The Stormwind Full Employment Act remains in force.

So I’ve had a fair chunk of time to play with Cataclysm.  Maybe you’ve heard of it.  And if I’m going to start using my own blog again (and I am), ranting about it seems like a good place to kick off.

‘Cause there’s a lot to rant about, but it all comes back to the same point: this expansion has really not fixed anything.

Yes, the talent trees have been streamlined.  No more having to look elsewhere for talent builds!  Largely because the trees have been pared down so far that it’s not possible to screw up.  Your choices come down to maybe a half-dozen points to put in situationally useful spots.  Or you can choose which of two functionally identical playstyles you prefer, which really comes down to one sharp pointy thing or two.  Yay.

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After a fair amount of thought, I’ve reached a conclusion on the overall arc of Wrath of the Lich King.  And it’s an important thing to consider, because this expansion was Blizzard pushing hard on the story button.

Oh, certainly there were other design goals at work.  There was a move from a raiding ladder to a stepstool, so that a character that hit 80 a week before Icecrown Citadel came out could conceivably take part in the raids on Arthas.  There was a rebalancing of classes to bring hybrids in line with pure classes, letting both my shaman and paladin swing for broke on damage meters.  (Spending quite some time as the guild’s top DPS as an enhancement shaman is a bit of a point of pride for me.)  A resurgence of quest design, artistic and flowing zones, and of course the addition of the game’s first new class… there was a lot going in here.

But this is the first expansion where we’ve received more than one in-game cutscene explicitly devoted to story.  There are more interactive setpieces, more quests that exist with no real objectives beyond “watch events unfold.”  Blizzard was hitting that story button hard, and it takes a while to absorb. Read More…