So here's how zones have come to be structured. You get a breadcrumb quest from a call or command board within a city, you follow it to an outpost in the zone. This outpost has a couple quests to get you acquainted with what's going on, introduce conflicts and the forces at play in the area. You do a few rounds of questing, then are moved on to a new outpost elsewhere in the zone, that expands upon your actions at the earlier outpost. Usually you move from a town or substantial settlements to staging areas and camps. Another few rounds of quests. This goes on maybe four or five times. You're always moving, there's little backtracking, and one thing follows from the other. Most questlines have unique mechanics at some point in them, and you find yourself frequently participating in large scale battles and joining notable heroes against powerful foes. Structurally, World of Warcraft is the best it's ever been. It's actually fun to quest - you're reading your quest log again, and the scale of the story as you experience is pretty cool. You feel like you're impacting the story much more than before. So there is all that. Unfortunately, there's still a lot to complain about.
Questing and levelling is fun, and the game as a whole has reduced the compunction to grind significantly. But there's still a whole lot of it. I don't throw up my hands every time I have to retrace my steps, but the same dungeon run once a day for two weeks isn't that fun - and dungeon grinding is the funner of grinds. We start talking about dailies and reputations and professions and it's absolutely mind-numbing. But these grinds are necessary now even to casual players if you want to stay competitive in any arena of endgame material which has been made so much more casual-friendly. But it's cheating - it's a trick to keep players playing the same thing over again so they can play new stuff when it finally comes out. And when finally it does come out, there's a new grind with it.
For example, archaeology. What the hell kind of profession is that? When it was first announced, Blizzard called it a profession you could focus on "in your downtime." I had no idea what they meant then, and I have even less of an idea what they mean after bringing archaeology up a few levels. It can't help but create downtime. Every other profession allows you to make something of use to you: equipment, enhancements, toys, reagents, et cetera. Archaeology allows you to make vendor trash - and fairly cheap vendor trash at that. Ostensibly, the reward is the lore, which should actually make it the profession I get behind. But the thing is: the lore tidbits that accompany each piece of vendor trash, while fun, don't leave my character with anything they can keep. So really, I can fully appreciate that reward by going on Wowpedia and reading it there. Completing it in game offers me nothing extra except, I guess, a minor sense of accomplishment? For tabbing out and blogging while my character flies between digsites?
Oh I know, I know. What about Zin'rokh, Destroyer of Worlds? The Innkeeper's Daughter? That adorable little baby raptor skeleton? And yeah, these are sweet items that anyone would want, but you stumble upon them based solely on luck. In another profession, if you want to be able to make something, there is a clear path to making that happen. If you want to make elixir A you must gain reputation with faction B. It's a grind but at least it's a grind with a finish line. You want the Bones of Transformation, just dig aimlessly. Don't have a night elf digsite? Better dig at some other one until one opens up. You might get it. Maybe not, though. Just keep digging.
The endgame grinds are just so tedious, and it's made worse by the fact that questing has been refined into such a smooth experience with good pacing; when you break 85 and finish questing your zone dry the game slows to a muddy slog almost immediately. You have to work hard on the same material over and over before you're outfitted to enter heroics and hold your ground. Then you have to run the same heroics repeatedly before you're outfitted for raids. It doesn't ever stop.
But the focus was split into many different things, this time, with an emphasis on endgame but a revisit to all the mid-level content we've all slogged through on all our different characters in the past. And the revisited zones are great. Questing's come a long long way since World of Warcraft and it shows. Zones that have gotten the full treatment are incredibly well done. Unfortunately, a whole lot of zones haven't. Now, I haven't had the chance to play through everything yet, but I've quested a few zones of varying levels, started a couple of new characters, and I'm shocked by how half-assed some of this is. I'll compare.
I started a night elf mage and found the Shadowglen to be virtually identical to its earlier incarnation. Iverron is still waiting for someone to cure his poison after five years. I kept on playing expecting a phase to come in, announcing that the cataclysm had occurred and all that, but no such luck. And things don't improve once you finish up in Shadowglen and go to Dolanaar. The starting experience has been tweaked to be a little more streamlined, but it's essentially the same, and I was incredibly disappointed with that. Especially when the new race/class combinations encouraging players to start new character, it felt ridiculous to be running the same quests over again.
Darkshore has been completely overhauled, and it's wicked (which is even more impressive considering how boring it used to be). It's got a really solid story that keeps you moving and interested. Several elements have been added to make it much easier to travel through, and the quests are varied and fun. There's still the staple "kill x murlocs" and "find x dirt clumps" or whatever but the numbers are generally smaller and they mix it up enough to keep it exciting. Once I finished it, I was surprised at how much fun it was, and was optimistic about the new expansion.
So then I hopped on a Horde character and played through Arathi Highlands. I had very high hopes for Arathi and maybe I did it to myself, but I was again severely disappointed. Some modest improvements and indication that time has passed. But the quests are all completely identical. The quest hubs are arranged so you're generally not going to the same area multiple times, which is nice, but still, there were no quests here I hadn't done before. You have NPCs telling you these are the same quests you've done before. It's maddening. What's more is that the prevalence of elementals in the area and the impact of "The Princess Trapped" questline made Arathi ideally suited to be of importance to the elemental war raging after the cataclysm, but the quests here are so untouched they may as well have been left alone completely.
I wasn't expecting every single zone to be redone. Everything since The Burning Crusade is tolerable. But what I had thought we were going to get with Cataclysm was a revamp of every old world zone, and that's not what we got. Blizzard is still capable of making a good game, that's very clear, but what's also clear is how cheap and flippant they can be with their own material, and they're high profile enough at this point that there's not really an excuse for it.
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