Cata missing the Immersion Factor!

[unholytestament]

And where do you feel Deathwing's presence in the game, in a couple of missable quests and randomly having him kill everything but you in the zone you're afking in. Deathwing is the only thing tying Cata to WC2 and WC2 barely managed to establish him as a character past EVIL DARGON BIG BAD STAY AWAY.

How, pray tell, does one miss the intro quests to Hyjal and Twilight Highlands? I can understand all of the morons who abandon quests and forget where to pick them up missing the battle between Alexstrasza and Deathwing, but you can't begin questing in Hyjal or Twilight Highlands without doing quests where you see him.

And then there's the dozens of different quests throughout the 1-60 experience where he and the Twilight's Hammer are mentioned.

And how does Cho'gall not tie into Warcraft 2? Or the entire Dragonmaw Clan?

[Deleted]

Wait, wait, wait. The story is too shallow and the players don't feel involved in it? Compared to what? Classic and BC, where the quests were pretty much entirely random, or Wrath, where the quests only loosely followed a story (and often only for a single chain)?

I mean, yeah, WoW tends to be a lot less story-oriented than other games, but Cataclysm went way more into the story than the older content did.

Compared to other games out there maybe?

[Penatar]

it's just too linear. No other expansion was as linear. Fuck I've never played a game as linear as Cataclysm, even super mario world had more sidelines you could do.

[Trispec]

it's just too linear. No other expansion was as linear. Fuck I've never played a game as linear as Cataclysm, even super mario world had more sidelines you could do.

Hyperbole much?

[Lothaeryn]

What I find sad about this xpac is that there really is hardly any need to revisit old questing zones from 80 to 85. Like in wrath for example, you had numerous daily quests that would take you to various zones, so therefore immersing yourself in all the wrath zones.

This xpac fishing/cooking dailies, you don't even leave sw at all. There is very few dailies to do other than TB, wild hammer and therazene, so your generally staying in sw or if waiting for dungeon pops. Like Mount Hyjal for example, once you have done the quests, why go back? Why the xpac feels small and boring, at times.

Blizz did have some great ideas with phasing etc, but think they failed in making this xpac fun. Even if they made your fishing and cooking dailies a little more you know involving. I mean picking up pumpkins, or grabbing lobsters in sw is a little mind numbing.

Are you fucking kidding? I HATED running around half assedly to just do one simple daily in my routine. Have you ever done the Argent tournament? You had to travel the ENTIRE CONTINENT and back for one fucking sword and that took well over 20 minutes just to do alone, and then im gonna go do ANOTHER daily with the same goal (JCing dailies...) and waste another 15 minutes i could easily use to run and finish a heroic? Those dailies were horrible!

The cataclysm ones are much better in the fact that you DONT have to run around like an idiot to do one stupid quest on a daily basis to get your rep/gold/Token for the day. Im glad i dont have to leave SW to do my dailies because it took forever just to do all my dailies to begin with.

Cutting out the travel time was trivial at best simply because NO ONE SENSIBLE LIKED IT, PERIOD.

And there are achievements for completionists out there that encourage you to go back to old content to finish. have you done the Bounce achievement yet in Hyjal?

---------- Post added 2011-02-07 at 05:50 PM ----------

How, pray tell, does one miss the intro quests to Hyjal and Twilight Highlands? I can understand all of the morons who abandon quests and forget where to pick them up missing the battle between Alexstrasza and Deathwing, but you can't begin questing in Hyjal or Twilight Highlands without doing quests where you see him.

And then there's the dozens of different quests throughout the 1-60 experience where he and the Twilight's Hammer are mentioned.

And how does Cho'gall not tie into Warcraft 2? Or the entire Dragonmaw Clan?

I Agree on you on this point, hell even the Wildhammer Dwarves were mentioned in WC in regards to gryphon riders. and Cho'Gall *ahem* MADE THE TWILIGHTS HAMMER and was also (IIRC) a member of the Shadow Council at first IN WCII. Then entire expansion revolves around TWO, not one, TWO major characters from WCII who created the primary threat to this expansion, the Twilights Hammer.

One cannot simply ignore Cho'Gall and walk into The Bastion of Twilight!

[Penatar]

Hyperbole much?

no not at all. IF I wanted to I could kill koopa just after entering word 2, or I coud take the numerous paths through each zone and reach him the long way.

Cata has no side stories, I loved that about wrath. There were side stories in each zone that were optional and not required to do quests later in the zone.

Edit: Not to be confused with me saying I love wrath, I just enjoyed the questing so much more.

[Doombringer]

As others have said, some of the new Cataclysm zones do not allow you to fully appreciate Deathwing's impact on the world, his madness, or his story.

Hyjal - Deathwing is summoning Ragnaros. This feels forced, as if it is the only method of getting Ragnaros back on our radar. We spend the entire zone then fighting the Firelord and his minions.

Vashj'ir - We're here because we got shipwrecked here. Something is going on with Neptulon and the plane of water.

Deepholm - Deathwing was here, but has already left. We fight the Twilight's Hammer, but most of our time is spent killing Troggs or Elementals. Deathy is mostly used as a way to get us into the zone, via the Maelstrom, but it still feels... limp.

Uldum - We're told that Deathwing wants the Coffer of Promise, and thankfully we actually see a few of his agents working to uncover it. It does feel a little shoehorned into the otherwise cheeky Indiana Jones storyline, however. Schnottz is working for Deathwing, so he says, and he has a few Black Dragonflight goons to back him up. It's better than only a text reference, but still feels detached.

Twilight Highlands - Lots of Twilight Cult presence. But they're here working for Cho'gall? This is another Hyjal... Deathwing is pulling the strings of a sub-boss. Thankfully, we do get exposure to Deathwing himself in the Red Dragonflight storyline. We also see a bit of him in one of the Nightmares. Overall, not bad.

They could have done better.

[unholytestament]

Hyjal - Deathwing is summoning Ragnaros. This feels forced, as if it is the only method of getting Ragnaros back on our radar. We spend the entire zone then fighting the Firelord and his minions.

The elemental lords were all servants of the old gods. Ragnaros was recently banished from Azeroth. Deathwing, now directly serving the old gods, summons Ragnaros back.

Explain to me how this is forced.

Vashj'ir - We're here because we got shipwrecked here. Something is going on with Neptulon and the plane of water.

Both factions initially go there because the island presents itself as a strategic asset. The shipwreck is caused by the naga who are aligned with the Twilight's Hammer. The naga are trying to subjugate Neptulon, the elemental lord of water, who has abandoned his loyalties to the old gods (this needs to be explained...). The Earthen Ring recruits the players to strike against the Twilight's Hammer and then defend Neptulon. Though we succeed in taking out two of the TH bases, the naga are too great in number for us to defend Neptulon.

Deepholm - Deathwing was here, but has already left. We fight the Twilight's Hammer, but most of our time is spent killing Troggs or Elementals. Deathy is mostly used as a way to get us into the zone, via the Maelstrom, but it still feels... limp.

Deathwing has shattered the world pillar, which lead to most of the damage done to Azeroth. To prevent further damage we must retrieve the fragments of the world pillar and repair it. These fragments are held by the many denizens of Deepholm whose trust we must gain before they will hand it over.

Uldum - We're told that Deathwing wants the Coffer of Promise, and thankfully we actually see a few of his agents working to uncover it. It does feel a little shoehorned into the otherwise cheeky Indiana Jones storyline, however. Schnottz is working for Deathwing, so he says, and he has a few Black Dragonflight goons to back him up. It's better than only a text reference, but still feels detached.

Meh. I agree.

Twilight Highlands - Lots of Twilight Cult presence. But they're here working for Cho'gall? This is another Hyjal... Deathwing is pulling the strings of a sub-boss. Thankfully, we do get exposure to Deathwing himself in the Red Dragonflight storyline. We also see a bit of him in one of the Nightmares. Overall, not bad.

So you completely discount the battle between Alexstrasza and Deathwing?

[Rivin]

And where do you feel Deathwing's presence in the game, in a couple of missable quests and randomly having him kill everything but you in the zone you're afking in. Deathwing is the only thing tying Cata to WC2 and WC2 barely managed to establish him as a character past EVIL DARGON BIG BAD STAY AWAY.

In BC you know you were advancing on Illidan, shutting down his allies' operations through quests which lead to 5 mans until you were literally banging at his gates, same for Wrath and the Lich King.

This is where I feel Cataclysm's storytelling fails in comparison to Wrath's. Deathwing just doesn't have enough of a presence. He shows up in Hyjal and Twilight Highlands, and it's awesome, but he doesn't really establish himself as the villain very well.

However, Illidan had basically no presence whatsoever in BC (I'm pretty sure I had no idea who he was, other than that guy in the intro cinematic, until I started reading WoWwiki, which was after I had probably three or more characters at 70). They overdid it a little with Arthas, making him look too much like a cartoon villain, but he was definitely all over the place making sure you knew he existed.

Compared to other games out there maybe?

I do believe I covered that in the very post you quoted. :P

[Sardonic]

It could just be, for me anyway, that after 6+ years WoW has lost its ability impress.

But, I dunno. I still love the idea of mmo's and rpg's in general. But something about Cata is just plain wrong to me. Too much instancing and phasing, ultra-linear questing, the insult that is archaeology (I've never seen a more transparent and un-fun grind before). It just feels... meh. I haven't logged in in weeks. In fact I think my game card time has expired, and it doesn't bother me one bit. There used to be a world to play in with this game, where you would meet other players and discover things. Over time it's become all about queues and instances and gear-chasing. Even if you want to explore the world you won't see players (or even nodes) that are out-of-phase with you, and you can't just pick quests a-la-carte now. You must start at the designated starting point for a zone (if you wish to quest there) and follow the insultingly-linear questline as long as you can stomach it. There is no variation.

Somehow, for me anyway, they killed the world that used to make playing WoW so fun for me.

[Lumineus]

Sorry, I didn't realise that 4.0:
If you are into lore and are upset by the fact you can't relate to it, then read up on it, there's a hell of a lot of lore behind the dragon aspects, the new old god that's gonna come into play,

Actually, no there isn't a lot of lore about N'Zath, other than what little about the Emerald Nightmare was in Vanilla, and was then attributed to Hakkar (oops). And that's half the problem. In Wrath, you knew ALL ABOUT Yogg-Saron before you even hit level cap. We still don't know anything about N'Zath.