Honestly? Not as bad as I remember it being.

I do miss the old world but this was a breath of fresh air. Interesting villain, decent story and enjoyable zones. (Except Vash'jir.)

Hard fucking expansion but still enjoyable. Fuck Dragon Soul though. That can do one.

The drop-off point for a lot of WoW fans, myself included, but it gets a somewhat unfair rep. I absolutely loved the reworked zones (although the decision to leave many of the weakest zones, especially compared to the vanilla ones they spruced up, is an odd one i.e. Ahn-Qiraj, many of the Kalimdor zones) and the new dungeons do a lot to make the staler patches of early-level content much more enjoyable. The newer zones are a mixed bag, though, especially spaces like the Twilight Highlands and Uldum that feel run-of-the-mill in their writing and quest design. I think what really sunk this expansion for a lot of folks was the slow roll-out of new content and the absolute shitshow that was the overarching plot of Deathwing/the Elder Dragons. Blizzard has always been ok in regards to their writing, but this was a new low for them that I'm not sure they ever fully recovered from. Maybe someday I'll go back and catch up on WoW, but I think Cata marked the end of the golden era for the game in ways that ultimately keep me finding the motivation to return.

Despite the negativity this expansion gets, this was where dungeons took a step in the right direction. Mechanics were more prominent, Crowd Control was actually required, each class was more well-rounded for encounters.

As for everything else this expansion changed... Welp lets not pretend like it was all good before this. Each expansion (+Vanilla) before it tore at what WoW was and the different reasons people liked it.

Before Cata, Vanilla had lackluster lore around raid bosses.
Before Cata, TBC changed raiding for better or worse. (Depends who you ask.)
Before Cata, Wrath really turned questing into what felt like a chore instead of a necessary process.

Ah, the great divider. The end of an era. Cataclysm has a pretty miserable reputation, which is a shame, because there's a lot of good stuff in Cata. The new 80-85 zones and the new starting areas for the Worgen and Goblins are all great. The revamped 1-60 leveling was actually fantastic, and it's a massive shame that everyone just sat in their capital city and spammed LFD because it was faster... classic example of players ruining a game for themselves. LFD also more or less ruined the new heroic dungeons. They were hard in a way that was very satisfying and well designed... if you had an actual guild group. Trying to complete them with LFD randoms was true horror. The new raids were pretty great for the first two tiers as well.

Unfortunately Cataclysm was just too ambitious for its own good. It shouldn't be any surprise that there ended up being a lot of cut content and somewhat of a rushed, undercooked end to the expansion. The team had little time to work on the next expansion, so the final raid (which was considered lackluster to begin with) was current content for an extremely long period of time. That last third of the expansion really left a bad taste in the mouths of many, many players. Releasing at the same time as that final raid was the most divisive feature ever added to WoW: LFR. The very concept of LFR was sacrilege to many players, including myself. I've definitely softened that stance over time, but even now LFR's presence has a very negative effect on my motivation to play the game. Even the game's story was starting to drive players away, as players perceived a frustrating amount of favoritism being shown toward Thrall, who is typically seen as a self-insert character for Chris Metzen, WoW's creative lead at the time.

To many players, the revamped geography of the old world serves as an eternal reminder that the World of Warcraft that they know has been destroyed. Ashenvale has a giant volcano in the middle of it that never stops erupting, Westfall is ravaged by a perpetual tornado, the Barrens have been quite literally torn asunder, etc. Many players no longer feel at home in Azeroth because their version of this world died in 2010. So much of Cataclysm is great... it's such a shame that so many only remember it as the death of something that they once loved.

This game's story was much more interesting to me as it focused mainly on the original areas of Azeroth. Originally I hated this game because at the time I was a Tauren main (having switched from Night Elves late in WotLK), and seeing my boy the Barrens getting butchered like that was not the tea. As a druid main, the Mt Hyjal area was where I would spend most of my time and that kind of turned me around on the idea of it being a bad expac (as well as all the worse expacs coming out after making this good in comparison). Dungeon finder made for a much easier experience as someone who didn't have a guild and just levelled using quests.

This expansion has three of the most profoundly terrifying moments in WoW history:
The moment where you're questing as a wee little level 20 alt - maybe you're killing a deer, maybe you're mining for ore, maybe you're picking flowers - until the sky turns red and some massive city-sized dragon shows up out of nowhere and obliterates you instantly.
The Whale Shark in Vash'jir. All the fun of the Fel Reaver, now with some Thalassophobia thrown in there for a little extra spice.
*Questing in the Thousand Needles and seeing the Thousand Needles Whale Shark respawn and go through its death animation while you're doing the ice cream questline. Thanks for the mini heart attack, Blizz.

you have no idea how sad i am to write this but:

negatives:

-RAID FINDER OH MY GOD NO

-Dragon Soul

-Revamped old map, noone asked that and we didnt need it, just do it in small zones or do something else, dont change what is perfect.

-Dragon Soul

-questing zones were really a letdown and only Uldum stands out, even twilight i feel it wasnt perfectly executed, Vashj'ir is no cap the WORST zone in ALL of world of warcraft

-Dragon Soul, i will never forgive Blizzard for how they did Deathwing there.

POSITIVES:

-LORE WAS INCREDIBLE, really, amazing.

-Deathwing was a badass villain and you almost felt bad for him listening to his story, in particular the dungeon End Time really stands out as one of the best dungeons ever expecially for the location and seeing a future with deathwing in that state really brings sadness

-Dungeons were challenging as hell and overall very funny to experience with friends

-Firelands were something else man...


overall i feel like this was a good expansion but for the first time in wow's history we actually had real game threatening problems such as revamping old world an some stuff i said earlier, and that isnt cool since we were used to Vanilla, TBC and WOTLK where 99% of content was amazing.

This game is very difficult to rate.

4.0: 6/10
4.1 (ZG + ZA Rework): 9/10
4.2 (Firelands): 10/10
4.3 (Dragon Soul): 1/10

4.1 and 4.2 (Firelands) was peak WoW followed by 4.3 with Dragon Soul that was abyss WoW. (4.0 was just alright. Not much to say except the world overhaul was pretty good, even though it was a shame that the classic world wouldn't be playable again until 2019 with "WoW Classic". The raids in 4.0 were just ok.)

In 4.3 we got the worst raid ever made with the worst final boss fight of any game I've played, while systems like LFR flagged the end of WoW being a living legend, having now become a fallen legend. One that it hasn't recovered from and likely never will. The less said about the story, with Thrall becoming Chris Metzen's self-insert Gary Stu, the better. The only good thing in this patch was the "Well of Eternity" Dungeon. "End Time" was mid at best and the "Hour of Twilight" "dungeon" was laughably bad and only tolerable to the "so bad it's good" Benedictus voice actor.

Despite Dragon Soul being the worst "media" (consisting of video games, books, TV shows and movies) I've ever experienced, Firelands was "fire". Molten Front was an improvement on the Argent Tourdament daily system, with a story as you progressed through the dailies and the raids was great. Only 7 bosses but each one was brilliant and the entire raid struck a good balance between casual and hardcore raiders from my point of view. The patch (4.1) before gave us the Zul'Gurub remake, which is the best dungeon Blizzard have ever made hands down. For the first time every dungeon boss was of "raid quality". Only downside of this 4.1 patch was how Classic ZG became unplayable for years until WoW Classic.

With all that. 7/10 is probably a rating I'm comfortable with giving this game. Despite the low point of Dragonsoul, I don't want to give this a terrible rating and downplay the fun memories I had of Firelands (4.2) and 4.1.