Not exactly a retrospective – but hey like anyone cares.
Unless you’ve been living in a cave on Neptune with your eyes and ears covered you can’t have missed Blizzard’s soul sucking golden egg World of Warcraft or WoW for short. As in “WoW, I can’t believe I’ve been playing for 12 hours already”. World of Warcraft is a pretty standard MMO; full of elves, dwarfs and the normal Tolkienesque brick-a-brack.
The third expansion to this monster is the appropriately named Cataclysm – boasting a revamped world after the local bad guy of the day has gone all “day after tomorrow” on it.
Long time players will be able to revisit old zones drastically altered by the cataclysm... But they won’t.
2 new playable races – the goblins bearing a striking resemblance to a Jew in a Walt Disney film and a breed of lovable cockney werewolves allowing the players to learn more about these races that have until now been lurking in the background… But they won’t.
And of course six lovely new zones for max level players to run around and play in… But they won’t.
In truth the vast majority of the game will now see players parked outside their local auction house while waiting for a little pop-up window to appear and invite them to whichever dungeon or PvP-battleground has the shortest waiting time. This removes the first “M” for “massive”.
Now I’m going to pause this review here and reveal the awful truth that I have been losing my soul to this game for six years now and after taking a break I thought that “now might be the best time to get back into it”. So at the risk of sounding like every forum post ever written – here comes the comparisons to the older versions of World of Warcraft.
The first noticeable change is obviously the world itself. The revamping is a very welcome refreshment to a game that was starting to feel a little stagnant. New quests have been added in almost every zone and I’m grateful to see a lot of the more tedious quests removed. No more “collect 20 items that drop 5% of the time of mobs that only spawn ever other lunar cycle”.
However after pushing further into the zones I noticed two things: the lack of group quests and then, to my shock, the lack of people at all. If I didn’t know better I would have thought I was simply playing a single player game. Desperate for human contact I entered into the random dungeon finder and thus allowing myself to take on the challenge of harder content with richer rewards together with the help of four other players from other servers. “At last!”, I thought, “human contact!”. However my attempts at greetings fell on deaf ears as we set off. “Not to worry” I thought, “they’re just eager”. After the first boss went down everyone left without a word and I thought “well ok them“, so I tried again several times to much the same ends.
Then it hit me like a well-placed dwarven hammer. There is no need for anyone to do more or less then they need to anymore – you can come and go, steal and abuse without any repercussion. It’s not like I’d ever see them again and trying to talk sense into anyone is like trying to add logic of a forum argument about Justin Bieber fighting Chuck Norris, so I decided to stick to my solo play. This removes the second “M” for “multiplayer” and leaves me with just the “O” for “online” and it was only my bank statement reminding me of that.
The next screaming difference I noticed was the talent system – the means by which I can make my character unique. Instead of 70 or so talents handed out with one per level and placed as I wish over 3 grids, I now start by picking a specialization out of the 3 grids. This instantly gives me a handful of spells and abilities from that tree then a talent point every other level at first. It seemed like a good idea, no more would certain specs be useless until higher levels. However, after the first few points went in I started to get the feeling I was being led down a path. Each tier is made out of 5 essential talents and some useless ones that I can’t imagine anyone needing, so I decided to check around and sure enough. Every one of my class had pretty much the exact same spec and the ones that didn’t clearly had a different aim from me (normally PvP). Then I started to realise why. After picking a specilisation I couldn’t spend any points in the other specs until I reach the bottom of the first spec I picked, by which time it would be too late to make a difference.
Finally I realised what I had become and what this game had become. A series of identical motions, a routine going through the same motions as everyone else like a drone in a hive right down to the pre-programed “ding” and “grats” responses. And the more I played the more I fell into this pattern, like showing any actual emotion or breaking of from the norm would cause the secret police to come and haul me off to reeducation camp. The game truly feels evil, like some kind of Orwellian “Big Brother”-nightmare and honestly the only ones to blame are the players. After years of listening to “X is overpowered”, “now Y is overpowered “, “this is too hard”, “this is too easy” and “my porridge is too hot” Blizzard are now just telling you what you want and watching you eat it up like the good whores you are.
Unless you’ve been living in a cave on Neptune with your eyes and ears covered you can’t have missed Blizzard’s soul sucking golden egg World of Warcraft or WoW for short. As in “WoW, I can’t believe I’ve been playing for 12 hours already”. World of Warcraft is a pretty standard MMO; full of elves, dwarfs and the normal Tolkienesque brick-a-brack.
The third expansion to this monster is the appropriately named Cataclysm – boasting a revamped world after the local bad guy of the day has gone all “day after tomorrow” on it.
Long time players will be able to revisit old zones drastically altered by the cataclysm... But they won’t.
2 new playable races – the goblins bearing a striking resemblance to a Jew in a Walt Disney film and a breed of lovable cockney werewolves allowing the players to learn more about these races that have until now been lurking in the background… But they won’t.
And of course six lovely new zones for max level players to run around and play in… But they won’t.
In truth the vast majority of the game will now see players parked outside their local auction house while waiting for a little pop-up window to appear and invite them to whichever dungeon or PvP-battleground has the shortest waiting time. This removes the first “M” for “massive”.
Now I’m going to pause this review here and reveal the awful truth that I have been losing my soul to this game for six years now and after taking a break I thought that “now might be the best time to get back into it”. So at the risk of sounding like every forum post ever written – here comes the comparisons to the older versions of World of Warcraft.
The first noticeable change is obviously the world itself. The revamping is a very welcome refreshment to a game that was starting to feel a little stagnant. New quests have been added in almost every zone and I’m grateful to see a lot of the more tedious quests removed. No more “collect 20 items that drop 5% of the time of mobs that only spawn ever other lunar cycle”.
However after pushing further into the zones I noticed two things: the lack of group quests and then, to my shock, the lack of people at all. If I didn’t know better I would have thought I was simply playing a single player game. Desperate for human contact I entered into the random dungeon finder and thus allowing myself to take on the challenge of harder content with richer rewards together with the help of four other players from other servers. “At last!”, I thought, “human contact!”. However my attempts at greetings fell on deaf ears as we set off. “Not to worry” I thought, “they’re just eager”. After the first boss went down everyone left without a word and I thought “well ok them“, so I tried again several times to much the same ends.
Then it hit me like a well-placed dwarven hammer. There is no need for anyone to do more or less then they need to anymore – you can come and go, steal and abuse without any repercussion. It’s not like I’d ever see them again and trying to talk sense into anyone is like trying to add logic of a forum argument about Justin Bieber fighting Chuck Norris, so I decided to stick to my solo play. This removes the second “M” for “multiplayer” and leaves me with just the “O” for “online” and it was only my bank statement reminding me of that.
The next screaming difference I noticed was the talent system – the means by which I can make my character unique. Instead of 70 or so talents handed out with one per level and placed as I wish over 3 grids, I now start by picking a specialization out of the 3 grids. This instantly gives me a handful of spells and abilities from that tree then a talent point every other level at first. It seemed like a good idea, no more would certain specs be useless until higher levels. However, after the first few points went in I started to get the feeling I was being led down a path. Each tier is made out of 5 essential talents and some useless ones that I can’t imagine anyone needing, so I decided to check around and sure enough. Every one of my class had pretty much the exact same spec and the ones that didn’t clearly had a different aim from me (normally PvP). Then I started to realise why. After picking a specilisation I couldn’t spend any points in the other specs until I reach the bottom of the first spec I picked, by which time it would be too late to make a difference.
Finally I realised what I had become and what this game had become. A series of identical motions, a routine going through the same motions as everyone else like a drone in a hive right down to the pre-programed “ding” and “grats” responses. And the more I played the more I fell into this pattern, like showing any actual emotion or breaking of from the norm would cause the secret police to come and haul me off to reeducation camp. The game truly feels evil, like some kind of Orwellian “Big Brother”-nightmare and honestly the only ones to blame are the players. After years of listening to “X is overpowered”, “now Y is overpowered “, “this is too hard”, “this is too easy” and “my porridge is too hot” Blizzard are now just telling you what you want and watching you eat it up like the good whores you are.
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