World of Warcraft Cataclysm Review

This has been along time coming. Just ask anyone who has been grinding dailies for the past 6+months waiting for something new! And here it is, World of Warcraft Cataclysm, having arrived on the 12th December in all its glory. With this new expansion the whole world was to change permanently for better of for worse, and our Orcs, Night Elves, Tauren and this authors famous dwarf Hunter wandered off into the oncoming storm, wondering what terrible new foes we were to face. For some of us, it ended all too soon.

The Following article is dedicated to my best friend Steve, without whom I would not have been able to play Cataclysm, let alone write about it.

But enough of that, onto the content, what you can expect, and sadly, how long it might last...

It sure was, the eruption of Deathwings escape has forever changed the world of Azeroth. For a start, there are dozens of new flight points dotted around all of the old areas. Whether or not it was the massive dragon's plan to make it easier to get around remains to be seen as he was not availble for comment!

Joking aside, a LOT has changed, and several new areas have been added for the higher level players to get from 80 to 85. The entire flow of lvl 1-60 has changed for the better, characters level MUCH faster, and you never again will get stuck wondering where to level next. Essentially, Blizz have put all the quest helper / Zyggor Guides out of business, because if you need one, you might as well give up playing now.

New Zones

Mount Hyal - lvl 80-82 in northern Kalimdor

Vashj'ir - lvl 80-82 underwater zone (mmmn, didn't enjoy this one so much)

Deepholm - lvl 82-83 in the elemental plane of earth

Uldum - lvl 83-84 tribute to Indiana Jones! My favourite zone in the expansion.

The Twilight Highlands - lvl 84-85 in the Eastern Kingdoms

Tol Barad - lvl 85 end game zone, split into 2 parts, one PVP and one dailys grind em ups to give early finishers something to do.

Gilneas - lvl 1-12 starting zone for the Worgen

Kezan - lvl 1-5 starting zone for Goblins

The Lost Isle - lvl 5-12 zone for Goblins

All of this of course leads as I said before to a new flow for levelling, as shown on the map to the right. It works well, but it takes next to no time to whizz through the new old content.

The biggest problem for me as a casual player was that the 80-85 levelling process also took next to no time. I had fully explored all the new content and dungeons in just under 2 weeks. I repeat, I am a casual player, so it's not like I was playing 24/7.

Goblins and Worgen, which to choose?

Well, graphically, I would say that gobbos got the Blizz love this time around, better animation, great mount, cracking humour in the starting zone. The worgen are lacking a mount, having a rather pooly animated running on all fours type thing going on, and they have the worst "mockney" accent since Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins...

Having said that, both starting areas are a departure from the normal, and are very story orientated, I enjoyed them both immensly.

I can only talk from personal experience here, it was ok, but not as smooth as I thought it could be. As you can see, Stormwind was hideously packed in a way I have never before seen. Of course, Iron Forge was empty, as its not a major travel hub for the new content.

So, there we were in SW, counting down to midnight, waiting with baited breath. 2 minutes after midnight the servers went down. Of course, we were all expecting the game to come back up relatively quickly, seeing as most of the new stuff had been in place for a month or so. I gave up after an hour :(

Still, the atmosphere was great beforehand, and all things considered, it wasn't the worst launch.  The biggest gripe I have about the beginning was the players themselves.  The sheer selfishness of the vast majority of players was astonishing.  Huge numbers of elitist twats stealing every kill they could and blocking access to quest givers.  God only knows what it was like on PVP servers, as ALL the quest givers are shared between Alliance and Horde.

There is no doubt that World of Warcraft has been massively changed by the Cataclysm Expansion, and in the mostpart, the changes are amazing, some of the new zones are just spectacular, but there are some surprising design choices, like the shared quest givers, and the sheer amount of instancing that leave me wondering if its a move in the right direction.

Overall though, of course I am going to recommend it, if you already play its essential, and if you are just starting, no longer do you have to worry about catching your mates up as levelling is so fast.

I just wish that there was more content to the 80-85 journey. What is there is amazing, but with every expansion it seems to take less and less time to reach the end of the line

If you enjoyed this article

Please don't forget to click the green "Rate Up" button and "share" it with your friends via Email, Twitter, Facebook, or any other social networking sites.