The previous series starts here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/kK9mrJeE1Jzagok.html

I’ve played every expansion and honestly cata was one of my favourites

I'm probably in the minority, and given how long queue times were back then I wouldn't be surprised, but I still much prefer dungeons that require you to take your time and do your job well for fear of death over Mythic style speed runs. Every MMO these days seems to struggle from the same system atm in dungeons. A well-geared tank will load into a dungeon, run through a massive stretch of mobs and pull everything in sight, and just basically expect the healer and DPS to be able to deal with it and "keep up." For newer, undergeared characters, especially healers, this can lead to a LOT of headache and annoyance, trying to find a balance between learning and doing their job properly, and keeping the overly cocky tanks happy since there are very few tanks in general, and you kinda rely on them sticking around. The whole speed-run system and mentality have ruined dungeons for me in pretty well almost every MMO across the board, and I would personally prefer it if it wasn't even an option, and you HAD to take your time and use your CCs effectively like back in Cata. What's the point in classes having extra CC skills and talents if you straight up ignore them 90% of the time. It's less about strategy and more about gear score these days, which feels far less gratifying in my opinion. You didn't "overcome a challenge," you chain pulled entire rooms with no fear of failure and basically spammed buttons until everything died. Fun times. (And if they are an option for people who prefer it, and I know a lot of people do, I still think you should have the choice and be just as well rewarded for doing more STRATEGIC modes of dungeons)

Still cant fly in Silvermoon

As one of the patient, learned tanks in Cata, I can honestly say that my favorite part of Cata was heroic dungeons. I loved that in heroics, you couldn't really ever ignore mechanics, even if you were geared to the teeth.

I loved Cataclysm, the revamp to the old zones was needed in my opinion but the one “issue” I have with it (its more of an annoyance) is that now when you level a new character you’re basically starting in Cataclysm, going back in time to outland/northrend, coming back to cataclysm again/Pandaria etc. New players must find it a bit confusing.

Cata's dungeons were really fun. I started playing in Wrath, so I never played anything older, but I really appreciated the increased difficulty and thinking required for Cata's dungeons.

To this day, Cata's heroics remain as one of my fondest memories of wow. They were hard, yes, but also very satisfying. It's such a shame that the playerbase as a whole didn't like it :/

Oh man! TotalBiscuit's beta playthroughs were the shit! They were so good that I remember going back and re-watching them years after they were released. Shame he quit shortly thereafter...

So happy to see someone appreciating the great parts of Cataclysm. The return to difficult, non speed run dungeons was fantastic (for guilds). The 10 man Heroic content was amazing too!

I liked WoW more when dungeons were harder. You should have too CC and learn the dungeon to be successful,.. it makes it feel rewarding and less of a grind.

Imo WoW's decline started the moment they nerfed hc dungeons in Cataclysm. The launch content of Cataclysm was amazing.

i love these videos where you talk about how past expansions played out, i started play WoW in March last year so i never really got to experience these expansions (apart from the odd couple days on my sisters account) keep up the great work with these videos!

Isn't it funny? They revamped the world in 2010 with cata because the world was 6 years old to this date. Now, 8 years ago, the revamped world is from the perspective of time on life servers older than the "old world". So, it's about time to revamp again and include bc and wrath blizzard lol

turbulent times on youtube *video starts to buffer and not start back up*

It’s funny though. Despite all that happened I still absolutely loved cataclysm. One of my favourite times of the game ever. Especially the early difficulty of the dungeons. I was so excited to get to use polymorph again. Especially in the sky dungeon place with the anti magic zones. Very tricksy stuff.

You forgot about the talent redesign that (in my opinion) took away, the enjoyment of being able to build your class exactly how you wanted, despite the cookie-cutter specs on the internet.

Cataclysm ruined South Shore, one of my favourite little towns since launch... a sorrowful tear still rolls down my cheek every time I fly over what is now a craphole. Would be nice if the Alliance cleaned the place up again in BfA, but not holding my breath

Can we get some Cata love in the comments? It was a good expansion! Literally joining up with the other aspects, tearing out Deathwing’s SPINE and forcing him into the maelstrom. Also don’t forget the bone-fish Hunter tier set or the toilet priest set!

I loved Cataclysm and I still love it. I had my best times playing Cataclysm...

great video but this video just showed me how much we have lost. I miss reforging, pvp like wintergrasp, class design, 5v5 arena...some of the most fun I've had in this game during those times...legion was great for content and all but class design just ruined it for me. When your classes feel like watered down versions of previous expansions with the most powerful weapons on azeroth, you know something is up.

Launch Cata was the absolute peak of WoW for me. The dungeons were the absolute best part for me. So difficult, so much strategy and learning. The game did not forgive mediocrity, and it actually helped me learn the basics of how to self-improve. Just to be clear, I was a healer without a guild at the launch. The few times the dungeons worked out, they were so good and fun that it made up for all the frustration for me.

I really enjoyed early Cata dungeons that presented somewhat of a challenge. As much as I enjoyed Wrath, it did become an aoe zerg fest. They should have really stuck to their guns with that one... if players cannot fail, how can they improve?

I found your channel quite recently and initially I was sceptical about how interested I'd be in this kind of content - I'm glad I watched because since then I've been on a Bellular-Spree. Fantastic videos, really interesting and engaging topics delivered masterfully. Thoroughly enjoy your work, keep it up.

When Activision began to meddle

For me the decline started at WOTLK: I know how so many people love it, but thats when the homoginsation of classes began and the decline of real class differentiation. I played shadowpriest all through tbc and loved being a utility class, I also had an enhancement shaman alt for exactly the same reason, but that was taken away in favour of just flat damage instead.

I can put this in a simple list 1: WOTLK started a lot of problems, people were already struggling to clear some dungeons with Dungeon Finder Occulus and ICC 5mans, but cataclysm made 'heroics hard', I.E. they punished players for ignorance, which is fine, there is nothing wrong with learning a fight, however with Dungeon Finder resulted in people just getting kicked en masse, queues lasting hours on top of hours as tanks were rare, and you were incentvizied to farm these hard heroics repetitively, so queue queue queue, so people joined queues and most of the time never cleared them, thus never got their badges, it would be fine if it was like pre-dungeon finder where people simply wanted the gear from the dungeons themselves, but instead they were running them repeatedly 2: Forced cookie cutter talents, while MOP gutted the talent system outright, Cataclysm got the ball rolling by forcing players to invest all their points into one spec before they could choose talents in another, on top of this, we were reduced to 1 talent per 3 levels, rather then 1 per level 3: The leveling experience was streamlined, now you might think "isn't this a good thing" well, no, it did what its purpose was, it allowed for end game raiders to have a larger pool of newbros to recruit from at the end game, but in reality, people were hitting level 85 and had no idea how to play their class because you were simply facerolling to end game, really though, the leveling experience to me is the biggest flaw in cataclysm, the revamped, BC/WOTLK style zone quest chain style of questing, rather then hub/farming style leveling made players get bored, I miss when as an adventurer, I got a quest, and I had to actually find my objective, the objectives were semi-threatening, that immersed me in the world, but from Cata onward you pretty much play the oblivion/skyrim style game of "follow the dots" ad nauseum until you hit end game, and then you just farmed queues all day long. This is why people miss vanilla, sure the modern game is more mechanically advanced, the core gameplay designs are lackluster and designed entirely around end game raids, leveling is streamlined to get people into raids, the expansion is designed to funnel people into raids, and the gearing system is designed to keep people farming raids every-single-week, meanwhile any sense of metagame outside of raids from cataclysm onward merely became a mindless faceroll and repetitious daily quest grind

Sometimes I wonder how you manage to upload so much. Keep it up man! Your content is awesome.

This sure takes me back. I haven't played in a couple of years now, but the transition from WotLK end to the start of Cata was genuinely some of the most fun/time I had spent playing WoW (maybe second to mid-late Burning Crusade/early WotLK). I certainly remember people taking issue with the early difficulty, but my Guild and I adored it, it's unfortunate what it eventually became though (i.e back to chain pulling speedruns).

Cata was a fun expansion for me. Yea the lost of the old zones and items is a bummer but it added a lot of things I really enjoy Plus the new zones for the most part are A LOT better (especially on the horde side). Splitting up the Barren waste land (pun) into two zones made it Actually on par with other zones in terms of size to content ratio and the new Silverpine made leveling an Undead really engaging

"If you chain pulled, you died. Hell, if you pulled without CC'ing, you'd often die. If people messed up interrupts on some bosses, you'd die. If the tank didn't use their defenses right, you'd die." I miss this :(

I will always remember being burned by Deathwing whilst our questing and wondering wtf happened

Extremely well put together video.. You sir, never disappoint. Brought back so many memories, keep it up!

People hate on cata but now that we look back cata was actually a good xpac

WotLK, forever the golden age of WoW.

Excellent nostalgic video! I remember when I hit max lvl on my Druid, holy hell were heroic in cata a pain. It was rough to say the least.

Cataclysm was my second favorite expansion right behind Wrath. I can see why some people would call the lore of the expansion "fragmented," but I just generally enjoyed the overall mood of the expansion, and I don't remember having that much difficulty with the dungeons. I liked the Valor and Justice systems for progression in the end-game part of Cataclysm, but the overall image was good too. It wasn't for everyone, but the roughly four years or so of Cataclysm and Wrath of the Lich King were the glory days of WoW for me (even though I still enjoy it a lot now).

Cata made me stop playing mop sealed the deal They butchered paladins ogrimmar and plenty more stuff that my brain Made me forget in Order to protect my sanity... only fun thing i remember was slicing through ppl on my FROST DK and playing 2's with 2 enh shamans which was booth really fun

I went in almost every day super excited to do more in the game all the way through the end of Wrath. I took 7 months off in Cata, 6 in MoP, a year in WoD, and 6 months in Legion. That should say enough.

I love these retrospectives man you should keep doing them for all expansions

Cata gets more hate than it deserves

I loved cata, pvp there was awesome!!

I'm still mad at how they handled Uldum. "You know that mysterious door that's always been in Tanaris? Well, there's nothing in it. Here's a new passageway we made out of thin air to get you to Uldum."

Another great video. Keep up the amazing work!

You forgot to mention the WoW Fashion-Renaissaince with Transmog being added with Cataclysm. And looking good is (lets be honest) the most important part of WoW since then

Cata made me quit the game until the final months of MOP that led into WOD because of how contrived and vapid the content turned out... I am also very glad I was doing more productive things during that fabled content drought at the end of MOP too.

Bel mate... you bringing back some good memories of wintergrasp - gosh that was awesome

Incredibly well done video! One of my favorites of yours:D

Group finder and cross-realm shards were the beginning of WoW's decline.

I liked World of Warcraft cataclysm as an expansion and all & However I really disagreed with (LFR) It just really wasn't good for the game in my opinion.

I absolutely LOVED healing in Cataclysm. I think it was the expansion I healed the most, it was so much fun. Especially in the beginning, and nope, I didn't run heroics with my guild, I ran them in LFD pugs. For me, the idea of not keeping everyone topped up during an entire fight but starting off that way and using half of the HP as a buffer to conserve mana was awesome. Overhealing back then was a CRIME, mana was such a dealbreaker. I got so used to managing my mana, I switched off to tanking in Legion because of all the overheal spamming people do to get HPS numbers up, it made healing boring. It made for much more engaging play for healers - except for Holy Pallies because they were entirely OP, but I digress. I remember many people would quit mid-dungeon but those who had played in TBC would stay and persevere, because they knew what hard dungeons were (I was one of 20 people in my server who pugged heroics back then). That's how the term "Wrath babies" came up, people who started WoW during Wrath were used to easy content. HOWEVER... Wrath babies were the people who made WoW become the single greatest MMO in the industry, and so the hard heroics really were a bad decision financially and PR-wise. Hindsight is 20/20, but if Blizz had instead come up with Mythic dungeons back then, maybe WoW would've kept at least part of the subs it hemorrhaged back then.

I've been wanting to read the Warcraft books! Good to know I can get them from trying audible

it would have been alright if not for flooding thousand needles

Cataclysm wasn't all that bad. It's just that the last raid was terrible and lasted too long.

Hey one of my friends has given me those old dvds for this and the ice looking expansion but I have never really played the game.I just put the cataclysm one and I an downloading the whole game!Will I have the entire game and the cataclysm areas or will I have the restricted one?

A really *huge* problem with Cataclysm raiding was that the new "equal" 10/25 system destroyed a ton of large raiding guilds (mine included) - because why rely on 24 other people showing up on time and not screwing up when you could rely on only the (perceived) "elite" 9 of those players instead ? Add to this that those large raiding guilds had people to talk to and play with online at almost all times while the 10 player guilds didn't, and you can easily see how this lead to further problems. The server identity and group identity that those large, stable raiding guilds had provided was also gone once those guilds imploded . . .

I played pre nerf Grim Batol in lfd and i loved it^^ (i was dps at that time). The dungeon nerf is one of the reasons i quit in cata xD

I have some nostalgia for Cataclysm. The world revamp was needed, although they should have gone all the way and revamped the Azuremyst Isles and Quel'thalas as well. The worgen and the goblins were a nice addition and this was also when I really started to get the hang of this game. Of course I too had issues with the heroic dungeons, but that's only because I tried tanking which I sucked at.

Keep em coming, Bell! Great video, as to be expected.

During MOP or WOD I can't remember which, I was asking around in my guild if anyone wanted to join me for going through a bunch of vanilla raids for transmog gear. Had someone call me a moron in chat, they apparently didn't think vanilla had any raids because they didn't appear in LFR.

Damn I miss Cata PvP it was so much fun

Doing those difficult dungeons at the start of Cata was honestly some of my most memorable time in WoW ever. I'm all up for making that stuff super hard again, but I don't think the current player base would be able to up their game to that level of team play.

Been playing consistently since March 2006, can tell you the absolute most hype I've ever been was during the Cataclysm announcement period. It was such a cool concept. There was no precedent for something as insanely epic as "remaking the old world" AND giving us the ability to fly in it. We would get to see new conflicts in many of our old favorite zones and see them from the sky. Cataclysm had a strong launch, that was thoroughly entertaining. This did not last. As time went on the problem for many became the overly tough normal dungeons, the splintered feeling of zones, instead of the continents we had always known, the dreaded Raid Finder and more. Now, raiding felt less special, and less like a goal. To many, the epic nature of earning your right to raid was lost, and with it Warcraft in general. I still believe today that even though raid participation has gone up astronomically, the downward curve of subscriptions is closely tied to this. I haven't finished Belluar's video before posting this, and i'm sure he touches on all this and more. That said, just wanted to share my view of World of Warcraft at the time.

Cataclysm holds my favourite times playing WoW. I miss the challenge and class/player involvement - CC'ing in heroics and managing bosses intricately. Mana pools - I played a paladin healer and was raiding in our server + factions top raiding guild. Bastion of Twilight, Firelands.. Dragonsoul, it all felt so damn immersive, and I loved it! Don't get me wrong, the immersion in Legion is great but I feel it is a completely different type of immersion - I find myself playing more for the lore, secrets, collectibles and individual immersion, rather than the group/community immersion that WotLK and Cata really held for me. ~ TL:DR - WoW now-days feels a lot more individually immersive/less community or group immersive. I personally preferred the cataclysm style, difficulty and progression though I really appreciate the lore-immersion of more modern wow. Anyway, love your vids Bellular! Keep it up man! Peace!

how do you come up with such interesting videos so fast? keep up Bellular!

Cata was the best pvp expansion 🙌

Deepholm my favorite questing experience I’ve ever had

I was literally watching a video of Rob Pardo talking about game design and this showed up. How times have changed.

0:46 Anduin look like young brad pitt

Wow Cataclysm opened on Pearl Harbor day.

b roll shots look really cool with the action cam setup

I can't believe it has been 8 years!!! I remember buying the hard copy like it was yesterday! I was so excited!! :')

Cataclysm was my favorite expansion... hmm...

The decline began already with wotlk...it just got compounded and -catalysed- (no pun intended) with cataclysm. People still dont get it...It was TBC that built the reputation and attraction that later resulted in wotlks mass subcribe. But what they got was something different...wotlk was so rushed it was mindboggling, nothing felt like it should have and this just built up for the entire expansion until cataclysm hit and people realised it wasnt going to change. Then they started homogenising, changing the core gameplay, removed talent trees (a frickin core rpg element in any rpg game) and making raids smaller. Everything that had been WoW was now changing and naturally alot of people left.

Cataclysm was indeed weird times playing WoW. I was / am mostly a pvp player and I found this expansion one, if not the most balanced when it came to arenas. You could still create arena teams and set up banners for them and ratings were gates for obtaining better and better pvp gear. It was a better progression then than what happend in MOP, WOD etc. and you felt you actually had stuff to work for... even if you were only into pvp

Bel, great video keep up the awesome work that you do. Not sure if it’s my end but at 14:54 it looks like the footage is missing.

I started at Cataclysm. I loved the game then and still enjoying it. I was mostly a lore guy tho. I played for the lore not the loot. From what I ve learned about the levelling in Vanilla I wouldnt play the game this long if the revamp have never happened. I would probably quit it before maxing my character. So the revamp secured a sub for WoW and I am pretty sure many more.

IMO I think everyone hated Cata so much because it had to outdo WotLK which was pretty damn amazing

I still remember the heroics at the beginning of cataclysm. It was both fun and pain in the ass. I remember doing that one dungeon I think it was stone rock or something like that down in deepholm. So many people would leave and quit because they couldn't handle it and it took so long for me to get that dungeon completed.

Great video! Most of my game friends left during cata and then I took a break too. I'm enjoying this expansion. I'm glad they learned from cata.

Cata is my favorite expansion, fight me

- dailies were a mind numbing grind - felt like chores rather than a fun game - Deathwing fight could've been way better - Tauren Paladin??

nice tree on your desk. any idea where I can buy one or seeds for one? love the autumn color.

I loved random LFD with random heroics. It was really awesome to overcome hard encounters, even with hours to beat the dungeon. I would really love if players would've been forced to go through hardcore encounters to have a somewhat decent gear like it was in TBC and like it was in Cata.

Cataclysm was my favorite xpac, just like mop...i don't understand why people hate cata.

*sees 2009 clip*.. They used the term "ladies and gentleman", ahh.. Those were different times, different times indeed.

Definitely gotta agree with this entire video. Lots of people like to boil Cataclysm's ultimate flop down to really simple points (it was too hard at launch! or it introduced LFR and made things too easy!), when... well, there's a lot more to it. There were a fair few pieces to that puzzle.

The harder dungeon difficulty basically tore my guild apart, because no one wanted to run any dungeon that didn't have me (holy paladin. Everyone hated Grim Batol, but Lost City of Tol'vir was the hated one for me because of that one boss with the phoenix) or this one shaman healer. Every other healer got shafted. They weren't considered "good enough" and they had to try to gear up on their own and couldn't handle the difficulty and quit the game. I was in a basically dead server so finding replacement healers that were good enough was a damn mission, so we started raiding a little later than intended, and since a lot of those healers that had quit had other friends in the guild, tensions were already high and only got higher. Compounded with other unrelated drama, it eventually killed my guild. Most of my friends quit, so I had no incentive to really do much of anything, and I basically haven't seriously raided since (I used to raid hardcore since vanilla). Now I don't raid for different reasons (work, mostly, plus I don't want to have to commit to a schedule to play. I want to be able to play or not play when I want).

Agreed ... i hope one day we have WOTLK again , no exp after that ...

A lot of people who played WC3 RoC and WC3 TFT, subscribed to WoW to see the end of WC3's story. After Arthas died, they one-time players left WoW, happy with what they saw. IN other words, WotLK sub numbers were a freak accident (positive accident). They never had any interest in playing WoW before or after WotLK. Mid-Burning Crusade sub numbers should be nostalgic standard, not WotLK.

Awesome video Bellular, i find it really interesting actually since i have only fond and good memories of Cataclysm and i dont really remember any negative things about it so this series is really interesting for me, might rwmind me of the negatives that i might have forgotten

i loved leveling and doing dungeons on cataclysm, because just as you say, it was really hard, every pack was like an adventure, where you have to hex, focus the leader of the patrol, use aoes, different strategies.... and that lead to not steamrolling and not having to communicate, which is what i hate in pandaria. the tank just killing a dungeon boss in 4 seconds. crazy

For me the decline happened with WoD. MoP is one of my most favorite expansions and Cata was good. WoD and Legion is the bad side of WoW. Cata is just so underrated. I mean yeah Dragon Soul was a disaster, but at the same time Firelands was an absolutely amazing raid. Cataclysm has the best music in all of WoW. The leveling revamp was great. Zones like Westfall and Desolace were complete garbage before Cata. Transmog is an amazing feature to make your character look cool and the lore was quite nice too. Ragnaros and Deathwing are some of the best villains in all of WoW.

"The game is too easy, worst expansion ever!" Makes it harder "The game is too hard, worst expansion ever!

Aside from the chronicles books, have there been any books between Illidan and before the storm?

Being an old school player....I remember these times well. I was so excited for CATA.....Deathwing has always been my favorite baddie. However even my resolve was tested to it's breaking point. My guild died, and many of my friends were leaving. It truly did feel like the "death" of WoW had finally arrived. ...........Then Panda Land was announced. That very day was when I left the game for several years. Even though I've returned now, and do enjoy the game, ....today it's too tainted with "Activision" and mass market appeal in it's attempt for all the monies. The true WoW...did die! However maybe one day it can rise again.

I liked Cata, compared to expacs since then.

audible skip 01:10

You are 100% about Grim Batol on LFD. It's a nightmare, I skip all the Cara dungeons while leveling and just do MOP LFD while simultaneously questing as DPS.

I feel that Cata heroics were perfect, great challenge and thinking about every fight instead of trying to run through it, made a good tank heals duo a must