I wasn't fond of
Cataclysm when it launched. Not because of its
zones or its story, both of which I probably like more than almost
anyone. My major problem on
Cataclysm's launch was that I was
generally solo, having to use Dungeon Finder for my dungeon runs. The
rest of the folks I was guilded with weren't on at the same time I was,
and that meant I had to try and tank the new dungeons (with their
emphasis on CC that no one wanted to remember how to do) and then the
new dungeons on heroic, with all sorts of instant-kill mechanics that
were completely avoidable and which no one wanted to avoid.
Pugging these dungeons as a tank in groups full of people conditioned by
Wrath heroics was like placing my genitalia in an garbage disposal, except you can generally only do that once. I ran these dungeons
repeatedly. It was not pleasant. By the time I was geared enough to tank the new raids, I was so bitter and hated
Cataclysm as
an expansion so much that my friends and colleagues (many of whom were
lucky enough to have dedicated groups running these dungeons, not being
forced to pug as I was) thought I'd gone frothing, barking-mad insane. I
tanked in tier 11, but I had no
desire to do so; I merely did it out of obligation.
What this meant was that I missed out on getting to
enjoy those dungeons. The difficulty of getting groups to avoid Corborus'
burrowing,
Sell wow gold the inevitable fallout of blaming and group disintegration
cost me several months when I could have been admiring how well laid-out
these dungeons were, looking over their art and enjoying the mechanics
on a technical level. There were a lot of cool fights I spent my time
gritting my teeth through, a lot of dungeons I endured due to their
tuning. It's one of the reasons I like going back and tanking them now.
All the places we went
Cataclysm launched with several new dungeons, considering it was a five-level expansion, not 10 like
The Burning Crusade and
Wrath. These dungeons were Throne of the Tides, Blackrock Caverns, Grim Batol, Halls of Origination, Lost City of the Tol'vir, the Stonecore, and the Vortex Pinnacle.
These seven dungeons came in regular and heroic, which in the case of
Grim Batol, Halls of Origination and Lost City of the Tol'vir meant that
there were dungeons you could only run at level 85 but then immediately
had
another level 85 difficulty. It also expanded upon two old
dungeons, Shadowfang Keep and The Deadmines, not only redesigning them
for their leveling content but bringing them into level 85 with new
heroics.
Grim Batol is a
gorgeous dungeon. It does an amazing job of
presenting us with something we've seen before -- the lost dwarven city
now infested with monsters (almost all of the Blackrock Mountain
dungeons and raids are Dark Iron in construction). By simply changing
the particular dwarves who
built it and using their history in
the process, we get a dungeon as logical in its exploration as it is
well crafted. The place is the Wildhammer answer to Ironforge, and it
surpasses its rival in many, many ways. I know I'm going to come back at
level 90 and blow the place up just to get to
explore it.
Halls of Origination, frankly, feels
too huge and beautiful to
be a 5-man. Its seven bosses, vast, sprawling layout and multiple levels
all make it feel more suited to be a raid. Its legacy as the
continuation of the story from Uldaman and Ulduar, the beautiful,
Titan-inspired Egyptian theme, the watcher bosses with their complex
(for a 5-man) mechanics all felt truncated and clipped crammed into
5-man fights.
Blizzard, you've taken two older raids and turned them into 5-mans. Find
a way to revamp this 5-man into a raid. I know it doesn't fit the
Pandaria theme at all; I don't care. Do it at level 95 -- or 100, for
all I care. But
do it. This dungeon is simply too good to leave behind.
The presentation of the elemental planes
Throne of the Tides -- well, what can you say about it that hasn't
already been said? It's amazing. It's gorgeous, it's fairly unique, it
manages to tell a progressive story that changes as you move through the
place and changes the very way the layout is unlocked. It's sad that
the story ends here, really. I wanted more. I wanted to find out what
happened to Neptulon. Dungeons like Blackrock Caverns and Grim Batol
were at least
thematically continued in the tier 11 raids, but
Throne of the Tides sits there, a wonderful and unique gem of a dungeon
that may never find a proper setting for its wonders. Like Vashj'ir, it
stands as something unique and new in
World of Warcraft.
Finally, there's the Vortex Pinnacle, which simply put had some of the
best art assets of any dungeon I've ever seen. Frankly, Vortex Pinnacle
and its sister raid Throne of the Four Winds
are simply gorgeous, and the first time I saw them I thought to myself
that this is what Dalaran wanted to be -- extremely well-realized,
astonishingly beautiful, absolutely capturing the idea that you're in a
castle made of clouds in a plane of air.
All of
Cataclysm's efforts to show us the Elemental Planes
wrought by the Titans were very well done, frankly. I may have gotten a
little sick of Firelands after several months in it, but like Deepholm
and Throne of the Tides and the VP/Throne of the Four Winds, it did the
job of making me believe I was in the domain of an elemental lord.
An expansion that actually expanded the world
Really, while
Cataclysm had the flaw of being set not in a new land to explore, it had the benefit of being set in
many new lands to explore. It is my hope that as time passes, we look back on
Cataclysm with kinder, wiser eyes. This is an expansion that did a lot more right than you'll realize until you've had time to play with
Mists, because
Cataclysm is where risks were taken and lessons learned.
Every time I've played on the
Mists of Pandaria beta, I've said to myself
This is like Uldum or
This is like that vehicle quest in Cata. The new expansion is heavily informed by the one we just played. I really think the
ideas of
Cataclysm were often fantastic, if in places the execution didn't quite match up.
Twilight Highlands in particular has always stood out to me as an
excellent all-around zone, with unique questing for both factions, and I
definitely feel its legacy when questing in
Mists.
Cataclysm actually made the world of Azeroth itself bigger
. It showed us hidden places of the world we had not seen in years of playing -- Gilneas, Kezan, Uldum,
wow
gold for sale, the Highlands, Hyjal
-- and
it made them all part of the ongoing story. Going forward, those places
exist. They're realized, and we can go see them whenever we want to. We
could even have whole new raids and dungeons in those zones.
Mists of Pandaria is moving the storyline of Scarlet Monastery and Scholomance forward with new level 90 heroics, and that's a move pioneered in
Cataclysm with Shadowfang Keep and The Deadmines. New content can always be revisited once it exists, and
Cataclysm provided us with quite a bit of new.
Also, I don't know how much I can say about how much I admired the new
worgen and goblin starting areas. I could probably do an entire post
about those, and they absolutely inform the design of the excellent
pandaren starting area. So let us celebrate what was good here.
There's a lot more than some would have you believe, and I only really
scratched the surface. Were there negatives, missteps, attempts that
fell flat? Absolutely, there were. And I've belabored them myself on
occasion. But today, let's talk about what
worked. Because a lot of it did.
