After shipping players off to a new continent and even an entirely different planet over the last couple of years, Blizzard has gone full steam ahead with the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion, which brings the world's most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game back to its roots. And then it takes those roots, grinds them up, and serves players an entirely fresh experience in the world of Azeroth. Join GameSpy columnist and WoW-head Leif Johnson as he travels through this whole new world (of Warcraft), exploring new zones, beating new dungeons, and enjoying what may turn out to be the happy medium to unite diehards and casual gamers alike.
Something is rotten in Azeroth. Somewhere in between the marvel over the devastation wrought by the dragon Deathwing and the thrill of exploring new zones, somewhere amid the hours spent leveling and the legion cinematic cut-scenes, somewhere between deaths in the challenging new five-player dungeons, players on every server started to worry that World of Warcraft might be showing its age. Almost everyone agreed that Cataclysm's sweeping changes had breathed new life into the game, but something, they said, was missing. So much was different, but too much was the same. Suddenly, scores of formerly loyal players announced that they were canceling their accounts. Others expressed concern at the perceived lack of endgame content. Still others, most worryingly of all, simply seemed bored.
The curious thing is that while thousands (if not millions) of players agree that Cataclysm lacks a vital "something," almost no one agrees on what that something might be. Indeed, the question of why so many players just weren't "feeling it" recently spawned an epic thread in the official WoW forums that reached a full 50 pages of replies. Elsewhere, the punishing new five-man heroic dungeons generated such an uproar among players that it prompted a lengthy official reply from Ghostcrawler (AKA Greg Street), WoW's lead systems designer. Complaints like these plague every expansion, but these complaints had a bite.
I can't say I really agree, but I understand the concerns. I've spent much of my time since hitting 85 flying around the world and fiddling with the game's new Archaeology profession while suffering through my 45-minute dungeon queues... and the experience eats at my soul. Archaeology is one of the few genuinely new experiences in WoW, and many players agree that it's about as entertaining as carving the contents of a Manhattan phone book into a sequoia. Basically, you fly throughout the world collecting archaeological fragments from different races in the hopes of piecing them together into an epic-quality weapon that will help you in raids or dungeons. Most of the time, however, you get novelty crap. One item I've made summons a bunch of scarabs that just skitter around me in a half-circle for 20 seconds. It took several hours to make, and it has an hour-and-40-minute recharge timer. Another rare item makes a shaft of green light appear over my head for 10 seconds. That's it. Clearly, Archaeology shows Blizzard at its most imaginative. But if I love any one thing about Archaeology, it's the chance to use the world in its entirety. Whereas players who strictly focus on the level 85 zones complain about their limits, Archaeology takes you everywhere. Quite frankly, it's the only legitimate reason to use the lower leveling zones at 85, and I enjoy my romps among landscapes that I've known for years.
But therein lies one of Cataclysm's problems. For all the netherworldly charm of Deepholm and the watery expanses of Vashj'ir, most of the new zones are uncomfortably familiar. As a part of the old world, these zones use much of the same architecture and creature models that players first encountered on those cold November days in 2004. While this makes sense lore-wise, it also means that most of Cataclysm's zones lack the thrill of discovery that suffused zones in The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. Zoning through the Dark Portal in The Burning Crusade took us into a world so broken that it made Deathwing's recent Azerothian tantrum look laughable. Travel too far, and you could literally fall of the edge of the world. In Wrath of the Lich King, players sailed north to a cold and unfamiliar land filled with gruff Viking-like giants and breathtaking futuristic ruins. In Cataclysm, however, Mount Hyjal seems far too similar to preexisting Night Elf zones -- and the Twilight Highlands seem like a mere extension of Loch Modan with hobbit holes.
This familiarity extends even to the dungeons. In Blackrock Caverns, players zone in only a few feet away from the entrances to some of the game's oldest five-man dungeons, and the Dwarven scenery within is very much the same. In Grim Batol, players battle through what simply looks like a more awesome version of the Dwarf faction capital of Ironforge. Even one of the raid instances, Blackwing Descent, looks all-too-similar to 2005's Blackwing Lair. Players like me see these steps as a love letter to fans of classic WoW; others see it as laziness on Blizzard's part. Perhaps you really can't go home again.