WoW: Cataclysm - SPOILERS WITHIN

I really hope they don't create capital cities for the new races. The ones they added for the Blood Elves and Draenei were ghost towns the last time I looked, populated only by a small handful of new players and people slogging back for profession training.

It's sad that they spent so much time working on those gorgeous cities, but didn't give people any reason to stay there once they could travel to the old capitals.

Scratched wrote:

One thing I am a bit pleased about: No new 'main' capital city like Shattrath or Dalaran.

I may be remembering this wrong, but I'm fairly sure they mentioned in one panel that there was a new hub city, they just aren't showing it yet.

At or close to the Maelstrom would be my bet.

The reason I don't think/hope they'll do another hub, is that all the new high level areas are spread out. Hyjal, Uldum, Grim Batol are the three I can remember straight away. This isn't most of the new high level content being on it's own continent, whether these areas are in their own instance remains to be seen though.

Elycion wrote:

MMO's seem to grow like cities. Eventually the original game is like the downtown area of a city, it gets old and run down and nobody really wants to go there anymore. Blizzard seems to be acting like a forward thinking city council and renovating their downtown to bring it new life, rather than letting it slide into urban decay and disuse.

To take your analogy a step further, Cataclysm is a bit like gentrification. Most major U.S. cities are seeing their downtowns come back to a degree. WoW is the same.

More to the point of the game and game design, consider Blizzard's perspective. Lots and lots of work went into creating Shattrath and Outlands. Both are ghost towns. Players will abandon Northrend, too, as soon as the expansion comes out.
So if you're Blizzard, do you create yet another world that will be abandoned down the road, or do you re-work something you already have?

That was a pretty easy call. I never really fell in love with Shattrath, and Outland grew old fast. Both are sad, depressing places to be endured rather than enjoyed.

I think Blizzard also is banking on the idea that people really, really love Azeroth. Can't wait to see what they do to the place.

Rem at Do Not Try This At Home put up a great blog post on why he thinks Cataclysm is a fantastic idea.

Rem wrote:

Cataclystic genius
It's on MMO Champion, on WoW.com, on Blizzard's official Cataclysm site and all over the blogs and news sites. The Cataclysm is coming. What's my take on it?

At the risk of sounding like a fanboy, this is simply a genius move. Why? Because it directly aims at core problems of the expansion mechanics and shoots them down with sniper precision.

Lethargy

We all know that one. As soon as a new expansion is announced, no matter how far in the future, everyone gradually begins to fall into that sense of "oh, why do anything, it will all be useless in just a little more than a year". Never mind that a year is an age in gaming terms, or that nothing you can do has any actual "use" beyond entertaining you in the first place anyway.

Instead, by announcing the end of the Old World, Blizzard turns lethargy into urgency. Suddenly, all those things you wanted to do "some time", but somehow always forfeited in favour of riding circles through Dalaran become things you need to do now, because in "only one year" you won't have a chance to do them any more. People won't tell their non-WoW friends they should "try the game, but better wait until the next xpac, it'll be better then", but instead to "come, come quick, you'll barely be able to see all the stuff in the time that's left!" whether this is actually true nor not.

Rather than suspending their subscriptions until the game version changes to 4.0, people will renew, just to run through all those places they will never be able to see again, ever. "Never again" are very strong words. They are better than anything when it comes to creating urgency and rattling the cage of a community, that, by and large, became stagnant in many of its ways.

Old content quality

To quote myself from yesterday: The moment you step through The Dark Portal, something happens to the quests. They suddenly become awesome.

See, the vast majority of the Old Azeroth quests is just plain boring. Yes, I know, that you might be nostalgic about this or that couple of gems, and that at least in the Plaguelands the storytelling reached a temporary high, and not having played in all the zones (yet), I leave room for the possibility that a nice chain or two might have escaped my attention. Also, the zones I have been in were nicely and diversely designed, the locations and positions made sense, unique atmospheres transpired. But when it comes to the very quests themselves, I spent the first 58 levels mostly with unimaginative tasks solved by unimaginative mechanics presented with unimaginative descriptions. Again, yes, there were exceptions and outstanding gems. But for the most part, everything these quests were concerned with was to make me cover as much ground and occupy as much of my bag space as possible.

The thing is, that in the Outlands, the proportions turn around. Instead of "10% awesome, 90% trash", I get 90% awesome, and the little trash that's left is easily and without much trouble handled on the way to the next original and in itself entertaining task. The difference in quality is immense, and could be already suspected when comparing the Draenei and Blood-elf starting zones with .. the rest of the low level game. It's not surprising either, there's two more years of experience and ideas working there. From what everyone is saying, there's another quantum leap in the WotLK content.

Blizzard knows this. They know, that most of their old content, to put it blunt, sucks. But there's nothing they can do about it, because if they spend an entire content update adding candy to some low level quests 90% of their player base already did a hundred times, everyone will laugh in their face, and most of it will be perceived as "dumbing down" anyway. Except, of course, if they redo the entire Old World and then add actually new and exciting quests.

Old content balance

I can't see into the past, but I do believe, that at some point (a.k.a. Vanilla-WoW), all the content, quests, dungeons, rewards, money, XP and difficulty were balanced with each other and resulted in an intensive game experience. The XP-curve was more flat, crafting worked slightly different, dungeons were harder, the quests fewer. But as of now, all Old Azeroth content is balanced for is getting you through it as fast as possible while still entertaining a notion of "the journey being worth it for the sake of the journey itself". You're being showered with XP and rushed through the levels at a pace that makes you wonder, why they don't just let you start at 55 and send you to the Outlands right as you leave your starter zone. Oh, wait, they do.

This is closely tied to the quality issue above. They know it's not the best they have in offer, so they just let you whiz through it. Redoing it from the ground and filling it with high quality content will enable them to restore a balance between content and progression, to really make the first 58-60 levels a worthy experience in itself, rather than just "the road to The Dark Portal", with shortcuts wherever possible.

Technology

The announcement of flying in the old zones was one of the points that created the most doubt about the validity of the leaked information. It was pointed out by many, that many of the buildings and structures in the Old World are not true 3D-objects, but just facades, consisting only of the parts that can be seen from the ground. It is the very reason, why flying mounts are only permitted in Outlands and Northrend - flying over Azeroth would let you see untextured and unmodelled back- and upsides, while turning the entire world into true 3D would just have been too huge an effort (more to that later). Of course, it kind of mashed well with the general notion of redoing Azeroth completely, but seemed to only underline how technologically non-feasible such an enterprise would be.

Here's the perk: the WoW-engine was created with this sort of "facade"-landscapes in mind. It doesn't work well when it has to render too many too large 3D-objects. This is why your frame-rate collapses upon entering the Outlands or Northrend. There, everything is in full 3D, which they just square-into-round style shoved into the old engine. They can't really update the engine either, however, because something like 80% of the existing content interacts with it in a very specific way. You'd have to redo that entire content completely ... see where we're going here?

Expect a major, and I mean major engine update for Cataclysm. And, to dispel fears, this doesn't mean the game will suddenly have much higher hardware requirements. The graphics style won't change, it's the staple of WoW and its eternal youth. But in the past 5-6 years, technological advances in rendering efficiency have been made (as always). Making use of those while still sticking to simplistic roots will result in a game that will look better and run faster. You can say you heard it here first (unless you heard it somewhere else before).

Publicity

No one removes old content. No one removes old content. No one ever removes old content. It's a principle so fundamental, that the leaked information seemed ridiculous for suggesting Blizzard would. Old content is something that a significant monetary investment was made into, and that is there now, paying for itself. You might want to streamline (i.e. accelerate) or polish (i.e. nerf) it, but you never remove it. It's real value, you don't just throw it away!

The complete Azeroth-revamp is a muscle-move by Blizzard that is simply unprecedented and carries so much weight, I am seriously lacking adjectives to describe it. We all know Blizzard is rich, and sitting on a near-guaranteed revenue. Which is why they are probably one of the very few companies who can afford it. Yesterday, Blizzard basically came out and said "we are taking this money we earned with WoW, and we are sticking it right back into WoW, to facilitate a never seen before quality leap within the life cycle of a single game". With people all over the blogosphere already singing nostalgic, sometimes sympathetic, sometimes hostile swan songs to WoW (again), they basically flipped everyone the bird and said "forget it, WoW isn't going anywhere, it's here to stay". You can bet that members of NCSoft (disclaimer: I am very excited about Aion and wish it luck and success!) and other companies with great aspirations cried themselves into sleep last night.

In an age when games take more than half a decade to develop only to ship in a buggy and unpolished state, Blizzard stood up and said they'll make a game nearly with the content scale of original WoW within a year. And for all the joking about Soon (tm), deep down, everyone knows they'll pull it off. It is an incredibly bold move, which makes it clear, that WoW is not the ageing, helpless prey, out there for the challengers to hunt - it is the mighty giant, who smashes all opposition and feasts on their remains. Whether it will indeed play out this way, time will tell. But it is this incredibly strong message that transpired.

To quote myself from yesterday: The moment you step through The Dark Portal, something happens to the quests. They suddenly become awesome.

Gonna have to disagree here. Questing hasn't changed since day 1. I did 2 of those flyover quest thingys in Hellfire, then immediately ended up back on "Kill 20 of these things," or, "Get a random drop off this mob."

I notice a huge jump in quest quality between Azeroth and Outland.

Thanks for that blog post, Mord. He's got a very interesting take on stuff.

Well NSMike, you have to admit that the Draenei and Blood elf started zones are dramatically better than the old world ones.

I liked the Barrens, though it was spread out quite a bit. I can't help but admire the fact that it seems intentional that underused zones get demolished and overhauled and spread out zones get divided and revamped. Azhara is kind of an outlying, upper level, neutral region way at the end of ashenvale. So what do they do with it? Attach it to a faction hub city and split it into two lower level zones.

NSMike wrote:
To quote myself from yesterday: The moment you step through The Dark Portal, something happens to the quests. They suddenly become awesome.

Gonna have to disagree here. Questing hasn't changed since day 1. I did 2 of those flyover quest thingys in Hellfire, then immediately ended up back on "Kill 20 of these things," or, "Get a random drop off this mob."

I think it speaks more to the grouping/annoyance factor of the quests themselves, and the rewards. In Azeroth, the quests for a zone were scattered all over all at once, which was exceptionally annoying for a place like Ashenvale on foot. The Barrens, Plaguelands, Desolace, Feralas, Stonetalon (x100), Wetlands, and Loch Modan are all pretty bad about this. Once you hit Outland, the quests do group alot better, so that you eventually explore the whole zone but you're doing several things in the same area of that zone at once. Also, while Outlands does have the "okay now kill 20 boars" quests, they aren't so ubiquitous as they are back in Azeroth. The quests, on average, tend to be more engaging and interesting.

Interesting post. Im still not entirely convinced.
I do hope he is right about the engine update, because before Blizzcon I thought that would be the one thing which would actually be in the expansion. But they never talked about such an update, beside changing the water effects.
And as much as I like the style of WoW, especially characters could use a polygon upgrade together with terrain textures.

Outland is better, but it's not awesome, imho.

When I hear the Cataclysm talk vs the SWTOR talk, they don't really compare. I mean, Cataclysm sounds good, but it doesn't sound like KOTOR the MMO in terms of single player story depth, full voice acting, and levelling exclusively through class-specific quest lines. Cataclysm sounds like the natural progression WoW has been on (questing improving each expansion). If it were more, I'm pretty sure they would be shouting it from the rooftops.

SWTOR is basically claiming to be the fulfillment of AoC's destiny quest idea.

In any case, the proof is in the pudding. I'm looking forward to both.

Well NSMike, you have to admit that the Draenei and Blood elf started zones are dramatically better than the old world ones.

You are 100% right here. I remember leveling my Belf pally a couple years ago using their starting zone... I was at 25 before I left the place, in less than 2 weeks. Couldn't even come CLOSE to saying that about Durotar and The Barrens.

Blue wrote:

[color=blue]
The horde have finally conquered Southshore. [/color]

What? Not on my watch they ever did that. On Blackhand especially Tarren Mill was always on the losing end. Every Halloween saw many dead horde too.

I'm leveling my orc shaman in Durotar and the Barrens as we speak. After about two weeks, I'm ... level 24, with a few more Barrens quests in the log.

Keep in mind, I'm talking about vanilla WoW, no expansion, no level acceleration. Your experience now is vastly different, guaranteed.

I'm with you, Krin, I was immediately like..."But I've punished Hordie griefers there many a time!"

One thing that has me wondering...

Northrend may not be part of the old world, but it is on the same planet. Will the Cataclysm leave Northrend untouched?

NSMike wrote:

One thing that has me wondering...

Northrend may not be part of the old world, but it is on the same planet. Will the Cataclysm leave Northrend untouched?

Probably, since it's not an old enough region for Blizzard to be able to specifically exploit people's need to get misty eyed and nostalgic about the good ol days.

I kid.

Sort've.

They said Northrend would have changes, but it would be very mild compared to what the rest of the world gets.

What I'm hoping will happen is better integration of low level and high level areas. Since the new stuff in Cataclysm is spread out around the reshaped old world, how cool would it be to actually have high level and low level content in the same zones? As it stands, starting a new character (or coming back with some old characters, as I am), the only way to see what you're working towards is in the major cities. It would be much cooler if you could see higher level characters, their gear, their spells, the kinds of things they're fighting, all that--out in the world where you're questing too.

Okay, probably not all that cool on PVP servers, but I don't care.

I could be totally wrong, though. I guess a lot of people spend a significant amount of time raiding. Lower level characters aren't going to get a window on that (though it would be nice if they could... as squires or something like that).

BadKen wrote:

What I'm hoping will happen is better integration of low level and high level areas. Since the new stuff in Cataclysm is spread out around the reshaped old world, how cool would it be to actually have high level and low level content in the same zones? As it stands, starting a new character (or coming back with some old characters, as I am), the only way to see what you're working towards is in the major cities. It would be much cooler if you could see higher level characters, their gear, their spells, the kinds of things they're fighting, all that--out in the world where you're questing too.

Okay, probably not all that cool on PVP servers, but I don't care.

I could be totally wrong, though. I guess a lot of people spend a significant amount of time raiding. Lower level characters aren't going to get a window on that (though it would be nice if they could... as squires or something like that).

What you're describing is vanilla WoW STV post-ZG. It was a nightmare of ganking on PvP servers, and probably no picnic on PvE.

I kind of got the idea that we would be seeing high level toons visiting places where lowbies level. That always impressed me as a lowbie, in vanilla.

NSMike wrote:

What you're describing is vanilla WoW STV post-ZG. It was a nightmare of ganking on PvP servers, and probably no picnic on PvE.

Yeah, I was there, though not on a PVP server.

I guess my dream is just a care bear pipe dream.

NSMike wrote:

I was at 25 before I left the place, in less than 2 weeks. Couldn't even come CLOSE to saying that about Durotar and The Barrens.

I'm leveling my orc shaman in Durotar and the Barrens as we speak. After about two weeks, I'm ... level 24, with a few more Barrens quests in the log.

That said, I've leveled in Azuremyst/Bloodmyst, too, and the leveling hubs there are a lot more compact and efficient than the other starting areas. There's a little bit of running around, but it's not nearly as bad as some of the other starting areas. (I'm looking at you, Darkshore.)

No complaints here that I got Ghost Wolf form at 16 and a mount at 20. I'll never figure out why there was so much QQing about that.

The flip side of that is that I've already out-leveled Stonetalon for the most part. Which is not necessarily a bad thing -- all the Alliance who hang out there seem to be a good 50 or so levels above me.

There's a few videos out (one with the most hilarious voiceover I have ever heard) showcasing the changes to Azeroth, and admittedly it's pretty funtastic. I am allowing my cynicism to wane slightly in light of the following two bits of info: Titan's Path and this description of the stat change justification:

Blizzard wrote:

I'm talking about very hardcore raiders who no longer could eyeball a piece of gear with any degree of authority. I might believe that some very few of you are so proficient with the math as to be able to eyeball the stats, but I think you are vastly overestimating the number of players who can or do. Remember, the formula to convert armor penetration into damage was so complicated that we had to take the unusual step of actually spelling out how it was calculated.

I was doing some memory lane thinking the other day, and while the unification of spellpower and hit/crit rating was indeed a huge change, Vanilla WoW did not have the following stats:

crit/hit rating
haste
Armor Penetration
resilience

You had, for the most part, vanilla stats with SOME attack power. Crit and hit increases worked on a strict percentage level. Look, for example, at the Bloodfang set. Not only is it really poorly itemized, like everything else in vanilla WoW, but it's got no ArP, no haste, no crit/hit rating. It's str/agi/crit%/hit% across the board.

Currently the juggling of 9,000 stats for optimum efficiency has led to general confusion even among the theorycrafters, AND it's forced many player (tanks especially) to carry multiple gear sets. In vanilla WoW you didn't have a soak set, a threat set, a resist set, a multi mob set, and an avoidance set -- you had "tank set" and "resist set."

The more I think about it, the more I see this stat homogenization to be going back to WoW's roots -- not oversimplifying the mechanics.

Regarding stat streamlining, I think the DK is an excellent example of how itemization might look in Cataclysm. DK tanks don't have to be terribly picky about tanking weapons. Generally speaking, you want a decent amount of stamina and either strength or agility. (Sorry, hunters! Oh? You don't like it when somebody rolls on your weapon? Welcome to everybody else's WoW pre-Wrath! :old:) However, there are clear cases when a given weapon within an ilvl is more appropriate for tanking than not.

I will present three ilvl 219 weapons as examples:

Abaddon - This is about as clear as a DK tanking weapon as you're going to get. It's not spectacular for damage or stats. Hit is extremely prevalent on plate in ilvl 213 (therefore making it unlikely that a DPSer would want any of it at all) and ArPen is really only strongly favored by Arms Warriors and DPSing Blood DK's. In any case, the amount of stamina means the weapon is shortchanged for damage stats. However, all of those stats are great tanking stats.

Ironsoul - Pretty middle of the road weapon. Not terribly offensive for either tanks or DPS but nothing to draw either group to it specifically.

Edge of Ruin - Very low amount of stamina and great damage stats make this a huge draw for DPS. I can't believe any knowledge tanking DK would waste a roll or DKP on this item.

I think you'll see this philosophy more often than not in Cataclysm. Blizz alludes to it with the reforging or whatever. Got Abbadon but hoped for Edge of Ruin? Well... too bad. What you'll get is an Ironsoul. The new item won't be best for DPS but will be better than what you had.

Reaper81 wrote:

Edge of Ruin - Very low amount of stamina and great damage stats make this a huge draw for DPS. I can't believe any knowledge tanking DK would waste a roll or DKP on this item.

Actually, it's the best starter tank weapon for DK this side of the Titansteel Destroyer.

Dr.Ghastly wrote:

Actually, it's the best starter tank weapon for DK this side of the Titansteel Destroyer.

Still, Reap's point is a solid one. None of those three weapons are terrible for Death knight tanks. Sure, they trade a bit here and there for threat vs stamina, but not terribly so.

Compare that to ilvl 219 druid tank choices, which are all over the map, and I can see why Blizzard is homogenizing things.

Dr.Ghastly wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:

Edge of Ruin - Very low amount of stamina and great damage stats make this a huge draw for DPS. I can't believe any knowledge tanking DK would waste a roll or DKP on this item.

Actually, it's the best starter tank weapon for DK this side of the Titansteel Destroyer.

I disagree. Marrowstrike is clearly better for tanking and drops in the same instance. The Agility, Stamina, and socket beat Edge of Ruin for DK tanking by a country mile. I didn't include it in the list because there is a strong argument that can be made that a hunter or druid "should" get Marrowstrike before a DK.

EDIT: And this sort of discussion is what I think Blizz is aiming for with Cataclysm. We're not discussing comparative stat values (haste vs hit [soft cap or not?] vs expertise [soft cap or not?] vs arpen [a bajillion vs none?] vs crit vs AP) but rather a given item's "role" and appropriateness.

Seth wrote:
Dr.Ghastly wrote:

Actually, it's the best starter tank weapon for DK this side of the Titansteel Destroyer.

Still, Reap's point is a solid one. None of those three weapons are terrible for Death knight tanks. Sure, they trade a bit here and there for threat vs stamina, but not terribly so.

Compare that to ilvl 219 druid tank choices, which are all over the map, and I can see why Blizzard is homogenizing things.

I didn't say it was a bad weapon.