Disclaimer: This is in no way a representation of the end game experience with current end game raids and other level 85 contents, this is just my initial impression of the game. Also there will be no pictures in this presentation as they were mistakenly stored on a different computer.
Six year after initial launch and the game has been dramatically changed, but was all this worth it for someone that has stopped playing after that disastrous Wrath of the Lich King? At first look Cataclysm is definitely Blizzard's most ambitious expansion pack for WoW yet, it contains so many game changing fixes that it could very well be it's own game. I took a closer look at what all these changes mean to a game in many ways need a jolt to reinvigorate millions of its loyal fans.
-vs. WotLK
Any veteran WoW player will be able to tell you, Wrath of the Lich King started on a good note as it featured one of the the most dramatic story line in the Warcraft history with the fall of Arthas. However as all these players will be able to tell you that all that good didn't last as WotLK ended on a sour note with many can not wait for the arrival of Cataclysm. Wrath did add many good features but in the mean time took away quite a few very important things that made vanilla and The Burning Crusade great. Wrath continued the transition of making the game more and more accessible to more players meaning it has gotten easier. To many this was the main complaint as it got so ridiculous by the end that you can literally hit level 80 and be decked out in epics in two weeks. Everyone in the game had a chance to kill the Lich King, a very good chance too. On the other hand PvP continues the imbalance of classes through more emphasis on arena. By all it feels like it has lost everything that made WoW a unique and perfectly polished MMO into a browser game that anyone that knows how to turn on a computer can play, and kill the Lich King on top of that. Arena titles like Gladiator meant nothing as well since anyone that plays a Warlock and have a cat can get the title.
But not all is bad though. Wrath did introduce some new game plays and techniques that were welcome in this aging game. Blizzard experimented phasing with the Death Knight and other key events through out Wrath that really made story telling in an MMO much better, and they also made looking for group easier with the queue system that was much much better that the dreaded hour long search for a tank on top of the Orgrimmar bank. One thing you will notice when you first play Cataclysm is all these welcome features are back and more heavily used. You will see phasing right away in the starting zones in Cataclysm as you progress in quests the landmarks and things around you will change. The LFG queue is back as well as you can queue for Catacylm dungeons right away provided that you have discovered the instance entrance. As for the bad things, this is what makes Blizzard one of the greatest developer in the industry. They listen to the community and change what is not right accordingly. It has been known for a year now Blizzard intend to fix everything that is wrong with Wrath by increasing the difficulty level of the game and making epic gear and epic end game bosses truly epic again. Meanwhile they will reinvest in battlegrounds again in hope of lessening the importance of arena game play. All these sounds good at Blizzcon but can they really deliver since it contridicts to what they wanted to do which is make the game more accessible and more casual?
-Changes for the good?
Cataclysm features two starting zones just like Wrath and immediately you will realize that the difficulty has been kicked up a notch. The mobs have alot more health than you and hits like a truck espcially if you are poorly geared to start with. Even classes that feature extreme ease in leveling such as Warlock or Death Knight have to stay awake this time around as if not careful you can easily die on one of the first quests. This will be more evident if you play a class that can not take a hit or in poor gear as you will die a lot. So in a way the game is more difficult right off the bat even though this is probably not exactly what people were complaining about. So what are the dungeons and raids like? espcially the heroic versions? Well I couldn't really comment on those since in the limited time I had to spend with Cataclysm I really didn't get a chance to try them out. I did however tried various normal version of different dungeons while leveling but they were nothing special in terms of difficulty. I did have a chance to tank in one of the heroics in beta and it was quite difficult, I wouldn't call it TBC difficult but it was still hard. It's a step in the right direction although you will still question Blizzard's intention after guilds have finished raids within 2 weeks of the release of Cataclysm. It definitely puts the wrong messages out there and slowly the epic gears are starting to make it's way into the game and all the blue gear lasted all but 2 weeks of the game. As far as PvP goes battlegrounds are more important now but arena still plays a big role for people that want to earn PvP gear quickly, the way I see it the only way to fix this problem completely is to remove arena entirely.
For the noobs and casual players that started playing in Wrath and still want to feel superior with all their easy kills and easy gears, what does all these changes mean? It means the game is more chanlleging to play and you might actually need your brain now, but it is still not nearly as hard as Vanilla or TBC ever was. As far as accessibilty goes it has gotten more so in a different way. You see for the person that is just getting into the game now the level 1-60 quests are much easier to do and make much more sense while doing them, you get quests that lead you to the next zone and quest rewards that are actually useful. It also features mount service to zones so lower level noobs don't have to wonder around for hours looking for the next town and getting killed in the wilderness and eventually get frustrated into rage quitting. The story line involved with questing make much more sense too if anyone still cares about story plot. And if questing and exploring the vast land of Azeroth is not for you then queue for random dungeon not only gives you superior experience to leveling it also gives you blue gear as reward for doing it. It also helps that majority of dungeon quest givers now are inside of the dungeon rather than making noobs going all over Azeroth collecting them thus further confusing said noobs. To test the accessibilty of the new leveling system I personally make a new hunter and through mixure of questing and random dungeons I was able to get all good blue gear and level to 35 in roughly 2 days of playing.
After all I can safely say all the changes are for the better even though it's not quite on par to what everyone hoped.
-New Content
All the changes to the old world is great for attracting new players but is there enough new content for vetern players? That is a very important question since the biggest problem with Wrath was at times it felt like Blizzard was only concerned with attracting new/casual players and they don't really care about all the die hard vetern players. From what I have heard that there is actually less new zones in Cataclysm than WotLK but they all vary greatly in terms of landmark and quests they feel a lot more fresh than Wrath zones. For example many player seems to prefer leveling in mount Hyjal but I found that Vasj'er was a lot more original and overall cooler zone. It's starts with a movie with your boat sinking along the shore of Eastern Kingdom and the whole zone then is under water, with you getting your seahorse mount shortly afterwards. It doesn't give you as much gear rewards as Hyjal quests so if you are not already decked out in ICC epics then it might be better for you to level in Hyjal, other than that every single aspect of Vasj'er is supperior to Hyjal. Also the game ships with 4 end game raids compare to the 1 that was in Wrath, and none of these raids are recycled like Naxx was for Wrath. Other changes such as game mechanics are no strangers to WoW as Blizzard constantly fine tunes game play through each patch, however I can not comment on them too much as I didn't reach end game to really know how each class plays different. What I can say is some more evident changes are welcome while some are not. The changes to the talent tree are welcome in my opinion as the old talent tree was getting too bloated with a lot of pointless talents. Now it's more concise and most of neccessary passive talents and some more important ones that everyone gets such as mortal strike, everyone will get them depending on the tree you go for. Some of the less welcome changes to me include changes to Orgrimmar, I really hated it at first and while I am slowly getting used to it now I still enjoy the less confusing design of the original Orgrimmar. Others include the deletion of Portals in major cities, and here I thought Blizzard is trying to make the game more accessible to noobs.
With Cataclysm Blizzard also introduces 2 new races but no new classes. Both Goblin and Worgen are cool race in their own right with Worgen more so for obvious reasons. But what makes them cooler is their starting zones. Both feature heavy phasing especially Worgen. The city of Gilneas is a dark gothic city along the coast of Eastern Kingdom, and the starting quests will take you through out the city and the vast lands around it. As you progress through the quest line you will slowly see the changes within Gilneas as the city slowly decays and eventually falls into ruins with the invading Forsakens. Goblin starting zone is at a much lighter note with the upbeat music even though the island of Kezan is getting destroyed by Deathwing but the lack of seriousness is apparent in the Goblin's solution of blowing everything up. This includes putting rockets up monkeys' asses and chickens while setting bombs off on everything you touch. Overall Blizzard really out done themselves on these 2 starting zone in terms of showing off the new phasing tech and story telling. It translates well for the rest of the game too and that's what makes Cataclysm leveling less tedious.
-Conclusion
All these are great but is Cataclysm enough to bring excitement to a 6 year old game? Blizzard always make great trailers to hype people up but at the end of the day as you play in Cataclysm you realize it's still the same old WoW, you get to 85, you grind all the rep, you get gear in heroics and you do raids. Nothing more nothing less it's just the road to that goal might be more enjoyable now than Wrath. For me all the changes are great but Blizzard needs to do a lot more than this to convice me, therefore Cataclysm is not quite that earth shattering event I am looking for.
-Final Score: 8/10
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