Skoll Shorties

Permission granted.

So ultimately, I agree - Cataclysm was, in retrospect, a good expansion that brought a lot of good stuff to the table. Cinematically, it was very well executed in a lot of places - the worgen starting experience and Vashj'ir have stuck with me to this day probably the most.

I think a lot of the changes were good, yes. Hillsbrad and Silverpine were given stunning revamps for example. But I think some of them, unfortunately, haven't aged well. Azshara, in my opinion, is irritating in comparison to its more intimidating Vanilla counterpart, and stuff -

like the Westfall chasm just ends up being a big eyesore on a zone that was more attractive in its simplicity. Narratively, it was mostly done pretty well. I *did* feel a consistent sense of dread knowing Deathwing could show up at any time, and bringing back villains like -

Nefarian and Ragnaros really helped to drive home the scope of the threat. Plus, finally getting to set foot in places like Hyjal or Uldum - when we'd only been teased of their existence before - was a huge deal to me personally. But coming off of Wrath, a lot of it felt like -

it didn't take itself as seriously as it should have. So many quests ended up revolving around jokes or media references - which is fine in moderation, but the SHEER volume of them just really took me out of the mood quickly. The final straw for me personally was at the end of -

Twilight Highlands, when you ended up fighting Cho'gall's chosen. And he ends up being a Jonathan Coulton reference. Now I love JoCo, but at that point, it really cemented for me that this expac was just going to have a nagging frustration for me that some people might not share.

I guess the level of references didn't bother me too much because at the time I didn't even put the two together. That being said it definitely was an issue throughout the expansion. Some zones worked while others were just chock-full of too many jokes.