World of Warcraft Cataclysm Revealed

World of Warcraft Cataclysm Revealed

Blizzard have finally announced their latest expansion – Cataclysm. And it promises to be just that with a massive re-work of much of the basic content of the World of Warcraft. In this article I speculate on what these changes will mean to basic game-play of World of Warcraft.

As you might have guessed the basic level 80 cap has been raised to 85. It makes me wonder why this was not raised to 90 – an increment of 10 as in previous expansions. I suspect that Blizzard have held back content with levels yet to rise further. As with all level-cap rises there will be new abilities and talents associated with the increase. It will be interesting to see how hard Blizzard will make each level above level 80 and what form these new abilities take. One form is the new Phased terrain which is similar to the ‘Phasing’ style of game-play development found in WOTLK.

With Phasing, the players view of the world will vary according to their advancement in the game resulting in a much more varied game-play.

The downside of a level rise is that earlier content gets a little easier: it’s not uncommon for level 80 players to solo level 70 dungeons and bosses. So, it’s no surprise that there was a raft of new dungeons, raids and zones announced.

But probably the biggest announcement is the the re-work of the original content to Azeroth and the two kingdoms of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdom. Even as a level 80 Mage who regularly plays in Northrend, I often find myself returning to Stormwind and hanging out in my local tavern of Pig and Whistle. So I have reservations that some of the familiar content will disappear. On the up-side this will be a massive boost to long term players who will essentially get a complete re-work of the entire game.

Another major upheaval in the game is that the leveling characteristics from 1-60 have been re-worked.

Again, this will greatly affect the game mechanics and experience of those players leveling alts. So for example the re-work of the Barrens has completely changed with the zone split in two halves with the leveling game-play dynamic completely changed. Darkshore, as another example, has been completely re-worked with Auberdine destroyed.

Listening to the BlizzCon team review panel there will be 7 new zones including an underwater zone called Sunken City of Vashj’ir bringing a new dimension of underwater game-play. The Cataclysm brought about by Deathwing has resulted in huge tidal waves forever altering the landmass of Azeroth and changing the coastline forever with new Lost Isles making an appearance for the new Goblin Race.

Listening to announcements at BlizzCon, developers have obviously spent a great deal of time re-working the original content to move it up to the same standard as Wrath of the Lich King. The great thing about re-working the the two kingdoms of Azeroth is that players can at last use their flying mounts which will forever change the basic dynamic of the game. This tells me that Blizzard are slowly but surely moving toward aerial combat. Developers admit that their first attempts at this were a little lame, but I suspect future patches of Cataclysm will further enhance this aspect of game-play.

And watch out for brand new mounts. With Wrath of the Lich King there was an explosion of vehicles and mounts with the Engineers getting some really cool mounts in the form of bikes and the even Tailors get to craft flying carpets. So I’m sure there will be a raft of new mounts and crafted mounts. One cool mount that was leaked was a new Goblin vehicle mount.

As with with WOTLK expansion and the release of the Death Knight, there are two new Races joining the fray: Goblins, aligned with the Horde and Worgen, surprisingly, aligned with the Alliance. Both races bring new abilities and styles of combat, greatly increasing the diversity in game-play in the World of Warcraft.