World of Warcraft: Catalysm
World of Warcraft Cataclysm Resources
World of Warcraft Cataclysm Races
Apr 10th
Ever wonder how races plays its role in this latest WoW expansion? Below is a Cataclysm Guide to races to get you started.
Varian Wynn, the new leader of the Alliance, hates Orcs, and Garrosh, the new leader of the Horde, after Thrall’s mysterious disappearance, hates…All non-Orcs! This sets the stage for more tension, new Cataclysm Quests, and more importantly, new Battlegrounds. The change players will notice most is that Garrosh has kicked out Undead, Blood Elves, Goblins, and Trolls from Orgrimmar, thinking they can’t contribute to the war effort. Only Orcs and Tauren remain. (Is he not threatened by the big anthropomorphized cows? Or does he consider them strong enough to contribute somehow?).
The Goblin race—who are oddly the ultimate inventors and the ultimate capitalists in one—are working extra-hard to prove their worth to the Horde, and the new Alliance Race, the Worgen (Werewolves), are distrusted by Humans, for obvious reasons.
One of the Goblin Quests has you “accidentally” rescuing the kidnapped Thrall—the old Warchief of the Orcs!
The Worgen intro Quests are truly inspired, with you playing a Human whose town is besieged by Werewolves, and just as you’re making your Heroic Last Stand, you realize that the Werewolves are your old friends and colleagues—then you are Turned as well! You wake up with a mysterious mentor teaching you how to control your transformation. The Worgen-infected town is attacked by the Forsaken, but then a Tsunami wipes out the enemy fleet—and your town—so your only choice for survival is to join the Alliance.
The Goblin intro seems to be inspired by “Mad Men” or Las Vegas. You act as a high-powered executive, and amidst all the trash in the streets and billboards, you start thinking you’re the king—then the Cataclysm hits! Desperate to save your own green skin, you pay a smuggler to get you out—who betrays you and tries to sell you as a slave! A naval battle knocks you off course, and you link up with Horde forces, trying to find the “Secret Cargo” the Alliance had—It turns out to be Thrall, who, impressed by your bravery, inducts you and your whole Clan into the Horde!
Phased In
The best change WoW Cataclysm brings to the table is “Phasing”—your actions actually make a PERMANENT difference, but only to YOU. In other MMOs like WarHammer: Age of Reckoning—and even AION—you could enact “changes” to the environment, like setting/extinguishing fires, snatching supplies—sometimes even destroying a whole building—But it would just reset, so the next player would have something to do. In City of Villains, you were given “instanced” destructible environment—a whole sub-universe for you to destroy and devastate at your whim—But it had no effect on the “real” gameworld. They don’t have enough server-power to instance EVERYTHING, and it would ruin the “Multiplayer” part of MMO—and more importantly, make it no longer worth the $17/month WOW charges!
Halfway between instancing, and the temporary “changes” you could enact in previous MMO games, the game actually tracks your changes and shows them ONLY TO YOU—even terrain-changes (Like flooding or mountains being formed or leveled)!
This is a truly AMAZING system, and it will make players actually feel like they’re making a difference, AND takes advantage of the fact that different clients are sent different information—the same reason “Stealth” powers work in PVP—to show each player THEIR own customized version of the gameworld, reflecting the Quests they’ve completed, and the changes they’ve wrought, or helped cause. (Destructible environments and/or “leaving your mark” were a big part of the popularity of Duke Nukem, Red Faction, and even Crusader: No Remorse!)
The only problem I can foresee is that some of these changes cause TERRAIN differences, so how will they explain when one player is walking up a hill, and the other player sees a player walking in the air over flat land? That is the main reason no other MMO has dared to have deformable terrain!
WoW Cataclysm Quest Guide
Mar 8th
Ever since Burning Crusade was launched players have been nostalgic for the good old days of “Vanilla Wow.” The good old days when instances were actually hard, classes were all unique and epics were actually epic. I myself have indulged in this nostalgia and rolled a character in a vanilla only raiding guild for a while. Since Blizzard has never worked on creating a pre BC-server these type of player created options were the best we could hope for. But with the impending release Cataclysm, Azeroth will undergo a massive overhaul and old pre-BC wow will be gone forever! Already alot of Cataclysm guides and information can be easily found. Old zones will be irrevocably changed, favorite instances will be removed and the old Azeroth we spent our first 46 days /played in will be lost forever upon the coming of this new expansion!
If this makes you feel sad you really shouldn’t let it. Nostalgia will always make us remember the good points of something and forget the bad. One of the most challenging aspects of instances was finding someone with a key to open the door. WoW Cataclysm classes were unique because only one class could tank, one could heal, three could DPS and the rest had unique ways of doing nothing well. And the reason epics were actually epic was because everything else was loaded up with spirit! Blizzard has fixed all these problems in its expansion content, but so much of it is ingrained in pre-sixty play that only a full rework of Azeroth can elevate it to the games current standard of quality. I know I’ll feel a little bit sad when I finish installing the expansion and log in because a part of the game will be gone forever. But I also know that it will usher in a brighter age for Azeroth. (And not just because everything will be covered with Lava.)