[& let's get to ripping--Cataclysm and Rift]
I don't mean ripping in a bad way. Well perhaps in some areas but whatever.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm picks up right where Wrath of the Lich King left off. Arthas is dead and the world of Azeroth needs someone else to come along and stick it's firey angry bits in it. Cue Deathwing (dubbed "Emo-Jaw" by Amber) blasting out of the center of the planet. If you don't know *why* Deathwing is down there, I suggest here. If you don't care like my husband who won't read a book unless it has pretty pictures or something to do with Diablo III, then short version is that Azeroth-C'thulhu made him crazy, now he wants to kill everything. Or go listen to The Cure and Morrissey and write about how unfair the other aspects treat him. Either way.
The result of this dragon tantrum tears the world apart...in places. I don't think Blizzard really understands what natural disasters do. Tsunamis don't just break open statues, they leave everything looking like this. Earthquakes do this, not just cause spikes to attach themselves to everything. "But it's a video game!" you say. Oh alright, fine but in a world full of blue space goats and talking cows, a bit of realism doesn't hurt.
I started over as a Tauren Paladin and why yes it was marvelous. The zones in Azeroth to start with were new and fresh. Mulgore wasn't "Mul-bore", Silverpine forest had some of the best cut scenes in the game, Desolace actually kept me interested. But Northern Barrens? Meh. Dustwallow Marsh? Snooze fest. Not much had changed. It's sort of hit or miss with "zones we cared a lot about" and "zones we didn't care fuck all about" and it's more than apparent. Instances are pretty much the same--with the exception of SFK that's been taken and made into a level 80 hell-hole--but the only thing that has changed is the fact that the levels are different. Goodie.
I will say that Badlands actually had a quest line where I cried. Like a bitch. And Southern Barrens made me hate Alliance in a way that my Druid hippie ways would not allow in the previous expansions. So my vote for "Most Bestests Zones" go for those two.
So Mrs. Kanatlu, defender of light, Sunwalker extraordinarie makes it to level 60 and time for Outland and---why is this buggy as hell? Quests don't complete, quests are missing, mob spawn rates are horrible and it only gets *a little* better in Northrend. Forgot you made 2 other games previously, hmm? On top of that, if you've had multiple toons before, leveling through all of this goop again slows the game down immensely. Yes, yes, heirloom items and "what did I expect, Blizzard to hand me a free ticket to 80?" but someone should've taken a look at the zones at least a little bit.
And don't talk to me about rep grinding every faction ever made or I'll come in there and eat your heart.
Now we make it to 80 and Hyjal is first which is somewhere between epic and amazing if you're the least bit of a lore junky, Vaz'jir which was like getting teeth pulled, Deepholm which I went through in a haze, Uldum which had a hilarious story line and finally Twilight Highlands, the zone with THE most epic cutscene. After all of this triumph, my little lady cow stands with her mallet at level 85 and...
And it's WoW. You run dungeons. You get rep. You get badges. You use rep and badges to get more gear. Rinse. Repeat. But isn't every MMO? I just sort of wish it wasn't...that obvious. There was a lot of QQ about how Heroic Level Dungeons were harder than what they were in Wrath... which cased the rest of us cranky-old-ass-elite-mother-fuckers to laugh at those people who never saw Shattered Halls at release or the fact Mags had 35k crushes in a time where tanks had maybe 25k health. Did any of them fight Kael'Thas with the gravity turned off and having to fight 5 guys at once? Kil'Jaden when fire bombs and dragon orbs had to be controlled in the middle of a twenty five man? Hard? Ozruk in Stonecore is "hard" but everything else just requires you to have half a brain, a sense of coordination, and the understanding that you might fail the first couple of times. Which apparently a lot of "Wrath kiddies" don't.
Yes, this is me sounding elitest. No, I don't really care. It's like how you bitch about your iPhone 3 because it's not a 4 and your grandfather who had no electricity in his house looks as you wanting secretly to smack you in the face but won't because you're family. Shut it and enjoy your new toys. And get off my lawn.
In the end, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is...World of Warcraft. If you've played WoW before, you know what to expect. Go kill X of creatures, bring this back, talk to this tosser, don't stand in fire, blah blah blah. It's a lot of glossy paint with great moments of "Ooh, ahh!" but if you've played it before and don't have friends to play it with (like I do) or have limited your playing time (like I have) then obviously you're going to get bored.
Unless you're like my hamster who finds every fortune cookie new, exciting, and must engorge itself every time it's placed in front of him.
____
Now Rift is a game made by Tiron and it's tag line is "We're not in Azeroth anymore."
Hot damn. +100 to you Rift for running up and giving the middle finger to Blizzard instead of running and crying like most of the gaming word does in fear.
The word of Telera is divided into two factions, Guardian and Defiant, or dubbed by Defiants on the forum boards: "The Catholic Church and Terminators". You are the last people alive in a dying world. Regalos and his blood swarm are kinda taking everything and going to consume it like popcorn. You, as an Ascendant (special snowflake you) get sent back in time to stop Regalos (Skynet) from breaking free with your mad skills (Terminators) or you get sent back in time to stop those heathens from unleashing Regalos (Satan) instead of just sitting around looking all pious and shit saying, "Well, it's not *my* fault." (Catholic Church)
With these two sides, there's 3 races, 4 "callings" and 8 "souls" per calling to pick. Sound complicated but it ain't. Pick your side, pick big guys, elves, or humans, pick do you want to be agile melee DPS, Magic DPS, healing, or big swack-y melee DPS and get to rolling. Everything after that, however is up to you. Do you want to call lightning AND plague? You can do that. How about be a self healing tank? You can do that too. There's also souls for PvP only which IS SOMETHING BLIZZARD JUST REALIZED THAT PVP AND PVE DO NOT HAVE TO HAVE THE SAME SKILL SETS KTHNXBAI.
/breathes. The bad? Alright.
You're dumped into the world after your time travel o' rama and there's your basic go kill X, go get me that quests though, I must say in a knock to them, the quest text is not very...deep. "Bartholomew Cubbins must know what is causing the troll plague. Go get 5 Roc Talons to further his experiments." Well what troll plague? Why are bird feet going to do anything? Why are you trying to save the trolls and they've pretty much caved my head in for the last 20 minutes as I've tried to run through this zone? I know most people don't read the quest text but I stopped after a while for it being so pedantic. Quests rewards are pretty predictable too--oh look, there's a piece of armor that's got +1 more of the stats I care about than the one I have. The queues are some where between bloody long and fuck all and the spawn rates are somewhere between "Dinosaurs" and "Fire ants". Either they're rarer than rocking horse poop or they're attached to your body like Charlie Sheen is attached to porn stars. It's really annoying. I spent 20 minutes waiting on a jar to pop. A JAR. But the good?
You don't have to wait if you don't want to. Extra-dimensional monsters are usually running around and they're going to put their foot in the town you're questing in or pretty much in the entire area if you and your cohorts don't stop it. Obviously this is an incentive to prevent Rifts from spreading their ick factor all over Telera. But what's a rift look like? They're kinda obvious--being one of the elements: dark, life, water, earth, and a supposed fire rift, everything turns to shit in that area when you walk into it (dark sky, rumbling) or a little swirly mass on your minimap says, "HERE BE MONSTERS FFUUU-". The other incentive from doing rifts is that you get nice currency to buy loot depending on how much you did while in the rift. Hot damn.
The queues are long because quite frankly, I don't think Tirion was expecting their game to be this popular. Less lag means you have to be gate keepers which is great for all the people already *logged on* but when I'm sitting 617 in a queue that's going to be 2hrs, my eyebrow is going to twitch and make me get a sandwich and watch Top Gear. To combat this, they have opened new servers and have been *very* responsive to their player base---not just "We appreciate your patience and sorry for the downtime." but actually say on forums, "Hey, guys, we're sorry, let me tell you *exactly* what's going on." It's a nice change from other games I can tell you that ::gives side eye to Ghostcrawler::.
Instances? Well...I'm level 21 and haven't done anything because I haven't really had to. But I'm pretty sure with Rock leveling fast, we'll happily skip to Iron Tombs one day. Maybe. Jei can only play on the weekends and the weekends is when Raine and Brent do stuff so I'm pretty sure I'm just going to end up pugging it. And there's PvP but I'm not a PvP hog so I'm the wrong person to ask about that but I have heard that it's tons of fun.
In short, I love the game and it's got none of the major growing pains that Aion or FFXIV did. And that's enough to make me want to sleep with it.
Good Night and Good Luck.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm picks up right where Wrath of the Lich King left off. Arthas is dead and the world of Azeroth needs someone else to come along and stick it's firey angry bits in it. Cue Deathwing (dubbed "Emo-Jaw" by Amber) blasting out of the center of the planet. If you don't know *why* Deathwing is down there, I suggest here. If you don't care like my husband who won't read a book unless it has pretty pictures or something to do with Diablo III, then short version is that Azeroth-C'thulhu made him crazy, now he wants to kill everything. Or go listen to The Cure and Morrissey and write about how unfair the other aspects treat him. Either way.
The result of this dragon tantrum tears the world apart...in places. I don't think Blizzard really understands what natural disasters do. Tsunamis don't just break open statues, they leave everything looking like this. Earthquakes do this, not just cause spikes to attach themselves to everything. "But it's a video game!" you say. Oh alright, fine but in a world full of blue space goats and talking cows, a bit of realism doesn't hurt.
I started over as a Tauren Paladin and why yes it was marvelous. The zones in Azeroth to start with were new and fresh. Mulgore wasn't "Mul-bore", Silverpine forest had some of the best cut scenes in the game, Desolace actually kept me interested. But Northern Barrens? Meh. Dustwallow Marsh? Snooze fest. Not much had changed. It's sort of hit or miss with "zones we cared a lot about" and "zones we didn't care fuck all about" and it's more than apparent. Instances are pretty much the same--with the exception of SFK that's been taken and made into a level 80 hell-hole--but the only thing that has changed is the fact that the levels are different. Goodie.
I will say that Badlands actually had a quest line where I cried. Like a bitch. And Southern Barrens made me hate Alliance in a way that my Druid hippie ways would not allow in the previous expansions. So my vote for "Most Bestests Zones" go for those two.
So Mrs. Kanatlu, defender of light, Sunwalker extraordinarie makes it to level 60 and time for Outland and---why is this buggy as hell? Quests don't complete, quests are missing, mob spawn rates are horrible and it only gets *a little* better in Northrend. Forgot you made 2 other games previously, hmm? On top of that, if you've had multiple toons before, leveling through all of this goop again slows the game down immensely. Yes, yes, heirloom items and "what did I expect, Blizzard to hand me a free ticket to 80?" but someone should've taken a look at the zones at least a little bit.
And don't talk to me about rep grinding every faction ever made or I'll come in there and eat your heart.
Now we make it to 80 and Hyjal is first which is somewhere between epic and amazing if you're the least bit of a lore junky, Vaz'jir which was like getting teeth pulled, Deepholm which I went through in a haze, Uldum which had a hilarious story line and finally Twilight Highlands, the zone with THE most epic cutscene. After all of this triumph, my little lady cow stands with her mallet at level 85 and...
And it's WoW. You run dungeons. You get rep. You get badges. You use rep and badges to get more gear. Rinse. Repeat. But isn't every MMO? I just sort of wish it wasn't...that obvious. There was a lot of QQ about how Heroic Level Dungeons were harder than what they were in Wrath... which cased the rest of us cranky-old-ass-elite-mother-fuckers to laugh at those people who never saw Shattered Halls at release or the fact Mags had 35k crushes in a time where tanks had maybe 25k health. Did any of them fight Kael'Thas with the gravity turned off and having to fight 5 guys at once? Kil'Jaden when fire bombs and dragon orbs had to be controlled in the middle of a twenty five man? Hard? Ozruk in Stonecore is "hard" but everything else just requires you to have half a brain, a sense of coordination, and the understanding that you might fail the first couple of times. Which apparently a lot of "Wrath kiddies" don't.
Yes, this is me sounding elitest. No, I don't really care. It's like how you bitch about your iPhone 3 because it's not a 4 and your grandfather who had no electricity in his house looks as you wanting secretly to smack you in the face but won't because you're family. Shut it and enjoy your new toys. And get off my lawn.
In the end, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is...World of Warcraft. If you've played WoW before, you know what to expect. Go kill X of creatures, bring this back, talk to this tosser, don't stand in fire, blah blah blah. It's a lot of glossy paint with great moments of "Ooh, ahh!" but if you've played it before and don't have friends to play it with (like I do) or have limited your playing time (like I have) then obviously you're going to get bored.
Unless you're like my hamster who finds every fortune cookie new, exciting, and must engorge itself every time it's placed in front of him.
____
Now Rift is a game made by Tiron and it's tag line is "We're not in Azeroth anymore."
Hot damn. +100 to you Rift for running up and giving the middle finger to Blizzard instead of running and crying like most of the gaming word does in fear.
The word of Telera is divided into two factions, Guardian and Defiant, or dubbed by Defiants on the forum boards: "The Catholic Church and Terminators". You are the last people alive in a dying world. Regalos and his blood swarm are kinda taking everything and going to consume it like popcorn. You, as an Ascendant (special snowflake you) get sent back in time to stop Regalos (Skynet) from breaking free with your mad skills (Terminators) or you get sent back in time to stop those heathens from unleashing Regalos (Satan) instead of just sitting around looking all pious and shit saying, "Well, it's not *my* fault." (Catholic Church)
With these two sides, there's 3 races, 4 "callings" and 8 "souls" per calling to pick. Sound complicated but it ain't. Pick your side, pick big guys, elves, or humans, pick do you want to be agile melee DPS, Magic DPS, healing, or big swack-y melee DPS and get to rolling. Everything after that, however is up to you. Do you want to call lightning AND plague? You can do that. How about be a self healing tank? You can do that too. There's also souls for PvP only which IS SOMETHING BLIZZARD JUST REALIZED THAT PVP AND PVE DO NOT HAVE TO HAVE THE SAME SKILL SETS KTHNXBAI.
/breathes. The bad? Alright.
You're dumped into the world after your time travel o' rama and there's your basic go kill X, go get me that quests though, I must say in a knock to them, the quest text is not very...deep. "Bartholomew Cubbins must know what is causing the troll plague. Go get 5 Roc Talons to further his experiments." Well what troll plague? Why are bird feet going to do anything? Why are you trying to save the trolls and they've pretty much caved my head in for the last 20 minutes as I've tried to run through this zone? I know most people don't read the quest text but I stopped after a while for it being so pedantic. Quests rewards are pretty predictable too--oh look, there's a piece of armor that's got +1 more of the stats I care about than the one I have. The queues are some where between bloody long and fuck all and the spawn rates are somewhere between "Dinosaurs" and "Fire ants". Either they're rarer than rocking horse poop or they're attached to your body like Charlie Sheen is attached to porn stars. It's really annoying. I spent 20 minutes waiting on a jar to pop. A JAR. But the good?
You don't have to wait if you don't want to. Extra-dimensional monsters are usually running around and they're going to put their foot in the town you're questing in or pretty much in the entire area if you and your cohorts don't stop it. Obviously this is an incentive to prevent Rifts from spreading their ick factor all over Telera. But what's a rift look like? They're kinda obvious--being one of the elements: dark, life, water, earth, and a supposed fire rift, everything turns to shit in that area when you walk into it (dark sky, rumbling) or a little swirly mass on your minimap says, "HERE BE MONSTERS FFUUU-". The other incentive from doing rifts is that you get nice currency to buy loot depending on how much you did while in the rift. Hot damn.
The queues are long because quite frankly, I don't think Tirion was expecting their game to be this popular. Less lag means you have to be gate keepers which is great for all the people already *logged on* but when I'm sitting 617 in a queue that's going to be 2hrs, my eyebrow is going to twitch and make me get a sandwich and watch Top Gear. To combat this, they have opened new servers and have been *very* responsive to their player base---not just "We appreciate your patience and sorry for the downtime." but actually say on forums, "Hey, guys, we're sorry, let me tell you *exactly* what's going on." It's a nice change from other games I can tell you that ::gives side eye to Ghostcrawler::.
Instances? Well...I'm level 21 and haven't done anything because I haven't really had to. But I'm pretty sure with Rock leveling fast, we'll happily skip to Iron Tombs one day. Maybe. Jei can only play on the weekends and the weekends is when Raine and Brent do stuff so I'm pretty sure I'm just going to end up pugging it. And there's PvP but I'm not a PvP hog so I'm the wrong person to ask about that but I have heard that it's tons of fun.
In short, I love the game and it's got none of the major growing pains that Aion or FFXIV did. And that's enough to make me want to sleep with it.
Good Night and Good Luck.