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Horde Zone Review: Swamp of Sorrows

Character: Brakalma the Pyre Witch, orc elemental combat shaman.
Level Span: 50-55
Theme: Subtropical orc ruins

I had had some bad luck lately, playing through a number of classic zones that were virtually unchanged, but I remembered how good World of Warcraft can be while playing through the some of the redone Swamp of Sorrows. Before I get into the zone review I'm going to go on a bit at how much more fun it is to play a shaman now. Brakalma is my highest level shaman and I hadn't used her for a long time, revisiting her briefly after the totem interface was released but not playing her more than a few levels. I always found elemental combat to be the hardest to play of the shaman specs, mostly because I was always out of mana and they're tough to gear, but now that's not really a problem, and I find the spell rotation to be fun and dynamic. So there's that.

The zone ostensibly starts in the newly added neutral goblin town Bogpaddle which was pretty meh. The quests are the usual "bring me lobster tails" and "crabs stole my beer" kind of thing but there's only five or six in Bogpaddle before you move on. The neutral goblin story arcs stay pretty by the book, which was a bit unfortunate, but it nevertheless filled out a zone where there was formerly not much to do.

The zone really took off once I started nosing around Stonard. I'm never sure what percentage of current players are fans of the real-time strategy forebearers of the series, but the Swamp of Sorrows revealed itself to be the zone for them. For those of you who may be unaware, the Swamp of Sorrows was a key location in Warcraft: Orcs and Humans as well as Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, and players are pitted against the other faction, represented by the Horde's Stonard and the Alliance's new outpost, Marshtide Watch. You get to play through different phases of the battle using classic units that culminates in you fending off an Alliance attack on Stonard. The throwbacks are far from subtle, going so far as to title the quests "Orcs and Humans" and "Tides of Darkness," and they are still just hack 'n slashes, but it's still fun to indulge the nostalgia of what I imagine must be a minority in the player base. Afterwards, players are treated to a surprising revisitation to minor character Neeka Bloodscar and Helgrum the Swift. The questline was moderately touching, if maybe trying too hard. Aside from Neeka, there weren't any characters here that left much of an impression.

Meanwhile, the neutral quests ultimately lead you to the Temple of Atal'Hakkar, where players are given a new line of lead-in quests by Itharius. These help to establish what's going on in the sunken temple and explain who the major players are within, why they're there, and why it's imperative that you kill them. While the quests were fun, and made use of the labyrinthine corridors of the outer temple that formerly were just a pain to slog through to get to the instance portal. Ultimately I was pleased with the treatment the Swamp of Sorrows received. It wasn't anything spectacular, but it got the job done.

Dungeon: Sunken Temple

I will say that as a dungeon to play through, the Sunken Temple has been vastly improved. Where there were once around fifteen bosses there are now only five boss encounters, and it's only the middle floor so people aren't constantly getting lost. Additionally, the Avatar of Hakkar is now extremely simple to summon, so he's become a boss people actually do. The lead-in quests tell you why the dragons are in there and who the Atal'ai are, and also gives some additional weight to Jammal'an. From a detached and objective point of view, the Sunken Temple is a success now in a way it's never been before.

However, I am not detached and objective. I'll be the first to say that the original Sunken Temple was always something of a disaster to actually play in. There's a lot of fairly arbitrary rules that aren't explained to newcomers (the shield, the snakes, Hakkar, etc), its layout was fairly complicated and didn't really translate to the map well, making it difficult to navigate and easy to get lost in. That, and the huge list of bosses with hardly any loot to speak of made it virtually impossible to play the whole thing through without losing party members, and a full clear took over two hours if you were lucky. So yes, the Sunken Temple had a lot of problems that needed to be worked out.

That being said, the dungeon was of great significance to the narrative, and tied into a lot of very long questlines even before the addition of the class-specific quests. The story of Hakkar and the Atal'ai was incredibly cool, and served to flesh out the trolls to an extent that few to date have enjoyed. Though disjointed, the narrative surrounding Hakkar was involved and compelling, especially in that his rebirth in Zul'Gurub was facilitated by players being duped by Yeh'kinya. Coupled with Marvon Rivetseeker's archeological interest in the temple, as well as the backstory given to Morphaz through the class-specific quests and the story of Eranikus (even if elaborated after the fact), these factors made the Sunken Temple one  of the most story-rich dungeons in the early game, even if it was a pain to actually play and complete. But even then, the frustration was with its many winding corridors, hidden rooms, and sprawling complex, which made it feel like you were really crawling through ancient evil ruins.

The revamp of the Sunken Temple has eliminated all the frustration but most of the significance, as well. The actions of players in the Sunken Temple had ramifications that came up later, so speaking from the perspective of interpreting a Warcraft timeline, the temple was already "completed" years ago. The Shade of Eranikus was defeated, and the Avatar of Hakkar was destroyed and its captured essence delivered to Yeh'kinya to eventually be reborn in Zul'Gurub (and again destroyed). Zul'Gurub isn't in the game anymore, so I feel we can effectively rule that as completed, as well. But when you kill the Avatar of Hakkar in the new version, Itharius mentions Zul'Gurub as if that hasn't happened yet. So from the timeline perspective, this is impossible, and must simply be ignored. I don't understand why we weren't simply given a complement of new bosses and an updated story for the Sunken Temple. Why are we still killing Jammal'an when this would've been the perfect opportunity to finally deal with Yeh'kinya?

I realize that most players are not following the story in detail and don't care about stuff like this, and I understand that priority logically is given to areas that players are more involved with, but nevertheless, the dungeon had to be redone; these quests are new; the work is already being done. I've gotten tired of being punished for paying attention.