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Macleod, just a small note: there was not four "short" zones, there were 5; Vashj'ir, Hyjal, Deepholm, Uldum and Twilight Highlands. All five were quite large. Of course, there was also Tol Barad, but obviously it acts as Wintergrasp of Cataclysm, so I excluded that.
I think I can sum it up pretty well. In my opinion there are a few things that wow is dealing with thats causing its troubles. One does have some thing to do with age, and thats simply that the more stuff that comes out the more you have to compare it against. Vanilla wow was totally new and is still the hugest portion of the game consisting of 60 levels and an entire world with two continents and tons of zones. BC was much smaller but had alot going for it in that it was the first expansion. It introduced a new planet to explore, the concepts of heroic dungeons and flying mounts as well as areas and dungions only accessible by said flying mounts (and thus only at max level), So it felt like a new area of the game had opened to you besides the already existing raid content that everyone expected. Then out comes lich king, the first expansion to have a direct comparison possible. But it too had some new stuff going for it, it had not just one but TWO potential starting points, as well as its biggest plus with the introduction of DK's people at last had a wholly new class to play around with and also the introduction of achievements, and phasing as well as the game changing dungeon finder. And now we have Cata, it changed the world, but 90% of it was irrelevant to already leveled characters. It boasted some nice improvements on already done things, with two potential starting areas for the new content and improved use of phasing, as well as lots of other improvements on quest progression and story cohesiveness ect. But nothing really stands out as feeling "new" like the others before it. That combined with the fact that the actual areas felt rather small when it took less than a month for most people to finish all the new quests, compared to the previous installment where many people STILL haven't done parts of northrend. Then you finally got to max level, struggled through demanding heroics to get to the raid content, only to be faced with an unusually small number of bosses, and nothing else to do. People held out alot of hope for firelands with its promise of "content for questers" and "interactive progression" as well as finally getting to see one of the elemental plains and finaly lay the final smack down on ragnaros. And at first it seemed to deliver, the quests were fun and changed up as you progressed and strived to bring additional forces to the firelands, until at last you finally manage to bring all three forces into the firelands and... nothing. You buy your rewards and there isnt even a reason to continue doing the dailies after that point. The new raid is cool but extremely challenging making it not very friendly to any but the hardcore raiders, and even they dont raid every day, leaving them in the same boat as everyone else who sits in org wondering what it is their supposed to be doing.If i had to summarize the issue with cata into a single phrase it would be. Focusing to much on the journey and forgetting about the destination. It feels like you have taken the best road trip ever, only to be left standing in the middle of the desert at the end of it.
Don't forget that a lot of people are feeling the crunch of the economy. Fifteen dollars may not make or break a budget, but it's hard to justify if you only log on once or twice a week. People who might otherwise keep their subscription just in case they feel like playing are probably opting to let it expire.
What i think they did wrong with Cataclysm is that they only made 8 new 5-mans, they should have gone to a new continent or planet not redo the Classic game, they spent so much time on the renewal of Classic content that they let the true expansion content fall by the wayside and it showed when they level cap only increased by 5 levels. i feel that they should have gone to 90 and spent more time on the 80-85 content rather then redo every single area in the 1-60 content intsead we got a expansion with more time focused on endgame where the gap between a Core raiding team and a Pug is only how many Heroic bosses they can do, i miss the days when boss fights actually were hard unlike in cataclysm where we found we were one-shotting bosses on our first attempt ever on a boss, i also feel that the justice point system is a mistake as well, they have made it so that you dont have to be at cap like you had to be back in the glory days of Emblems and Badges to begin working on Endgame content when we now have fresh players who hit cap for the first time entering raids like Firelands without the knowledge that all the time grinding Heroics gains you in learning how to cope with diferent fight mechanics in short they have made it too easy for experianced players to enjoy the game and they are setting up new players to fail when they burst into the raid scene without the experiance that they players who spent weeks in Heroic instances learning how to work their class in a long encounter espically Healers and tanks
WEll said sir
Newer Bigger MMOrpg's are on the way. i know many of my friends have already left wow to get ready for these games. I for one will always stick by wow. you see where your money is spent. Battle.net is still around with Dota still going strong. If blizzard dont kill it people will still play :)
I quit because the game just started to suck. Straight up, I played 4.2 for a day , realized it was all bull$%^& quests and that blizz had given up on their raiders, or maintaining any sense of progression and were only interested in making the content as accessible as it could be for as much money as they could get. The game is done. Things like the pvp cap , which only punishes the people who would be smart enough to save up for certain weapons, and just weekly caps on valor and conquest to "even out" how fast you have access to them only punishes the people who do more. I don't want lots of trash epic dungeons, Five mans dropping slightly dumbed down raid gear makes raid gear less worthwhile. The whole game was just becoming such an apparent grind, as in you could just farm heroics and be raid geared.
people really want to see content a whole lot of folks cant get through a raid to see it tell its blaze through it in over powering fashion. wither its becouse there not great raiders there guild sucks or they just didn't have the 3 days to go through icc and die to arthas 77 times. these people only get to see the end of this story because its trivial. case in point sunwell not 1 guild on my server could beat it. and sunwell continued to be hard untill maybe tier 9 came out and we were able to over power all the fights except the last 1 were you still needed to know the fight.i would like to see naxx 40 added back in to the game, break neck change i was playing eq today and we were all talking about wow and a lot of those folks don't like the kids game the biggest complaint most people had was that it's to fast your done with the game in a heart beat 1-85 in like 2 weeks for a hard core gamer, the post above is totally correct no reason to rebuild the world if your just letting people run through it with out seeing all the changes and when your cranking out levels by doing duns all day long players can really care less about what is in that level 35 zone that was re built. also old agrument when they changed the mount level to 20 that alone increased the speed you get through the game plus mount went from working for them to giving them away i remember being 59 in vanella and think wow ill never have the money for my 60 by 60
After the launch of wrath,in 3.1 you had Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightning when Ulduar released, In 3.2 when ToC released you got the 5-man toc dungeon and in 3.3 there were 3 new dungeons.So the 2 dungeons people are running every week now to get there vp are old, the gear doesnt scale with the raiding tier we are in.When 4.1 released it was to make raiding content easyer to get into because you had to go from blues to epics.