A dragon erupts from an underground prison, causing massive terrain shifts, both physically and politically. The breakup of the uneasy pseudo-truce between Alliance and Horde, shaken in Wrath of the Lich King, has finally broken completely, due to Warchief Thrall’s bloodthirsty replacement.
Jay Brack lampshaded (At least I HOPE that was tongue-in-cheek lampshading?) his own Executive Meddling by saying he had expected this expansion to be a few more Levels, a couple new Races, business as usual, but the Developers finally stood up and overrode him, realizing that the old 1-60 experience needed remodeling.
They were GOING to have everything look like it went through an earthquake, but the planned cracks and jagged landscape caused characters to get stuck, so they nixed it and fixed it. LOTS of things have changed, mostly for the better. Every Zone in the game has been changed and upgraded, and supposedly, the Cataclysm Quests will be changed to show more creativity. WoW was the first to have “directed killing” Quests, the much-maligned “Kill Ten Rats” (Which is also the title of a fansite), the design philosophy has come full circle and realized that just asking people to kill bigger and bigger versions of the same thing—and/or more of them—was part of the repetition that burned out players on MMO games!
One example that I HOPE makes it into the game is a Mammoth Meat Quest. Rather than just kill 10 Mammoths, feed one a bomb, then pick up the pieces! This outside-the-box thinking will REALLY help Quests, or at least make them less grind-ish!
Looking for more information about the expansion? Then don’t forget to check out this WoW Cataclysm Guide which is prepared specifically for the expansion and covers details about Cataclysm in assiduous detail.
On a Wing and a Prayer
More New Flight Paths were added, AND players will now get WoW Goblin/Gnomish jetpacks—and even flying mounts—so they can fly around PERSONALLY! Although this was obviously inspired by AION, it’s a welcome change. More importantly, a lot of impassable terrain and invisible walls are being removed. The original reason for the impassable terrains, visible or otherwise, is that they literally didn’t finish the areas players couldn’t go to, to save time/effort, and by constraining players to only the finished areas, they made the world SEEM more complete than it was! (Early players with teleport or climbing utilities found out the Masquerade, but were banned for it) To coin a meme, WOW didn’t USED to stand for Wide Open World, but now it just might!
Re-Zoning
They were serious about improving Zones. They finally eased up on the cliffs near Orgrimmar that were the bane of so many low-Level Horde players. Apparently, the Goblins carved a path up the cliff and set up a camp there. Oddly they also turned an island into a Horde symbol, and carved a Goblin “Mount Rushmore” into a mountain!
More serious changes include splitting the Barrens into North and South Barrens Zones, so that players of Cataclysm PvP and Questers won’t interfere with each other—not as much anyways—added new Quest Hubs on StoneTalon Mountain, and a plucky Druid who is terraforming Desolace into a place people might like to live. An oasis of civilization in the desert. (Make your own Vegas jokes).
DarkShore was destroyed utterly, removing the largely redundant Quests of Auberdine, but two smaller Quest Hubs have sprung up, supposedly alleviating a lot of running around.
Uldum is finally being opened to players, and Ashenvale has gained a lot more forts. Also, an underwater Zone—which players have requested for a long time, inspired by the Tram’s Aquarium stretch.
Oh, and Gnomeregan might finally be sufficiently recovered for the Gnomes to head back to—until they mess it up again!
