5 Things I Loved and Hated About Cataclysm - #1 Dungeon Difficulty

5 man dungeon difficulty took a different tack at the beginning of Cataclysm as compared to Wrath that left some people feeling frustrated and angry. Perhaps it was a case of ask and ye shall receive? Or maybe a little throwback to the old days of WoW. Either way it was something that left me feeling unsure about what I really want from a 5 man dungeon in the future.

It's hard, or maybe way too easy, to compare the end of one expansion to the beginning of another and make judgement calls on what feels difficult to do, but that's exactly what we did at the beginning of Cataclysm.

Way back in the day....World of Warcraft was difficult. I hear a lot of folks talking these days about how those of us that have been around for a while are waxing poetic about the old days of vanilla. The talk has been that what we think back then was awesome, we really would not want to return to. Such as all the grind that WoW once was. I think they are very right and very wrong.

So let's stick with the 5 man content for the moment or I'll get all sidetracked.

And let's start with something more relate-able to the current player base then vanilla.

At the end of Wrath dungeons were EASY. Not just kinda easy, but really SUPER easy. I could breeze through a Wrath heroic dungeon in 15 to 20 minutes. No stopping. No CC. In fact, there was quite a lot of 'pull the whole room!' going on.  From what I understand this happened because the gear in Wrath was on overdrive and jumped way too fast. Pretty soon we had outgeared the dungeons in the expansion.
I have tried to remember how difficult the dungeons were when we first started Wrath and honestly I have a hard time recalling them. Either is was so long ago or it was inconsequential. I know they were.
As I wrack my brain I remember wiping on heroic Utgarde Pinnacle forever. All the Halls dungeons in Storm Peaks drove me crazy. You really had to get some of those pulls right or you would have the entire room. Back when you didn't want it. The fire room in Halls of Lightning where you had to run through the room then AoE them all down without dying or pulling the next mob on the stairs. And all the Vrykul statues. Do you remember those? Some of those pulls really sucked. Yet toward the end we were flying through these dungeons like a hot knife. I remember hardly having to think about what was going on. Just AoE, AoE, aoe.....
SEEEEED !!!!!!

It was great watching all those things explode everywhere.

And then...Cataclysm. Wow, boy were we in for a shock.

They were hard. They were long! They required CC. Oh noes!

Mostly they were time consuming. Time that people had not previously allotted for 5 mans. Many ran in thinking it would be the same old song and dance. Pull. Kill. Loot. Move on. We were wrong. Some of us knew it was coming from people in the beta or blue posts telling us what to expect. Yet still we didn't really believe it until we got in, and then all the QQ started. And I laughed. Truly.

The reason I laughed is because I actually enjoyed them. I wanted to put that much time and effort into a dungeon again. I felt that we hadn't seen anything like this since Burning Crusade 5 mans. I remember (see here we go) how much fun I had in BC 5 mans. I think it was mostly because of my guild though. We did guild runs all the time and most of the time had a blast. We also cursed a lot.

I didn't laugh very long. Yes even I got tired of it. Heaven forbid you get Grim Batol, even now it's long and annoying. I enjoyed the dungeons but found I did not enjoy the people. So many expected them to be easy or short. And many expected that everyone would just remember how to trap, sheep or fear. Not the case. After the first initial months Cata 5 mans became full of rage. In fact there was a time where I just didn't want to do them. It was either too time consuming or too frustrating to waste my time on.

What would I like to see in 5 mans? The last group of dungeons (Hour of Twilight) seem spot on for me. 3-5 bosses with different mechanics. Small groups of mobs. I would enjoy something once in a while that requires thought but not every mob. Something with CC and pull tactics. I think 30-45 minutes is good. I think 20 is too short. I want to wipe once in a while. I want it to be difficult. I want it to be challenging, but not all the time, and not every pull. I want to have to think about it but not so much my brain hurts by the end of it where it makes me feel like I'm glad it's over.

I also wonder if what I'm asking for is not possible. With the gear ever moving upwards is this something that we should come to expect from our expansion dungeons? It starts off challenging and then at some point it becomes really easy?
Perhaps with the challenge modes coming out and the gear normalization they come with, we will actually have a dungeon that will keep our attention throughout the entire expansion. Where we don't whine it's too hard or whine it's too easy. No, that would be too much to ask for lol. We will always find something to whine about. That is the one thing I'm sure of.


So that's it. That's my top 5. Originally I started with 5 I loved and 5 I hated but found that they were pretty much the same things.

As we move into the new frontier of Pandaria what is your favorite or least favorite thing from Cataclysm?

Tick Tock Time - Time between patches and releases

Now that Mists of Pandaria has been officially announced for release it has sparked in me a curiosity. When have all the patches occurred in WoW, what were they for, and how long did we wait for them?

Searching for Patch Notes
Thus began the research. I wasn't able to find any previous patch notes at Blizzard, and I remember when they posted patch notes that there was always a link to old patch notes. With the current iteration of their "blog" I was unable to find them. Somewhat distressing considering that info is their own history. I guess they turned it internal. I was bummed. It reminded me of how much information is just not on the website anymore, or perhaps its just more difficult to find. I don't know.

Off to my old friend Google where I searched patch releases. I found the best collection at WoW Wiki. It is very cool, they have patch info dating back to pre-launch vanilla, and they did a pretty decent job of compiling everything. It is really fun to trip down memory lane and pinpoint exactly when I began playing in the sequence of events. Then to remember what was happening and how I was feeling as certain things were brought on line in-game. My plan is to try and keep track of releases and patches going forward, and have my own notes and timeline about what was launched when.

So I took all this information and plopped it into an excel spreadsheet for my own reference. I briefly thought about putting it up as a page here but it seems too long and not as complete as I'd like it to be to post it.

What I Found

Not surprising, as the cycle of expansions has gone on, the time between patches has increased. That is a good sign actually. That means there is less Blizz is fixing, and that the game is more stable than it's ever been. Though that also means that the time between new stuff is longer as well. Both the time between patches and the time between patch and expansion.

From the last big installment in vanilla (Naxx release) to the pre-launch BC events there was 6 months. (Jun-Dec 2006). I do remember the wait for BC seemed forever. I think because I was so excited to be a part of everything going on.

From the last BC event (Sunwell) to the pre-launch Lich King events was 7 months (March-Nov 2008). This was surprising to me. It seemed like we had so much to do, and I wasn't even raiding any of the larger raids. This was also when we saw the biggest influx of dailies with the Isle of Quel'Danas. Before that the dailies were rather insignificant and many were zone pvp related (Hellfire nodes, Nagrand's Halaa etc.). We had new ways to spend our time.
From the last Wrath big patch (Ruby Sanctum) to the Cata pre-launch events was only 4 months (June-Oct 2010). I think most people would count from when ICC launched though. In that case we're talking 10 months (Dec 09-Oct 10). It did indeed feel that long, even though I was raiding ICC from probably 3 months after it came out until right around 4.0 dropped. I had things to do and my guild was relatively vibrant. Everyone was still logging in regularly. As you can probably deduce from that sentence, it is not that way right now. I did level a large range of alts. More than ever before. I believe I raised 7 toons to 80 before Lich King was done.

Well, here we are waiting for the next launch. So when was the last big patch? I'm sure you all know it was DragonSoul but when did that come out exactly? I was surprised that DS was launched back in Nov 2011. If we use that as the last big infusion of content then we are looking at 9 months. Assuming that we'll start getting pre-launch events in August, or early September. This was only surprising in that it has been just shy of how long we waited for Cataclysm to drop, and yet this time around it feels like this has been the longest one yet. I fully expected there to be more of a difference. It certainly feels like more of a difference.

Patch Content

That being said I thought another point was really interesting. The number of patches we've seen over the last two expansions has decreased. Again a good sign and something we would expect to see over time. It's just not something at the forefront of my mind as the months roll by.

Vanilla hit version 1.12 before it was done, with around 38 total patches. BC was at 2.4 but it had a lot of versions, approximately 28 in all. Wrath went to 3.3 with its own passel of versions, about 22 total. Cataclysm is also at 4.3 but has only seen around 14 patch releases. In fact, I was incredibly surprised to find our last patch was in late February. We've had nearly 6 months of patch free time. Very unlike all the last expansions we've been through. That means we haven't even seen anything new in 6 months.

 

A lot of speculation has gone on about why we are so bored this time around. Looking at both Cata and Wrath timelines we've spent about the same length of time waiting for things to happen. We've had a little less dropping in between than previously but it just seems like we have less to do this time around. Perhaps its the number of zones, or that we only had 5 levels as opposed to 10. It may be that 1/2 the expansion was dedicated to 1-60 leveling which left less content for the 85's. We had a lot of end-game content up front this time around and the dungeons seemed strangely spaced throughout Cataclysm to me. Whatever the reason we are all hitting the top end of boredom.

Regardless of the reasons I thought the information I got from this data was rather interesting and strangely relevant as we wait for our next big WoW fix.