Things you miss from WotlkFollow

You can't be serious. You've listed the things I DON'T miss.
The Music in Lich King was 30 versions of "Somber cold song."
The Lich King always was a pampered rich Mary Sue. From WC3 I hated that whimp.
Dalaran was always way overcrowded, at least Orgy and Stormy are spread out.
20 minute heroics were watered down and boring. *Aoe Aoe Aoe spam C/Ds on 10 second boss*
25 quests at a time is just longer to clear your log.
Feral does have issues, but it's still top 10 DPS if I remember right, and a Bear was used for the world first Sinestra.
WotLK zones were 90% snow, nothing was interesting about them. ZulDrak is a zone I hope to NEVER do again, I did it once and it sucked.
If you have less to do in Cata than Lich, you're doing something wrong. You can still random, you can still raid. You can still do dailies. You can still do LICH KING dailies, and randoms, and raids.

What DO I miss from WotLK? Waiting for and playing Cata Beta.

See, I'm the opposite. I was playing Lich just to play, just to get the 'latest gear' from the latest raid. Now, I log on and actually have to ask myself which alt to level. I'm in a stuck situation on which main to level once Cata comes in the mail next week.
I see the "Oh, I've done both starting zones twice" dilemma, but I was getting pretty damn tired of Fjord and Tundra the third time through.

I was complaining about the linearity back in WOTLK as well. Having two starting zones (and now just one, unless you're a mad ********* of some kind) is really not awesome.

And sure you have to ask yourself what alt to play. So did I in early WOTLK and early TBC, hell, most of my Vanilla time was spent wondering what class to play. However, once you're at cap with most of your alts, what then?

Do I want to log on my Paladin and tank a dungeon? No. Why not? Because tanking even a regular dungeon feels like a chore. Okay, so what about my Druid? He's a tank as well. Okay, what about healing? No, also a chore and people yell at you if you mess up. Okay, so DPS? Sure, 40-minute queues rock. How about PvP? Okay, can I get full Brutality first? Sure, just farm some dunge-- *snap*

Really, I understand why they changed the way dungeons were and everything. Some people found WOTLK dungeons extremely boring and not really rewarding. My problem is that the dungeons still get boring over time and the rewards are nowhere near worth the effort now. Not even with JP dropping from regulars.

Edit: It's that there's no feeling of progressing, I guess. Whether I'm healing a heroic at ilvl 329 or 350, it still feels the same. I never feel like I'm on top of things. It doesn't feel like my character's ability to traverse a heroic dungeon successfully increases at all. Sure, my biggest heals crit for 40k instead of 32k, but really, it makes no real difference.

I'm sure this expansion is huge fun for guilds and all, which is what Ghostcrawler more or less made clear in his blog as well, but as a pretty regular player who only runs with pick-up groups, this expansion... it's killing me. Personal opinion, of course.

Edited, Feb 20th 2011 3:07am by Mazra

ooo... THIS is going to be a popular rated up thread!

My impression of cata is that it oddly seems slanted towards endgame and pvp, while what it excelled at was questing (with the caveat of it's linear nature making alt levelling less interesting.)

There's just less of some of the things that kept me happily occupied in Wrath. Dailies aren't as plentiful or rewarding. Therazane's an ok parallel to Sons of Hodir, but I'm remembering Oracles/Frenzies, Kalu'ak, Brunnhildar... all with fun rewards (til they mistakingly gave the Kalu'ak pet to everyone). Cooking and fishing are dull as dishwater with the recently added old poles added to fishing as new incentive.

I do miss a sanctuary city, but accept that as lore appropriate.

Heroics are too much like mini-raids and take way too much time for what's supposed to eventually be a daily routine task. Once all you need are the valor badges, they're simply not worth doing.

The guild perks have more negative than positive effects for those not interested in them. As a casual I actually played less with others on my realm than before and it became an even less social game (I was once kicked from a realm group with the explanation, offered only after having asked for it, that a guildie wanted in).

I doubt my perspective is helped by the fact that my favorite toons happen to be by numerous accounts currently the least fun to play. Once it becomes necessary to search for fun, well... I'm taking advice I dished out a long time ago and am on a break (feels moreso this time as if it might be a permanent one.)

So much work went into this by designers who clearly have a love for the game, so it seems pissy to focus on negatives. But I have to admit that although I enjoyed levelling a great deal, Cata is not something I feel compelled to come back to on a regular basis. It's more like a standalone game that I play once and set on the shelf. It resembles my favorite adventure games in that way and others I suppose.

I liked the music at Riplash Strand (the 'ruined coastline theme'), and Sholazar Basin's themes are just plain awesome. All of them. Also, a few of the 'tech' pieces played in the Titan-made buildings/areas/caves are cool too.



Dude, this isn't some paladin who fell and put on a cursed crown who is now in control of some walking corpses... Deathwing is an -aspect-, perhaps more powerful than Alextrasza herself! He's a HUGE dragon, who very well lives up to his name.



As if Dalaran wasn't! lol. Dalaran was worse for crowding, though I WILL admit I enjoyed the portal and One-Hearth Location Fits All.



Faster H queues were kinda nice, but then again, it is early in the expansion yet. Wait until more casuals get ahold of 359s after a raid tier has been released. You'll see shorter Qs.



I like linear questing; areas actually change as you quest through them, and it feels more epic, and there's no logistics math to be done ("Hmm, should I do 3, 4, 5 and 6 and then go over and do 7 and 8.... or should I do 7, 8 and then do 3,4,5,6?").



Some classes have taken a hard beating, sure. But I'm quite sure that hunters and Arms Warriors are now enjoying the game. I know I -hated- leveling my hunter in Wrath, having to turn Viper on every few shots and KCs. That, and BM was laughed at, and not even viable in any sort of group play. Arms Warriors? They were just a stepping stone for Fury once you got enough +Hit gear. Now, Arms are making a comeback. That's not the only two examples, either.



I'm not a huge fan of Vashj'ir, but I did thoroughly enjoy Hyjal, Deepholm and Twilight Highlands. Uldum is OK, but nothing to write home about IMO.



So basically, if it isn't easy enough that everything gets handed to you, it isn't worth playing? Am I getting that right? Mobs were way too easy (even with just quested gear, everything died in 5 seconds or less, you couldn't even get out a full rotation!), and some areas are just plain annoying, and the grind from 70 to 80 just seemed.... longer... than 80 to 85. I'm actually planning on getting Cataclysmic Loremaster on the majority of my characters, but Northrend Loremaster? Meh. Boooooring.

Also, I HATED the ridiculous number of Group Quests, and I'm thankful there's only 1 Group Quest chain in Cataclysm.



I have fond memories of Wrath, but yet, I'm also enjoying Cataclysm as well.

Also, the new 1-60 content is just plain awesome. I'm thoroughly enjoying leveling a couple lowbies as well. I just wish that 60-80 wasn't so boring.

One thing I DO miss from Wrath, though:

VRYKUL.

I loved their voice-acted on-aggro taunts.

We need more of that.

Edited, Feb 19th 2011 10:18pm by Lyrailis

I admit that killing low geared people by knocking them out of the Naxx stone was hella fun. I think Thunderstorm and Druid Wave were my two most used abilities before Naxx.

I don't really miss it. 80-85 went way faster than 70-75, for me anyway.

strangely, 80-85 went faster than 75-80 for me!
considering the multi-million exp requirements of each level, I was really expecting to have no toons at 85 until next year. It took me forever to cap one pair of toons (I suffer from terminal acute altitis) in WotLK, however I find myself with three pairs of toons now almost at 85, with one solo toon (I mostly dual-box) already capped at 85 AND all his crafts capped.

Even my crafts are capped on a couple of toons: mostly cooking, but also Inscription, Alchemy, and Engineering (gotta love those multi-exp-point recipes).

I like Cata, but I will say in arena I liked the healer balance a little better in WoTLK. I don't like that all healers have a magic dispell now, I feel it puts holy paladins at a disadvantage in 3v3 it was a huge thing we brought to the table while every other healer had offensive utility. Now every healer has the same thing we do plus they have better offense/CC.

Paladins used to run cleave teams because we could dispell melee and keep them on target. Now every healer can do that. Hand of freedom is simply dispelled in 1 global in high rated arena. A cleave comp is simply better off with a non paladin. Teammate gets hexed, a druid/shaman can decurse that and they can dispell magic as well. Priests can do 2 magic dispells per global. They all have better CC. Paladins did get a melee interupt to be fair, but melee range for a paladin is a bad place to be. In high rated arena paladins are on the very bottom right now and I dont see that changing without some big changes to the game and healer mechanics.

See, I completely disagree about the questing--I LOVE the linear hubs. But maybe that's because I essentially always quested the same way--gathering every quest in town and then going to the area where I could complete the most. It was boring. And the quests were often only slightly relevant to the story of the zone.

I see losing hubs that will offer a bunch of unrelated quests that send you to different parts of the zone as 100% a blessing.

And you finally get to really feel involved with the story...

Other things:

1. I love the music... mostly. I hate Orgrimmar's song. But other than that I liked everything I've heard so far. The music doesn't always fit the zone perfectly, imo, but part of that may be preconceptions. Whatever song plays on the login/character-creation screen, I really like.

2. The LK and Deathwing are totally different types of enemies. Most of the fear of the LK was concentrated in his army of the living dead. Deathwing, on the other hand, is more terrifying than the LK BEFORE you consider his legion of dragons and insane followers.

3. I do miss Dal, but because I really liked Dal. And it was WAY more crowded than SW/Org ever was.

4. Nope.

6. Feral is a perfectly viable PvE spec. It's only in an odd place in PvP.

7. There were zones I liked in NR, and some I wasn't so fond of. Same for the rest of the game. But the design of the zones in Cata is definitely better.

8. How do you have nothing to do? Run dungeons, do bgs, ranked bgs, raid, dailies. You have MORE options in Cata, along with all the old ones.

It's not so much that Raw's opinions differ, it's that he'd being an asshat to those that don't agree with him.

And:


These two are just not valid. He's perfectly free to FEEL that way, but that doesn't mean he's right. Because neither of these are an opinion--he's making a claim about the way things actually are.

SW and Org are NOT more crowded than Dal. You get clusters between the banks/AHs, but that's it. Dalaran was always packed early in the expansion. The only thing that led people to any other hub was if they needed to use the AH. It just isn't true that SW/Org are more crowded. Dalaran was the main hub servicing two factions. SW/Org service one (but, to be fair, they're probably more than half Dal's population due to the AH). And they're WAY larger than Dal.

And not wanting to do anything != having nothing to do.

Cata only added options--it didn't take any away.

You can do all the old things, like dailies, bgs, dungeons, professions. You can do new things like the new bgs, rated bgs, Tol Barad. And leveling a character is actually fun again.

Just because you don't want to do any of it doesn't mean that you have nothing to do.

That's like... driving a white car, wrecking it, and then buying a new white car that's a different make and model and then going "I miss the last car; this one's white."

It is just stupid, and doesn't make a lick of sense.

Edit: Now, if there are -other reasons- he likes or dislikes the towns, then he should have said so. But the way he worded it, he makes it sound like that the population density is what he doesn't like about the new towns. If that were true, then he would have/should have disliked Dalaran even more back in Wrath, because the population density was worse!

Edited, Feb 20th 2011 12:38pm by Lyrailis

I will admit that they need to do something about mounts.

It seems like Blizz is running out of ideas for "cool flying mounts" that doesn't involve something gigantic (read: drakes/dragons).

I mean, even *I* could come up with cool ideas.

Rocket packs? Can't get any smaller than that. I'd love to go flying through Azeroth with naught but a jetpack. Heck, make it a unique mount so that it also works underwater too (with underwater speed also). The only drawback? No land mount speed. If you land, your character stops using it and starts walking. Maybe QQ about druids would stop if people could use it to mine/herb (going into combat would remove the mounted buff though).

Airplanes? We got helicopters, why not engineering-made small airplanes like those that already exist in the wow-verse? Heck, it could even be a 2-seater, for the really expensive version!

One-person balloons/mini zeppelins. Why not? It wouldn't be that hard to make a small one-seat craft, and stick a balloon and propeller on it. It'd still be smaller than a drake!