Cataclysm: the end of WoW as we know it?

See what I did there.  That was a joke.  Sorry.

Lodur posted about What Cataclysm is Doing Right on World of Matticus.  He asked us:

So what do you think? What was the best and worst of Burning Crusade? What was the best and worst of Wrath? How do you feel about cataclysm so far? Excited, sad, angry? What are you looking forward to the most?

The Burning Crusade
I didn’t play a lot pre-TBC.  I was busy with that pesky Real Life and I never raided.  I barely made it to 60 when TBC arrived.  TBC was six months in before I reallyt started playing.  So I can’t make the comparison so well.  I liked the Drenai and Blood Elf starter areas, and how much better they were.  I liked Shattrath as a central hub for everyone.  I liked flying definitely.  I loved raiding.  I went as far as the beginnings of Black Temple and Mount Hyjal before the nerf and there were few bosses I didn’t enjoy (despite constructs in the raid).  Kara is still my favourite raid – and the Big Bad Wolf (Opera) the best boss for sheer comedy value.  I didn’t like the elite raider superiority thing (and still don’t).  I was not really a fan of Shattered Halls and I despised Auchenai Crypts.  It was definitely a bit grindy, but already better than in vanilla.

Enter Wrath of the Lich King
WotLK fixed a lot of things.  Raiding is more accessible, which is a good thing.  There are times when I wish there was more of a challenge in some normal content – Trial of the Crusader on normal is particularly easy.  I love Northrend.  Its beautiful, musical, enchanting.  Especially Dragonblight.  There are a few problems.  Wintergrasp lag hell anyone?  But that has been fixed.  The heroics are all too easy.  Every last one of them.  Theres only one boss tactic – tank and spank.  I’m not a fan of the hard mode mechanic.  I’m not sure I have a solution to the problem they solve, but I’m not a fan.  I think most retribution paladins like WotLK though because (in 3.0 and 3.2 at least) we are competative dps.

Cataclysm
Firstly, if you want to read all about Cataclysm then you really want to hop on over to WoW.com.  You’ll find a complete list of information there, kept far more up to date than I could manage!

What I like

• The storyline – Deathwing returning, breaking up Azeroth, trying to access the elemental planes, sounds like fun!  I’m hoping for a big, fat, world event to start this off.
• Reworking the old world – it’s the right time to do this.  The old world feels its age, its clunky and inefficient.  This should take us back to old places we loved, or never got to see.
• Heroic Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep – looking forward to these.  I have done both, but not often so they will be fairly fresh to me.
• Paths of the Titans/Rethinking talents – I’m hoping this will add a bit of spice to a dull ret pala tree and I think the Paths sound fun.
• Jazzing up the professions with archaeology and reforging – sounds good to me.  I like my profession choices (miner-JC on Morrighan, tailor-enchanter on Akandra and herbalist-alchemist on Enalla with a transmute mastery), but I’ll be glad to see anything that makes them more exciting.
• Guild leveling and achievements – I’m all for these despite the drama llama that I am sure will follow them.
• Rated battlegrounds – not a fan of arena and these would give me an incentive to do BGs again. I’ve skipped these largely since TBC when PvP gear was desirable for PvE.
• More raid content – see they do listen!
• Flying in Azeroth – fabulous.
• New dungeons – Abyssal Maw will be a water dungeon which sounds fun.  Uldum: Halls of Origination will be non-linear with 7 bosses which sounds like what they have proposed for the Icecrown dungeon is a new type of design.  I hope these will be more of a challenge on heroic than the current round of dungeons.
• New raids – not many details, but a promise there will be more content.
• New zones – these all sound interesting and there will be a new hub (Deepholm) with links to key places.

Whats a bit ‘meh’

• New races – not really needed.
• Simplification of stats – I like maths!
• No new hero class – its good in that it won’t mean a complete rebalancing again, but bad in that I was really hoping for that healer/hunter hybrid.

What I don’t like

• Healing gnomes – this is just WRONG. I guess I should be thankful there are no gnome paladins.  *Shudder*
• The name – too short to be abbreviated, too long to type in full so often.
• The level cap – while I get all the arguments for it being 85, it offends my sense of symmetry.
• The Plane of Fire – guess what the raid tactic is going to be?