It's turning into a freakin' research project. Spent an hour (it'd've been fifteen minutes without the language hurdles) interviewing a player new to the game with Cataclysm.

He wants to see the story but is frustrated because he is leveling so quickly huge chunks get missed. At 50 he'd never left his starting continent and hadn't seen most of even that one. It was all gray. His question was if he should keep doing stuff way below level or push forward. The answer, of course, depends how he wants to play but it did crystalize something that'd been nagging at me. The leveling curve is now completely disconnected from the content. I'm no WoW luddite pining for the sometimes brutal climb of the original game, and WoW has always had many interlocking or parallel stories not all of which would be seen by one character–a strength–but Blizzard has made the game so easy and fast in the revamped old zones (I've not yet experienced 80-85 content) that even with new info dumps, some elegant and some awkward as hell, the experience of the world has broken.

Breadcrumb quests are added in the major cities, suggesting players go here or there when they reach an appropriate level, but there is no information where the places are or how to reach them. A fine idea but no information is given concerning where they are or how to reach them which is an odd combination. More importantly, most of them will already be under-level roflstomps once reached. My interviewee had a quest log full of breadcrumbs leading to stale locations and I have the same.

We finally leveled the guild–guilds level now–to four, and the perk for members is…faster leveling.

There is a ton of great stuff and I recommend WoW, but it's breaking into discrete chunks. Some times intentionally and some times not.

Zone specific, Un'goro's streamlined quite a bit. Still gorgeous and painfully ugly depending where you turn the camera. (Hint: don't look at the canopy from below.) Most of the old quests still exist or are referenced but have been moved to new locations and made easier. Link is gone forever. A new quest chain, an extended Don Quixote gag, would be a lot of fun if it weren't maddeningly buggy.

It's also odd; having played games, and WoW, for so long I could tell instantly which things in the environment would be tied to a quest later. That's me, not WoW, but I'm starting to see how people who create games (or movies, what have you) start having trouble enjoying them. Consumer->aware and critical consumer->too damn aware and seeing the hooks outlined in neon. My first experience of this, different but related, was reading Steinbeck as a kid. I dubbed it hint-clunk foreshadowing. Got a C on that paper, which was supposed to be about the elements and not the levers.

ramble mode off, time to visit Outland

[edit] Short version. Before a character saw all the zones but not everything in them. Now a character sees a few zones and everything in them. It's balkanized.

Thanks beak-ed one. No idea what to do. Cataclysm's not purchased for either. The EU server, the guild is great but there is zip for endgame. Not sure there's a single alliance guild trying to kill a damn thing. I'm a #2 so the idea of endlessly churning new characters for something to do makes my sinuses hurt. I may be back on that silly RP US server soon.

Not inherently an MMO player myself. There's the I Am Misanthrope plus some of the competence issues you mention. The game has to be extraordinarily good to flip me into a #2 (this is starting to feel like some analog of the Kinsey scale).

I'd instantly quit WoW forever if I couldn't use mods. Vaguely, inconsistently against in a single player RPG but my WoW is smothered in mod sauce. Spearmint with a little ajawain. Blizzard expects them to be used and over time adds many of their features to the base game. Sometimes in nearly useless versions [cough Blizzard threat meter cough] but often whole hog.

The value of a threat meter can not be overstated. That's the one absolute requirement for grouping or even soloing as a pet class. It is impossible to consistently and accurately track threat in your head. Anyone who says otherwise is full of poop.

 

The hideousness of guildnames is a real problem but arthritic Adams jokes are no solution

Got an error and this post went up three times. Can't edit previous two or delete dupes. If a mod has a second, mind cleaning the mess up?

It is still echoing through my soul Steer and I shall be forever afraid and weak kneed. Cowed and grateful.

 

A new Tauren cow joke is an interesting project. With millions already doing them for years, a tough project. Maybe auroch gags? Anyone got ideas? Should be easily checkable against armory to see if we can find a truly new one. I summon the [pauses to put on spiked blue hair anime wig] Power of Tap!