LogFAQs > #947054488

azuarc posted...

Generally accurate. Had little to do with my personal life and more to do with my class and my position within the guild and simply how long wow had been going at that point. When what you're doing takes a sudden verve from clearing Hyjal and learning Sunwell to doing nothing for six months other than one instance each week that we quickly had on farm, that interest needs to be replaced by something.

Makes sense, and I hadn't thought of it that way before. there were clearly growing pains at blizzard trying to create content that could satisfy both the ultra-skilled and the newbies. It took a few more xpacs for them to settle on today's four difficulty settings: LFR -> flex normal -> flex heroic -> static mythic

turbopuns3 posted...

Actually if I'm being honest with myself, Cataclysm was my favorite and I just regret not staying more deeply involved with the game during that time so I tend to think of Wrath first due to immense levels of nostalgia.

Cataclysm had its good parts.

Class design was bold and experimental, and new mechanics ranged from fantastic (hunter) to okay (paladin). Every class received cool new toys without forcing us to run out of keybinds (in MoP it got to be too much). The relative homogeneity of classes was novel. The low-level questing experience was cleaned up, and raid fight mechanics continued to improve incrementally. This expansion was probably when I PvPed the most and leveled the most alts from scratch, because it was fun. Firelands was a satisfying raid, and I'm nostalgic for BWD because I raided with friends.

There were quite a few downsides.

Because so much dev time was spent revamping the low-level experience, leveling from 80 to 85 was long, repetitive, linear, and frankly unfun. Max-level world/solo content was nonexistent- it was replaced by grinding 5-player dungeons over and over and over again. Lore in general and Deathwing himself wee massive disappointments. The 1-60 revamp had questionable aspects to it as well, but I won't get into that. The Zul'Agains were okay but not what we needed.

Blizzard had issues with difficulty settings at first, this time designing for the skillful players. Max-level dungeons were tuned for hardcore raiders with decent gear and coordinated ability use. Less experienced players banged their heads against the wall for a few weeks, saw there was nothing else in the game world for them to do, and unsubscribed. Cataclysm has the dubious honor of being the first expansion in which subscription numbers dropped

All of this could have been forgiven.... if not for Dragon Soul- the worst raid ever created- and the sloppy introduction of LFR. I've mentioned before that LFR killed class design for a few expansions. It took 3 more for blizzard to get it right

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You did indeed stab me in the back. However, you are only level one, whilst I am level 50. That means I should remain uninjured.