I dont know how much is Ghostcrawlers fault and how much isn't. Its hard to know the internal political dynamics of a company and who is really in charge of what.

 

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Letdown.

The revamped 1-60 content is fantastic, and worth doing once on each faction. But...between the changes to healing mechanics and the way they implemented Heroic instances, the bottleneck they created for a fresh 85 before being able to access raid content took so much of the fun out of the game. The raid content itself is fine, IMO. But getting to it isn't.

Ironic that in WotLK they did a good job of encouraging and supporting PUG grouping as a way to make early raid gear accessible to more players...because they turned around and crushed that in Cataclysm. Even those of us who used to enjoy running friends from small guilds through Heroics to help them get geared just stick with guild groups now. And while I used to enjoy the occasional afternoon of "chaining" Heroics to get alts or friends geared up, I don't even want to do daily Heroics for gear on my main character now. Thank goodness I'm raid geared at this point and don't need to do Heroics at all, because I don't care if I never see another Cataclysm Heroic again.

On the PvP front, I was looking forward to rated BGs with genuine excitement. But to do them competitively you need to treat it almost like raiding, and the worst part is that you almost have to do arenas (ugh) every week for points in order to get epic gear in order to be adequately geared for rated BGs. I'm probably expecting too much, but I wanted a more flexible system that still allowed me to play BGs in a competitive way.

I used to enjoy getting an alt or two geared for PvP and raiding for a change of pace, but I have lost any desire to do either with my alts in Cataclysm. It just isn't fun to do that any more.

I have to laugh at myself...as a lifelong PvP-focused player, I actually learned to appreciate and enjoy raiding in Wrath. But if I had just started exploring the raiding aspect of the game in Cata, I think I would have canceled my subscription by now. I've mentioned before that I agree with Blizzard's desire to make raiding more challenging than in Wrath, but I think they over-corrected in Cataclysm. They just plain pushed things too far.

Edit: It's stupid to blame Ghostcrawler for frustrations with Cataclysm. He's the voice of the company, but is certainly not the only person making decisions. Blizzard wanted this.

I started playing at release and played daily until Cataclysm. I haven't logged in for a few weeks and just unsubbed. The game just is not fun for me with the changes and it doesn't look like it is going to change

 

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Ghostcrawler is more than the voice of the company, he's also the lead developer. That means he has the final word on how things are going to progress, therefore he is the perfect person to blame for the issues the game is having right now.

 

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Disappointed.

Flying in Azeroth was a really nice addition, forcing them to redo the zones that weren't flight friendly. There are some good things, but overall, I felt WotLK was more epic and Northend was really well done.

Unsubbed after about 2 months.

 

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I've mentioned before that I agree with Blizzard's desire to make raiding more challenging than in Wrath, but I think they over-corrected in Cataclysm. They just plain pushed things too far


this

 

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Overall, I think WoW is about the same, but I am still enjoying it.

I think Cataclysm was almost a paradigm shift, which has caused some angst for long time players having to re-learn how to do things they previously did without having to put much thought/effort into doing.

At first, I wasn't a big fan of the changes made to Discipline Priests (my main in WotLK), but I have changed my play style to be more in line with Blizz's changes and now feel more comfortable healing in 5 mans and raids. I've been leveling a Ele/Resto Shaman and have been having a lot of fun doing so.

The changes to the early leveling zones are fantastic. The streamlining of the quests and the flavor added have made leveling a new character more enjoyable for me. The speed you are able to level at now is possibly a negative (guild perks & BoA's make leveling too fast I think), as you only see a small part of the new world on your trip to 85.

 

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I never saw the rehashed 1-60 ride..

The last thing I want to do with my time is level an 9th character, so that part of the expansion was lost on me.

 

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I give it a meh-. It surprised me to learn I actually liked WotLK better than I thought. Did not know that until Cat turned out to be a disappointment. Cancelled after a few months and doubt I will be coming back this time. All the other times I cancelled I knew I would be back once new content was released but this time, not so much.

 

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The let down began back before Catas release when the Path of the Titans was removed. With the removal of that its just more the same. I would have no issue with Blizzards and Team B's desire to go back to a BC Hardcore mindset, if they had implemented something new and fresh inserted into the End Game to fill in the time or to see my character advance in some fashion. To much time and effort was put into redoing the old world content, though needed that is for sure, that apparently nothing was left to focus on end game.

I haven't even played Rift and only read some posts about it and one of the intriguing things they have there are Puzzles in zones, completing the puzzles rewards you. Hell, even something as simple as that with new puzzle released every patch could have freshened up the gameplay of the end game of WoW.

I think that the major tragedy of WoW is that the developer of Blizzard are some the most talented, yet it seems that they are satisfied with the Status Quo and perhaps have stagnated on ideas. I mean with a world as large as WoW, why not go back and interject stuff in the old zones and keep them relevant even at end game when the max level goes up, make people still go back and re visit these zones in some fashion. Don't know at times it just seems that there is a lot of wasted space in the game.

 

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