Scattered thoughts on Cataclysm's coming

It finally hit me this weekend that this is the last post I will write during the age of Wrath of the Lich King. Come Wednesday, when my next post will go up, we will official be in the era of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and the era of Wrath of the Lich King will finally be over. There are probably some who, in response to this realization, would write a nostalgic post about their memories from Wrath and what they will miss, but I can't count myself among them. In fact, before the Shattering came, I took no screenshots of the old world, did no final tours or looks around of Azeroth before it was changed forever, did no rushed leveling of any new alts to see the world one last time, because it has simply become stale. Wrath is also something I have put behind me, as evidenced by the fact that at this point, all I do in WoW is the Stormwind cooking and fishing dailies. The cookies dailies I do to earn recipies in preparation for Cataclysm, and the fishing dailies... well, I might not need any of the loot from those bags, but I like fishing, and the quests are new, so that's good enough for me. The point is, I could not be happier to be getting new content, for I lost interest in Wrath's content long ago.

You see, I'm a soloist. I play the game for the solo endeavors, and the last time WoW received an injection of good solo content was two years ago, when Wrath of the Lich King was released. Patch 3.3 brought no new solo content, and patch 3.1 and 3.2 brought with them the Argent Tournament in various stages, which I felt did not live up to the first round of solo content brought about by Wrath of the Lich King. Two years is a long time to play the same content, so I grew bored and started leveling alts, but that too soon turned stale as I realized just how far behind the old world had fallen in terms of quest design. It just wasn't as fluid or fun as Northrend or Outland, and the classes themselves evolved in very strange ways at lower levels. patch 4.0.1. did much to address the latter point, but the fact is that we alt-aholics have been playing the same content for a very long time. Given all of these facts, is it any wonder I'm ready to embrace WoW 2.0? Is it at all surprising that I have no nostalgia for the old world and no wistful longings for the glory days of Wrath? I'm ready for the new content, both in the lower levels and the higher ones.

You'll notice I referred to Cataclysm as "WoW 2.0" in that last paragraph. It's a nickname the expansion has picked-up due to just how much it is changing the game. Come Cataclysm, many claim, the game will have changed enough that it will practically be a brand new WoW, not just an expanded version of an old one. And the nice thing about it is that we don't have to lose all of our progress we have made on our current characters. If Blizzard were to release a proper World of Warcraft 2, a different game from the current one, I'd be hesitant to leave my pets, my mounts, my achievements, my trophies from conquests past, and start from scratch in a new universe. With the way things are, everything we have already earned carries over into this new WoW and can remain with us a few more years, while we still get to experience an almost brand new game.

But does Cataclysm really deserve the title of WoW 2.0? I hit upon this question as I was walking through Stormwind the other day and realized that, though the world has changed, it is not a new world. All of the old zones remain, even if they have returned in new forms, and though there are new zones and new content being added, they are simply par for the course in an expansion pack. The fact is that we are still playing on Azeroth, just Azeroth realized in a different light. We are still playing the same 10 classes; yes, those classes have evolved in some significant ways, but those evolutions are, again, par for the course in an expansion pack. Any significant change to class design I can think of that has come with Cataclysm is just a response to the necessity of adding a new expansion pack or a logical evolution of the class as the game and the expectations of its players continue to evolve. Not to marginalize Blizzard's efforts--far from it, I imagine it must have taken them a lot of effort to get to this point--but might Cataclysm be WoW 1.5 moreso than WoW 2.0?

If it is, then I'm ok with that, because WoW is a great game. We don't need a completely new game to entertain us, because WoW has a lot of longevity. As long as it can keep evolving to continue to satisfy the players and let us have fun, I'm ok with not getting a completely new WoW. Why demand something new if the old is still just as good?

So on this, the eve of Wrath of the Lich King, I say goodbye and good riddance to WoW 1.0 and and welcome in WoW 1.5, or WoW 2.0, whatever you want to call it. Tonight, I can go to bed with the knowledge that when I wake up, a game I have been looking forward to for a very long time will be waiting for me (I preordered the expansion digitally), and though I can see us players needing to wait for some sort of server maintenance or emergency patches before we can actually play, it's good to know that Cataclysm is almost here, and I'm willing to wait that time if we need to. After all, Cataclysm was officially announced more than a year ago; what's one more day to wait? Either way, I shall see you all on the other side.