Cataclysm Classic went live a little over a week ago, on May 20th. As one of the most divisive expansions in World of Warcraft’s past, the fact that the team decided to go ahead with it was a surprise. I always recalled enjoying Cataclysm when it was here the first time; what was more challenging was that so many of my friends quit either at the launch or soon after. Will things be different this time, and are the changes Blizzard has made to how Cata Classic works enough to mitigate the actual pain points from the first time around?
Cataclysm Take Two
The Wrath of the Lich King expansion was one of the high points for World of Warcraft, as it wrapped up a storyline years in the making. Wrath has gotten a bit of a bad reputation for how long we were in Icecrown Citadel at the end, but that shouldn’t diminish the overall experience of the expansion. Given how well-received Wrath was, any expansion was going to have a hard time following it. With that in mind, I always thought Wrath would be an excellent point to cap off the Classic experience.
However, I always wondered what would happen if Blizzard decided to proceed with Cataclysm Classic. Would my friends who left the first time around stay this time? Would there be enough Classic players so everything doesn’t feel dead? Would my guild, which has consistently remained strong in all of the previous versions of Classic, hold together? These things immediately made me concerned when Cataclysm Classic was announced. I had no real concerns about the content but how everything around it would be affected.
The first and last questions are closely related, so I can answer them together. Once we wrapped up raiding in Wrath and were on hiatus, we started seeing people posting that they were stepping out of Classic. Most people I thought would head out did, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how many carried on. So my guild can keep on with what we have been doing. It’ll be different due to the various people we have lost, but it’ll remain intact, which is a massive improvement from my experience in the original Cataclysm. I hope others have faired as well as I have in this respect.
Regarding the overall population playing, it’s much harder to get a good read on. I have certainly seen a ton of players around, enough that I am constantly reminded how much I hate how the old style of tagging mobs works. I’ve been queuing for dungeons to supplement my leveling, and as a dps, the times have been ~10 minutes during peak periods, which isn’t bad. However, in all previous iterations, I have had a horrible time trying to level herbalism as I quest. I would never see anything to pick because all the nodes were constantly on cooldown. So far, I haven’t had much of an issue gathering herbs in Cata Classic. I get sniped sometimes, but I have had plenty to fill my alchemy needs.
I also wonder about the percentage of Classic players who play retail because they could be busy with Pandaria Remix and the Season 4 achievements. If those are pulling players away, there could be an influx of people in Cata Classic as goals are completed in retail WoW. It’s tough to say for sure what the player level is currently. From what I have seen, though, it feels like there are fewer players than when Wrath Classic launched. That said, it still feels like there is a healthy population, so there doesn’t seem to have been a dire drop.
Yeah, but what’s it like to play Cataclysm Classic?
I started my Cata Classic journey in Mount Hyjal because nothing beats green dragons and druids. I have leveled through Mount Hyjal multiple times in the past, so I expected this to be like visiting an old friend after a long time apart. I quickly discovered that I don’t remember much about the leveling experience in Cataclysm, and most of what I remember are more general impressions and feelings. I was shocked to realize I didn’t remember Thisalee, my favorite druid class hall companion in Legion, is a fairly important quest giver. This is especially shocking because her quests were a ton of fun. Reflecting on this, the first time around, I was much more focused on getting through everything and getting ready for raiding as soon as possible.
To say I enjoyed my time in Mount Hyjal this time through would be a colossal understatement. I did every quest available in the whole zone, and I was still a little sad when it was time to move on. I’m even retroactively sad that I didn’t appreciate the Mount Hyjal storyline for what it was the first time around. Additionally, it’s frustrating that I had to go out of my way to start there because the questline leading me to start leveling again pushed me to Vashj’ir. I’m reasonably sure that’s how it worked last time as well. I’ve always thought this was done because they feared that if players were given an obvious choice, they wouldn’t choose the underwater zone. Which is probably pretty accurate for most players.
Moving from Mount Hyjal to Deepholm was a bit rough for me because zones that are (or feel) underground are always a hard sell for me. It was at this point I started to supplement my questing with dungeons. I thought dungeons would only be a good way to level up when I had the quests for them, but it turned out that even repeating them without quests sped me along quite a lot. It also helps that I have always really enjoyed the Cataclysm dungeons. I will go back and do the questlines in the zones, but dungeons turbocharged my leveling speed.
As I mentioned previously, dealing with the Cata Classic tagging system has been a real pain point. There is a good reason it is bothering me more this time: the players' behavior has changed a bit. One of the things I loved about Classic was it felt far more collaborative, with players running around buffing each other, randomly helping people when needed, and grouping up for quests so people could share tags. All of that feels like it has fallen by the wayside and is rare when it happens. This has probably been happening slowly, but it’s exceptionally noticeable now. I wish there were some way to regain that feeling of camaraderie again.
What’s Next?
Leveling is only one small part of what makes or breaks an expansion. I need to spend some time in the raids and see how that feels. There’s also a lot to consider with various bugs/exploits and how those get handled. I’d also like to play through the starting areas for the two new races. I know neither has had the massive issues they had during the beta, but it’s still a significant feature that came in with this expansion. So, hopefully, in a week, maybe two at most, we’ll have a final fully scored review of Cataclysm Classic. So far, though, it’s had a reasonably strong start.
