Results tagged “Cataclysm”

We've seen various Cataclysm previews, including proposals for the clashes that have provoked glee in some quarters and a gnashing of teeth in others. That Cata would change the face of the game we've known since last summer - even then I called it Wow 1.5 because of the wholesale changes planned - but as the nitty gritty is emerging that's starting to sink in. In some regards our having only part of the picture will be skewing our perceptions - some "broken" mechanics may work fine in Cata once their context and other talents/skills become clearer - but others are clearly 'bad' (the druid tree from change, for example). Will Cata ensure WOW's continued dominance of the MMO market, or break it? I think the jury's still out.

The second notable event of the week was the appearance of new in-game items in the Blizzard store. There've already been four pets (two associated with plushies, which I drew the line at). Today has seen a fifth pet (lil'XT who I gather doubles as a trainset-breaker) and a mount, the Celestial Steed. I've no philosophical objection to people buying cosmetic items to enhance their gameplay experience (and I have KT and the Monk), though I'm leery of anything that smacks of microtransactions to give you an in-game advantage. The Celestial Steed - which is an adaptive sparkling pony, improving as your riding skill increases - doesn't provide a combat advantage but it is straying into the 'in-game advantage' area as it applies to all your characters (so to paraphrase Men In Black, its the last mount you'll ever need - even more so than the Headless Horseman's nag). In effect none of your characters ever need buy a mount, just the riding skill which is worth a reasonably amount of gold across multiple characters. Not a vast amount of gold in the grand scheme of things, but quantity nonetheless.

I'm conflicted. One part of me (the pet/mount collector) would like to add the Steed to my collection but another thinks its the thin end of the wedge and the start of something I'm wary of. I like a number of things Blizzard have done to open up the game world, though I think things have gone slightly awry with the endgame that's left the 80 experience feeling a little hollow.  (Having got 3 characters to 80, Im currently spending most of my time with lower level characters where there's stuff to do solo that's a challenge). Add in the 'bought advantages' (with probably millions of dollars make on the Steed today alone, I agree with Leafy that its unlikely to be the last we'll see of such things) and I have to wonder if in six months time or a year from now Cata will be something I want to play.

[And as a sidenote, I did visit the Blizzard store and contemplate a purchase, going as far as to join the queue which showed how wonky the time estimates were - at 70k place in the queue the wait was 7 hours, but by the time I'd got to 8k half an hour later (watching election debates on TV) it was more like 25 minutes by which point I'd talked myself out of purchasing a Sparkling Pony, at least until after the weekend]

It's coming up on 4am and I've been up the best part of 24 hours due to family issues, but I thought I'd put my inability to sleep to some use (though apologies if sleep deprivation makes my spelling, grammar and logic even more ... interesting ... than usual).

 

So, Cataclysm is confirmed. No great surprises there, though some of the details are quite interesting - the Guild Leveling and Path of the Titan look like neat new twists, and the races and class-race combos look set to inject new life into the game. I really like the idea of advancing the lore and shaking everything up, but in considering the impact of Deathwing's return I came to a conclusion:

Cataclysm isn't just an expansion, it's WOW 1.5 by another name.

An expansion would build on the setting, adding new content to that which already existed. Yes, there may be changes to classes and zones and quest, but in many regards these are nips and tucks (pretty big cosmetic surgery in some cases, but essentially evolutionary rather than revolutionary).

Cataclysm meets the criteria of an expansion by adding new levels, zones, races (etc) but it also changes the entire playing experience. We're not talking just "your talent trees are different" or "there are more quests in Dustwallow" we're talking a revamp of pretty much everything. Geography and quests will change, there'll be changes to character stats that make the amalgamation of spell damage and healing look like childs play (no spellpower - all derived from int, no mp5 - that'll be spirit, no defence - that'll be talents, etc). We're talking pretty much a rebuilding of the game from the ground up (hence my thinking of it as WOW 1.5 - it's not a wholly new "WOW 2", but its so radically different as to be distinct from classic/BC/WotLK).

One part of me applauds the vision - the willingness to go in and make changes, applying the lessons of the last five years and giving the players a number of things they've asked for while using lore (Deathwing's return) to justify them - and is excited by the lore and gameplay potential, but another part of me worries. The scale of what's being considered is vast and stands a good chance of making the waves from the introduction of DKs look like a storm in a teacup. If it works, great, but how many people will be driven away by having to (once more) unlearn the game and start afresh.

Wholsesale reboots can be phenomenally successful (just look at Star Trek and Galactica) but the last game that had its innards ripped out and remodelled died a painful and lingering death (I'm thinking Galaxies) as players defected to the next generation of MMOs principally WOW). It would be ironic if WOW met the same fate (and I'm not suggesting it will, but the risk is there - I have more faith in Blizzard than SOE though).

Tangental to this that this remodeling of the game will render large chunks of the game 'lost' to those who've not experienced them in their original form (as ever the case with updates and expansions, but were talking about a vast scale here) and the core zone/quest changes will be rolled out to all players with the expansion providing access to the races/levels/new zones. With The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, some mechanics may have changed but fundamentally the world wasn't changed; you still spent ages hunting the Defias messenger in Westfall or hunting furbolg in Winterspring. In Cataclysm, that may not be the cases. Old timers may discuss the epic journeys to hand in quests in Auberdine, while new arrivals luxuriate in the new Darkshore quest hub .... (okay, not that that's a bad thing per-se - the point is to 'fix' stuff that's broken - but it'll had a whole new dimension to "remember when ... discusssions" (and thinking of how the Loremaster Achievement would be tracked makes my head ache :p) 

(it would be great if the whole 'legacy>new' change was done via phasing, much as the rumors of re-conquering Loredaeron suggested a week or two back, but I guess that'd cause too many problems and shifting the cataclysm from a 'world event' to a more personal level wouldn't really fly)

Now, you'd think that after spending a vast amount of effort remodelling the 1-60 experience you'd want to give players the chance to see all the hard work (and they're talking about 'new experiences' through the new class race-combos) so the comments I've seen about "no new character slots" seems very odd. It's tantamount to saying "you 5-year vets with 10 characters .. neenah!" Yes, the addition of Blood Elves, Draenai and Death Knights did much the same, but those were elements of the relevant expansion, not a core part of the expansion/revision. I can see a lot of spirited debate on the character slot issue ...