So we know Cataclysm Classic is on the way. We have the timeline, with dates already pinned down for all the major milestones. In a little over a week the pre-patch will arrive and it will be time to decide if we’re in on another WoW Classic adventure.
WoW Classic 2024 Roadmap – April 9 revision
I find it a bit amusing that on social media Blizz has been pushing the idea that this will be a speedy experience… as opposed to the original which, in addition to pissing people off by destroying the vanilla world, felt like it languished too long for a five level expansion.
Fast Cata, Best Cata…
Granted, in the grand scheme of things the wait from the launch of Cataclysm to the launch of Mists of Pandaria was actually at the short end of the scale, even if it felt long.
- WoW Launch to The Burning Crusade – 784 days
- The Burning Crusade to Wrath of the Lich King – 667 days
- Wrath of the Lich King to Cataclysm – 754 days
- Cataclysm to Mists of Pandaria – 658 days
- Mists of Pandaria to Warlords of Draenor – 779 days
- Warlords of Draenor to Legion – 656 days
- Legion to Battle for Azeroth – 714 days
- Battle for Azeroth to Shadowlands – 832 days
- Shadowlands to Dragonflight – 734 days
But it was also the first time when WoW began dumping subscriptions dramatically mid-way through an expansion. That seems normal now, the second half slump, and Blizz still hasn’t figured out how to abate it, but back then it was the first time the company had experienced the line going down rather than up. Losing a couple million subscribers… more than four times the peak subscriber numbers of most of the breakthrough generation of MMORPGs that preceded WoW… was shocking.
In a panic they offered WoW players a free copy of Diablo III (once it launched, which is a whole different story) if they would just sign up for the annual pass, a one time full year subscription to WoW. Very much worth it if you stuck around and played Cataclysm through its second half… but how many people did that? I mean sure, more than played Shadowlands after even four months, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Our group ran up against a lack of interest in the expansion, though that was because we believed the hype… and I’ll have a whole hype retrospective post at some point, as it was in many ways the peak of my hype for WoW… and wanted to start fresh in the revamped new world… only to find it really not very much fun. Overland solo zones were better, but as a group, the dungeon content had all been neutered, chopped up into little, digestible bits guaranteed to be runnable in 30 minutes or less with even the most half-assed grab back of dungeon finder despicables you could imagine.
Add in the dungeon finder and it became the “sit in town and queue for the next dungeon” game that made many question whether or not accessibility had gone too far. This is why, when drawing the line between “classic” and “modern” WoW I usually point at the dungeon finder rather than Cataclysm. Oh, and there was only five levels of content, the dungeons were not really all that memorable, and if it wasn’t for the heroic five person versions of the vanilla troll raids I might argue that this was a completely skippable expansion on the road trip through expansions that WoW Classic has inevitably becomes.
So there was very much a question in the air in our group as to whether or not we were going to bother or how much effort we were going to put into it. We had fallen off the Wrath Classic train back in January and have been on vacation from Azeroth pretty much ever since, spending time looking for Valheim alternatives, then playing Valheim, and then spending some time in Conan Exiles.
Looking at ManicTime tracking, I spent almost not time in WoW Classic in February and March.
But now we have a date for the pre-patch and another for the expansion, so the time to decide is upon us… and we appear to be leaning towards playing. We have had a nice vacation from Azeroth, but thoughts have begun to return there and, in doing so, seek a plan.
Specifically, Potshot started looking into what classes might best suit his dual-boxing play style as he continues to do the heavy lifting to get us to five people for dungeons. He has the healers job, and had had a hunter as his secondary, auto-shoot and the occasional special attack at range being somewhat manageable. But his research indicated that for Cata, a DK might be another option, so he has set about leveling one up.
Fortunately they start at level 55 and with Joyous Journeys still active you are apparently level 59 or so when you exit the tutorial. So he is off to Outland and was heading into Nagrand last I checked. All of which is preferable to giving Blizz $60 to $80 to get a level 80 character boost if you have the time.
Seeing him back, I started poking around with my rogue who I had run through Outland and into Northrend late last year with an eye towards getting one more level 80 ready for Cataclysm Classic. I was always going to do the five levels of Cata, the question was the level of commitment.
So we’re waking up in Azeroth again, warming up some characters while we wait for the pre-patch to drop and screw up our build. I forget which classes were most screwed over by the Cata respec, though I am tempted to say “all of them” because one of the great aspects of Wrath was that most classes were pretty OP.
Blizzard has a consistent through line of hating it when we all feel comfortable with our classes. It is as though if the players feel good, they feel bad, something that carries on to this day… see the great Diablo IV nerfing.
