I have some bad news.
As many of you know, recently I have been battling with my addiction and hoping that I had the willpower to overcome what is essentially a socially crippling obsession. However I am ashamed to admit that, on Tuesday the 1st of November, in a moment of weakness...I renewed my World Of Warcraft subscription.
Sad face.I can see you now, shaking your little heads in disappointment. As many of you know, I have been battling with this condition for a while now, desperately trying to hold out from returning to Azeroth. Unfortunately I fell into a bad crowd, a malicious and self-serving group of individuals who informed me that the new changes implemented in Cataclysm made the game fun again, removing much of the early game grinding and creating a much more concise and varied leveling experience. Not only that, I could now play as a sweet Troll Druid whose feral Cat form is a badass fucking tiger. These "friends" dragged me back into the gutter. They know who they are and I hope they are fucking proud of themselves.
Unfortunately, they were correct.
Remember that first time you started playing WoW? Ok, maybe you don't - that's fair enough, the game is 6 years old. Well, I remember. I remember being completely blown away the first time I stepped into Orgrimmar, overwhelmed by all the level 60 characters with their raiding gear. I remember promptly getting lost, too, and finding myself running up and down the drag asking passers-by for guidance. I remember my first trip through the Wailing Caverns and being completely confused by what an Instance was conceptually, let alone what I should be doing as part of the group. Flying over Thunder Bluff for the first time, running into my first Ally (and being promptly ganked), joining my first group for Warsong Gulch. These were all big moments at the beginning of my WoW career. Cataclysm is the closest I have ever come to reliving that initial impression. And it's pretty mindblowing.
The re-jiggered zones in World Of Warcraft really are pretty fantastic. Since I started playing again a couple of days ago I have got up to level 26, high enough to cover the new Troll starting zone, Durotar, The Barrens, Ashenvale, and the dramatically altered Orgimmar. Each of these haunts remains largely the same - even the Barrens, which has been sliced apart into northern and southern chunks. The difference lies in the quests. Instead of strolling into the Crossroads and being given 20 quests all at once, players are channelled down much more focussed lines of progression. You might be given two or three quests and they will all culminate at the same juncture. Upon their completion you are given a new set, or sent to a new location (usually via some form of set-piece quest where a NPC mount will physically take you there). To streamline this, there are now lots of smaller settlements and flight paths scattered around each zone. Instead of basing all operations from a single settlement, you will find yourself doing groups of very similar quests from before, though from a much more accessible location so you aren't repeatedly running from one end of the zone to the other. The quests themselves have also been addressed, removing the tediousness and monotony of many of the early quests. You will no longer be sent to find 30 centaur bracers, for example, though you may have to defend a hillock from waves of the fuckers as a jazzed up alternative. It's this kind of new set-piece interaction that actually makes the quests interesting again, giving each quest a unique feel and making the NPC characters much more involved and vibrant. I got a terrible shock the first time I jumped into Wailing Caverns only to find that the bosses had all been altered with different attacks. It has meant that although the layout of the cavern is the same, I am having to reassess and relearn how to tackle it.
There's also a bunch of new stuff like tooltips and other junk which is basically just official equivalents of the most popular addons. There is now an ingame version of Quest Helper which will mark the locations of your current quest on your map and give you a little arrow on the minimap to point you in the right direction, for example. Possibly the best new feature is the ability to stream patches and new builds of the game whilst you are actually playing it. My understanding of this is that the installer will prioritise and update the most relevant parts of the game first. This has been mostly flawless, allowing me to play the game despite having loaded only about 20% of the mammoth Cataclysm update. I had a bit of trouble when I tried to teleport into an Instance that, apparently, my installer had not yet loaded - but apart from that it has been fine.
As one giantbomb intern intoned - Cataclysm basically takes the quest structure from Wrath Of The Lich King and applies it to the original game. It makes a big difference and, crucially, it's a lot more fun. I managed to get to level 26 without ever feeling like I was having to grind. At one point I hopped into an instance and, having completed the dungeon, was invited to repeat it. Despite being in a great group, I declined. There was too much other new shit I wanted to see.
As much as I hate to admit it, Cataclysm is actually fucking awesome.
MAY HE WHO IS WITHOUT SIN CAST THE FIRST STONE
Thanks For Reading
Love Sweep
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