View from the Road: The Big Goodbye

[Nuke_em_05]

[Do I, or anyone, have to buy the expansion?]

Short answer: No.

Less short answer:

Everyone will get the Cataclysm patch to the old world. If you have only vanilla WoW, you will still have changed zones and quests in Azeroth.

What you pay for in the expansion are access to the two new races. I don't know about the new class options on existing races though. You will also get a level cap of 85, and access to the all-new zones for 80+ in Azeroth. New endgame raids/instances.

That's the general gist of it.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm/faq/

There's a lot of explanation in there. If you can find it...

 

[daskat]

One thing i like of WoW is that when i go to the big cities (Iron Forge, Stormwind, Dalaran,etc). i can see lot of pc running around. People forming groups, trading, chatting. I'm usually more a solo player than a team player and if i have to choose i prefer to quest, farm, grind alone than do it with others but i also like to see people running around in some situations. Since Burning Crusades came many places of the old content became desolated. For example while Stormwind is allways full of people Darnassus is usuallly empty. There many people at all time playing around Goldshire but Desolace is desolated almost all the time.
I think Blizzard kept the auction houses and most of the class trainers at old major cities so player would have to go back there again.And that make sence for me, quite depresing to start playing a new mmo and have the feeling that you are the only one playing it.
Blizzard could add a new continet or dimesion (i'm still waiting for the emerald dream... lol) but that probably would have made the old zonesmore the desolated, specially the areas in eastern kindom and kalimdor, since now with the group finder is much faster to level in instances than to quest in those areas. And at the other most of the people tend to rush to end content game and also tend to skip dificult or boring quest. And to make it worse if the area is already empty is almost imposible to find other players to run those quests.
I like the idea behind the new expansion cause i think it will bring back players to those areas even if they dont look and feel like they used to.

 

[Contun]

I'm so jealous.

Oh well, guess I'll just have to keep eyeing my g-mail every couple of hours and hope that I get in. I've been in the last two betas for the expansion so odds are on my side... right ...right?!

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

I'm excited about cataclysm. I left after sunwell and it will make me come back, at least for a month to see the new stuff.

Hopefully after 6 years they finally did away with everquest-style masochism gameplay. Anyone ever make the corpse hop run from Teldrassil to Ironforge? You were level 10 getting eaten by level 20 spiders and crocodiles.

Or how about the Shaman water totem quest "Run from one end of the barrens to another over and over again!" That is crap that games don't need anymore. Time sinks for the sake of sinking time that don't advance the story or improve your character.

 

[carpathic]

Count me amongst those who does not quite get why this is so huge. I mean understand mourning change, but..we often mod our games anyway. Is it because you have so little choice about what the Mods will be?

 

[sunpop]

Good burn all of azeroth to the ground that place sucks(now) and the only thing making me want kittenclysm is that they are destroying the place. Then I remember what most of the wow community is like these days and I refuse to buy it.

But just think of how different things would be if you logged into age of conan and it ran well, and people were actually playing it.

Don't reroll wait for The old republic funk we can crush those rebel scum together hell I'll even wear my rebel scum shirt my cousin gave me.

 

[PlasticTree]

I am now imagining a cataclysm that comes to some games I played.

..

Sounds fun, actually.

But now, I am imagining a cataclysm that comes to The Windwaker, and it's ocean that I love.

..

Horror. Nothing but pure horror.

 

[Kwaren]

The cataclysm came to my favorite game, Chromehounds.

R.I.P. Sal Kar. You defended yourself valiantly until the day they shut down the servers.

 

[Archon]

View from the Road: The Big Goodbye

What if the Cataclysm came to your favorite game?

Read Full Article

I think why WOW: Cataclysm strikes such a chord among WOW players is that it demonstrates the ultimate irrelevancy of your character?s deeds. You are NOT changing the world. You are NOT an epic hero. Your deeds are meaningless, and the real events of the world are caused by the unseen hands of people far more powerful than yourselves.

It?s one thing if the world gets blown up and it?s your fault. Another entirely if you?re a self-styled defender of the world and it gets blown up and it turns out you were irrelevant before, during, and after it?s blow-up.

My $0.02.

 

[TundraWolf]

GTAIV in a destroyed Liberty City? I'm conjuring images of I Am Legend and what little we've seen of I Am Alive.

Neither of those are bad things. In fact, I dare-say it'd be one of the better games I've played in a long time.

 

[Sikachu]

snip

I think you missed a trick here by talking about TF2 instead of how Valve actually has ruined CSS by releasing a significant patch that is mostly comprised of cosmetic nuisances but also seems to have gimped some of the weapons, changed all the spray patterns, changed mouse tracking, and ruined character movement so that it now feels like you are ice-skating around maps. Six years old and still the most popular game on steam, WHY THE FUCK DID YOU HAVE SOME NOOB THIRD PARTY STUDIO FUCK WITH IT, VALVE?

I have a conspiracy theory as to why. People who play CSS rarely buy new games because it is so addictive and makes a lot of other multiplayer FPS seem pointless. Because you don't need to pay a subscription to play, Valve aren't really making any money off these people. So they hit upon the idea of ruining the game now, thereby encouraging migration and laying the groundwork for mass-migration when CSS2 comes out so as to avoid the situation they're in now in which CS1.6 is still the third most popular game on Steam. The release of L4D2 showed that Valve's ethos of not viewing their players as cash dispensers but as part of a relationship they need to nurture is well and truly dead, I wouldn't be that surprised to learn that they've taken this step too.

 

[RvLeshrac]

As a dedicated LOTRO player.. and one who isn't as tied to the word of Lore as many are, I would love to play that changed LOTRO game.

As soon as that happens, Tolkien Ent. and the Tolkien Estate will immediately step in and have the game shut down. Turbine has to walk a fine line when they approach the original story, even though they're given a fair amount of leeway with things not described in any of Tolkien's writings.

But even players like you and like myself, who love the lore, can look forward to a cataclysm in LoTRO: The Scouring of the Shire. One day the entire Shire is going to be wrecked, and I can't wait.

I don't know that that's *quite* the same thing. But yes, in 5 or 6 years, I'll expect to see a foul and barren Shire instance.

 

[The3rdEye]

What if the Cataclysm came to your favorite game?

If FFXI had experienced a cataclysm event I might still be playing it. Sometimes it's better to just rip everything apart and start from scratch than to add one more modification to a Frankenstein's-Monster-esque existence. But with FFXIV on the way... /drool

The obvious thing about this is: if you're new to WoW and start after all of this happens, the contrast will mean nothing to you (though, of course, the fundamental qualities of the game will be different, this difference would not exist subjectively speaking). If WoW's user base doubled, many of them wouldn't know or care about the differences. And that's to say nothing of whether the new design is actually better or not. I think it would be a little to early to tell either way.

Can't that be said for expansions or patches for any MMO though? Depending on when someone joins, they might not know about the "Pally Nerf" or w/e, they'll just see the world as it is at that moment. Even if someone doesn't play WoW, it's being marketed in such a way that it still has people thinking "Huh, I wonder what that's going to be like" and gets them signing on. That's not even taking into consideration the substantial amount of speculation and word of mouth advertising that Blizzard is getting by making such a large departure from the norm. Even if it flops, it's pretty cunning development any way you look at it.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

The article and comments bring up some very valid points, and I might miss Azeroth myself.

On the other hand: Goblins

Bring on the cataclysm.

Seriously though, MMOs are such an inappropriate medium for storytelling anyway, it doesn't really matter what happens. Anyone who comes in after the Cataclysm basically misses out on a big chunk of the story. Its like if someone bought Warcraft 3 today and they weren't able to play the first campaign. You could piece together what happened, but its not the same. The way I see it, what little mess of a story there is moves on with or without the player. And that's sad, Warcraft is too epic to have a "World of"

 

[Billion Backs]

I can't bloody wait. I don't mind seeing familiar worlds changed so much, and I think I'm going to get back to WoW again thanks to Cataclysm...

I've been skeptical, but now that I've seen all the revamped zones on wowhead, wow... It all looks so awesome =p

I loved exploring the old world back in vanilla, and I'm going to enjoy re-exploring it as a goblin warlock.

 

[Billion Backs]

anc[is]The article and comments bring up some very valid points, and I might miss Azeroth myself.

On the other hand: Goblins

Bring on the cataclysm.

Seriously though, MMOs are such an inappropriate medium for storytelling anyway, it doesn't really matter what happens. Anyone who comes in after the Cataclysm basically misses out on a big chunk of the story. Its like if someone bought Warcraft 3 today and they weren't able to play the first campaign. You could piece together what happened, but its not the same. The way I see it, what little mess of a story there is moves on with or without the player. And that's sad, Warcraft is too epic to have a "World of"

Well, Matrix Online did it. Or so I hear.

It was okay for some kind, although of course that kind of a game is at most suited for players that come early and stay till the end. It's probably not the best approach financially in terms of attracting new players, or maybe not. But it's been done before, and it's pretty cool.

 

[Vitor Goncalves]

I'm somewhat interested in cataclysm. I have never actually made it to the end game - the closest I ever got was to level 75 before all my friends jumped ship and there no longer seemed to be a reason to play. The grind up until the end was a lonely experience, filled with a handful of noobs like myself and awesomely equipped characters that verterans had rerolled. It was always a bit frustrating when someone would ask "what is your main" when I was playing as a level 30 or 40 rogue and I'd tell them the truth: that this WAS my main. I think I encountered perhaps a dozen other players questing through Azeroth - it wasn't until the outlands that I finally saw other players regularly and that took several honest to god days of my life to reach.

With the expansion, perhaps the trek to the end would be less tiresome, less irritating and actually feel like a multiplayer game and not a terrible, terrible single player RPG.

That could be the idea behind. For a "veteran" like me that knows every corner of the world its easy to level up, in few days. I personally actually create, level and delete to create and level new chars for fun, its my favourite part of the game because its the one that actually allows you to explore the vast world, instead of end game that these days its down to hang around in Dalaran and raid Icecrown, Vault of Archavon and Ruby Sanctum. So basically a wonderful MMO with the biggest virtual universe out there down to the same boring tasks over and over.
Maybe with Cataclysm levelling will be a challenge to veterans again and allow new people to enjoy with the company and stay. I think the reason why the community halted its growth on the last 3 years is exactly because of the lonely experience when starting a new char. You don't get help, you don't get groups for dungeons and you end up quitting after your trial/1 month/2 months subscription is over because the experience was terrible.

OT: I am with you in the bandwagon of nostalgia. redesign the entire world is quite harsh. Not the first time it happens in a MMO, nut its not the same as playing game original and then play a sequel. If you miss the original you can go back and play it again. In this case, you can't. The original will be gone for good, and if you miss it, you will remain missing it.