If you’ve been listening to the show, you know that I’ve gotten back into WoW now that Cataclysm has come out. Here’s the insight of a former player and long time MMO fan. In short: there is no better time to come back to this game or try it for the first time.
What’s happened is immense. Blizzard has took, what has been for many, the best Massively Multiplayer game and gave it the shiniest coat of paint in the history of games. And, I don’t just mean graphically.
You see, Blizzard is smart. Yaknow when you go to cancel a service and they give you a ton of options as to why? Blizzard’s like, “OK, we read all that.” and then they report, “Check out our next expansion.”
The number one reason, I guarantee, that anyone ever quits a game like WoW is that it can be a big time commitment. This stems from 2 things: A) it is the very nature of a game like this and B) the game is god damned good. Like, really really wonderful. So, that being the number one reason for people quitting WoW it has been addressed and then fixed in this patch. The game can still take you months to play, but it’s more expedient with its way of progressing you forward into new content.
This takes place because they way that the game has been broken up since the first time they released an expansion. Levels 1-60 for the longest time were the “grind” in order to get to the good stuff: the expansions. But, now, it’s funny, they redone the entire 1-60 experience so much that once you hit the expansion stuff, they are the more boring levels! It’s bizzaro Warcraft. But, what it means for us is that you don’t have to wait to get to the good stuff. It’s good all the way through. One criticism about the way that they did this is that they actually didn’t give enough attention to those expansion lands. Once you hit Burning Crusade content, you really feel it (less so with Wrath of the Lich King stuff and once you get to the stuff from the Cataclysm expansion things are all good from there, too).
The story missions are much better than before, with more narrative, reoccurring characters, and layed out in less meandering path from zone to zone. Its less time wasted on boring stuff, and it because its streamlined, you don’t have to play it for months in order to get to the higher level. And, you see more stuff. Real things are happening within the lore of Warcraft and this time you get to see it from the perspective of a lvl 1-60 guy. Oh, and by the way, because attention was paid to these quests your rewards for them are much better now. Continue on with your quest gear, cuz now they are awesome and they will get you to 60, no problem, just like the expansions.
They also done a ton with the general game play. This isn’t brand new but it’s been tweaked: Dungeon Finder. Compare that to if you were playing Black Ops’ campaign, you can queue for a multiplayer match right in the game, and when theres one ready you just go into it and when its over you go right back to playing campaign again where you can queue up again. But in WoW, what you do in the dungeons gives you direct rewards outside of that. So, your playing Black Ops again, get into multiplayer, level up in the match, and when you get back you have all the benefits you got leveling up.
There are tons and tons of tweaks like that. The first time you get into the game you have beginner’s tooltips. Hovering over your fireball spell, instead of throwing a bunch of numbers at you, it’ll say “Use this to do damage at range.” The close range spell will say something like, “Dude, use this when things are in your face!” When you get better at the game, you might want to know those numbers but when you first start off, those tips might not be obvious, especially if you’re never played an MMO.
The beauty of this is that in order to try out this awesomeness, you don’t need the expansion at all. It’s still all the basic lands, but they’ve been totally restructured for awesome. You can play through all of this without worrying about buying the expansions until you get there. You get a free month when you buy the game. That’s a lot to see and do and if you’re done after that you don’t have to worry about it. If you’re and old WoW player, like me, just boot up your old profile and see all this new stuff. I didn’t have to upgrade my PC either. It’s the same engine from 2004.
It’s really cool going back. Starting a new character, I didn’t dread the grind to high levels for once. I was just experiencing the rich world, like the first time.
Bravo, Blizzard.
