Wow has lost its touch. Is cata responsible?

[Tonuss]

I agree that taking a break from the game can be a very big help.

I think that persistent-world MMOs change the way we approach gaming, and are designed (not deliberately, IMO) to induce burnout. I cannot recall any other video game that I would play almost every day for at least an hour a day for months, even YEARS, at a time. There were periods during my EQ and early WOW days where I was playing every day, two-to-four hours a day, for weeks on end.

Even games like the Civilization series, which I would play an absurd amount of over a short time, didn't keep me coming back every day for hours at a time over a course of months. Or even weeks. I played a shitload of Civ2, and more than a few of my Civ2 sessions were almost certainly much longer than my longest ever WOW/EQ session. But since each game finishes at some point, I'd go for days or weeks before I picked it up again. Not my MMORPGs, though. Day in, day out, grind grind grind. It was fun, don't get me wrong. But burnout is inescapable, IMO.

So now I take breaks whenever I feel I need one. Or I do as I am doing now, where I play 30-60 minutes at a time with the occasional day off and the rare 2+ hour play session. I don't think I've logged into WOW in three days or so as of today, and I'm not worried about it. And these days when I play, I don't feel as if I'm falling behind and need to make up the slack, either. So the threat of burnout is pretty much gone now and I can enjoy it more when I play.

[AgentSnipps]

Like just about everyone said above me takeing breaks can help a ton. I've played off and on since release and evertime I go to take a break I just watch MMO champion every now and then for something intresting to pull me back in. This is the longest break I've been on (over 8 months) but reading these forums and such has goten me excited to try multiboxing again.

Since I have a tendency to wander and get side tracked I've deicded to forgo RAF this time and either lv my 71 hunter,shaman and warlock to meet up with my 80 priest and pally and 5 box cata or just dual box my priest and pally. This way if I get distracted by oh say SC II again I wont be wasteing my RAF time.

Also considering faction swaping to Alliance, not a fan of ditching the Horde but I think a fresh viewpoint of the game might hold more for awhile longer and I can always go back.

P.S. Why does everyone love BC so much? I had just enough time to hit 70 and clear kara before going to bootcamp and afterwards could never get into it.

[Oatboat]

Actually its going pretty fast with no RAF. My gobby enhance shamans are climbing pretty fast. Was suprising how much more exp they added to low level quests. Of course if you had RAF with the new quests... it would be nuts.

One thing that i've really enjoyed are the guild perks. Joined a level 25 guild and got tons of perks... i didnt even know what some did until i needed them lol.

[lightstriker]

I have taken so many little breaks. it helps a lot.

Re-spec old teams and composing new teams or levleling alts get me going. There are so many teams to try. Exorcism and Holy Wrath(round robin) was a huge advantage in Wrath. Now I i got 3 tankadins and 2 Holy/dps assist. So I don't CC like Blizz wants us to. I rarely bother to dispell. Tanks have cheap AoE. Because of all the CC, I am currently pushing my pet teams (and Druids.) for off tanking(mainly Beast spec).

Faux AoE healing with 2 Holy. Take the talent Protector of the Innocent. Cast 2 Beacon of Light on one tank. Heal the others and almost everyone gets some healing.

Cata is good for all the revamp classic maps and other refinements. People seem to forget that and focus on the 85 maps and end game. We have been leveling the old maps for SIX years. This is a great expansion pack.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

WARNING!


I don't think Cataclysm was responsible for all of the ills of late as there are a lot of folks still enjoying parts of the game. I do think that Cataclysm went downhill in a few ways:

• Instance mechanics adopted a lot more "one mistake and you get one-shot" mechanics and TONS of gratuitous AoE damage.
• Instance trash became a pain in the ass with no particular rhyme or reason.
• All of a sudden, CC became a requirement unless you outgeared the content.
• Healing drastically changed from a sliding scale of capability to a "you must be THIS HIGH to heal THIS INSTANCE" setup.
• 4.0 over-homogenized talent trees and, thus, the options classes had to play variable roles. Sub-specs/hybrid specs were effectively gutted by this.
• Stamina and mob damage scaled like mad, while healing output stayed largely constant.
• Fewer items seemed to be available per faction to outfit folks for heroic entry, meaning you had to grind more factions for gear.
• Mana regen was dramatically nerfed, or rather, was moved into an "active regen" scheme and away from passive regen talents/gear/stats.
• Many rotations were turned into WHACK-A-MOLE instead of logical ability progressions.

I also think Cataclysm screwed up playing with friends as I'll describe as part of my reply to the next comment.

Some of the reasons are boring questing that is incredibly linear.
But the questing process is relatively quick, compared to say 10 levels of WotLK... and people complained of the collection quests there, then the very next expansion complain of the rail-roading of Cataclysm.
Once the leveling is done, and that is a very small percentage of the game, Cata is essentially the exact same as BC or WotLK or whatever the next one will be.

Assuming I am reading that right, I'm going to take exception to what you insinuate is an inconsistent position vis-a-vis questing/leveling. Lemme break down the way things differed with regards to quest chains in the various expansions from my experience (I almost exclusively leveled all my boxing teams through questing):

Classic WoW:

• Most quest hubs were not chained. You could start at Crossroads, Taurajo or any of the others as soon as you met the minimum level was met.
• Zones were completely separate with no breadcrumb quests required.
• Everyone could play together, including your high-level friend who had done the quest several times and could speed you through quickly.
• There were lots of "chains" but the only really linear ones were those that led into "lore" or "story-line" quests, many in instances.
• Breadcrumb quests were extra XP but they absolutely were not required.

BC:

• Zones did not require breadcrumbs from previous zones.
• Some quest hubs (maybe 30%?) needed breadcrumb quests from previous hubs but this varied wildly by zone. (see: Nesingwary & the faction hubs in Nagrand for examples)
• Your friends could bring their high-level alts to play with you and help you through quests.
• Instance quests usually did not require breadcrumb quests and many were from NPCs right outside of the instance.
• Most quest chains outside of lore/storyline quests were only limited by meeting minimum level requirements.

WotLK:

• Zones were 50/50 on whether you needed breadcrumb quests to start them.
• Most of the hubs in a "sub-zone" were all part of the same chain of quests, which required a drop quest or breadcrumb quest from an NPC. Some quest hubs could be partially started without breadcrumb quests but others required lots of them, even multiple breadcrumb questlines AT THE SAME HUB.
• Friends could play with you in about 80% of areas, though some of the most fun quest chains (see: Icecrown Ebon Blade series) were phased, so your high-level friends that were on different parts or had completed them could not help you with them.
• With the exception of the Dropship Crash Site in Hellfire, WotLK had a lot more onerous collection quests than BC.

Cata:

• 90% of quest hubs in a zone _required_ breadcrumbs from previous hubs or you could not even SEE the NPCs, let alone interact with them.
• Friends on different quest lines could not help you as phasing was heavily prevalent, preventing them from seeing you or the mobs you were tasked with killing..
• Many entire zones or sub-zones required breadcrumbs to start them, though some of the lower-level zones weren't quite as railroaded.
• Phasing in the lower-level areas was absolutely nuts, especially for multiboxers where some collection quests would kick each character into a completely different phase just from picking up the last item! Meant you could have all guys help with the first one, 4 guys with the second, 3 guys with the third, two guys with the 4th and your last poor schlub was left to solo the last drop by himself.

So, as you can see, questing got consistently more linear and railroaded, taking a giant leap into WTF-dom in Cata with the overuse (IMO) of phasing on an almost per-quest and even sub-quest level, especially in the lowbie zones (goblins was my only experience).

So those of thus that bitched about WotLK linearity of questing and the even more linear Cata quest lines are entirely consistent and justified in that position.

Or did you have a non-obvious point you were making?


In the end, all of the above killed Cataclysm for me, though the changes to questing were probably my biggest gripe as that was where I spent most of my time multiboxing.

Congrats to those who still find it an exciting game. It doesn't suck completely and is still probably the best option in the MMO market for folks who aren't experiencing burn-out on WoW in general.

[Shodokan]

Cata is a blast. Yes questing sucked ass but overall its a great expansion. After december I was 12/12 and felt that raiding was pointless. Though i did like wotlk more mostly because rets were a blast for me.

4.2 looks amazing.

[zenga]

Cata is a blast. Yes questing sucked ass but overall its a great expansion

Agreed.

After december I was 12/12 and felt that raiding was pointless. Though i did like wotlk more mostly because rets were a blast for me.

There is a huge difference between the normal modes and the hard modes. It depends of course on the guild you raid with and on your personal skill, but we had no real problems with any bosses on normal mode, but it can take use quite some time to knock out a new heroic boss. The difference is immense on at least half of the fights, so I don't really understand why progressing through hard modes would be pointless? Even the very top guilds needed several days to get a kill on a new hc boss.

According to wow progress about 400 guilds killed nefarian before 2011. Iirc you were on illidan us, so you must 've been in one of the the top 3/4 guilds on your realm, which are basically all world top 150 guilds. Looks pretty weird to say that it's pointless to continue after clearing normal modes when raiding in such a pro environment.

[Shodokan]

Agreed.



There is a huge difference between the normal modes and the hard modes. It depends of course on the guild you raid with and on your personal skill, but we had no real problems with any bosses on normal mode, but it can take use quite some time to knock out a new heroic boss. The difference is immense on at least half of the fights, so I don't really understand why progressing through hard modes would be pointless? Even the very top guilds needed several days to get a kill on a new hc boss.

According to wow progress about 400 guilds killed nefarian before 2011. Iirc you were on illidan us, so you must 've been in one of the the top 3/4 guilds on your realm, which are basically all world top 150 guilds. Looks pretty weird to say that it's pointless to continue after clearing normal modes when raiding in such a pro environment.

I raided 9 toons a week in ICC... when you have shit on farm it gets boring. And i moved off illidan and didn't like the guild i was with anyway. If i liked the people i was raiding with i'd love to just push hardmodes but when you loathe some people you were playing with the environment isn't the greatest to push for that sort of thing. I ended up taking a break last semester anyway so in the end i wouldn't have been able to really put effort into raiding.

[Ualaa]

I didn't say Cataclysm wasn't rail-roading linear quests, I specifically said it was.
I also said people were complaining of the endless collections in Northrend last expansion.
People in general, myself included, like to complain... it is human nature.

I was essentially comparing WotLK questing to Cataclysm questing, saying that both had aspects which were not fun as a boxer.
But that Cataclysm was less painful then WotLK, 80-85 certainly felt a lot faster than 70-80 did.

1st to 85th is only a small portion of the overall game; compare the entire leveling process vs the time you spend in dungeons, raids, pvp, crafting items or playing the auction house.
Even if the leveling is painful or boring or whatever, it is a very small portion of the game, and the game is essentially the same elements in each expansion as the previous.

[Khatovar]

STUFF and THINGS

I agree with all of this. I've been through every expansion and Cata simply wasn't fun. It was frustrating and lackluster. Everything follows one narrow line. All the classes are the same, all the quests are the same, even dungeon "progression" seemed to follow a very set line with very little choice on where to go. It's like the whole game got cookie-cutter instead of just talents. Like an assembly line or something, not a game.

That's not to say there weren't suck things in the other expansions and in Vanilla, but at least I had enough to keep me entertained while those things were fixed or grew on me. For me, Cata was played out within a month.

And believe me, I want to get back to my team and play, but I keep coming back to the 2 months where I logged in, sighed, did a JC daily and logged out again. And my husband refuses to come back at all, so I just can't justify 5 subscriptions, 1 Cata upgrade and leveling a replacement to 85 for a game that's going to make me feel like I'm going to the dentist. Maybe after another content patch or two, but the game's not there yet {though my boredom level is!}.