Tuesday Haiku? And My Thoughts on Cataclysm 10 Months In

Time Lost

Love is never late.

A heart able to forgive,

Makes up for time lost.

 I really have no excuse for not posting this earlier, except that I was lost in time.  In fact, I spent a lot of today near this very ledge in Stormpeaks, leveling my rogue.  I took her from level 75 to level 79 today, all the while mulling over the changes to World of Warcraft since the release of Cataclysm.

I read a post by Liz Danforth not long ago, and in it she explained exactly what she thought Blizzard did wrong with Cataclysm.  You can find her post by clicking on her name.  Where World of Warcraft is concerned, I agree with her wholeheartedly, but I'd like to take it a step further.

And this may help explain why I haven't been posting lately.  Why I keep missing Haiku Tuesday, and why I'm finding it hard to care about a game I still love and still think is one of the most beautiful games I've ever played.  It may help to explain why I'm in mourning for WoW.

The points Ms. Danforth makes are excellent--we were heroes in Wrath, we had a purpose.  We made mistakes, but our intentions were pure.  And at the end, they put a statue in Dalaran so everyone could see that we finally accomplished our mission.

In Cataclysm, we seem to jump from one extreme to another.  Dungeons were extremely difficult before gear, continued to be difficult after gear, and people had to relearn how to use crowd control.  While crowd control is always an excellent thing to learn, the quests to get to those dungeons were fairly easy, and except for Uldum, didn't have much of a story line other than to open up that part of the new world.  

Even in Uldum, as fun as they were, I'm not sure to this day what the whole Harrison Jones quest line had to do with Deathwing.  In other words, I haven't seen a lot of continuity in Cataclysm.  

And the rewards have been less than par, for example, getting 353 level gear in the Zul's, when it takes 359 level gear to be able to complete them, at least for the most part.

In Wrath, everything tied together somehow, even the iron dwarves.  Yes, we probably should have had to use a little more crowd control, but the really good players have always known how to use it when needed, and we still had a definite plot leading up to a definite ending.  

And the gear progression was, well, phenomenal in my honest opinion.  Those of you that have played awhile, think back to when you started Ulduar after Naxx.  Weren't those stats amazing??  Remember drooling, and possibly fighting, over Worldcarver?

Also, the end-game daily quests in Cataclysm, well...bore me to tears.  The new Molten Front ones are just the same horrible drudgery over and over, and if you're on a pvp server, then they are painful drudgery.

Now, don't get me wrong--I love a lot of the changes Blizzard made, especially the way quests progress in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms now for new characters.  They really have done an amazing job with that, and everything runs together almost seamless, making leveling enjoyable again.

I also appreciate that every expansion is a major undertaking, one that I'm sure most Blizzard employees take to heart.  I'm sure they tried very hard to keep everything new in line with old lore, etc. I realize that I am not a game developer.

But I am the end user.  And I just feel like, somewhere along the line, they lost the heart of the game.

Maybe I'm just burnt out from 2 years of raiding.  I would love to know what you think, 10 months into Cata.

Have fun, no matter what game you play!