Customer Reviews

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

5 star:		(70)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(29)
1 star:		(58)

 

 

I played WoW for six years and loved it. I downed most raid bosses while they were still relevant, achieved very high-rank PVP (and later Arena) titles, and was even satisfied as a casual player for over a year when my work schedule was rough. Then the Cata beta came along. Over the course of nearly half a year, I dutifully tested every bit of content available and experienced more of Cata than most people have on live, even now. And I hated it so much that I permanently left the game.

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Having participated in previous betas, I was struck by the difference in tone this time around. Developers rarely responded to constructive feedback, no concerns were ever addressed with in-game changes, and the bug reporting and suggestions feature was broken for months. The game was clearly going to go live as the developers envisioned, reality be damned.

So what did beta testers take issue with and the developers ignore?

1. Questing. The quests are fun, but mostly only the first time around as the new "on rails" design requires each zone be done in the exact same order - no choices, skipping, or jumping around. Leveling is also too quick. It took longer to get from level 70 to 75, let alone 80. Even at a leisurely pace, it takes only days to get to...

2. Level 85. Cataclysm raid bosses are split between several raids, but don't be fooled - Naxxramas alone featured more bosses than all Cataclysm raids combined. Cata also has the fewest at-release dungeons of any expansion thus far, profession-related quests which pale in comparison to previous expansions, and few daily hubs. You get to 85 too quickly, and then there's nothing to do besides...

3. Heroics. They are too long for too little reward. For a mandatory (for progression), daily task for the entire expansion, two hours is an outright chore (and it's often still over an hour in epics). Dailies on multiple chars + raid-prep gear grinds = recipe for boredom. But the biggest problem with heroics is...

4. Healing. Universally maligned during the beta, all five specs now have identical playstyles where one spell is spammed ad infinitum. There's some variety when raid healing, and your overall healing done per spell may vary, but one spell will dominate your time spent casting. To ensure hour-long queues, Blizzard also targeted the other vital group role...

5. Tanking. Skill- and control-based mechanics have been replaced by DPS-like rotations. Tank cooldowns are now along the lines of "Reduce damage by 10% for 10 seconds" - you don't even notice you've used a special ability. The changes to tanks and healers were part of a bigger problem...

6. Homogenization and loss of replay value. If you have one tanking or healing class, you have them all. The differences are superficial, and with few talent and glyph choices, even DPS classes all provide essentially the same experience. Every instance is the same, every character is the same, every day is the same - the game feels like a second job instead of an escape. There was only one thing left to screw up...

7. PVP. The imbalances are worse than at any point in WoW's history, and that's saying something. Tol Barad is an unmitigated disaster, with mechanics that were so poorly thought-out that it's mind-boggling. The "new" battlegrounds are quick clones of Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin (Battle for Gilneas even displays AB node names at the start of games, to make it clear just how little work was put into it). Rated BGs are regular BGs with 90-minute queues.

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The hype coming from Blizzard simply does not resemble the reality of the game. The talent/glyph revamp made things more cookie-cutter instead of less. Homogenization not only made the game less enjoyable, but did not help at all with balancing - nearly every patch (and sometimes hotfixes, too) features massive (30-50%) buffs/nerfs.

Blizzard's greatest misstep was blaming players instead of admitting their mistakes. They've convinced half of the population that the other half are unskilled whiners, causing a permanent rift in the community. The devs are in a lose/lose situation now, as they'll lose players if they don't make changes, they'll lose players if they do make changes, and there will be caustic bitterness in the community no matter what.

After so many years and so many attempts by other companies to create a "WoW-killer," it is a hilarious irony that WoW has itself become a WoW killer.

Update (06/07/2011) - I check community fan sites every so often to see what the state of the game is, and things continue to get worse. They've announced premium subscription services (paid in-game features), confirmed that every new raid tier this expansion will have around 7 bosses, and scrapped the Abyssal Maw, among other things. Cata lost 600,000 subscribers in the first three months after release. At that rate, 2.4 million subscribers will have been lost by the end of the year. But with D3, GW, SW and other games due out this year and Cata having the slowest content release schedule of any WoW expansion, 3 million (1/4 of all WoW players) is a safe estimate. Sadly, this may be the end of WoW.

(+) The old lands of Azeroth were refined to great effect:
* Zone design and lore is more interesting
* Quest hubs are more plentiful and feel more organic, major cities and population centers were redesigned to be more practical and useful
* Phasing, cinematics, real time events, RTS segments, and guided narratives make it feel more like a modern RPG hybrid and less like a MMO
* The new game experience has been streamlined, flowing much more coherently levels 1 through 60

(+) The slight graphic updates and introduction of DirectX 11 effects make the game look far better than you might expect - especially for a clearly aging engine with cartoonish art design and direction

(+) There is an absurd amount of quality solo and small-group content in the new post level 80 zones

(+/-) The class and mechanics changes, overall, were well thought out. They made the game even more accessible, early advancement more fun and rewarding, and the general gameplay more elegant. However, customization is limited and stunted. The last leg of levels, 81-85, leave you feeling like you're putting in time and gaining levels without growing in power or versatility

(-) Too much homogenization between classes, defined by role, has occurred. Class and spec combinations that once felt unique have been altered in a ham fisted way, now functioning in an essentially identical manner to others

(-) Cataclysm is short on raiding content. What's present feels uninspired and rushed - many dungeon and raid bosses are copies from past expansions wrapped in new skins/assets

(-) Changes to healing mechanics have rendered the role formulaic and rote

(-) Despite the smorgasbord of content the "grind" (repetitive activities that must be performed ad naseum for reward or advancement) has been ramped up far beyond anything I ever thought I would see in a WoW expansion. This terrible design approach is pervasive, affecting everything from dungeon progression to tradeskill advancement - particularly the new Archeology skill

(-) There is a gigantic gulf in difficulty between normal and "heroic", or advanced difficulty, dungeons. Many tedious mechanics are introduced, mistakes are far less forgiving, there are too many enemy abilities that kill instantly or nearly instantly, and the time required to complete a single dungeon has been extended from a sensible 20-30 minutes to an hour or longer. It's not uncommon to invest hours in a dungeon only to have the other players give up out of frustration - leading to no one seeing any kind of reward or advancement for their efforts

A symptom of the poor heroic dungeon design is an ugly social atmosphere. Players quickly grow short tempered and irate. The sense of gregariousness and community is abandoned, replaced by single minded greed as players squabble over any perceived reward their hours upon hours of grinding might, on some off chance, grant them. It's a terrible and sudden shift that ruins the game and drives players away from a substantial chunk of content.

Blizzard keeps introducing changes that exacerbate the issue, rather than alleviating it. And they apparently do so to spite their customers, as feedback has been overwhelmingly negative towards all of their recent developments. As a result the heroic and raiding community has sharply declined since the launch of Cataclysm. It has been distilled down to small, unsavory cliques of elitist and socially awkward players - the kind that, prior to WoW, could only have been found in the darkest corners of the grindiest and most unfun MMOs of 2000-2003.


--- Conclusion ---

Cataclysm is a lot of fun for new players and those looking to experience the rebuilt world of Azeroth. Blizzard has shown that modern game design and techniques can work in MMORPGs. It's worth the cover price for the hours of quality gaming it provides to new and old players alike.

However, the wheels come off as you approach "the end game". The game transforms into a soul-sucking trial of banality and tediousness - seemingly designed with cold and uncaring calculation to make players unhappy and question their enjoyment of the genre as a whole.

World of Warcraft came along in 2004 and dragged this genre out of relative obscurity, leading to hundred million dollar MMO budgets and prime time advertising campaigns. So it's ironic that here, in its twilight, Blizzard has abandoned the casual players that made it a success and transformed WoW into a ghoulish doppelganger of the MMOs it conquered long ago. Do they intend on courting the types of players that reigned over those archaic fossils of MMO past....and their insignificant subscription tallies? One can only wonder how Blizzard can do so much right in a game, just to turn around and essentially soil their own hard work.

This is the Worst Xpack that blizz ever came out with! I have been playing WOW since 2005 and I never thought anything would ever make me quit. I was one of the Biggest WOW fans their ever was. I bought all the books, comics, and collectables. This Xpack is mostly like having a second Job only its less fun. You have to Grind 5 times as hard for items just to be able to raid. there is no new content most of it is revamped old content. The new dificulty level has turned the community against itself making doing anything with out a guild a very painful experiance.

The gear is horible to look at, and there is very few dailies to keep you occupied. The raids are mostly set up for the top eliete whom play the game,leaving the casual player base behind. The blizzard Dev team never listens to the player base, they even removed the suggestions tab from the forums. The things the player base have been asking for for years have been completely ignored. The Avitar models are the same since the game came out in 2004.

The game engine is the same it was in 2004, only the environment in the xpacks are new giving the illusion that the game has improved graphics. If you are a new player too the game you are going to be paying well over $100.00 to get all the xpack including this one for a game made in 2004.

The game is loaded with bugs and most of the original devs working on wow have been transfered to the new Titan MMO blizzard is working on thus making the game even more buggier. The GM`s do not pro actively police the servers allowing people to activly bot and gold farm / mat farm / honor farm for items.

The devs have completely lost touch with the community all the requests that have been asked for by long tearm veterans have been completly over looked such as more charecter slots, updated Avitar models for example.

The 2 main specs Tank and Heals have been designed in a way that makes most players fustrated to the point that they have been either shelved by players or exploited for ingame gold for runs, or the ever so popular its my way or ill boot you from the group attitude. This elietest attitude is a complete turn off for new players due to no one giving the new player a break in a dungeon its either you know what your doing or we will vote kick you.

Blizzard put alot of effort into revamping Azeroth for new players, but anyone over lvl 60 will rarely see it due to LFG que`s never having to leave the city. Not to mention that the dev team has essentially made the community an ANTI new player game. If you are a new player be prepared for a sound tongue lashing from the elitests. If you are lucky they will just vote kick you with out calling you every explitive in the book.

The thing that really agrivates me the most is when they took all of our creativity with our classes and made them all cookie cutter spec's... i mean common Actiblizzion why on earth would you take away every thing that we could call special about our classes. now its like playing tick tack toe with your self. and with pvp or as i call it PVCC there is absolutley no fun in it you are constantly frozen stunned and did i mention frozen.

Shared raid lock outs GASP now you can only chose between a 10 man or a 25 man, they only took away stuff only to take more away. And i want to pay $15.00 a month for this? really Actibliz?

There is no events during the year other then the same old holiday events that have been going on since vanella. The only really fun events are the ones that herald the new xpack that brings a reason to the new xpack. So you are spending time grinding dailys, doing the same dungeons and raids over and over and over again. There is simply no creativity comming from the devs team.

In my opinion Actiblizz is just keeping the lame horse alive long enough to have incomming revenue to fund their Titan MMORPG. there is no way any company would let a major game that millions love go this far down the toilet. Actibliz is their own worst enemy, i will never buy another game from them again.

last but not least if you are a parent avoid buying this game for your children at all costs, the community is the absolute worst cesspool of filth, and depravity that the internet has to offer. There is things that you will see, hear, and read that will make you cringe to the point that you cant beleive that someone would be that awfull. The player base almost goes out of its way to be as discourtious as they can possibly be making one wonder why the hang are they playing a multiplayer game in the first place, unless it is their intention to be there just to be mean to others with no recourse for their actions. there are a few in the game that are nice but most of them are leaving for other games.

All in all I thought that there would have been virtually nothing that would have made me quit WOW I was completly addicted to this game but this xpack was so bad it made me quit cold turkey and I never even felt bad about quiting.

BUYER BE AWARE: this xpack is the worst XPack i have ever seen. Blizzard should be ashamed of themselves for releasing this. They are a wonderful company and I have never seen them release any game this bad!

( edit 11/20/2011 ROFL @ pandas and Pokémon )

I started playing WoW during the Burning Crusade expansion. I enjoyed it although as a "casual" (here defined as a capable player not able or willing to spend the time required on attunements) I missed out on much of the endgame content and took a long break before the release of Wrath. The accessibility of that expansion increased my enjoyment of the game. With Wrath, Blizzard seemed close to perfecting a formula that could please an amazingly wide spectrum of players.

Then came Cataclysm. 80-85 levelling and the two new starter zones are the only fun to be had specific to the expansion pack, and that experience is more akin to a solo player adventure game than anything online or social. So much has been said already here and in forums about the negatives of endgame: lack of choice in talents, lack of much to do besides raiding, overly reused content, overly long dungeons, tedious pass/fail mechanics, poorly designed pvp, un-fun tanking/healing, and (probably their biggest not-at-all-thought-out mistake still snowballing) guild rep. The game is a mess once you hit 85 and the recently acknowledged subscription losses are a reflection of that.

The developers have in a way become hostile towards casual players while encouraging "elites" to equate time spent playing with hard work. WoW has become almost a parody of it's former self in this respect and allows those of us with better sense to finally give up a bad habit.

If this were a stand-alone adventure to be played once through, I'd give it 3.5 stars for the 80-85 levelling and the two new races (the revamped 1-60 is not part of the expansion). As the social online experience it presents itself to be that strongly emphasizes endgame it deserves only one. Time will tell whether or not Blizzard deems the return in investment worthy enough to restore WoW. They've got the talent and most certainly have the funds even if it likely can't be done until the next expansion. However, the confoundingly self-destructive design decisions they've made with Cataclysm give tinfoil hat wearers plenty of reason to suspect planned obsolescence. It's that bad.

You know, I used to love playing this game! I started playing two years ago in 2009, and wow I had waaaay too much fun! I played for ridiculous amounts of time, and there was always something to do.

When I heard that Cataclysm was going to remake the old content in this game I was so excited I couldn't contain myself. I managed to get a sneak peek at this game and do some testing in closed beta on it.

By the time the game came out I was so infuriated about everything that had changed with the game. I mean I really thought that Blizzard knew how to make games that were so good they were even addictive. What I found out was that they either lost their touch, or the talented bunch that made WoW aren't working on it any longer.

With changes like locked in talent trees up until level 71, talent points every two levels, simplified/homogenized classes, linear questing, and guild perks, and making the end game very hardcore tuned...things don't feel right.

In fact the entire game feels like its replayability has been gutted in the extreme for a faster leveling process. Sadly, I don't think Blizzard is able to keep up with its customers as it has a hard time pushing out content fast enough even with its new release method.

To me, this game has destroyed what I enjoyed about it...

I've played WoW and had a large guild on the same server for almost 6 years. We were excited about Cata, particularly the guild perks. At the beginning of the xpac, I'd have 50-60 players online at night. Now, 3 months later, maybe 15. It took everyone a month (tops) to max out to 85, then the grind begins. I have a casual guild of older players, and a lot of them don't have 2+ hours to invest in running heroic dungeons to complete the dailies. The ones who couldn't do heroics because of time limitations fell back on daily quests, which after a few weeks is nothing more than mindless boredom.

I think Blizzard totally missed the mark with this xpac. People were bored after only one month. If you aren't a hard core raider, you're pretty much out of luck with Cataclysm. On that note, half of my guild went to RIFT and it has been a great game so far and it DOES cater to casual players like myself.

I used to spend days at a time playing wow and was very excited about this release. I have supported blizzard through every good and bad choice they have made regarding WoW but the magic I used to feel playing it is gone. First off, the questing zones from 80-85 already felt stale the first time I ran through them. After so many expansions something just slightly new should be done in my opinion to keep things fresh. Old world revamp, did anyone really want it? Don't get me wrong I actually really liked new orgrimmar, but if the choice would be between focus on developing more quality end game content or an extreme make over of vanilla WoW I think most people would choose end game content. The new races are boring, I feel like much more could have been done with them. Anyone who has played the goblin starting area would agree it was horrible. Oh, and the worgens look silly when they walk. The new guild leveling system was an interesting idea but it just dooms anyone who wants to start a guild. After my raiding guild left I tried to start my own and it was nearly impossible to get recruits. Even guildless lvl 14 noobs will turn down their nose at a lvl 1 guild! People only want to join a high level guild but don't want to put in the work to do it. I was a huge PvPer and could not wait to see the new battlegrounds and rated battlegrounds only to be very let down. The meager 2 battlegrounds are just rehashed old ones with a different look. After strand of the ancients and isle of conquest I really thought the devs were going to put out a battleground to blow ours minds at 85 like strand did for me the first time i played it. The new wintergrasp called "tol barad" is very silly also, it is just too hard to lose to the opposing team if you control the bases. I won't explain the rules here but trust me. As for my highly anticipated rated battlegrounds. Not a bad idea but it just didn't work for me and just horrible to organize, worse than a pug raid. Why you ask? Well after you finally get enough people to queue up it takes foooorever to get into a battleground that you might just lose and gain nothing. meanwhile most people will just log from your group due to boredom 20 minutes into the wait, very frustrating. Arenas were more of the same, nothing new. I still liked arena, but my favorite thing to do, 2v2 team battles no longer would get access to the best pvp gear. 3v3/5v5 is good too but I loved 2v2, removing the gear access from 2v2 rating was no bueno. Plenty to add but those were main problems for me. More would include terrible new talent trees, making more classes similar to each other which takes away from diversity in the game (kings=MoW, Bloodlust for everyone!etc.) Heroics and new raids just aren't fun IMO, and the balancing of classes has just got out of hand. I really doubt there are any new people looking to join WoW but if there is, stay away, this game has gone south.

There are always going to be the hardcore warcraft types that will defend this game regardless of how horrible it becomes. Just like a guy that loves his car and will defend it no matter how many times it has left him stranded on the side of the road it's still reliable to them.

Cataclysm only brought cosmetic changes to the game but really didn't add enough new content for it to keep me interested in playing it. I really did not like the idea of the "zoned" quest and instances where people just disappear and you can't help them or chase them if they are trying to gank you. It just goes against the idea of an MMO. Aside from that the quest really just didn't interest me all that much. This was mainly due to the fact that the games story didn't interest me all that much therefore I didn't care about the quest. In WoW fashion you do so many quest and pointless side quest that the main story really doesn't matter at all because it becomes so misconstrued by the time you finally get to the part where it should matter.

One big thing that really turned me away from the game is how empty and boring the world seems. When you have tons of other people playing the game is fun. Honestly even the worst games can be great if there are lots of other people around to make it interesting. I for the most part barely ran into or saw anyone hardly outside the main cities. It almost reminded me of Guild Wars, and that's bad(in GW you only see people in cities because all zones outside towns are instanced and therefore exclusive only to you and the people you bring with you).

As I toured around Azeroth I just got to thinking about how much fun the older games were when there were more players around. This game just made me realize how few people actually still play this game (trust me the box is lying there's not 11 million players, heck I can't even find 5 people to do a simple dungeon). Yet I found myself once again doing the task I did in the last expansions. Working on crafts, and trying to pvp with an unbalanced class system(Btw when I say unbalanced I mean all classes are unbalanced to the over "balanced" Paladins).


If you think Cataclysm has changed anything from before it hasn't. The new classes are only charming when you're in the starting area. As soon as you're grown and leave the nest it's just the same game as before. I played Wargon werewolf people or whatever and it was a nice skin. I don't think this needed to be a separate race though. They don't add much to the game. It would of been better if you could just change your existing character to join a Wargon faction and then have them become werewolves because it's just a skin over the same old classes.

Goblins are fun and they should of always been a choice although they are neutral so it would of made better since if they could be the first race to be either alliance or horde. They make better sense to be in the game as they have always had a role in the game so you should already understand their race and their importance. Playing wise it's just a new skin.

I also wanted to add all the achievement updates and talent tree changes but it's really not worth mentioning. Achievements have always been a gimmick that I never cared about and the talents and class balancing of this game has always been something blizzard was clueless about. It's like they don't know how to make playable characters in their own game. Not very fun having to relearn your character ever 6 months or every patch upgrade. When it comes to talents WoW shows it's age with it's limited skill customization. That's one thing new games have brought that WoW hasn't. They option of breaking the mold in the skills you can posses. Everyone or every class uses the same standard set of moves so pvp is boring. There's not enough variation in this game when it comes to attacks. There's no long list of skills you can choose as you like to mix things up. Each class has 3 paths to fulfill different roles and after you choose one your just riding on rails. You can dual class still that's only useful in changing from pvp over to raiding. You're still stuck playing the same old move set. In Cataclysm they only made this worse by limiting the idea of spending points on other trees to add additional skills. Now you are really stuck going down one skills list.


There was just nothing appealing to me about this game that made me feel that it was worth my money or my time. If you pick it up you do so for the level cap upgrade and to explore the few new areas. This could have easily been just a free patch upgrade. This isn't worth spending money on. Primarily that is how I felt about the game. It's the weakest of the previous expansions and also the worst.

In any case I rate MMO's by how much fun I enjoy playing it. In this version of WoW I was often bored as the explorable world was often empty. I also spent more time in queue and typing in AFK than anything else. I never spent so much time NOT playing a game while playing a game before. Also, I want to add since most of the people that used to play this game casually just to have fun have left and moved on, you can expect to run into a lot more hardcore elitist professional WoW players now. Not the crowd I'm interested in being in I enjoy what little life I do have.

1 Star for the worst expansion ever released. I have permanently decided I have no interest in playing this game again I'm done with this series. I have seen it's mountain tops and they don't offer much.

A lot of people are champing at the bit saying how wonderful and great Cataclysm is. And if you're a fan of the "Korean Grinder" style of MMO, then I suppose that makes sense.

In Cataclysm, WoW's most recent expansion, the zones are rendered wonderfully, and it's visually appealing, all things considered when you recall the style of graphics WoW has.

Dungeons are a challenge after the near ridiculous ease of Wrath of the Lich King dungeons, and the Heroic dungeons even moreso.

Level cap is raised to 85 from 80. Archaeology was added as a secondary tradeskill.

Past all the hype Blizzard is shoveling out, the truth is that Cataclysm is a grindfest which possibly even surpasses Burning Crusade. At endgame your choices are grinding dailies or dungeons for rep to get reputation based bits of gear, day in, day out. Some reputations don't even HAVE dailies, which means you have to do nothing but dungeons nonstop to even make any headway. And once you have the gear from the reputation vendors and heroic dungeons, you get to do it all over again in the name of "progression" for raids which are really just rehashes of mechanics from prior raid encounters with a different wrapper and a slightly different variation added to further obscure that fact.

Archaeology was added as a secondary tradeskill, and is worthy of note because it's a grindfest in the extreme should you want something worthwhile out of it, which only happens as a factor of random luck. Check Youtube for videos of WoW's Archaeology and you can see the grind inherent for yourself.

Truth is..World of Warcraft is a far cry from what it once was, and not in a good way. At all. For anyone considering the expansion or getting World of Warcraft, please understand that the original development team for WoW has been moved over to SC2, Diablo 3, or Blizzard's new MMO named "Titan". The new development team apparently cannot find the "pulse of the MMO" the original development team was clued into and as a result most patch changes seem either arbitrary or ill thought out. In short, WoW has become so massive that the new development team cannot handle the logistics of managing WoW in it's current state because there's simply too many factors for them to handle.

Then there's the hubris. Zarhym, Bashiok Ghostcrawler, et al. have began taking it as their divine right to decide what others like FOR them. The patronization apparent in their posts and other news is so blindingly glaring that it's unbelievable. The Devs are slowly turning WoW into a MMO that is essentially a playground for them. Should you play the wrong faction or play a class/spec then your chances of ever seeing positive changes are markedly less than what entails the sphere of that playground. (Example: Shaman in WoW have been asking for help for YEARS without any help or positive changes to their class that actually address the issues they raise and present)

If you're looking for a MMO, it's honestly just not worth your time to invest in World of Warcraft at this point. Yes there was once a point where it was a viable, entertaining MMO but that point is far past.

I expected more out of Blizzard. Cataclysm was without a doubt one of the worse expansions to any game I have ever played. It started off pretty good, maybe due to the hype, but it quickly went down the drain. Linear and restricting quests, teamed with recycled material, and poor design ideas really killed this game for me. I can't help but wonder who Blizzard is trying to entertain with this one.

For a more detailed review of the expansion, check out MSB's post. While some of the issues he brings up were addressed since his original post, it is still pretty dead on.