Just for Gamer

Do you want to know WoW Cataclysm review from real gamers? But before you read their review about WoW Cataclysm, you can read short story of WoW Cataclysm that I taken from Amazon:

An ancient evil lies dormant within Deepholm, the domain of earth in the Elemental Plane. Hidden away in a secluded sanctuary, the corrupted Dragon Aspect Deathwing has waited, recovering from the wounds of his last battle against Azeroth and biding his time until he can reforge the world in molten fire. Soon, Deathwing the Destroyer will return to Azeroth, and his eruption from Deepholm will sunder the world, leaving a festering wound across the continents. As the Horde and Alliance race to the epicenter of the cataclysm, the kingdoms of Azeroth will witness seismic shifts in power, the kindling of a war of the elements, and the emergence of unlikely heroes who will rise up to protect their scarred and broken world from utter devastation.

Review by Dips

Edit: Before reading this review, please be aware that this is coming from the perspective of someone who started playing before they were a teenager. This review won't be necessarily as mature and thought-out as others, but may be an interesting perspective nonetheless.

I think almost all veteran players consider the glory days of WoW to be long gone. In fact, some may argue that the final glory days occurred during the Burning Crusade or even Vanilla. I guess I am no veteran, but despite this, us persistent players have witnessed moments of greatness throughout Classic, Burning Crusade, and Wrath that truly made the game worth playing. I leave Cataclysm out of that list intentionally, because I feel that this most recent expansion marks the end of such glorious moments, which have characterized the World of Warcraft for years. I feel that this expansion could mark the end of WoW completely.

I guess I should give some background about myself before I attempt to support such a grandiose assumption. I began playing the game a few months after release in Classic with friends. I was something like 9 at the time, and my first character was a Paladin. Many of my friends lost interest in the game after weeks and months, or their parents refused to renew their subscriptions, fearing that the game was too addicting. Thus began my pattern of playing for a few months, getting bored and stopping for a few months and then repeating the cycle. I never even hit the level cap in Classic because back then leveling took a discipline that most 9 year olds (including me at the time) didn't possess.
Enticed by trailers and beta videos of the Burning Crusade, I returned once again to experience Outland, this time playing an Elemental Shaman. For the first time, I hit the level cap and began raiding. But yet again, I never accumulated much gear or money.
It wasn't until Wrath of the Lich King that I finally learned to play the game competitively. As a Rogue, I progressed through the new Naxx, Ulduar, and ToC before leaving again just before ICC due to being sent away boarding school which I ended up hating and leaving after a year.

Now in the middle of High School, I've made an effort to return again - but so far this effort has been in Vain. I have a complaint in just about every aspect of the new expansion, so I'll go over the major ones.

New UI:

Logging back in on my Rogue in Cata, I could barely recognize the UI. A Dungeon Journal, A Guild Tab, A Dungeon Finder (I never really got used to it during Wrath), a completely re-done talent system, profession page, mount page, and companion page to name a few changes. The Dungeon Journal makes me really upset, because it eliminates basically any remaining challenge in Raids and Heroics. No matter how much research you did on old fights during BC and Wrath, there was always an element of anticipation and surprise going into a new fight. I got so used to watching Tankspot guides and strategies that I began to enjoy the research aspect. Unless you are literally at the highest tier of raiding these days, such research isn't necessary. Now you can see what the boss will look like, all of his/her abilities, whether or not you have to avoid them to stay alive, long before you actually step foot into the instance. Although it's hard to get used to, I was for the most part able to shrug this off. Once again, Blizzard continues to simplify the new UI making the game easier, what else is new?

Achievements:

Next I noticed that achievements like Glory of the Ulduar Raider and titles such as Kingslayer and The Astral Walker are still available. After all of the wipes I endured on my quest for even a Rusted Proto-Drake during Wrath, this frustrated me. I remember when seeing someone on an Ironbound Drake with the Astral Walker or Herald of the Titans meant they had skill. Now I got both of those achievements the other night in a pug of 18 level 85's in PvP and heroic gear, many of whom were prone to Ninja DC'ing. It made me truly upset to think about watching Vodka vs. Alone in the Darkness and Ensidia vs. Firefighter and all the epicness about those two bosses, as we one-shotted every hardmode with ease.


"New" Cities:

One aspect of Cataclysm, which others seem to love, is the re-vamping of Orgrimmar and Stormwind and their re-establishment as the capital cities. I personally hate Blizzard's choice to do this. There was something epic about being in a new world and a new city. It brings back great memories to think about walking through the dark portal for the first time and looking at the sky in Hellfire Peninsula. Being in Shattrath and Dalaran was great, and what made them even better were the portals that allowed one to head back to any city they wanted. I loved being around both Horde and Alliance in Dalaran, fishing in the fountain and doing dailies before returning to Ironforge to sit on the bridge. Now with Cataclysm, I'm stuck in a horribly over-crowded Orgrimmar (I faction changed during Wrath), in the same continents that I've visited for years. I honestly feel like the changes Blizzard made in Org and SW were just enough to crush any nostalgic feelings us old players had but not enough to simulate the feeling of a new expansion.

New Zones:

Some of the new 80-85 zones are cool, such as Uldum and Deepholm, but the questing has become so linear and easy that I got from 80 to 85 in about 4 days of casual playing. Traveling around doing Archaeology, I hardly notice the changes in the old world (besides a couple of zones, like the Barrens and Thousand Needles). I guess if you're leveling you may notice them, but all I can ask about the Cataclysm in general is who cares? For a level capped player who has no interest in leveling again, what does The Barrens being split into two zones have anything to do with me? Archaeology has done a decent job in getting me back out into the zones of Azeroth, but after all these years and considering I have every classic raid and dungeon achieve, it's starting to get old. Going back to the whole city idea; rather than leaving Shattrath or Dalaran and entering a colorful wilderness with strange-looking high level mobs, I leave Orgrimmar and see level 8 boars, which I've probably killed 10,000 times or more during my WoW career.

Mounts:

I had high hopes in this area but once again I was disappointed for the most part. There are a few cool ones, such as the Horde Scorpion, the Vitreous Stone Drake, and the Fossilized Raptor, but besides those I'm not very impressed. Besides the Vitreous one, the Stone Drakes don't even compare to Netherwing Drakes, Nether Rays, and Proto-Drakes. Camels are, let's face it, kind of boring and all the really rare and expensive mounts come from TCG and cost between 100,000 and 750,000 gold on my server, not to mention the Winged Guardian, which is purchased on Blizzard's store for real money. They even added a new Ahn'Qiraj battle tank as an Archaeology reward; now the true Scarab Lords with the Black battle tanks are hard to spot. I have the Vial of the Sands drake (which I'll get into later) but I still find myself riding around on either my Nether drake or one of my Protos (all of which, of course, you can still get) just because I think they look so much better.

Auction House/Money:

I'm not going to criticize this too much because I realize economies change and inflation must occur. But I'm still a bit bothered by the fact that, in Wrath it took me over a month to save up for a motorcycle, and now in Cataclysm it took me about a week to save up 35,000 for Vial of the Sands. Rather than working hard on the Auction House and having hundreds of auctions up at a time, making small, hard-earned profits from each, I go to sleep each night with one sword or dagger up for about 15,000 (the mats for which cost me 3000 tops and required no farming). At one point I friended a lot of my competitors on the AH to see who I'm dealing with. I was surprised to notice that many of them are level 1 Rogues with randomized names who I'm almost certain are Chinese farmers. Some of these level 1's play all day and night, don't answer any tells, and undercut you almost instantly.

Content:

I honestly haven't bothered with that much content so far in Cataclysm. The heroics are often too long and provide horrible loot. I have no idea why they eliminated the epic from the final boss that existed in BC and Wrath. I got all I needed from ZG/ZA in about a week, considering you can do them both many times a day, and now I'm hovering around a 360 item level - too low to be invited to successful BoTs and ToT4W without an achievement (even though I know all the fights without any research thanks to the dungeon journal) and too high to really benefit from heroics. Like another reviewer said, there were more bosses in Naxx (Wrath) then there have been thus far in Cataclysm - that's just pathetic.

One would think that with WoW progressing over the years the game would become more complex and difficult to master, on the contrary, Blizzard has made every effort to simplify the experience and make it more beginner-friendly. As a result of Blizzard's efforts, WoW has reached a sort of paradox. New players are great and always have been (call me a nerd but it will always be fun to find a brand new player at level 1 and show them the ropes) but Blizzard's development team has at this point utterly failed at balancing user-friendliness and challenge. Some people speculate that Activision is intentionally dooming WoW to make way for some future game, but I just can't imagine they would do such a thing. They've just failed on so many levels that I'm afraid the game is nearly beyond repair. Many reviewers are thankful that Cataclysm has severed their addictions to WoW, I'm the complete opposite. I only have a few years left to thoroughly enjoy video games before I head off to college. I've grown up with World of Warcraft, and as hard as it may be to believe, it's taught me a lot about people. I pray that Blizzard may get the message that so many of it's devoted customers are sending, but I guess only time will tell.

I know this has been a bit lengthy, but thanks for listening to my thoughts.

Review by P. Dui

I was addicted to WoW. I spent over a thousand hours neglecting my real life to play in the World of Warcraft. It was a fun time, even though detrimental to my real life. I had to quit cold turkey, because of the amount of energy it would suck from my normal life even though it was a lot of fun.

When Cataclysm came out, I was able to resist the temptation for a few months, but relapsed into WoW. I played through the Goblin Starting Zone, and the rest of the game was just BORING. It lost the spark. It was no longer an addicting cigarette, but just the butt. I am finally able to shake my WoW addiction and move on with my life. For that, I am grateful.

Cataclysm is just an old rehash of content, game engine, grinding, and elitism. It really was like another job and I finally got bored of the grind. The grind can be fun the first time around, but eventually it becomes a grind. Thank you Cata for helping me close this sad chapter in my life.

For every beginning, there is an end. Cata marks the end of the height of WoW and it's inevitable slow ending.

Review by W. R. Jones

World of Warcraft Cataclysm expansion took many of the things that annoyed players from previous releases then made them the basis for content. Whoever thought of taking all the things the average player failed at in a raid instance and making them even more numerous and deadly should be selling phone plans at the mall, not designing games.

I pity raid leaders now, the amount of yelling not to stand in stuff must be insane.

A few other things to consider:
The reputation grinds are epic, the heroics are tedious and unforgiving, the raiding requires you grind the previous two, PVP has been ruined for many classes... time honored skills removed or rendered useless, new battlegrounds are a poorly implemented rehash of older versions, "new" dungeon content is "old" content rehashed, and finally... grinding achievements are like crack, it consumes your life and returns nothing, much like this whole game.

Suggestions: Check out "Free to Play" (F2P) games for MMO's like... Forsaken World, Spiral Knights, Runes of Magic, Lord of the Ring Online.
For a pay to play game I'd give "Rift" a try, it's good for about 3 months of very cool questing, rift hunting and dungeon crawling, but unless there's a huge questing/dungeon expansion, 3 months is it.

All of WoW Cataclysm review above show us if WoW Cataclysm is not as good as previous expansions. If you've been played it, please share your WoW Cataclysm review by put your comment below.

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