It's been an interesting week for Warcraft.
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]
; "Rotface down!")
; "Gnomes are scary")
; "More Gnome than you can shake a stick at")
; "The Big Gnome")
; "Aren't you a little big for a Stormtrooper")
; "Victory!")
; "Saurfang Down!")
; "Maebh Tuskarr")
; "Buliwyf the Tuskarr")
; "Andro_Tuskarr.JPG")