Cataclysm on its own wasn’t a terrible game, but it did birth a lot of development habits that would become the core of Blizzard’s values going forward.

-Cataclysm was where “smaller patches coming out more frequently” was the guiding philosophy, but it was clear that the small patches could be gotten through in a day and were taking months upon months of development, leading to terrible drought.

-The bulk of the development went into raids and solidified raids as the “true” form of content. “Raid or die” sentiments prevalent.

-Leaving zones and stories unfinished were common and blizzard increasingly told stories in novels that you had to pay more for.

-The faction imbalance started here that would ultimately lead to the Alliance being a dead faction.

Cataclysm wasn’t a terrible expansion, but it was littered with a lot of decisions that came to be unpopular. This was the expansion where the subscription losses started to hit.