WoW Cataclysm: Worst Expansion Yet..?

[Tessera]

I've been reading some reviews over on Amazon.com, for the latest WoW expansion... "Cataclysm."

There are the usual glowing reviews, which were obviously written by either (1) brainwashed fanboys or (2) ActiVision/Blizzard's own marketers, pretending to be regular customers. I suspect that it is a mixture of both.

But mixed into all of the insipid hype, there are quite a few reviews which were obviously written by ordinary WoW players. And in almost every case, those reviews are not only negative... but downright scathing.

Check out a few of the reviews for yourselves:

http://www.amazon.com/World-Warcraft-Cataclysm-Pc/product-reviews/B002I0HKIU/ref=cm_cr_pr_recent?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

It honestly looks to me as if ActiVision is trying to destroy WoW, for some freaky reason. Maybe they don't want WoW to compete with some future product... like "Titan," maybe. Or maybe they've simply lost their minds (again). ActiVision has a long history of ruining good games... and now that they are completely in control of WoW (the original Blizzard devs are long gone), it would appear that ActiVision is indeed staying true to their history of undermining and ultimately destroying everything good in the gaming world. Their mindless greed has no limit, it seems.

Have any of you actually played Cataclysm yet..? I haven't played WoW in about six months... and after reading all of those negative reviews, I'm beginning to doubt that I will ever play it again.

[anariel]

I know it's going to sound a lot like "I told you", but hell, I stopped playing WoW (in the official servers, at least, since I play when I'm bored in my PC a private server for myself) in january of 2010. Raging because the realm where I had all my chars had a 10 to 1 imbalance favouring the Horde, and Blizzard kept stating than the balance was right (so people would either start in a new server from scratch, spending more time and thus paying them more, or migrate to another server... or switch to the opposite faction. 20 bucks per character, and I had 5...).

I also said that putting top-level characters into levelling zones was a less than ideal situation, and that it was just lazy recycling in order to spend less time and resources to get more money.

Since then, I said that Activision-Blizzard would just make all the money they could from Blizzard titles. It seems I was right.

[Will Never]

Played it for 2 weeks.  Did not like. 

[Tessera]

Well... I've taken a first-hand look at what
they've done to all of the old world zones.

And here is my initial impression...




I have nothing to add at this time. More later....

[Will Never]

I think the mage class is way better than before, at least.  It's more interactive now, especially fire. 

[anariel]

Played it for 2 weeks.  Did not like. 

I think the mage class is way better than before, at least.  It's more interactive now, especially fire. 

Uuhh In 2 weeks you evaluated a class? Wow, it tooks me to level a class to max level to evaluate it, and several dungeons, and at least one or two raids, and that tooks more than 2 weeks (well, unless you play 24/7...).

Now seriously, let's look at a mage's role in WoW's history:

The Dark Ages of Magic: from Beta to the first expansion.
   Here the mages were looked for in raid and dungeons for three, and only three, capacities only they had. First, and more importantly, they can make food & water (thus reducing downtime and the amount of in-game money invested, since you don't have to spend the ones with monetary value). Second, because they had two useful spells at the time: Sheep (usable in combat!) and Remove Curse (spell known by mages and druids...). Third, because they could create a portal to a Capital City for all the people in the raid or party to get out of the dungeon quickly (in case they had their home stones anywhere else).
Oh, and they could also do damage to enemies. Sadly, the first dungeon had a 90% population of monsters inmunne to Fire magic, and until patch 1.8 or so the Arcane talent tree was considered more than a joke.
A common depition of this era's mages involves a photo manipulation of the Tier 2 armor with 2 water dispensers attached to the shoulders.

The Ages of Magic Competitivity: from Outland to Northrend
In here the mages awakened to new levels of power. They also became sought because they were able to compete with other DPS classes, and the Arcane talent tree was revamped, while the frost tree became considered the PvP tree. The nature of the enemies had to be, again, be taken into account, because there was some raid bosses inmunne to frost magic (Hydross the Unstable, SCC boss 1), and some to fire (Al'ar, optional boss in The Eye), and there were some mobs inmunne to certain kinds of magic (The Steamvault, several elemental adds both in patrol and escorting a boss).
I personally see this as a good age for mages, but not really the best. That would be...

The Age of Broken Magic: Northrend
Probably thanks to Malygos' madness (the dragon in charge of magic), mages became here obviously overpowered. Good geared mages from the previous expansion (like mine... with equipment only from badges and two raid items) became able, with any spec, to out-dps a same level party unless epic geared like him. And when they reached max level, they became somewhat the kings of the PvP, since there was a small amount of defense at that moment, and Arcane had a burst damage output like nothing before in the whole game.
Mages, in raids, were sought for they damage. In dungeons, they were prefered to almos any other DPS, since the tanks were able to take on several enemies at once and keep them from attacking anybody else, and the situation reached such an extent that classes desgned from the Beta of WoW received Area of Effect skills (like the rogue and his Fan of Knives) to compensate.

The Unknown Age: Activision takes over Blizzard, and Cataclysm is released
I can't talk about how mages fare here, since I stopped playing shortly after Activision bought Blizzard and the game became even more a money-sucking whore. People, however, were not really pleased by the return to 31 point talent trees, and the dumbing the dungeons had received in Northrend was "solved" not by better designed enounters, but by increasing the numbers involved in favour of the monsters (more life, more damage mitigation, more damage inflicted, etc...), as far as I saw.

Personally, I think the first expansion was the best of the three the game has, and the only problem with the base game was that people were more interested in epic items than in enjoying the game (which evolved in the "item level" focus which reached critical degrees of stupidity in WotLK with an addon to measure yours and other's...). Thumbs up for A-B, anyway, since they suceeded in two basic objectives: first they are earning an obscene amount of money, and second they are keeping people from realizing they are giving away money for nothing.

[Tessera]

The first era of WoW mages was also the time when I started that big "Mage Union" shit storm on the Blizzard forums. I saw all of this kiddie crap coming back then. The rest is history.  


I do have some other things to share about Cataclysm....


I created a new mage a couple of nights ago, for the express purpose of leveling her up from scratch. I'm doing this so as to get a clear sense of exactly what has been changed throughout the game, as a result of this new expansion.

Well... just about everything has been changed, so far. And not really in a good way, either. Unless you're a lazy 12-year-old with a low level of patience and an even lower attention span... in which case, it's great. Just great. Everything's great, kids.

Let me give some examples:

One of the first things that I was concerned about was the change in mage spells and mage talents. Gone were some things that *I* have always considered to be necessities for solo leveling... such as frost shields (gone until lvl 58), conjured food and drink (gone until the higher levels), Arcane Intelligence (gone until the highest levels), Arcane Missiles (we still have them, but they are a triggered spell now and can not be used unless they "proc" in combat), Blastwave (was useful for soloing and PvP... but is now basically the same as our old fire AoE and needs to be targeted before casting), total lack of ANY AoE spells until the mid-levels (say good bye to AoE grinding), and on and on and on.

So I was very concerned at first. But I stopped being concerned last night... when my new mage hit lvl 35 after only TWO NIGHTS of gameplay. I have never seen leveling this fast in vanilla WoW since... ever. Back in the earliest days of vanilla WoW (c. 2004), it was considered quite a feat to be able to solo your way to level 40 in a single week. Now along comes ActiVision and their latest poorly conceived craptastic named Cataclysm... and it's beginning to look to me as if a twinked, hardcore player could probably solo to level 40 in about 12 hours.

Why is my mage leveling so fast, despite having lost most of the abilities that I always considered to be essential for a solo mage..? I'll tell you why:

(1) Downtime has become almost non-existant. Health regenerates ridiculously fast in Cataclysm... and so does mana. So who needs food and water..? My new mage is level 35 already and in all of that time, she has had to eat and drink maybe four or five times, tops. I'm being serious... my new mage has been killing shit almost non-stop since I created her. By the time she finishes looting a mob that she just killed, her health and mana are almost at the top again... so she simply runs over to a new mob and blows it away in three shots. Lather, rinse, repeat... it's ridiculously fast now.

(2) The quests are MUCH easier and the rewards are... in my opinion... a bit overpowered. The experience gains per hour from questing are about TRIPLE of what I remember from vanilla WoW.

(3) Remember all of that pesky LORE and stuff..? Well don't worry about it... because Cataclysm has essentially removed most of the original lore from the game. Gone are the complex storylines and interconnected events. Gone is the necessity to travel to the far corners of Azeroth, in order to learn about the fascinating relationships between races, clans, locations, histories... all of that depth seems to have been largely eliminated. Instead, the entire game now plays in a very linear fashion... in which the player stays in one zone almost exclusively until those quests have been completed, after which the quests for the next zone are unlocked. You can not simply run to any zone you wish and start questing there... because now, you need to have first unlocked that area by first completing a previous area. So for those of you who enjoyed exploring the world at your leisure and picking up some quests along the way, well... just forget it. Cataclysm has ruined that aspect of WoW completely. Does this lead to faster leveling.? Well, yes... because of less travel time. Does this lead to a more interesting gaming experience..? Hell, no... it reduces the game to a "my way or the highway" experience which is very linear, very homogenized and just plain ROUTINE.

(4) They have added dozens of new flight paths, essentially removing any need for players to seek a port from a friendly mage. You can fly ANYWHERE now... in any part of the game world. And if you are a high-level player with a flying mount, then you are even more in luck... because flying mounts have now been enabled in the old world. Even though the old world was NEVER designed nor balanced for flying mounts (which were not introduced until the Burning Crusade expansion).

(5) World PvP has effectively been removed from the game altogether. So for you folks who play on a PvP server, this should make it a lot easier to level up without any headaches. It should also make you wonder why you rolled on a PvP server in the first place.


Basically, what I am seeing here is a bunch of clueless, wet-behind-the-ears devs, who are being told to put their own mark on a classic... without any regard whatsoever to Warcraft's lore, or tradition, or heritage. The game has degenerated into a homogenized, assembly line type of experience... in which everybody does the same things in the exact same order, gets the exact same rewards, plays the exact same way and achieves the exact same goals. So much for individuality... because that word apparently does not exist in ActiVision's goose-stepping lexicon. But hey... that's exactly what I would expect from an aging, disconnected and bloated company, who got their start by manufacturing primitive early 80's arcade games and Atari titles like "Pitfall."  

I won't be buying this expansion pack. Not until it is selling for $5.00 in the Amazon bargain bin... which I expect will be in about six months. This is without a doubt the worst, most poorly conceived and most pitifully designed WoW expansion yet. The fact that all of WoW's original devs are long gone is clearly apparent throughout Cataclysm.

I am not saying this because I enjoy shitting all over WoW... no, I am saying it for the same reason that most other veteran players are saying it: because it is TRUE. Cataclysm has ruined the World Of Warcraft.

[Will Never]

Uuhh In 2 weeks you evaluated a class? Wow, it tooks me to level a class to max level to evaluate it, and several dungeons, and at least one or two raids, and that tooks more than 2 weeks (well, unless you play 24/7...).

You're acting like I made some formal declaration about the class's worth based on an "evaluation."

I don't know how long you've been playing, but the mage class was changed drastically in the pre-patch that came before Cataclysm.  All of its talent changes went through before the xpack even came out.  I am making a very cursory and innocuous observation about what I experienced in the brief time I played the class right before cataclysm and right afterward, which is that it seems more fun and more interactive.  Notice how my post begins with "I think."

Don't read into it more than you're supposed to.  

And yeah, the xpack sucks.   

[Tessera]

Level 40 In 3 Nights



My latest WoW mage, relaxing in Booty Bay after a big battle with the Bloodsail Buccaneers.

She hit level 40 in only 3 nights. And I wasn't even playing very hard. That's the truth.

In fact, I was also leveling her trade skills... both of which (Enchanting and Tailoring) are at about 200 skill.

VERDICT: the Cataclysm expansion has made what was already a very easy game way TOO easy.
If you thought WoW was dumbed down before... then you ain't seen nothin' until you play ActiVision's
latest expansion. It's so fucking easy that even a 5-year-old could play it. Which is no doubt what they
are hoping for: more money from kids and "casual players."

Well... time to play on the emulated servers, I guess. The glory days of WoW are long gone.

Oh... and in case anybody is wondering, those are my own custom nude textures for WoW. She is actually
wearing armor in every single gear slot. I just made it invisible. And no... you can't have them.  

[anariel]

Tess, I must say she has an adorable expression on her face. She certainly is happy about her looks

Will, I played WoW since two months or so after its release 'til January of last year (2010). Never tried Cataclysm, and for what Tess said the only thing left to Activision is to sell bots to play for you between chatting and playing the AH in your Iphone. I'm not mad, nor reading more than there is to it, I'm just amused about your two first posts in this thread, because it's the same as if I say "I tried med college for two weeks, and found they really were clueless". Not because WoW is very difficult (or has been), nor because it can be compared with a college career (much less with one like medicine), but because both are hastily made conclussions.

<--Warning: wall of text about past exploits and almost forgotten histories. Like a grandpaaaaaa (mm that sounds sexy with "like a Virgin's" theme song XD)->

Before the first expansion I had a max level mage, warlock and druid, and had used the druid as a healer up to Naxxramas, and the lock up to AQ40. Before the third, the warlock had killed every boss but Sunwell ones (frankly, the rank and file of spanish players could do something if only they were able to play without the TV on, on the side...XD), the druid and the mage had done every dungeon in normal and heroic, and I had leveled a paladin to 64 in a little more than a week, playing about 4 hours a day for that toon. And when I left WoW I had the druid with three gears, able to take on any encounter (not hard mode) aside from ICC in any of the three roles, the Paladin able to tank or heal the same, and a Death Knight able to tank or kill even more. And the mage was leveling at 67, being shooed out from dungeons thanks to being able to steal the aggro of the mob the tank was hitting with a single spell three seconds after the fight started, the warlock was in 71 trying to mark mobs before the felguard killed them himself, a shaman had lv 55 and full heirloom gear for both magic and melee, and all those characters had dual spec, maxed professions for their level (save the shaman) and the highest mount allowed (and in the case of the 70+, they could also fly in Northrend). And I still had more than 20.000 gold in money, plus a lot of extra materials (about 10.000 more or so at that time).
Yes, I was THAT bored for years.

And the funny thing is that I enjoyed much more the first four months of play, with my druid (my first char) leveling as a healer (the other two specs were... very crap until patch 1. and doing some instances with very nice people. We did things like killing the Keeper in Maraudon, my toon with lv 44 and the others about level 46-47, and don't let me start talking about Stockades, Scarlett Monastery, Zul'Farrak or Uldaman, that was a ton of laughing. And I will never forget the first time I went to Stratholme (ud side), in a raid, me with lv 58 and the others with lv 60... and I was the only one resisting ALL the fear effects of the bats. That was epic laughs XD.

With the first expansion the game became more accesible in high end, but that made the dungeons more a farming process than any fun at all. And with WotLK, the game became a grindfest without anything else, aside from some innovations in the technical side (like the phasing stuff). Now in Cata seems like it's a botfest...

[Will Never]

Will, I played WoW since two months or so after its release 'til January of last year (2010). Never tried Cataclysm, and for what Tess said the only thing left to Activision is to sell bots to play for you between chatting and playing the AH in your Iphone. I'm not mad, nor reading more than there is to it, I'm just amused about your two first posts in this thread, because it's the same as if I say "I tried med college for two weeks, and found they really were clueless". Not because WoW is very difficult (or has been), nor because it can be compared with a college career (much less with one like medicine), but because both are hastily made conclussions.

Nope, your false analogy shows that you are reading too much into it.  You have even said why, when you admit that what you are saying can't be compared to a college career, despiting using that example.  

You're also interpreting "conclusions" out of brief statements of opinion.  Look, if you're going to be antagonistic, do it to someone else.  I just got back from a long day at work and I'm in no mood for people who want to be rude for no real reason. 

[anariel]

I don't think I'm the one being confrontational. But of course, anything can be constructed as such if anyboyd wants it.

I chose that example because you are related to the medical field, so you could get a better idea of what I was trying to tell. And again, I wasn't angry, just annoyed for a while before laughing.

You know, two weeks is the trial time. Trial times are made so you can only get to see the very beginning of a game (or product), which incidentally is the best and most detailed part of it. It's the hook to fish new customers. I accept a more accurate comparison would have been "I turned down the idea of going to medical college after the 30 minutes "play doctor" promotion" (as in "you are in one post of the medical field while a real doctor conducts 30 minutes of real work").

Again, I'm not trying to be confrontational. Just to find the right analogy. But Will, you are very hard to reach, you know 

[Tessera]

Look, if you're going to be antagonistic, do it to someone else.

He's not the one who's being antagonistic, Will.

[Will Never]

Look, if you're going to be antagonistic, do it to someone else.

He's not the one who's being antagonistic, Will.

Whenever someone begins a response to somebody with "uhh" and criticizes the mere fact that they expressed than opinion (let's even forget if they agree with it), then that person's response usually is not well-intended.   

[Tessera]

Cataclysm: New Playable Worgen Race



Just when you thought that WoW couldn't possibly get any dumber... along comes ActiVision.

[beetle]

I'll bet the furry community is really loving the worgen race.

[Tessera]

Copied from one of the members-only topics...

Ragnaros is a person-shaped mob in cataclysm... with what looks like a troll model.  

I've noticed something shitty about the entire Cataclysm expansion:

It seems to me that basically, what the new ActiVision devs did was to take bits and pieces of the original game... then threw all of those pieces up into the air... and then picked them up at random and pasted them back into their own "expansion pack." Because everywhere I look in Cataclysm, I see the same old shit from the vanilla game... just rearranged in weird new combinations. And then pawned off on the rest of us as being "new content."

Cataclysm is absolutely the most lame expansion that I have ever seen for WoW... and I've seen them all. I was there during the open beta for WoW... and I was there on launch day in 2004, too. And right now, the game is without a doubt at its lowest point EVER in terms of quality, balance and content. The retail "live" game has now been totally, utterly ruined by ActiVision. WTG, Kotick..!!! Your track record of ruining good games in the name of greed remains unchallenged. Jeezis, what a revolting little whore you are.

I plan to discontinue my WoW subscription very soon. But that's okay, because I have my own WoW server now... and I can set it up and play it any damned way that I see fit. If everything works out, then the rest of you will be more than welcomed to join me on a future tessmage.com WoW server. And if ActiVision/Blizzard doesn't like it, then they can blow me. In public. On the fucking David Letterman show.  

[anariel]

You know Queen Azshara? The night elf who, more than 10.000 yeasr in the past of the WoW played so much with sorcery she attracted the Burning Legion, started the War of the Ancients, make the Nagas and High/Blood elfs, and in War3 send Lady Vashj to help Kael'Thas?

She has come back. In DARKSHORE (lv 12-18, northwestern Kalimdor...). As part of a low level quest. Using Lady Vashj's model...

And when Malfurion Stormrage returns... well, let's say that Tyrande started banging her head to a wall for not having choose the less monster-looking of the brothers. And thanking Elune bestiality is not a criminal act in the Night Elf society...

Edit: a laugh in MMO-champion for that Raggie... well, massacre:

http://www.thedailyblink.com/2011/02/this-ideas-got-legs/

XDDD