What's up Giant Bomb readers? My dad recently got an invite from Blizzard to participate in the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm beta (he was randomly selected from all those who opted into the beta), and as a result I have been able to start exploring the work Blizzard has done so far on the expansion. I am going to blog a bit here on Giant Bomb about my experience with the beta, and give some insight on what I think about the changes and new content Blizzard is adding. Hopefully I can provide some interesting text coverage of the beta, as well as some of my own screen shots.
Also, this can be anyone who is reading this' opportunity to get first hand info about Cataclysm! Post a comment or send a PM if any of you have questions about the beta or want me to cover specific zones or whatever else you are curious about.
This blog entry is going to be about my journey's to discover the 5 man instance Blackrock Caverns with my dad's level 80 troll priest. I choose to first mess around with his priest as it has substantial gear and I play one myself on retail. After downloading the game as well as various patches and copying the priest over to a test realm, I was ready to start exploring the plethora of new content Blizzard has added as well as the extensive revisions that have been added to vanilla wow. Spawning in Dalaran, I chose to enter the portal going to Orgrimmar as a starting point, and was immediately blown away with what had been changed in the large, horde city.
After marveling at what Blizzard had done with Orgrimmar for a while, I decided that I wanted to do one of the new 5 man dungeons. I put my talent points into the holy tree, got the priest's healing gear on, and went to queue for a random Cataclysm dungeon. Unfortunately, it seems that in order to queue for any instance now using the dungeon finder tool now, you must first visit the dungeon's entrance. I think this is a great idea on Blizzard's part as it encourages players to actually explore the game's world rather than just using a matchmaking service for everything. So in order to do the new 5-man dungeons, it seemed I would have to fly to one of or both of the new instances. I chose to make the trek across the old world in order to visit the Blackrock Mountain-housed Blackrock Caverns.
This journey to Blackrock Mountain was made much simpler due to the fact that you can now use flying mounts in the old world. It seems a little weird at first, but it quickly becomes apparent that flying in the old pre- Burning Crusade content is a great addition that is only getting added now instead of earlier because of prior technical limitations with the old content. Even though I was able to speed along on my flying carped, I had to change continents in order to make it to Blackrock Mountain, so I took the Orgrimmar zeppelin to the Undercity, and then began my flight across the Eastern Kingdoms. On my way, I discovered various changes to many familiar zones which were for the most part interesting and exciting. My observations are in no way definitive, as I didn't fly meticulously over all of each zone, but it should give you a good idea of the direction that Blizzard is going in with this expansion.
Brill in Tirisfall had its architecture completely changed to the Northrend style that is used in all of the Undead towns in Northrend, similar to what was done to the Orc buildings in Orgrimmar. The city looked much better than its previously human but dilapidated look, and a statue of the Undead leader Sylvanas. The new look may have been partially recycled from what was done in Lich King, and it would have been nice to see completely new styles in terms of the world's architecture, but the new town was slick enough to seem like a great change. After flying over the rest of a largely unchanged Tirisfall Glades, I flew over the Western Plaguelands, which is now a lower level zone (the level of the mobs were in the 30s) and is much greener in terms of the foliage around the zone. There also seem to be a wide variety of human NPCs inheriting the zone, and the ghost town of Andorhall now was full of humans and undead fighting scourge, as well as a new Brill-like town on the outskirts of it.
I flew over Hillsbrad, which seems largely unchanged except for Tarren Mill's own Northrend architecture remake. Tarren Mill now has a handful large towers with four spotlights each which browse around as if looking for enemies attempting to infiltrate the town, and other familiar architectural attributes of Northrend forsaken settlements. Overall, the new town looks awesome, and perhaps the spotlights are Blizzard's sarcastic nod to all of the low level horde player killing that happens in Tarren Mill and Hillsbrad as a whole. If you can see an Alliance coming because of illumination from a spotlight, you are that much more likely to survive...
I flew over Arathi Highlands, which seems largely unchanged, as well as the Wetlands, which has some cool new additions but nothing drastic. A zone that seemed radically different was Loch Modan. The large lake that was central to the zone had been completely drained. The dam that used to hold the lake from flooding into the Wetlands seemed to be demolished. This change seemed completely crazy, and as a result new and awesome. It was a way of effectively turning a zone on its head. Before low level dwarfs and gnomes would have to quest on the islands in or the terrain surrounding the massive lake, now they will be required to slay mobs in the area that occupies the lakes former home! I hope there are more cataclysmic (sorry) changes like this in the expansion, as drastic changes like this lead to what is brand new and exciting content.
After flying over the Badlands, which has some cool additions such as a volcanic looking rift in the middle of the zone which is flanked by raised, lava filled craters, I finally made my way to Blackrock Mountain. I had to travel through searing gorge to make it there, but I am so unfamiliar with the zone that I doubt I could spot any changes. I flew down into the mountain and to the entrance of the Blackrock Caverns instance (which was very hard to find, at some point I broke down and used the internet to find where it was). I had accomplished what I had set out to do, and along the way I was able to see some pretty cool stuff that Blizzard was doing for this expansion.
Thanks for reading, sorry it was so long, hopefully it was informative. If anyone has any questions I'll try to answer them. Is there any specific part of the beta that people would like to see me explore? I'm going to try and not overlap Rorcraft as much as possible in what I explore. I think I'm going to try the Blackrock instance, then probably mess around with a Goblin or a Worgen, and what I have seen so far has got my hopes up!
Here are some screen shots I took
Log in to comment