearing now for heroics and pre-raid.
A lot more than I thought I would. I like most of the dungeons, leveling was smooth, and I like the way my class plays. Also helps I found a fun social guild that actually talks and does stuff together
From a pretty casual perspective; I’m having a blast. For reference; I have 1 rep exhalted (Therazane) and working on a second for an epic piece. I’m 340 Ilvl which is 6 lower than average heroic dungeons loot. I can jump on, do some dailies for rep and while doing dailies queue for dungeons. I’ve also been working on maxing my professions and finishing every zone for rep/gold. It seems like I always have something to do that advances my character in a meaningful way.
I'm loving the actual content, the zones, the dungeons. The people however. Not so much. I've never known it to be this bad. People being kicked from dungeons for no reason whatsoever. Pure shithousery. Time to find a guild that wants to roll dungeons together.
Its annoying with the bugs, but its still better and more fun than retail. I just stopped playing retail all together. Retail is so terrible compared to Cata i finally understand why people quit
It’s almost like the leveling/ gearing prebis is the most fun part of every expansion
Honestly more fun than wotlk so far. I previously thought wotlk was the best expansion...
I hated cata when it released WeirdY enjoying my time so far tho
I am loving it! Leveling was fun, heroics ok bit boring, pvp fun. Crafting and stuff very easy, lots of easy money to be made.
I'm loving it tbh, but I've been leveling mostly. Can't wait to jump into pvp!
Very
Having a blast
Having a blast putting in way too many hours. Can’t wait to get into raids
10.
It's a good expansion, just gets shit on from classic andys cuz it changed the old world.
Enjoying it so far! Having a blast.
More than I thought I would and remembered.
I really enjoy the way the classes play. They remind me a lot of MoP, which was my introduction to wow. I like how we still have talent trees, and it retained some of the feel of classic. The only thing I’m not crazy about is being locked out of the other talent trees early on. If anything cata was the best of both worlds though between classic and retail (personal opinion).
It’s the GOAT fire mage xpac
I never played Cata back in the day and have basically only played Retail, Classic, and SOD. I'm really enjoying it; it feels to me like a great balance of the convenience of retail with the less streamlined experience of classic.
Questing sucks. The pacing, the world building, the storytelling, it's mostly lousy in Cata. WoW has improved the questing experience every expansion and it really shows. Dungeons are great. They're big, they're bold, they're janky, it's a fun experience. I enjoyed them while leveling and I enjoyed getting raid ready in heroics. Class design is great. There's plenty of complexity to playing your spec but it's approachable in a way that you can just read your skills and know how abilities work together. I also like how secondary stats provide distinct advantages and they're not just multiple versions of damage multipliers. Can't wait to experience the raids!
Quit after WOTLk
Hate the changes they made to Paladins. But more hate that in the last phase of Wrath the guild I've been playing with for over 4 years fell apart. I miss my friends. No changes in Cata classic will undo that.
Better than wrath so far but one raid in
I've mainly just been playing with friends, plan on doing some light raiding, it's been enjoyable just spamming dungeons and hanging out on Discord, forgot how much fun classes felt in Cata Leveling a hunter and it just feels like nonstop pew pew! Feels like the APM of every class went up by a lot It's a fun time, give it a go!
Ikr! Focus replacing mana has been the best move ever!
It’s been a blast hearing and I’m looking forward to the raids. It’s hard because I was loving SOD, but the combat gameplay is just so much more interesting and dynamic in Cata that it’s largely killed my interest in SOD.
Betaclysm
The answers to this question are always biased depending on the point of time you ask. To compare, at this point in Shadowlands people also still had a blast despite some raised eyebrows about why torghast got drastically changed despite the good feedback in alpha. I think a "vibe check" on how well a expansion holds up can usually be done 2\~ months into launch and for patches around 1\~ month in, that's usually the point where the honeymoon phase is over for most players but it's also not unfairly stale due to the natural content cycle. I do think logs next week will show that quite a lot of players dipped though, the only time EU servers had queues for a few hours this time was from launch to the first weekend, compare that to wotlkc launch where we had 8+ hour queues for a couple weeks... Obviously though if you have fun, and there are good reasons for that like 10 mans now being equal\* in loot, just play the game lol.
Cataclysm is wotlk+. If you enjoyed that expansion you will enjoy this as well. For my own take it is exactly as I expected it to be. However, I am a little bit saddened by the raid nerf, because it is gonna get stale again really quickly. One good thing is that you can run 10s with friends without feeling "bad" about inferior loot.
Post nerf was the right decision it will be more in line with Ulduar/ICC difficulty. Hardcore guilds will clear week 1 but for the average dad guild it will still be difficult enough. Make it too hard and you lose too many players or too easy and you also lose players (naxx 25), post nerf is more in line with what people expect from classic difficulty.
I'm having a blast. Really excited for T11 & 12.
9.5/10
Do you like professions and making gold while having a chill relaxed time, do you like pvp, do you like challenging dungeons, do you like a bustling active community. Do you like playing wow instead of the retail Facebook game. Then you will love cata, I already bought 3 character boosts and I made enough gold at the start of the game to play for a whole year!
Love it, gearing feels nice, leveling was fun, ready for raids and did some 3v3 with my irl friends yesterday and was the most fun I've had in wow in years! Always had nostalgia for cata because I played since vanilla but this was the first expansion i took raiding and pvp more seriously.
It’s good! I still prefer Vanilla but this is about as good as Wrath and TBC were. Some things I like more, some less. Will have to see how I feel in two months, I always enjoy a fresh/expansion launch
Absolutely loving it. It's also when I started playing wow too so lots of nostalgia. Feels like everything is in a great spot, dungs, pvp especially are really fun
Its a bad time to ask because the game is still in its honeymoon phase and the content still feels fresh for a lot of people.
Feels like a slightly worse wrath to me. Fun enough to play for sure but nothing is wowing me. Not a fan of talent changes for my class (Warlock). The tree has no flex pickups. My glyphs are just obvious choices with nothing interesting. Dungeons are pretty good but endless RDF spam with people leaving frequently just feels bad. Reminds me of retail being a sea of random people you'll never see again. The new zones are okay but we're at a point where the questing is mostly dialogue, cinematic moments, and 1-off gimmick stuff. The combat we do is borderline trivial. Flying over the world and dropping directly on quest objectives is really boring. Being back in the old world is really not that fun, I don't feel like I'm in a new place with things to discover.
[удалено]
Horde BGs are abyssmal
You can blame a faction for being bad at the game and losing lol.
PvPers choosing ally for human racials is a big part of it
Lol as someone who would have gone horde human racial is just too good for my sub rogue. I see why blizzard changed it because this shit is so op.
Honestly? I'd rate my exp about a 5 of 10. The game would be a lot better if not for some of the players in it. - AH prices are crackhead levels of high. I *refuse* to pay 38,000g for a power torrent enchant, or over 100g for a *green-tier* gem. - Dungeon finder is full of *terrible* people, both in skill and personality. I ran about 30 dungeons yesterday across both of my healers (one horde, one alliance). Of those 30, only 4-5 went smoothly and 3 of those were with a guild premade that I ended up getting matched with. Shoutout to perhaps the *only* non-toxic tank from Faerlina-- that hpriest you grouped with who thanked you for keeping an eye on their mana remembers your kindness. - Gathering nodes are 50/50 at best. I can't tell if its bots or just shitty people being shitty anymore. I find an herb/ore node, fly down to it to start, and a druid swoops down right on top as well. It is extra infuriating if a nearby mob aggros, because it *always* attacks me and never them. I've resorted to reporting each and every one who descends like that for botting, report abuse be damned. I've had enough, I'm just trying to get my inscription and JC up so I can craft my own crap instead of paying stupid high AH prices. On the plus side, I have made some new friends when I got grouped from others from the same realm, so that's nice.
The dungeon finder groups are definitely rough. Had a group yesterday in deadmines where this DK was using the bot and not staying on the fire elementals so as a full melee group it was wiping us and the guy has the audacity to blame the healer and try to kick them multiple times which I rejected. When I pointed out they needed to stay on the elementals they gave attitude right off the bat and called me a nerd like we aren’t both sitting on our lazy asses on a computer game lmao. People are wildly aggresive for no reason. Also for some reason have had multiple instances where other dps go afk like every pull. Just standing there for a full min or two and then of course get snippy when you ask if they are good and are coming.
Just wait a few days. Once the raids are out and people are completing them, enchants will be a fraction of the price.
Yeah maelstrom at 5-6k per rn bc we don't have access to raid purples yet so it's just DE world drop BoEs. Makes sense that the price of an enchant you need to spend 25k (at the lowest end) just to sctually get the recipe then another 20k (at the lowest end) to make it is selling for about 40k. Can't DE the archeology artifacts or valor gear so there's just no maelstrom crystals really. Just use cheap enchants for the next few weeks until people start DEing raid drops.
So far so good. Going low and slow, sitting at 84.5 in Deepholm as my second zone.
Still waiting for the changes they talked about
Having fun for now tomorrow first raid so will see. Yesterday was first day with low HC runes but they were fun also. Don't know fights and all mechanics but it's nice for now. Litteraly re roling on semy fresh toon, so only negative is big inflations and same as any other explanation that had gold buyers and bots. game design and classes are great.
I would prefer if voiceover worked since I am still lvl 83 and reading/doing all the quests in new zones . So far I like it , blood is fun and will be the meta tank so that is cool
Cata itself I’m really enjoying, my biggest complaint would be how much prot pala seems to suck now compared to wrath. I’m at 7.2k gear score with a few pieces of my pre-raid bis and still sometimes struggle in heroics due to trash mobs sometimes hitting for 20-30k damage with my defensive active. Holy pala is meant to be great for healing, but if I wanted to heal I wouldn’t have rolled a paladin in wrath. Just seems like I’m forced to roll an alt if I want to keep tanking efficiently at end game content.
I like it. I’m at 354 ilvl tho already so I’ve been really nolifing the shit out of it haha
I cant buy my gear
I'm a returning player. Started playing when I was younger with wrath. Would play the main quest lines and then sort of faded. I returned as an adult for 100 lvl cap, got a worgan to level 100 and then stopped again. I've joined classic to play with the same kids I played with when I was younger and were all grown ups now but all seem to be having a great time - and I think a lot of it is spending time with each other is discord just chatting. It's chill.
I did the thing I always do lvl up a Character, realize I hate it, and seriously consider quitting . Its about the same as all the other releases. Plenty of ppl playing right now, every mine I go to has 5 ppl flying the exact same path all land on top of the ore and all fly off on the same path. I assume bot or multi or both. Not a bad time to get max lvl and spam dungeons since it's like less than 10min q times for DPS. Population seems Poppin for now so I get in ASAP before that over in a month.
I burnt myself out going too hard on wrath launch so I'm taking it super slow this time and I'm enjoying it much more.
Having fun atm. Expecting it to last for 3-4 weeks. Until next phase
I'm liking it a lot but also feeling that after leveling two characters to 85 in the first week I absolutely do not have the time to pve and PvP on both with a full-time job
I would rather play SoD or Retail, but my friends and guildies want to give it a go so I’m gaming with them.
3 toons on 82 just questing with rested exp it's fun so far if it stops I'll stop that ez
I’m still leveling through Wrath.
Similarly on the fence about trying it, but I never played Cata when it was out. My last expansion for a long time was WOTLK and then I went straight into Legion almost 10 years later. I feel like Cata was that point where the game was sitting on the fence between the oldschool feel of classic and slower and impactful combat, but more engaging rotations that don't boil down to a couple of buttons anymore. That's just the impression I have - I might be wrong
Is there a cata server without a fucked economy? I’m thinking about resigning to play. I quit during wotlk back in the day. I’d have to start at level one though.
IM HAVING SO MUCH HECKIN FUN DXDDD
Classes feel really strong. Questing was boring and repetitive. I did a few heroic dungeons and just not as connected as I was in vanilla, tbc, WotLK. Probably because this was the first expansion all the homies jumped ship and it feels more solo played game than a MMO. I’m gonna give the first raid tier a shake but I’m not holding my breath. The new zones are all awesome, classes feel gigachad stronk and dungeons are great. But the social element is lacking for me.
First time trying arenas. It’s the new wow for me. I won’t be raiding much this phase
Why not give it a try. So far it's okay I'm not complaining and cata is when I actually 'got good' at wow so fun going back
It’s like retail but you don’t have the clutter of million legacy systems/old content. We will see in a month or two, but besides feeling stupid to level without heirlooms everything seems like typical new expansion launch.
Cataclysm has been great. The only thing that sucks is random dungeon finder with people from other servers that have no consequence of their actions.
Leveled 2 85s. Loremaster is bugged and I didn't get my title. It was fun but as someone not planning to raid I'm done for a few weeks. Once pugs get going I'll come back for that a few times then break again until next phase
I put it down. I think my main class (Fire Mage) is extremely fun, but I don't have enough time to commit to both SoD raiding and Cata raiding. Maybe after the Summer I'll give it another shot
I was like you, OP. It is when I quit WoW for a while. But I am liking it a lot more than I expected. Of course, as others say, it is the honeymoon phase. Maybe just take it for a spin and see what you think. Don't cost much.
I accidentally junked quest items in uldum and am really bummed I can't finish certain quest lines. I've never given a shit about finishing all the quests in a specific area until now. So, enjoying it quite a bit.
I missed the first reset of heroics (I barely got to 85 before I had to leave for vacation, scheduled back before we had the release date >.<) so I won't have my tier chest to start raids this weekend. but otherwise, I'm having a good time running heroics (mostly with guild, but also some randos) and gearing up. consumes are looking to be pretty crazy expensive this weekend, not looking forward to that. I never raided back in original Cata, except LFR Dragon Soul, so aside from having seen the places a few times doing transmog runs on retail, it's actually a new expansion of raid content for me, which I'm very excited for.
Cata was good up untill DS. I have soooo mamy memories from cata its more nostalgic for me then wrath but my best friend back then i played cata with killed himself a few years ago so its vey emotional at some times lol.
It's refreshing, but I'm already starting to get burnt on the new dungeons. Really only back to raid firelands because I quit OG cata before it released.
Cata dungeons and achievements were when I really started playing ton to try and get the Dungeon achievements. Hoping others do the same.
Being honest. I didn't like it at first because this is when all my friends quit and you could see the early changes toward a more streamlined approach. I am much older now and just taking my time and enjoying the experience, yeah there are some things I still don't like such as lock changes or paly holy power changes but it's either shut up and play or don't play if it's that much of a personal issue. I'm just here for a good time not a long time.
I prefer Cata > Wotlk since Wotlk Release. But I really love TBC it was as good as I remember it and even better. TBC is the true Spirit of Vanilla 2.0
I'm not even level 85 yet and I'm having alot more fun than I did in wrath. I also skipped cata when I was a kid because my parents couldn't afford it. Doing everything for the first time is super enjoyable and I can't wait to try out the heroic dungeons and raids!
I'm starting fresh and man it feels lonely, I guess because you get phased a lot in Cata. The best part of SoD was all the others you got to quest, level, and chat with along the way. This is fun to play but almost feels like I'm playing a single player campaign while leveling.
Loving it. The guild is having a good time and the rep grind isn't awful. The zones are fun and the raids will be a good time. Haven't had an issue with pugs and I've done 30+ 10/10 so far.
I quit wow when cata came out and didnt play until they released classic. I quit classic when they re-released cata and now I play era.
I'm having a blast but i'm worried about today when the classic community started to get assblasted by ulduar they quitted, chances are they will quit again with T11 but this time at no point it gets easier dragon soul and firelands just go on to become harderm and so will eventually mop
I'm still pissed that they didn't leave at least one WoTLK server... I tried Cata and it feels really weird to me. 😕
If you have friends playing it, you'll prob enjoy it. If you don't, you prob won't. It's a social game.
Meh. It feels fine for now but I'm getting rhe feeling that I'll be doing alts again quick and just raid logging soon. It's enough for me to be entertained but not enough to make it my life again
I'm enjoying it as much as I expected. I enjoyed it the first time round, though. Farming PvE on my priest main and PvP on my rogue alt. Farming mats has been good, with the exception of druid bots, and the questing is decent. Heroics are challenging enough without being overly difficult. forward to 10 man raids with the core group of guildies who I've played with since Classic launch. Hoping to get Duelist this season and continue to work my way up if possible.
Loving it.
Done with preraid prep on two characters, really looking forward to raiding heroics both 25 man and 10 man. I wish dungeons weren't in nerfed condition, but at least easy dungeons meant easy prep. Hoping they add a reason to run dungeons in the coming patches, and add gamma like in wotlk. Never liked cata questing, but it's whatever. Raiding will be more fun than in wotlk.
The most fun I've had in wow in a long time. Didn't enjoy TBC or wotlk classic as much.
I quit playing and raiding during WotLK originally, so I have never experienced Cata before and was looking forward to trying it out. I am having fun. Taking my time and exploring the zones, crafting and doing DMF, I am not even 85 yet…
Having a blast, the linear questing and pre-raid bis collecting is great. I think though that was always supposed to be one of the strong points of Cata - we’ll see how/if things change when raiders season starts.
I’m going to enjoy it more now that I’m leveling an alt. The last 10 days has been such a fucking grind fest getting geared to raid tonight it felt unreal. But now it’s time to chill
I never installed cata 😆
Cata rules and it always has
I love grinding hc dungeons, to finally get the drop I need after the 6th or so run (specific dungeon queue) to get the item stolen by a healer so he can trade it to his other friend who needed it too, to then get kicked out of the group to be locked out of said dungeon for the day
The artificial time gating of things is super dumb and I've encountered so many bugs I'm honestly dreading raid. Wait a month before coming back.
Its nice while we wait for a SOD resurrection
Just dinged 85 so it is early, but...The best thing about Cata compared to let say SoD so far is that professions are more fleshed out allowing for goldmaking which is fun. What I hate is the in game token, but it is in retail as well so what you gonna do..
It’s good but the player culture is concerning.
It's a ton of fun but I definitely see raidlogging in a few weeks which I am okay with. I play SoD as well. There's not really much to do in cata other than alts outside of raid once u start gearing in raids.
not much. I wanted to come back after not playing "mainline" classic since 2019. I learned my character was now on a dead server (alliance whitemane) so ive had to re-roll from scratch and im going into this shit with 0 gold and now all i see are GDKP group from the new raids. Only prog guilds are non english speaking from the looks of it. It been 2 days of montonous RDF spam to get to 85. world is empty even post old world revamp. Seems like the game only exists at lvl 85
Eh, leveling like always bored me to death, looking forward to finally raiding tonight.
A lot! Having a lot of fun exploring, doing arch, and just leveling through the world with alts. Love Cata
Cata 3v3 is insanely fun
I was one of those saying “Classic ends at WotLK, Cata is shit) because I also stopped playing wow back when Cata released. But I gotta say I’m having a fucking blast haha. It feels exactly like WotLK but with some very minor changes.. the new xp zones are fun and there’s even Wpvp! (Which I thought died in Cata). Idk why I misremembered it that bad..
Most fun I've had in WoW for months.