Cataclysm - the year in review
OK, before I get to this post, which has been stewing in me for some time now, the obligatory "I'm sorry I'm not writing that much anywhere, and I will try to do better" line of bullshit you should all be accustomed to by now. Whether you are a real life friend of mine or a long time follower of this journal, you know better. I write posts when I write posts, and my claims of trying to do better and write more will never come to pass. Bullshit out of the way, on with the topic.
On December 7th, 2010, the third expansion for World of Warcraft was released in Cataclysm. The goals of this expansion seemed to be to do the following:
4.0 - The Shattering (not the offical title, it's just Cataclysm)
New Zones; World Revamp: The new areas were great for the 80-85 leveling content. All of the quests were chained, it was easy to follow, there were fun mechanics and a lot of great story telling. The world revamp was the best feature and it made leveling a new alt fun and easy. The highlight would be the changes to Hillsbrad, as well as the Western and Eastern Plaguelands quest lines, which everyone should do at least once. Quest content was overall excellent.
New Races - Worgen and Goblins: I hate werewolves, but the Worgen 1-12 content is some of the best fun you can have. Goblin 1-12 is equally fun. The new races looked great and added a lot to the game. Everyone loved it, so, moving on.
Dungeons and Raids: OK, the retuning of Shadowfang Keep and Deadmines sucked. Yes they were challenging, but who was nostalgic for SFK? I understand Alliance players who love Deadmines, but it's a long and boring dungeon. Additionally, Vortex Pinnical was BORING. You spend most of the dungeon running and not actually doing anything. That aside, the new content was challenging, mostly fun, and it was not anything like the horror that was Wrath heroics where they just became dull and grindy. Bastion of Twilight, Blackwing Descent and Throne of the Four Winds were great raids and are still a lot of fun, even two tiers later.
PvP: Raids on capital cities seem to have died down (boo). I haven't played any new battlegrounds, so I cannot comment on them. Tol Barad was unbalanced as all hell, so much so that Blizzard had to fix it (it was almost impossible for the defending side to lose, and on some servers, there was win-swapping going on). So, while the content was "fun" (I hear), it wasn't very successful. So, meh...
4.1 - Rise of the Zandalari (Blizzard hates you, wants you to be miserable, and will still take your money)
OK, we were SUPPOSED to get a raid in 4.1. We didn't. It was supposed to be Firelands. It wasn't finished. We were also supposed to get a Caverns of Time raid AND the Abyssal Maw raid (both were canceled - fuck you Blizzard). So what did we get?
Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman, both retuned to be 5-man dungeons instead of 20-man and 10-man raids, respectively, new gear that was worse than the gear people already had, and a quest line that was hard and only gave you a cute panther cub (which was the only good thing in this entire patch).
Allow me to speak for everyone who plays WoW - FUCK YOU BLIZZARD! ZG and ZA retuned took a minimum of 50 minutes to complete, and that is if everyone is doing everything EXACTLY 100% correct with no room for error. Any errors happen, and the time you are spending in these places jumps. Good runs were taking 75 minutes per. Unacceptable time for a 5-man dungeon where the gear you get isn't better than the gear you could earn from raiding existing raids, and these were actually harder content than the existing raids. Aside from the cute panther cub pet you got, the only good thing about this was the trailer video that had Horde players cheering the much underused Troll leader Vol'jin saying "The Horde is my people! If it be war ya bringing, then I stand against ya!" People yelling "Vol'jin for President" or "Vol'jin for Warchief" was kinda cool, for about 15 minutes.
4.1 sucked. Anyone who liked it and had "fun" in ZA and ZG has too much time on their hands and not enough to do. I was just angry through most of this patch.
4.2 - Rage in the Firelands (Delayed from 4.1 and not very good)
OK, there is nothing wrong with the Firelands raid, in and of itself. The problem is that this is all that this patch was. One raid. And it's hard for people to get through. Even on normal levels. Challenging is one thing, but some of these bosses were just mechanically so hard, that the challenge wasn't even fun. It was great for the top tier raiding guilds, and I don't want to sound like an "entitled casual player," but we needed SOMETHING to prepare us before going into this. A dungeon or two would not have been out line. So, it was delayed, it was good, and it was hard, and there was nothing to help the player attune to what they would be doing so less-than hardcore players were at extreme disadvantage. Meanwhile, hardcore guilds who do nothing but play WoW were facerolling this in less than three weeks... on heroic.
So what did the rest of us get? A daily quest chain of suck to open up a base in the Firelands. Why did it suck? Because you had to do the same quests, every day, for three weeks, JUST TO FINISH IT. Were these hard? Nope. Were they boring? YES. And the story reveal at the end WAS NOT WORTH IT. It was a good story, but it was not worth three weeks of pain and suffering in boredom to get to it. This was when I really thought about dropping out of WoW.
4.3 - Hour of Twilight (Now, I'm glad I didn't unsub!)
I am not saying that the latest patch makes up for about 8 months of bad to "meh" content, but it really helps. Here's why:
Now, the new expansion, Mists of Pandaria, is coming out second quarter of 2012. Thankfully, Blizzard seems to understand that they have to put out expansions faster (Wrath of the Lich King was too long), and all signs point to Blizzard having learned their lesson. However, if I spend another year like this, being mostly frustrated by bad content... no scratch that... if I spend so much as a month subscribed to bad content, I will walk away from this game. With the free-to-play MMOs getting better all the time, the only reason why I have stuck with WoW is because of game quality, and Blizzard needs to make sure that they keep it up. This is why I haven't yet signed on to the "Commit to a year of WoW and get Diablo III free" deal yet. 1) I don't care about Diablo III and 2) I might leave WoW in the next year if Pandaria isn't great.
On December 7th, 2010, the third expansion for World of Warcraft was released in Cataclysm. The goals of this expansion seemed to be to do the following:
- Clean up the 1-60 leveling content to make it interesting again.
- Change the world that had existed for six years and had become boring.
- Make raiding and dungeons fun again as well as challenging so it didn't feel like a grind (anyone who spent 10 months or more in ICC knows what I'm talking about).
- Return to more Horde vs. Alliance stuff and away from the "carebear" everyone come together that seemed to dominate the last two expansions with sanctuary cities.
- Most importantly, get players to come back who had unsubscribed (unsubbed) because a year in ICC was unacceptable.
4.0 - The Shattering (not the offical title, it's just Cataclysm)
New Zones; World Revamp: The new areas were great for the 80-85 leveling content. All of the quests were chained, it was easy to follow, there were fun mechanics and a lot of great story telling. The world revamp was the best feature and it made leveling a new alt fun and easy. The highlight would be the changes to Hillsbrad, as well as the Western and Eastern Plaguelands quest lines, which everyone should do at least once. Quest content was overall excellent.
New Races - Worgen and Goblins: I hate werewolves, but the Worgen 1-12 content is some of the best fun you can have. Goblin 1-12 is equally fun. The new races looked great and added a lot to the game. Everyone loved it, so, moving on.
Dungeons and Raids: OK, the retuning of Shadowfang Keep and Deadmines sucked. Yes they were challenging, but who was nostalgic for SFK? I understand Alliance players who love Deadmines, but it's a long and boring dungeon. Additionally, Vortex Pinnical was BORING. You spend most of the dungeon running and not actually doing anything. That aside, the new content was challenging, mostly fun, and it was not anything like the horror that was Wrath heroics where they just became dull and grindy. Bastion of Twilight, Blackwing Descent and Throne of the Four Winds were great raids and are still a lot of fun, even two tiers later.
PvP: Raids on capital cities seem to have died down (boo). I haven't played any new battlegrounds, so I cannot comment on them. Tol Barad was unbalanced as all hell, so much so that Blizzard had to fix it (it was almost impossible for the defending side to lose, and on some servers, there was win-swapping going on). So, while the content was "fun" (I hear), it wasn't very successful. So, meh...
4.1 - Rise of the Zandalari (Blizzard hates you, wants you to be miserable, and will still take your money)
OK, we were SUPPOSED to get a raid in 4.1. We didn't. It was supposed to be Firelands. It wasn't finished. We were also supposed to get a Caverns of Time raid AND the Abyssal Maw raid (both were canceled - fuck you Blizzard). So what did we get?
Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman, both retuned to be 5-man dungeons instead of 20-man and 10-man raids, respectively, new gear that was worse than the gear people already had, and a quest line that was hard and only gave you a cute panther cub (which was the only good thing in this entire patch).
Allow me to speak for everyone who plays WoW - FUCK YOU BLIZZARD! ZG and ZA retuned took a minimum of 50 minutes to complete, and that is if everyone is doing everything EXACTLY 100% correct with no room for error. Any errors happen, and the time you are spending in these places jumps. Good runs were taking 75 minutes per. Unacceptable time for a 5-man dungeon where the gear you get isn't better than the gear you could earn from raiding existing raids, and these were actually harder content than the existing raids. Aside from the cute panther cub pet you got, the only good thing about this was the trailer video that had Horde players cheering the much underused Troll leader Vol'jin saying "The Horde is my people! If it be war ya bringing, then I stand against ya!" People yelling "Vol'jin for President" or "Vol'jin for Warchief" was kinda cool, for about 15 minutes.
4.1 sucked. Anyone who liked it and had "fun" in ZA and ZG has too much time on their hands and not enough to do. I was just angry through most of this patch.
4.2 - Rage in the Firelands (Delayed from 4.1 and not very good)
OK, there is nothing wrong with the Firelands raid, in and of itself. The problem is that this is all that this patch was. One raid. And it's hard for people to get through. Even on normal levels. Challenging is one thing, but some of these bosses were just mechanically so hard, that the challenge wasn't even fun. It was great for the top tier raiding guilds, and I don't want to sound like an "entitled casual player," but we needed SOMETHING to prepare us before going into this. A dungeon or two would not have been out line. So, it was delayed, it was good, and it was hard, and there was nothing to help the player attune to what they would be doing so less-than hardcore players were at extreme disadvantage. Meanwhile, hardcore guilds who do nothing but play WoW were facerolling this in less than three weeks... on heroic.
So what did the rest of us get? A daily quest chain of suck to open up a base in the Firelands. Why did it suck? Because you had to do the same quests, every day, for three weeks, JUST TO FINISH IT. Were these hard? Nope. Were they boring? YES. And the story reveal at the end WAS NOT WORTH IT. It was a good story, but it was not worth three weeks of pain and suffering in boredom to get to it. This was when I really thought about dropping out of WoW.
4.3 - Hour of Twilight (Now, I'm glad I didn't unsub!)
I am not saying that the latest patch makes up for about 8 months of bad to "meh" content, but it really helps. Here's why:
- 3 new dungeons, each takes about 25 minutes to complete, each drops better gear than older dungeons, and a revamp of the point system means NO MORE FUCKING TROLL RUNS. Fuck ZA and ZG, by the way.
- Raid Finder - You can use this like the Dungeon Finder to get into an easy mode 25-man run of the latest Dragon Soul raid. Gear is better than dungeon gear, not as good as doing the raid proper, but DPS players are FINALLY in demand and don't have to wait forever in queues.
- Transmogrification! You can change the gear you are wearing to any gear you want, so long as it is the same type. So you can make the ugly tier 12 look like the nice tier 1 (if you can get it or have it). I am very sadly addicted to this in some BAD ways. More on that later.
- Dragon Soul Raid - while I haven't done it yet, outside of the Raid Finder, it really makes use of the whole world in interesting ways. It's fun, it's challenging, the mechanics are easier to work with than Firelands was, so it is a little more forgiving.
Now, the new expansion, Mists of Pandaria, is coming out second quarter of 2012. Thankfully, Blizzard seems to understand that they have to put out expansions faster (Wrath of the Lich King was too long), and all signs point to Blizzard having learned their lesson. However, if I spend another year like this, being mostly frustrated by bad content... no scratch that... if I spend so much as a month subscribed to bad content, I will walk away from this game. With the free-to-play MMOs getting better all the time, the only reason why I have stuck with WoW is because of game quality, and Blizzard needs to make sure that they keep it up. This is why I haven't yet signed on to the "Commit to a year of WoW and get Diablo III free" deal yet. 1) I don't care about Diablo III and 2) I might leave WoW in the next year if Pandaria isn't great.