I liked how Dragonwrath and Fangs of the Father began. I liked how just about
anyone of the required classes could pick up the beginning quests, and even with
a pug or LFR group, complete the first stage of lore and weapons. I liked how the
finished product only came from having a raid group that could do the grind and
then kill the final boss — grinding and boss-killing, or raiding in a nutshell
– rather than from whether or not you can win a battleground, continuing capping
valor long after you need the offered gear, or whether RNG graced you before the
next tier came out. I liked how everyone could get started but it took something
special (like teamwork) to finish.
I know green fire won’t be the status quo, even if there’s a lot of excitement
about it now. Future warlocks will have to live with regular orange fire for 90
levels just to get to the questline, and even then, will every alt take the time
to do it all? I know there are warlocks out there who aren’t excited about green
flames — and that’s totally okay — so they won’t be slinging the verdant fel
fire. It will be time for me to quit playing when I start judging others by the
color of their Incinerates.
I don’t think reward should be restricted up front by the first quest; instead,
make it challenging and endearing along the way. I hope Blizzard lets us all
paint our enemies with all the colors of the wind fire because we want to, not
because we happen to do X activity.
Now that we’ve talked about pre-expansion and Theramore, there’s one thing I really felt Cataclysm missed out on, and that’s Arathi Highlands. Frankly, with zones like the Eastern and Western Plaguelands, Hillsbrad/Alterac and Silverpine all heavily redesigned, Arathi sticks out like a sore thumb. Yes, I’m arguing that even more time should have been spent on a pre-sixty zone in an expansion that split its focus too much between zone revamps and new content, but hear me out before getting the torches and pitchforks ready.
I’m not arguing that they should have done more with Arathi in addition to all the zones they revamped. I specifically think certain zones like Desolace and Feralas could have done with less (especially Desolace, which just seems odd nowadays) and Arathi could have seen some of that development time. There are hints of this in the zone, with the Forsaken establishing a camp to the west with Galen Trollbane raised as a Forsaken. Frankly, there was a lot of potential for Horde/Alliance conflict here that really didn’t get realized. We have Danath Trollbane, who really should long since have gotten to come home and set his family’s house in order, and Galen the risen servant of I don’t think reward should be restricted kingdom on Azeroth into the undead fold. Symbolically, whoever controls Stromgarde holds the history of humanity on Azeroth in their hands.
