LONG BLOG
Cataclysm, the double edged sword.
WoW Cataclysm, the newest instalment from Blizzard to the WoW series. Cataclysm has received a lot of mixed responses from "Wooh this is awesome !!!!!!" to "This is shit they nerfed it way too much.".
Both of these statements are true but your reaction to the changes depends on your play style and time playing the game. If you have been playing WoW for a long time (possibly even from the beginning) you WILL be a tad annoyed to say the least that in the previous expansions you had to work for your epic raid or PvP gear. Specifically in vanilla WoW and The Burning Crusade where you had to raid to get the raid worthy gear (This usually involved running a raid 5+ times to get the piece you wanted). This also meant that Heroics WERE being ran for the gear that dropped unlike now where Heroics are just used to farm points thus meaning someone who has never set foot in any raid can be sporting full raid gear. This has 2 downsides, 1) It completely removes the learning curve from raiding as the player wont see the point in doing the easier raids(By this I mean easier game mechanics) and 2) A raid could find themselves with a extremely well geared player but unfortunately they have no idea what is going on. It is true though that sometimes raids will explain the tactics before hand so everyone knows thus eliminating this problem but unfortunately few such raid groups exist and most demand you know tactics without them being explained (There are some things which can't be learned from You Tube).
On the flip side of the coin however for new players and players who joined in WotLK this seems like a brilliant idea for many reasons, e.g. They have brought the XP needed to level down, it is easy to get raid and PvP gear and with all the Guild bonuses lvls 1-60 takes only a few days. However this may seem silly but all these benefits are not good for the player, for example the super fast levelling time means that they will probably have very little dungeon or PvP experience which leads on to the next problem. When players reach lvl85 and mindlessly farmed HCs for points what have they learned ? The answer, nothing. At the end of the day what the expansion has rather unwittingly done is allowed players with a low level of knowledge and understanding the supposed ability to do end-game content or have they ? Actually they have unwittingly given them a deeper hole to climb out of than in WotLK. This has come about for two reasons:
1) Most experienced raid groups can see these people coming from a mile off and won't let them join the raid.
2) The player doesn't realise that it's because he has no raid experience and because he has full 359 gear (most crafted or bought on the AH) he believes that he doesn't need to do the beginner raids (All raids drop 359 gear but some have harder game mechanics than others) so is endlessly trapped in a endless cycle of rejection.
With these last few word I would like to summarise my feelings on Cataclysm, thank you Blizzard for making the game easier for newbies but for all the good you have done you have done twice as much harm. Please don't get me wrong Cataclysm is a great expansion with great content but I feel the way it has been designed and presented is bad, specifically the aforementioned reasons.
P.S. I know this post is out quite a few months after the release of Cataclysm I just thought now would be the right time to make this blog considering the new content update that is imminently approaching.
Bawbagless 
Nihil 1
Both of these statements are true but your reaction to the changes depends on your play style and time playing the game. If you have been playing WoW for a long time (possibly even from the beginning) you WILL be a tad annoyed to say the least that in the previous expansions you had to work for your epic raid or PvP gear. Specifically in vanilla WoW and The Burning Crusade where you had to raid to get the raid worthy gear (This usually involved running a raid 5+ times to get the piece you wanted). This also meant that Heroics WERE being ran for the gear that dropped unlike now where Heroics are just used to farm points thus meaning someone who has never set foot in any raid can be sporting full raid gear. This has 2 downsides, 1) It completely removes the learning curve from raiding as the player wont see the point in doing the easier raids(By this I mean easier game mechanics) and 2) A raid could find themselves with a extremely well geared player but unfortunately they have no idea what is going on. It is true though that sometimes raids will explain the tactics before hand so everyone knows thus eliminating this problem but unfortunately few such raid groups exist and most demand you know tactics without them being explained (There are some things which can't be learned from You Tube).
On the flip side of the coin however for new players and players who joined in WotLK this seems like a brilliant idea for many reasons, e.g. They have brought the XP needed to level down, it is easy to get raid and PvP gear and with all the Guild bonuses lvls 1-60 takes only a few days. However this may seem silly but all these benefits are not good for the player, for example the super fast levelling time means that they will probably have very little dungeon or PvP experience which leads on to the next problem. When players reach lvl85 and mindlessly farmed HCs for points what have they learned ? The answer, nothing. At the end of the day what the expansion has rather unwittingly done is allowed players with a low level of knowledge and understanding the supposed ability to do end-game content or have they ? Actually they have unwittingly given them a deeper hole to climb out of than in WotLK. This has come about for two reasons:
1) Most experienced raid groups can see these people coming from a mile off and won't let them join the raid.
2) The player doesn't realise that it's because he has no raid experience and because he has full 359 gear (most crafted or bought on the AH) he believes that he doesn't need to do the beginner raids (All raids drop 359 gear but some have harder game mechanics than others) so is endlessly trapped in a endless cycle of rejection.
With these last few word I would like to summarise my feelings on Cataclysm, thank you Blizzard for making the game easier for newbies but for all the good you have done you have done twice as much harm. Please don't get me wrong Cataclysm is a great expansion with great content but I feel the way it has been designed and presented is bad, specifically the aforementioned reasons.
P.S. I know this post is out quite a few months after the release of Cataclysm I just thought now would be the right time to make this blog considering the new content update that is imminently approaching.
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About Bawbaglessone of us since 12:48 PM on 03.21.2011
Hello Destructoid ! I am Bawbagless, named as such becuase I take what has been dubbed by the nerd-raging 9 year olds as the route in life which requires no balls. Whether it be playing as a spy in Team Fortress 2 or a Rogue in World Of Warcraft I love sneaking about (Like a freaking Ninja). But enough about that, I live in sunny Scotland (if you can pardon the cliche) and have an obsession with games, computers and everything related to computers. My main games include WoW, TF2 and L4D2 but I also play many others include any Half Life game, any counter-strike game, actually any valve game would some it up better as well as the overdose of Square Enix. This has hopefully been a brief and comprehensive introduction to myself so with that I say goodbye.