It had been about 2.5 years since I last played World of Warcraft and a lot had happened in the game during that time. Specifically, an expansion (Cataclysm) and four major content patches. I had missed a lot!
For about two years of that time my interest in the game was dulled, but during last semester I began to have pinings, and since I received Cataclysm for Christmas I eagerly reinstalled and resubscribed to the game upon arriving back from Australia and am now back on the wagon.
That’s the first of the two possible starting zones that I explored – an underwater zone called Vashj’ir. The screenshot is taken on my new iMac, which I bought when I started playing since the game ran poorly on my old one (they updated the system requirements for the Mac client to no longer fully support pre-Lion OS). The underwater zone was a lot of fun, but I think a poor showcase for Cataclysm as a whole. Compared to the other new zones, it is graphically the worst by far. Check out these shots of Uldum, a lvl 85 zone:
Or another high level zone, The Twilight Highlands:
Or the elemental earth plane, Deepholm:
Beautiful aren’t they? Since I’ve always loved Warcraft’s graphics, and exploring, a lot of my thrill of playing again is to see all the new zones and the amazing Blizzard art direction.
It took me about 5 days to get to level 85 (the new cap), playing a bit like a madman. By then I had only explored 2.5 of the 5 new questing zones, so I suspect since I am coming in on the tail end of an expansion the leveling curve has been reduced somewhat.
Blizzard has also added a great deal of mechanisms to speed up the gear aquisition process and make the game less of a grind. As such, I was able – the day after hitting 85 – to enter the new end-game raid ‘The Madness of Deathwing’ and even take down the final boss. Such things would have been inconceivable in the WoW of old:
I was still very poorly equipped – notice my apalling DPS in the above shot 🙂
Level 85 is magnitudes more powerful than level 80. I was able to easily solo the entire Molten Core (an old level 60 raid) and even fight this guy with a tiny raid containing only 3 or 4 meaningful dps-ers:
I’m enjoying the game a lot though. Even though I’ve beaten Deathwing (once!), there’s still much more to do and items to get. I guess I’m going to stay on the wagon for a while longer…
