
	Platform PC Genre MMORPG Publisher Activision Developer Blizzard ETA Hopefully soon
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Futzing Around in Cataclysm

Recently, I was invited to partake in the beta for the next World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm. It's been an interesting experience for the most part thus far, and I thought I'd share some of my experiences thus far.

Arguably the toughest thing to decide has been where to start first. Usually when an MMO gets an expansion the process is easy, just go to wherever the new zones are for high levels, or, on occasion, roll one of the new races introduced, and see what they're like. With Cataclysm just about everything is new. The old world has been massively overhauled, there are two new races to try out, and on top of that, there is still the new high level zones for 80s to go to. So, just about everything is new.

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That being said, I finally decided what I wanted to see first: the old world. So, I teleported myself back to Orgrimmar to find myself in the Cleft of Shadows. Walking outside, I hopped on my flying mount and began to do the rounds. It's an interesting mix of new and old from what I saw while flying around Kalimdor. Orgrimmar has been heavily fortified, and Durotar has been flooded,

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while the Crossroads remain relatively unchanged. Flying further sound, I could see the ruins of Camp Taurojo, and the entrance to Mulgore had a massive gate on it. Arriving at Thousand Needles was interesting. Most of us have seen screenshots of it being flooded now, but actually seeing it with one's own eyes is even better. One area that I really liked was Desolace. At first I though, "This area hasn't changed as much as I thought..." but once I got to the center of the zone (around where Ghost Walker Post, that changed immediately. The whole area is lush with vegetation, and there is a huge tree in the center (certainly not Teldrassil big, but gigantic nonetheless), on top of this is a nice little lake right next to it. The whole scene is quite pretty. There's a slew of other interesting things to look at while exploring the old world as well, and one thing that actually flying across Kalimdor helped to drive home for me is just how massive the old world actually is. In the time it took to fly acro ss Ashen Vale, I could have flown past multiple zones in Outlands or Northrend. That's big.

Moseying over to the new zone for level 80s, it's proving to be an interesting adventure under the sea. Horde side, I hopped on the boat now stationed outside of Orgrimmar, and set sail for the new zones. It was a fun little trip, as the ship was run by mercenaries, so there were a mix of orcs, humans, and others all from different factions. Before long, though, the ship was attacked by a sea monster, and it wasn't long before the thing was sunk. When your character comes to, you see that you're in a tiny air pocket on the sunken ship with other survivors. From here players embark on a string of quests that first allow one's character to breath under water, and then to try and get the survivors to safety.

The quests themselves were alright, but largely typical fair for what players have come to expect from WoW, ie. kill X number of enemies, gather a, b, and c, occasionally ride creatures around. They were entertaining enough, but I wouldn't be surprised to see people plowing through these quests as they try and make a bee line for level 85. While doing the quests, it quickly became obvious that Blizzard is also going for a fairly hefty gear reset, as most of the stats on the quest rewards were on par or a little better than i251 gear. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like all of the models are in place for the new gear yet, as some of the stuff I received looked like old, uninteresting gear from the past. Hopefully it won’t be too long before the models are replaced. The environments so far have been a lot more colorful than I was expecting while under water. Usually when swimming around the coastline of Azeroth, things are pretty gray with a lot of sand and rock, but very little life. At least here in these new zones it looks like Blizzard is zazzing things up a fair bit, as there are big, green kelp forests, shipwrecks, and huge coral structures that add color to the area.

The final area that I’ve spent some time with is the goblin starting zone. So far, it’s looking like the goblins are going to be the silly, tongue-in-cheek race of Cataclysm. The quests are light-hearted, and there are a ton of little tidbits to laugh at while wandering around. I particularly like that the warlock and mage trainers are a little ways away from one another, lobbing fireballs and shadow bolts at each other. It would certainly seem that neither one likes the other. There were a couple of quests in particular that were exceptionally fun. One had players driving around in a hot rod to pick up a few other goblins, and take them to the bomb ball game. While driving, the car had some abilities one would expect like a turbo button and a horn, but there’s also the option to listen to the radio. For now all of the stations play familiar tracks from WoW like the Bre wfest song, and some of the ditties one would hear while in an inn. What I’m hoping is that these placeholder tracks will be replaced with something a little more interesting. It would be nice if Blizzard took a note from GTA and made their own radio stations for it. A goblin talk radio station would be awesome. The other quest that proved to be particularly fun was playing bomb ball. Basically you’re just launching bombs at a group of incoming shredders, but it was a strangely entertaining experience. The goblins themselves don’t have any specific racial stats at this point, but their two racial abilities are in place. One is a quick attack from their utility belt, while the other is a rocket jump (both abilities share the same cool down). I didn’t find the attack to be terribly useful, but the rocket jump could be a lot of fun.

That’s all I have to report for now, but there’s still a ton to look at in Cataclysm. This could be an expansion to keep me busy for quite some time with all of the content that has been crammed into it.

Mr. Nash
July 10, 2010