World of Warcraft: Cataclysm - First thoughts

If you have been living under a rock, you may not have heard of the release of the next expansion to the World of Warcraft franchise called Cataclysm. To summarise what this expansion adds:

• Two new races. Worgen for the Alliance (a shape shifting, werewolf race coming from the Kingdom of Gilneas which, through WoW's 6 year past, were hiding behind the Greymane Wall in Silverpine Forest) and the Goblin's for the Horde.
• Level cap increase to 85 with all the associated questing zones for those 5 levels as well as dungeons and starting raids.

Now that seems par for the course when it comes to a new expansion for an MMO. But what Blizzard did in addition is that before the expansion was released they "shattered" all the old, 6-year old content. Essentially, they gave themselves licence to go back and change, well, everything of the old world that was released with the World of Warcraft 6 years ago. This specific change has me so excited, and I have delved deeply into playing the rebooted content.

My first impression of it? Holy crap its awesome! They have taken every lesson learnt from the last two expansions (Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King) as well as the technologies employed in Wrath like the phasing technology to make questing in starting zones feel more persistent. One of the oddities of questing was when you did a quest such as fight off a horde of invading forces, go hand in the quest where the quest giver thanks you profusely for helping them and it will make life so much easier and yet you go back to where you did the quest and things are still the same. Now, with the phasing tech, they can actually make "permanent" changes to the world for your character.

One of my favourite moments was levelling my new Night Elf Mage (yes, Night Elves can now be mages), and arriving at Astranaar, the town is under attack by the Horde. Your first quests are to kill the fires burning all over the town and then hop into a glaive thrower and kill off a bunch of Horde flyers attacking the town. When you hand the quest in, the fires are gone and the Horde are no longer attacking. Definitely makes it feel like your doing quests actually has an impact on the game world.

The other thing that Blizzard has changed is reducing (and in some zones, eliminating) the stupid quests where you need to kill some bunnies or a few pigs that the guy asking you to do it could probably get it done himself. Now, starter quests make you feel a lot more epic. Every starting zone I have tried so far has that "epic" quest line just before you move onto the next zone. This is important because Blizzard has said they have a large number of new accounts that get created and then never progress past level 10. Making a new player, still getting used to his or her class, feel like they are important to helping save Azeroth will make them want to continue on with their adventure.

There is one exception to this however that I encountered. I created a Human Hunter, just to see what the newer starting area for humans felt like, and unfortunately you still have those rather silly quests in Elwynn Forest where you need to help two love struck farmer's children meet up in secret because their families are feuding. Not exactly inspiring for whats to come but I guess Blizzard had a few limitations as to what changes they could squeeze in before release.

All in all, this is by far the best expansion Blizzard has produced for a game I enjoy playing (as well as, apparently, 12 million other people) and they deserve the record breaking sales they are getting. With all the changes to all the starting content it is far less intimidating than it used to be to get started in WoW as a new player and old players can find some extra fun checking out what was ripped to shreds and replaced.

Warcraft Movie is going to ROCK!

I am sorry, but I absolutely HAD to blog about this. It is now confirmed that Sam Raimi will be directing the upcoming Warcraft movie based on Blizzard's Warcraft game franchise. For those not in the know, Warcraft has been around since 1994 in the form of a real-time strategy game with two sequels and a number of expansions. It then transformed into the now massive World of Warcraft, the worlds largest Massively Multiplayer Online game, with over 11 million subscribers.

How do I know its going to be amazing?

1. The franchise lore

The storyline that accompanies Warcraft and the events that play out in its plot all the way from the 1994 RTS game to the current WoW are a move makers delight. Full of action, intrigue, drama, wars, treachery and love stories.

2. Sam Raimi

When Blizzard first publicly expressed an interest back in 2007 about making a Warcraft movie, Uwe Boll approached Blizzard saying he could direct for them. With this directors serious lack of success at game to movie conversions (anyone remember Street Fighter?), Blizzard pretty much laughed him out and told him where he could stick his offer. They then went and selected, in my opinion, one of the industries finest action/fantasy directors. Pretty much anything Sam has directed has ended up golden.

3. Blizzards neurotic caution with its IP

Blizzard has a very big reputation for ensuring that the quality of anything related to its IP is stellar. For evidence, look at Starcraft Ghost, a game that was supposed to be an FPS based version of the Starcraft universe that was never launched because Blizzard thought it wasn't good enough. The expansions for World of Warcraft were also supposed to only take a year each and notoriously took a lot longer because Blizzard wanted to ensure a quality product. Starcraft 2 as well was supposed to be released last year but was delayed because again, Blizzard wanted it perfect.

I have no doubt they will employ the same tactic with the movie and not allow it to be released if it ends up being a load of crap.

There have also been numerous comments around by people who are not as in love with the Warcraft universe as I am, or the 11 million other players of WoW, and believe that only die-hard fans will watch it. Personally I don't think this is the case. The same was said about Harry Potter and yet more people have watched the movies than have read the books or even knew about the books. The lore and storyline that exists within the Warcraft universe is so broad and appealing that it should be a great movie to watch regardless of if you have ever seen or taken part in the games.

So come release day I will be at the front of the ticket buying queue and happily settle down in front of the big screen with popcorn and drink to be absorbed in a universe I have come to love.

Lok'tar Ogar!!!

Why Blizzard rocks!

I really do love Blizzard. They are a group of incredibly intelligent and insightful games developers. They only have 4 game franchises to their name and yet they are infinitely succesful. From the strategy genre with the likes of Warcraft and Starcraft to RPG's and MMO's such as World of Warcraft.

The real reason I love them is that while most games development houses are so focussed on the latest and greatest graphical punishment for your PC's hardware, Blizzard will work out the lowest common-denominator when it comes to hardware specs and then focus on that level of graphical grunt. No need for the latest price busting graphics card to play World of Warcraft or Warcraft 3. And the good news is that their upcoming releases, Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 will follow the same trend.

Instead of graphics, Blizzard focus on what is, to me at least, a more important aspect; gameplay. A game can be absolutely drop-dead gorgeous in the eye-candy department and yet still totally suck as far as enjoyment is concerned. I played Crysis. Gorgeous game, with everything looking so incredibly realistic it was jaw dropping. But after the jaw was picked up off the desk and glitz fades away what was left? A game that was, well, average in my humble opinion. I never finished Crysis because it bored me eventually.

Blizzard's focus on aspects such as playability and plot means that its games far outlast those that focus primarily on visuals. Look at Starcaft as an example. There are professional (yes, people get paid) Starcraft leagues and tournaments in Korea with huge attendances. Not to mention television rights as well. This is from a game that was released in 1998 for goodness sake. World of Warcraft is another example. Graphically WoW is slightly aging, and yet it still manages to enthral a massive audience (well over 11 million subscribers now).

What this also means is good news for Linux gamers. I play WoW on Kubuntu (my Linux distribution of choice) and it runs better in Linux with Wine than it does in Windows XP. Recently I found my Starcraft CD's from back in the day and they played too. Diablo 2 also does as well as Warcraft 3.

This is absolute brilliance by Blizzard. Not only are they ensuring that the largest possible group of hardware configurations on PC can play their games, but they are turning every Linux user into a fan at the same time by their decisions to not be "cutting-edge" in hardware needs.

I just hope that with the soon to be released Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 that they haven't forgotten that and that us Linux users will be able to help contribute to Blizzard's bottom-line by spending our money on their great games ... and then play them for the next 10 years. From what I have seen of the video's and screenshots, this does happily, seem to be the case. Only time will tell.