• Summary: In Cataclysm, players witness the face of Azeroth being altered forever, as the corrupted Dragon Aspect Deathwing awakens from his subterranean slumber and erupts onto the surface, leaving ruin and destruction in his wake. As the Horde and Alliance race to the epicenter of the cataclysm, the kingdoms of Azeroth will witness seismic shifts in power, the kindling of a war of the elements, and the emergence of unlikely heroes who will rise up to protect their scarred and broken world from utter devastation. New features in the game's third expansion include: Two New Playable Races: Adventure as the cursed worgen with the Alliance or the resourceful goblins with the Horde. Increased Level Cap: Advance to level 85 and earn new abilities, tap into new talents, and progress through the path system, a new way for players to customize characters. Classic Zones Remade: Quest to level 60 as you never have before. Familiar zones across the original continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms have been reforged by the cataclysm and updated with new quests and content. Flying Mounts in Azeroth: Explore Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms from a whole new perspective. Guild Advancement: Progress as a guild to earn guild levels and guild achievements. New High-Level Content: Explore newly opened parts of the world, including Uldum, Grim Batol, and the great sunken city of Vashj'ir beneath the sea, and enjoy even more high-level raid content than in previous expansions. New PvP Zone & Rated Battlegrounds: Take on PvP objectives and daily quests on Tol Barad Island, a new Wintergrasp-like zone, and wage war in all-new rated Battlegrounds. Archaeology: Master a new secondary profession to unearth valuable artifacts and earn unique rewards. New Race and Class Combinations: Explore Azeroth as a gnome priest, blood elf warrior, or one of the other never-before-available race and class combinations. [Blizzard Entertainment] Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 53 out of 53
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 53
  3. Negative: 0 out of 53
  1. Dec 22, 2010
    100
    Cataclysm is a love letter to fans of World of Warcraft, as it celebrates everything that made the original game so successful while carefully updating the old game to the new standard of play that Blizzard has set.
  2. Dec 23, 2010
    100
    If you're looking to run through the newly busted-up Azeroth with a fresh character, you won't find a better excuse to re-roll than the inclusion of playable Goblins and Worgen in Cataclysm.
  3. Dec 25, 2010
    100
    Cataclysm doesn't just make WOW better. It does something even more valuable than that; it renews it. It fires your excitement at starting on that long road one more time, and invites you to relish the journey just as much as you'll lose yourself in its ending.

See all 53 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 64 out of 172
  2. Negative: 73 out of 172
  1. The World of Warcraft has changed for the better it is more streamlined and far more easy to to follow, the game now explicitly tells you the best spots to be at your level. many see this as hand holding and an absolutely massive blow the the game's quality i find that rather absurd making a game less confusing is not making it worse and in some ways not even making it less difficult but rather simply less tedious. Another aspect of the game that i find highly improved is they way gilds have been reworked. Lets face it this is an MMO you are supposed to play it with others complaining that you can not solo parts is like complain about the lack of race race cars in a fighting game. This gives a guild actual benefits and rewards you for advancing your guild making the for a more cohesive game. My only complaint is that Outlands and Notherrend are absolutely untouched even a slight touch up to the 2 would have been a nice change of pace. Expand
    • 12 of 15 users said yes
  2. Unfortunately this really feels like the beginning of the end for WoW. I liked the new content a lot at first, until a week passed and I was already 85. Then I decided to go back and start a couple new characters to see the new 1-60 content. A couple weeks later, I was reentering untouched old content for levels 60-80 that I didn't have any interest in replaying. The transition between Cata content and previous expansions is just awkward without any consideration or adjustment by Blizzard. There just wasn't enough content and fine-tuning with this expansion for veteran players, especially when the 1-60 game is now so ridiculously easy that it's just as easy and boring as watching someone else play it on youtube. Blizzard still manages to make some quest lines entertaining and funny, but these came few and far between this time around. The highlights were the new graphic effects, more challenging endgame instances, and the reorganization of the entire old world to make it flow better (technically this wasn't expansion content - vanilla players have access to all 1-60 content). The more prevalent cons of this expansion include the terrible transition now present for new players after level 60, everything outside of endgame dungeons/raids being pathetically easy, more graphical glitches then ever before, poorly made cutscenes, a very boring new profession (archaeology), and very little else to keep any veteran players interested beyond another month or two. I'm not sure if Blizzard is just losing their touch, or if the game is just reaching the age where no amount of quality content could help retain it's playerbase. Either way, this expansion came off as very mediocre at best. Expand
    • 1 of 1 users said yes
  3. 2
    I *may* still be a WoW addict, but it seems less likely by the day. I haven't even downloaded the 4.1 patch. Why? I'm bored. Cataclysm revamped all the old world zones, redoing most of the quests! Cool, but they also made it absurdly easy to fly through them in a bare minimum of time. Why spend so much effort on giving the leveling process a facelift, only to be done with it so quickly? There is this persistent rush to end-game, and when you get there... there's very little left to do. Particularly if it's with the same character you've reached end-game on in previous expansions. There are achievements! Got 'em on my main, minus a fair bit of the ones requiring a raid. I really have no desire to get them again on another character, just for the sake of having them. Dungeons! Heroics! Have all the gear I can possibly use for an upgrade from them... on 6 or so toons, and their offspecs. PvP! Okay, really. I *know* Blizzard is in a constant struggle to balance PvP, but I just don't see it ever actually happening. Ever. Happens I have few-month-long moods where I really want to PvP, so I do it anyway, balanced or not. Well, since the massive battlegroup merger, and the faction changing for a fee thing, my beloved Horde *massively* outnumbers the Alliance. This leads to absurdly long queue-times for battlegrounds, and the inevitable sitting in Orgrimmar, waiting, that goes with it. Gets a bit old. Raids! Yes, I enjoy raiding, but you can only raid so many times per week. What's left? Professions? I have all of the professions maxed on various characters, except for archaeology. Which, as another reviewer quoted, involves staring at a stick with a blinking light, and *massive* amounts of travel time. /Yawn. So, we're left with leveling another character... again. Well, I've definitely got that covered--I have two accounts with max character limits on one server alone. Leaving me with absurd things like 3 priests, and 2 lvl 85 prot paladins, etc. Why? Well, not counting the fact that it's about the only thing left to do, I actually *like* leveling. Well, yay, there's new content for leveling up to 60. I've done all the new quests, on Horde and Alliance toons. It goes by too quickly, and I just end up with yet another 85 that I can't bare to delete, but probably won't play very often. As for the whole concept of "cata dungeons are hard!", they were moderately difficult initially, especially in comparison to the ones in Wrath, but, last I was playing they were easy mode again. Really, the dungeon-finder hp/healing/damage bonus is nice, but with 208k hp (with that bonus) and good avoidance and mitigation, I really didn't need CC any more. Yes, you still have to do appropriate things to compensate for various boss mechanics, for the most part, but it really had gone right back to "tank grabs a group, we all kill it, next!" from Wrath. For a little while, there was a hint of challenge. Now I don't care if you're hitting my target or not, I'm not gonna lose threat to you. That's just the tanking standpoint. With two accounts full of toons on one server, I *do* do other things, and I'm still bored. The new zones are interesting the first time through. Vashj'ir added in the element of needing to look above and below you, instead of just around you on a plain, but it loses its shiny luster of newness rather quickly. Most people find the zone pretty, but annoying. I only know of two people who don't hate it. The constant chain of cinematics in Uldum is an interesting twist the first time through, but after that, it's incredibly annoying to try to skip the cutscene, and find out you don't get the quest update, and have to go back and actually sit through the whole thing again. Also, an annoying facet of questing in the lvl 80-05 zones is that, with the ability to fly in the old world, the new zones were designed for you to fly in them. That doesn't sound problematic at first, but it massively affects mob spacing. You kill one mob, and then run just a bit too long to get to the next one, or you have to mount up, hop a short distance in the air on your flying mount, and then kill the next mob. Over all, the content is visually appealing, in the same WoW style, but the "new" parts get old pretty quickly. That's a gripe I have about the game as a whole, actually. Content gets outdated *fast*. Sure, you can do a Vanilla raid at lvl 60, because you can actually zone into the raid zone, but good luck finding other level appropriate people to do it with. Everyone wants to zoom through them on 85s. For luls, I soloed most of Kara shortly after Cata came out... on a holy priest. Sure, it's got the amusing "look what I can do" factor, but like everything else, it loses its appeal rapidly. If you don't mind using WoW as a giant chat room for weeks on end while waiting for major content patches, then you won't have a problem with Cata. It's pretty, but it's nothing truly new. Expand
    • 3 of 3 users said yes

See all 172 User Reviews

Related Articles

  1. The Disconnect: When Gamers Disagree With Critics

    The Disconnect: When Gamers Disagree With Critics Image
    Published: May 4, 2011
    The release of Portal 2 exposed a divide between game critics and users. While that title's user scores have rebounded, others haven't. We take a look at the games with the biggest score differentials between professional reviewers and gamers.