Cataclysm Review

Cataclysm was the 3rd expansion for World of Warcraft, but if your on here you probably already know that ..
It was released in .. December 2010? God it feels like yesterday but it has been a while..

The whole expansion was set around Deathwing coming back to Azeroth and pretty much destroying everything, with the elements being out of place.

The level cap was increased to 85 and two new races were introduced to the game, the Worgen for the Alliance and the Goblins for the Horde.
All zones in Azeroth got some soft of overhaul and 5 new zones were introduced 80-85.
Along with new professions and just a general tidy up of the game, with a ton of minor changes here and there.

I'll be brutally honest I was a little disappointed with Cataclysm, there was so much hype surrounding it and for me it just didn't deliver.

I do appreciate Blizzard going over the old Azeroth zones and re-doing them, some hadn't been touched in 5+ years and really were better off after the changes.

The 80-85 zones really didn't do much for me, they were a place where I levelled and that was it, none of them had much to do with each other, which was quite the opposite with the Northrend zones when you were working and going over a whole campaign around Northrend before finishing the campaign in Icecrown.

PvP content was non-existent, Twin Peaks is a pretty nice BG that I enjoy but Tol Barad was pretty ordinary. I prefer the Tol Barad dailies over the Argent Tournament variety we had in Wrath but it took what, a good 3-4 months for them to balance Tol Barad out..
Arena's were bland and world PvP was also non-existent, flying in the Azeroth zones was meant to change this but I didn't see how it did and I'm not a fan of the change.
Now people can get around the world even faster and spend more time waiting in Orgrimmar/Stormwind than travelling around the World of Warcraft on their 100% - in comparison to 310% mount.

PvE I thought was redeemable quality for WoW, the dungeons that were released were "hard" and I liked the challenge after the steamroll that was WoTLK dungeons.
They're a fair bit easier now but if people don't CC or pay attention to the encounter mechanics you will still wipe, its a bit more advanced than the brainless tank n spank 5 mans were in Wrath.

Blackwing Descent was pretty fun in my opinion and I liked the setting, Bastion of Twilight was quite meh - 4 bosses is a little too low for a raid in my opinion. Regardless BWD and BoT were both a step about Naxxramas and Obsidian Sanctum which players had to endure in Wrath.
Firelands was awesome and if you read my posts from before was one of my favourite raids of all time, it really shows how far Blizzard has came.
Dragons Soul I've only downed the first few bosses so I can't really speak for.

Things that Cataclysm definitely did get right were the Guild feature. Guilds actually felt important again and it sure brought my guild closer together as a community.
The rewards and achievements give you things to actually work for and complete as a guild, there are 25 levels and although I feel the levels are too easy to get and should take longer it definitely is a welcomed addition.

The 4.1 Zul Aman/Zul Gurub troll instances were pretty lackluster in my opinion and I was one of the guys who complained over the "recycled content" I mean not much had changed and most encounters were pretty mindless, the 4.3 dungeons followed in the 3.3 ICC's footsteps and were among the best 5 man dungeons I've ever taken part in.

With all that out of the way I'd like to list 5 things I'd like to see in Mists of Pandaria..

-More raids, we only had 2 raids (3 if you include BH) in Cataclysm until Firelands was released, if I was a pure PvE player I would of quit over that, thats really just ridiculous the fact that they didn't bring out a new raid in 4.1, the length of time in between patches was quite a while too.

-Updated character models - we NEED them especially for vanilla races

-New Arena map/instances, there are surprisingly few arena locations and it would be good for some more, they'd be quite resource-free to make and shake things up in Arena quite a bit.

-Reasons for World PvP again

-Balance, Mages and Hunters were ridiculous this expansion, period.