World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

Review from Matt - Tuesday, 04 January 2011 @ 9:12pm

As ever for a Blizzard title, Cataclysm is one of the biggest releases of the year for the PC. It expands on a universe that's already an impressive achievement, and gains new players to a community that is already more than 12 million strong.

And as the resident WoW nerd it falls to me to review this one. But when do you review a game like World of Warcraft or its expansions? We try to make a policy of finishing a game before we review it, but that's surely not going to work for us here. When have you finished? CAN you even finish? So the question then becomes “When have you seen enough to do a legitimate review?”. And for that one I don't really have a good answer.

And this is what a FRIENDLY city looks like

All I can tell you is that I think I can justify a review now. My main character has hit level 84, and gotten to and into the last area. I've done some of the new dungeons, started a goblin and a worgen and done a bit of Archaology. All in all I've probably seen the bulk of what Cataclysm has to offer, up to, but not quite including, the end-game experience.

In many respects Cataclysm is a smaller release than Wrath of the Lich King or Burning Crusade. Wrath added a large new continent, and increased the level cap by 10, added a new class, the Death Knight, and the largely uninspiring Inscription profession. It added an extensive amount of lore, and “phased” content, where the environments were different depending on your progress through quests.

This is not part of the normal landscape. This was Deathwing. It was awesome.

The Burning Crusade added two new races, the Blood Elves for Horde and the Alliance Draenai. It added the critically important and game changing profession of Jewelcrafting, and took the battle off Azeroth into the shattered remnants of Outlands. It also increased the level cap by 10, and added flying mounts. It allowed both factions to use Shaman and Paladins, something I'm still not 100% sure was a good idea.

Cataclysm, by contrast, gives your character only five more levels. There's no new landmass, strictly speaking, and the new areas are in the main slotted into the existing Azeroth. The new profession is a “fun” secondary one, Archaeology, and the new races (Goblin and Worgen) have always been in the game, albeit in an NPC capacity.

On the surface it has less to offer. But that's an oversimplification. Cataclysm is by far the most ambitious expansion for the World of Warcraft games so far. What's most impressive is not that they've made additions, but that they've rewritten the entire game. Azeroth has been shattered by the return of the dragon Deathwing who was waiting deep within the ground. His bid for freedom has caused damage all around the world, forever changing the landscape of Azeroth.

The changes range from trivial damage in some areas to significant areas of destruction. The Thousand Needles, a gorge filled with tall points of rock, has now filled with water, essentially making it the Thousand Islands. A huge chunk of the Tanaris coast has vanished, leaving the formerly desert Gadgetzan as beachfront property. Stranglethorn Vale has a massive hole in it, filled with rushing waters, and a large section where raid area Zul'Gurub used to be has been completely replaced with... well... Zul'Gurub. Major cities such as Orgrimmar and Stormwind have been revamped and redesigned, returned to the central powerhouse they were in vanilla WoW.

Orgrimmar sure has changed. Not least shown by the chaos and flying mounts overing above the city

One interesting side benefit of the new development put into World of Warcraft's Azeroth is the ability to use flying mounts in the original areas, with a few exceptions. Previously flying mounts were limited to Outland and Northrend, as the assets that comprise Azeroth were not intended to be viewed from all angles, but now they're able to be used everywhere.

It would be pointless to go through and list all of the new content and changed areas, because that list would be huge and fairly dull. The point is that the entire of Azeroth, the world many of us knew well from what was then a difficult and long grind to “endgame” of 60 has been drastically changed.

This has meant substantial gameplay changes for anyone levelling through the start of the game, making 1 – 60 a thoroughly revised experience. As well as the landscape, quest experiences have been changed in line with the design philosophies that now rule WoW's development – avoiding grind, and keeping quests interesting and entertaining.

An angry whale shark that does a MILLION damage per bite.

Cataclysm isn't just out with the old, either, there's plenty of in with the new. There are two new races, which as stated earlier have already been present one way or another, particularly as NPCs, either neutral (the Goblins) or as enemies, in the case of the Worgen.

In both cases there are new starting areas, the Worgen getting an area called Gilneas, and the Goblins getting the island of Kezan. Both are new spaces, but worked into the existing area of Azeroth.

Gilneas is drab and old, looking quite gloomy. Not Duskwood gloomy, but Silverpine gloomy, and with good reason. To be honest I found Gilneas and the entire Worgen experience to be a little underwhelming. It was dark and moody and serious.

Goblins are a breath of fresh air. They care about their bling and blowing shit up, and the goblin starter area is full of fun. I wrote fairly extensively about my experiences with it in my preview of the beta, so I won't go into too much more about that, but I do have to confirm that this notion of making the game actually fun is one I wholeheartedly support.

Hell yes Goblins get a hot rod. Why wouldn't they?

The other major new areas are more for the “over 80”, players continuing from the end game cap.

One of the first ones seen is Mount Hyjal, an 80 – 82 zone that sees the player take on the minions of Ragnaros, an end boss of the Molten Core level 60 raid. I actually haven't spent a whole lot of time in Hyjal, as I picked a different path, having seen its content a little bit as part of the beta. I found Hyjal mildly interesting but not as impressive or appealing as the other level 80 area, Vashj'ir.

Vashj'ir is an undersea area raised by the cataclysm to reachable depths, and is (almost) entirely under water. Questing within this area sees the player swimming around (helped by a buff that lets them breathe forever and speeds them up under water). Also you get a sea horse mount! Hell yeah!

Sea horse mount!

There's a lot to like here. The level design is quite stunning, and it's clearly given the artists an opportunity to go nuts with colour. There is vivid and bright colour all around the environments, and fun organic architecture and structures. Like Hyjal (and indeed, almost all of Cataclysm) there is intensive use of “phasing”, that allow the content and structure of the region to be based on your quest progress. This phasing can cause problems with groups who may be in different states, but in general it won't be a problem, and it adds a dynamic and interesting nature to a world that is by design unfortunately very static.

You also get an opportunity to play as different characters. For a time you inhabit the body of a Naga, for example, and that's surprisingly fun.

It's not all great, though. The system itself isn't great at handling vertical motion, and trying to navigate, find objects and people, and generally move around in the 3D space is a bit rough, especially when partied with someone else. You also get frankly sick of the water after two or three full levels of this shit, and there's not really quite enough variety to the design for these three zones/subzones to really feel particularly different.

At that point, though, it's time to move on to Deepholm. Deepholm is in “the elemental plane”, an alternative plane of reality... or some shit. It's the place where Deathwing was staying. It's where he was being fixed and where he punched a hole out as he returned to the surface. In punching this hole he damaged the World Pillar, and that concept is the core of the quest experience in Deepholm. Deepholm is a region of elementals and stone, crystal and magic, and it is initially visually very impressive. I have to admit, though, that I tired of it surprisingly quickly. In fairness, though, its quests run out relatively soon, and the player moves through Uldum.

Deepholm, an overview and a more impressive closeup look

Uldum is extremely impressive, and Blizzard deserves credit for it. It lies south of Ungoro Crater, or Southwest of Tanaris, and has been hidden for centuries by Titan magic. But that magic is damaged by the Cataclysm, and Uldum is now open to the player at 83.

The design of Uldum is essentially Egyptian. In style and feel it is not unlike the Ahn'Qiraj raids, full of sand and pyramids and sphynx-esque creatures. The main “good guys” for the area are called the Ramkahen, and they're kind of cat centaurs. Uldum also includes the return of the grave robbing adventures of Harrison Jones, with a series of quest in the pyramids. The region is visually impressive, with some great quest chains and architecture adding a look that's relatively unique to WoW's zones (outside of a few old raids).

Uldum is quite amazing. A lot of effort has gone into creating an aesthetic and original design here.

The last area players will level in is Twilight Highlands, an area dominated by the Twilight's Hammer cult. Like Vashj'ir the player reaches Twilight Highlands through a quest chain and major cinematics, a trend that marks a distinct change to Cataclysm's design. Much of its major content is done through rather cinematic and epic cutscenes, that take the player out of control, or reduce their interaction to the irrelevant. It works generally well, and gives a good feeling of significance and meaning to the events that occur.

Twilight Highlands is lush and friendly, and full of glee and dancing.

The same could be said of quests themselves. The quest concept in general has been revamped to reduce the amount of “get 10 boar livers” quests, and when you do have such quests they try to contexualise them and make them more necessary and important, rather than the “I'm making a stew!” approach we've seen previously. It leads to an overall more engaging game, with a narrative that is often actually worth reading, in contrast to earlier efforts.

There is so much I could say about the changes, the new content, the gameplay mechanics, class changes, new crafting materials, landscape differences, and a bunch of other things. But this review would just read like patch notes, and I don't want that. What I want to say Is simply this:

In all, a lot of effort has been put into improving the World of Warcraft experience, and the player base of more than 12 million players provides a level of resourcing that few games could hope to match. A lot of development has gone into the game, evolving the gameplay and the universe to do new things that could never have been conceived when the original World of Warcraft hit. Cataclysm is fun.

It's hard to write a review of this or any other World of Warcraft expansion that doesn't just read like the patch notes. This added, this taken away, new feature here or there. Ultimately that's all this review can be. We fool ourselves into thinking that a review is some sort of consumer guide, but it's not really. People who play WOW have already bought this expansion and were always planning to. People who don't never would have.

This city is Gadgetzan. There's not supposed to be an ocean there.

Pros

Impressive improvements to the existing world, more cinematic introductions and quests make for a more interesting overall narrative, compared to the previous titles. Goblins are really fun to at least start.

Cons

Don't know why they made it so hard to get around. Game IS getting a bit old. Only increased the level cap by 5. Serious server downtimes, lag outs and queues after launch. Still. Little added in terms of races, professions or classes.