A Goblin Eatery. Their Cities Look Great.

WOW: A Photo Safari of the Cataclysm

After returning to Azeroth after a prolonged absence I was eager to see how all the changes looked after Deathwing ripped the world to shreds.  Below are some images I took this morning followed by a statement on how I never will officially return to Azeroth and the World of Warcraft.

Why I won’t be returning:  In all honesty it felt like sitting down with an old girlfriend for a cup of coffee.  You sit across from each other and and have that moment when you slowly realize why you’re not still together. All of her quirks and faults that you once found endearing are now just annoying as hell.  You may always love aspects of her, but you now fully realize her time is totally up… just like WOW.

Nerd Appropriate:

  • Blow the world up – It’s a great idea, erase all those old quests and start over.  The grind from 1-60 was unbearable after the second or third time.  This should keep the game going for years to come.
  • New race and class combinations – So you want to play as an Undead hunter or an Orcish mage?  Now you can.  These new combos should breathe some life into the game.
  • Fast travel in the old world – finally you can use your flying mount in the old world.  Faster travel means less browsing the web between FPs.
  • New spells – Finally Warlocks can cast infernal and Doomguard without having to do a song and dance.  It only took Blizard 6 years to fix this.

Not Nerd Appropriate:

  • Too little too late: all these changes are great, but do you really feel like going through all this again?
  • Simplified talent system and skill trees: I enjoyed multi-specing.  Now it seems the game wants you to choose a skill tree and dump all your talent points into that single tree.  Where is the variety?  Where is the fun of trying out that Elemental/Resto , Combat/Assassination build.  It’s totally gone.
  • It feels old: Even with the graphical updates and new bells and whistles it just feels like they threw a coat of makeup on grandma’s ol’ wrinkle puss.
  • No narrative: While I was walking around town someone shouted “Hey where is Thrall?”, another person replied “He’s on vacation!”  We should know what is going on in the world at all times.  There should be something driving the player to do the things he/she does other than LOOT.  Remind me why I’m collecting boar tusks for the good of the universe again?
  • The Community: I’m sure there are great WOW communities out there, but when trade channels are filled with morons spamming nonsense 24/7, you begin to ask yourself where are they?  In my hour back in WOW this morning I encountered enough stupidity to never go back again.  Sorry WOW.

So there you have it.  WOW was an amazing ride, but I fear I won’t be coming back.  Games have advanced  much since 2003 in terms of structure and narrative and appear to have left Warcraft in the dust.

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This Post Has 8 Comments

  1. Scott

    The only “cataclysm” you should be preparing for is the sacking of Coruscant, ~3000 BBY. See you in The Old Republic.

  2. Ash

    I’m so ready man. I just have to figure out how to clone myself to work and play SWTOR at the same time. I think maybe Micah can do this, although I have no asked.

  3. Beast_Mode

    thanks for checking it out. glad i won’t have to now. on to star wars.

  4. Pilx

    Great write up. Just looking at those pics I kinda got the feeling you are talking about. A little reminiscent of what it used to be and its interesting to see where it is now. But once again…glad I’m not spending my whole day there. I’m getting more and more excited for SWTOR though, and now I need a new rig as my computer wont turn on, so its on FO SHO. /WTB New CPU

  5. Ash

    Thanks guys. In all honesty it was never as fun as it was when the whole guild was together eating pizza and figuring out how to bring down Ragnaros. SWTOR looks like it will have all the structure of a single player RPG with the positive elements of an MMO ( IE: player driven economy, crafting, and grouping.)

    We should all take off work a few days when it launches… just sayin’

  6. Scott

    I’m down, I just went back and watched the cinematic trailers on the SWTOR website. I think I peed a little.

  7. matt

    We will take a SWTORiday. It will be amazing.

  8. Micah G

    Wait, I was under the impression we were all re-upping and starting Evony Online accounts?

Comments are closed.