It’s been a month since the Cataclysm Classic launched, so it’s finally time to take stock and give it a score. This review comes in two parts; if anyone missed the Review In Progress, please give that a quick read first, as I won’t be rehashing most of what was covered there. For the second installment of this review, I will focus on my experiences getting to max level, gearing for raids, and the various issues I’ve encountered along the way.
Completing the trek to level 85
As mentioned in the Review in Progress, I loved my time in Mount Hyjal and happily completed every quest before moving on. Unfortunately, the other zones captured my interest less. Uldum came close, but the Harrison Jones questline completely bugged out on me, and I haven't been able to complete it yet. Since that was the one questline I was most looking forward to completing again, not being able to do it was highly disappointing. That one questline is the only thing keeping me from finishing Uldum.
One big surprise was how much time I spent in Twilight Highlands. I’ve never been a big fan of dwarves in general. It's not that I dislike them; they aren’t as appealing to me as night elves, trolls, or taurens. I’ve also always remembered Twilight Highlands as the zone where most of my alts went to die in Cata the first time around. However, I had fun completing the various questlines throughout the zone. There was so much I didn’t remember, like finding the baby gryphon (I need him as a pet), escorting the beer delivery, and the entire storyline with the wedding to get the two clans to stop fighting. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, and Twilight Highlands is the only zone, aside from Mount Hyjal, I have completely finished.
Despite only having five levels to get through this time, questing to level felt incredibly slow. I didn’t mind it too much while in Mount Hyjal, but after leaving there, I wanted to get to max level faster than I would have by leveling. I quickly honed in on running dungeons as the best option for quick leveling; even without having quests for the dungeons, the experience gains in them massively outpaced my leveling speed questing through the various zones. However, completing those quests was also a great source of extra experience and gear.
Thankfully, most of the dungeons had questgivers at the beginning to help prevent players from missing the dungeon quests. I ran into one problem: I found some NPCs in Mount Hyjal who asked me to take their mole machine to Blackrock Caverns and help them with problems there. I never took their mole machine, so I was sitting on their quest for a while. Unfortunately, it also blocked me from picking up the other quests the first time I did that dungeon. Thankfully, I only needed to drop the one asking me to take the mole machine. I wish that one had been completed when I arrived at the dungeon rather than specifically requiring me to take their mole machine, but dropping it wasn’t a huge deal.
Unfortunately, I ran into other more frustrating issues with quests in Blackrock Caverns. In most of the dungeons, there are a series of quests that need to be done, and when one is completed, the questgiver either shows up to give the next quest or there is a pop-up to complete the quest and get the next one. This didn’t happen in Blackrock Caverns, which meant I needed to complete that dungeon multiple times to get through the entire questline. Additionally, in Lost City, I needed to run it twice because the first quest required killing two captains, and most tanks only pulled one of them. While this was a bit frustrating, it wasn’t a huge deal for me because I was constantly queuing for the dungeons anyway. These issues will be a much bigger deal for players who want to do the quests and not repeatedly go back to the dungeons.
The Level 85 Experience
Once I hit level 85, I had to turn my attention to getting raid ready. This primarily means two things: gearing up and getting various reputations to exalted. In Cata Classic, running dungeons is the way to accomplish both quickly. This time, I was a little concerned I’d quickly get bored with the dungeons since I had done so many while leveling. However, I was pleasantly surprised that I’m still enjoying them, and I’ve settled into a comfortable rhythm of questing in the zones I didn’t finish while leveling between dungeon queues.
My biggest frustration in dungeons is dealing with people who do not interrupt casts on bosses. I’m not sure who decided it was a good idea for feral druids to have a minute long CD on their interrupt, but in a game where a boss can heal to full off one cast, which will happen more often than once a minute, it is highly frustrating. Sure, I can coordinate who will interrupt when I run with friends, but when I’m queuing in LFG and there is minimal communication, it makes for a rough experience. This issue is probably only heightened by the fact I have gotten used to having a 15-second cooldown on it for years.
I know some players don’t like the valor system as it isn’t exciting to slowly work towards gear compared to seeing an item you want from a boss drop and winning it. I’ve always felt that little bit of excitement isn’t worth the frustration of not getting the gear you need. As such, I really appreciate the certainty of knowing exactly how many dungeons I need to run to obtain the next item I need. After going through almost an entire tier on retail without an amazing weapon because it was a rare drop, I’m loving having valor back again.
Sadly, there have been some odd exploits and bugs with valor. Initially, an exploit let people obtain valor far beyond what they should have been able to do. Thankfully, they fixed that, but Blizzard should have also removed items from people who did that exploit. As it currently stands, the lesson here seems to be if you hear about an exploit, do it before they fix it, which is not great. Then, they switched the weekly cap to a season cap that increases each week, which is a much better way of handling things. Unfortunately, there was a visual bug where your total for the season would show how much valor you currently have. This was frustrating because I had no idea when I would stop earning valor until it happened, and it resulted in me feeling like I had wasted my time a bit. This bug has also been fixed and is now correctly showing where I am in relation to the weekly cap.
Getting reputations to exalted has always been one of my least favorite activities in WoW. I enjoy it when there are interesting questlines, but that always feels like the smallest part of getting most reputations maxed out. Most of the time, I end up needing to mindlessly kill mobs for rep. As such, I have always loved the Cata system of buying a tabard and running dungeons for rep. Not only do I generally enjoy dungeons, but it allows me to work towards multiple goals at one time. For some, spam-running dungeons for reps are boring, and I wish more alternatives were on par with how quickly reps are gained by using the tabards.
This first phase of Cata Classic also showcases my least favorite type of raid tier (which is true to how it was originally). Anytime there is more than one raid available, it always ends up being a bit of a juggling act, balancing time spent in each. Having three raids available only intensifies this issue, and some of our raid nights are taken up traveling between raids, which has always felt like a bit of a waste of time. There are 12 bosses in total between the three raids, which isn’t awful. I just wish there were 12 bosses in one raid.
That said, Throne of the Four Winds is one of my favorite raids in all of WoW. The design of it and both boss fights have always been enjoyable to me. It's often frustrating but generally tons of fun. Also, Blackwing Decent has the best temporary title, and I wish it were permanent. I would happily run around with the title “Slayer of Stupid, Incompetent, and Disappointing Minions” forever. As much as I don’t enjoy the extra strain multiple raids put on casual guilds, I’m happy to have these two raids back as current content.
Wrap Up
Despite my concerns when Blizzard announced they would go forward with Cataclysm Classic, this has turned out to be a much better experience than I remembered. Yes, I have seen many people step away again, but many have stayed. I hope this enjoyment keeps up through the other phases as well, but for now, Cataclysm Classic has been a real win for me. Additionally, there have been a ton of updates with streamlining leveling and speeding it up, so this is also a great time to jump in if you have been out of Classic for a while or haven’t given it a try yet.
