Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

(+) The old lands of Azeroth were refined to great effect: * Zone design and lore is more interesting * Quest hubs are more plentiful and feel more organic, major cities and population centers were redesigned to be more practical and useful * Phasing, cinematics, real time events, RTS segments, and guided narratives make it feel more like a modern RPG hybrid and less like a MMO * The new game experience has been streamlined, flowing much more coherently levels 1 through 60 (+) The slight graphic updates and introduction of DirectX 11 effects make the game look far better than you might expect - especially for a clearly aging engine with cartoonish art design and direction (+) There is an absurd amount of quality solo and small-group content in the new post level 80 zones (+/-) The class and mechanics changes, overall, were well thought out. They made the game even more accessible, early advancement more fun and rewarding, and the general gameplay more elegant. However, customization is limited and stunted. The last leg of levels, 81-85, leave you feeling like you're putting in time and gaining levels without growing in power or versatility (-) Too much homogenization between classes, defined by role, has occurred. Class and spec combinations that once felt unique have been altered in a ham fisted way, now functioning in an essentially identical manner to others (-) Cataclysm is short on raiding content. What's present feels uninspired and rushed - many dungeon and raid bosses are copies from past expansions wrapped in new skins/assets (-) Changes to healing mechanics have rendered the role formulaic and rote (-) Despite the smorgasbord of content the "grind" (repetitive activities that must be performed ad naseum for reward or advancement) has been ramped up far beyond anything I ever thought I would see in a WoW expansion. This terrible design approach is pervasive, affecting everything from dungeon progression to tradeskill advancement - particularly the new Archeology skill (-) There is a gigantic gulf in difficulty between normal and "heroic", or advanced difficulty, dungeons. Many tedious mechanics are introduced, mistakes are far less forgiving, there are too many enemy abilities that kill instantly or nearly instantly, and the time required to complete a single dungeon has been extended from a sensible 20-30 minutes to an hour or longer. It's not uncommon to invest hours in a dungeon only to have the other players give up out of frustration - leading to no one seeing any kind of reward or advancement for their efforts A symptom of the poor heroic dungeon design is an ugly social atmosphere. Players quickly grow short tempered and irate. The sense of gregariousness and community is abandoned, replaced by single minded greed as players squabble over any perceived reward their hours upon hours of grinding might, on some off chance, grant them. It's a terrible and sudden shift that ruins the game and drives players away from a substantial chunk of content. Blizzard keeps introducing changes that exacerbate the issue, rather than alleviating it. And they apparently do so to spite their customers, as feedback has been overwhelmingly negative towards all of their recent developments. As a result the heroic and raiding community has sharply declined since the launch of Cataclysm. It has been distilled down to small, unsavory cliques of elitist and socially awkward players - the kind that, prior to WoW, could only have been found in the darkest corners of the grindiest and most unfun MMOs of 2000-2003. --- Conclusion --- Cataclysm is a lot of fun for new players and those looking to experience the rebuilt world of Azeroth. Blizzard has shown that modern game design and techniques can work in MMORPGs. It's worth the cover price for the hours of quality gaming it provides to new and old players alike. However, the wheels come off as you approach "the end game". The game transforms into a soul-sucking trial of banality and tediousness - seemingly designed with cold and uncaring calculation to make players unhappy and question their enjoyment of the genre as a whole. World of Warcraft came along in 2004 and dragged this genre out of relative obscurity, leading to hundred million dollar MMO budgets and prime time advertising campaigns. So it's ironic that here, in its twilight, Blizzard has abandoned the casual players that made it a success and transformed WoW into a ghoulish doppelganger of the MMOs it conquered long ago. Do they intend on courting the types of players that reigned over those archaic fossils of MMO past....and their insignificant subscription tallies? One can only wonder how Blizzard can do so much right in a game, just to turn around and essentially soil their own hard work.