How to Make The Most of World of Warcraft
On wow gold August 21st, 2009, after a cheap wow gold flurry of leaks and hints, Blizzard finally announced to the world the latest entry in its wildly popular Warcraft franchise. The new expansion, called World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, debuted with an impressive five minute trailer video that promised wide sweeping changes were buy wow gold coming to the beloved classic. Players would be treated to buy cheap wow gold two new playable races (the werewolflike Worgen for the Alliance and the Gnomeesque Goblins for the Horde), flying mount travel in wow gold cheap Azeroth, new race and class combinations, new monsters, dungeons and raids, hundreds of new quests, an buying wow gold intriguing new secondary skill in ffxiv power leveling archeology, heroic versions of classic instances, new Battlegrounds, a Guild Leveling System complete with achievements, a new character progression path and much more. Look closer though and you’ll see that beyond the laundry list of changes, there is something fundamentally very different about Blizzard’s approach to designing and developing Cataclysm. You see, where Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King looked to expand World of Warcraft’s gameplay, physical game world, and lore, up and outward, Cataclysm looks instead to improve upon what’s already there and more, to change it irreversibly. The announcement trailer proudly proclaims; “Azeroth Reforged: Classic Zones Forever Changed By The Cataclysm”, a bold statement, but one that should give players a bit of insight into how Blizzard expects you to get the most out of its latest entry. Consider for a moment, that when Wrath of the Lich King and Burning Crusade were released, players found that there was little to no incentive to return to the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. While new races were added to Burning Crusade, if you were a Nigh Elf, Gnome, Tauren or any of the original races there wasn’t much reason to go back and roll an alt. Instead you were encouraged to pick one of the two new races and play from their point of view. Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King in particular were more about refining WoW’s core gameplay, and giving long time subscribers new ways of playing and new areas to level in. What Blizzard have done with Cataclysm is deviously brilliant. Without having to create entirely new continents they’ve come up with a scenario that will allow them to upset Classic Azeroth, to change areas and places we’ve been to and by now, know like the back of our hands, and to make it all worth your while to go back to the very beginning and witness a skewed, twisted version of Classic WoW all over again. This is why the new level cap extends only to 85, the focus on this expansion is on starting over, in a very real sense everything old is new again. You’re encouraged to look inward, rather than outward to what might lie beyond Northrend. Blizzard could easily have introduced a new hero class in Cataclysm, but they didn’t, because that isn’t how they want you to play it, they wanted as much as possible to keep the focus on the classic WoW zones. Don’t believe me? Look no further than the official FAQ Blizzard released for Cataclysm: ” As we developed new content and expansions, we learned a lot of techniques to provide players with a better game experiencebut the majority of the new content we were creating was for highlevel characters only. We felt we could apply the lessons of Outland and Northrend to improve the gameplay experience while leveling in the original two continents. Imagine revisiting a familiar zone like Darkshore only to find Auberdine destroyed by the cataclysmand then discovering entirely new towns and quests in other parts of the zone. Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms are central to World of Warcraft lore, and we want those areas to remain an important part of the game, not just a place to train or auction. Our goal is to make questing, leveling, and the overall story more fun for new, returning, and existing players. By redesigning areas of the original continents and introducing new content that matches or exceeds the quality of Wrath of the Lich King, we can revitalize the nostalgia and coolness of Azeroth.”
