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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.

Crown of the Earth

Alliance Zone Review: Teldrassil
Night Elf Starting Experience 

Character: Prince Danothen, night elf arcane mage.
Level Span: 1-10
Theme: Enchanted treetop woodland

Aside from the cataclysm, night elven society has been going through severe upheavals in the wake of Wrath of the Lich King. The novel Stormrage told the story of Malfurion's return from the Emerald Dream, and the subsequent ousting of Fandral Staghelm from the Cenarion Enclave when he was revealed as the source of Malfurion's imprisonment in the first place (that's what all that morrowgrain was for). Meanwhile, ancient highborne magi have come out of hiding and rejoined the civilization who exiled them. In Cataclysm, it is these highborne whom you play as when you start a mage. Additionally, night elven druids have traveled to Gilneas to deal with what was essentially a problem they created - the worgen - and have given shelter to the Gilneans who were forced to flee their homeland.

The night elves have suffered a very tumultuous period following a ten thousand year status quo, and just as things started to settle down, these changes shifted things again. Unfortunately, the night elf starting experience reflects these changes in absolutely no capacity. I touched on this briefly in my earlier Cataclysm review: Shadowglen and Teldrassil have exactly the same narrative they had when the game first came out five years ago. A bunch of quests have been removed, and several have been improved with mechanics to make them less annoying or easier, but the goals are all the same. The same problems, the same villains, the same outcomes. It's like no time has passed at all. The sole new quest is the last one of the zone, but at that point it's really too little too late, and it smacks of being a very last ditch effort to make the questline seem meaningful.

I think it's ridiculous to ask players to repeat the same material over again when they had to revisit it anyway. But that principle aside, there's a ton of new lore to go over and it isn't even touched on. As a night elf mage, my character should be possessed of a history fundamentally different than any other night elf class, but the play experience is identical, aside from a sentence or two from the mage trainer that actually tells him nothing. And the reasons why the highborne have been accepted back into the fold aren't explained at all. We're made to assume that Mordent Evenshade appealed to Tyrande to allow the highborne to return, but that's based on "A Cautious Return," a quest we would've had to do on other characters, which doesn't even show that hypothetical meeting. We just witness Mordent's conversation with Sentinel Stillbough, and then after Cataclysm, there are highborne everywhere so... I guess he made a good case?

There's a whole lot of new material to work with, and Teldrassil was the perfect opportunity to exploit it. Had Teldrassil been used as a vehicle to relate it to the players or even involve them in it, it would be a much more interesting zone. And that some of those chances are actually going to good use elsewhere somehow makes it more frustrating. Why not use the return of the highborne to create, say, a splinter group of night elf radicals, perhaps loyal to Staghelm? Or as a chance to elaborate on the harpies as potential powers? Or use Malfurion's return to focus on the Nightmare in the Emerald Dream as a possible source of evil (beyond the very tangential extent that it does)? For an expansion that seems to be blowing all its remaining villains in one go I really hope at least one guy is thinking ahead. But it always seems that if it's not about humans or orcs, it doesn't really require any attention.

Teldrassil did not fill me with confidence about approaching the other beginner zones. I was looking forward to starting a new gnome and troll, and now I feel like I shouldn't get my hopes up. From everything I'm reading and everything I'm feeling, Warcraft fans spend a lot of time these days feeling stupid for being Warcraft fans. Beating the final quest of Teldrassil on my night elf mage was one of those times.

All That Rises

Horde Zone Review: Vashj'ir

Character: Layla du Lac, undead assassination rogue.
Level Span: 80-82
Theme: Sunken night elf city.

Vashj'ir was the first zone I played after installing Cataclysm and it was immediately jarring just how linear it was.  By only a few quests in I knew I had to be paying attention. The entrance quest to Vashj'ir involves getting on a mercenary ship and sailing under the command of Legionnaire Nazgrim into the Great Sea to lay claim to a piece of land raised by the cataclysm before the Alliance does. But as the ship nears the island, it is attacked and eventually wrecked by a sea monster called Ozumat and the ship's passengers are thrown overboard into waters teeming with naga. You are saved by a Broken shaman named Erunak Stonespeaker of the Earthen Ring, who bands you with Nazgrim and a handful of other survivors. What follows is a desperate battle for ground against the naga led by insidious sea witch Lady Naz'jar, as she attempts to lay siege to the Abyssal Maw, Neptulon's elemental realm of water.

Undersea zones have been talked about by fans for a while, and the developers were luckily mindful of all the potential problems such a zone would present. Early quests reward players with permanent zone-specific buffs that allow them increased speed and water breathing, and soon after, underwater mounts. While the steps taken to make the zone fun are great, the addition of a third axis can take some getting used to, and it was frequently difficult to tell how far my character was from her enemies. While this can be frustrating for any class it's particularly troublesome for a rogue, whose combat is so dependent on her position relative to her foes. It's easy, too, to not notice hostile units come up on you from either above or below, which can prove dangerous in crowded areas.

If you're sick of the naga, you're probably not going to like this zone, but if you're in the camp who liked the naga when they first appeared and don't think they've ever really gotten proper treatment then you'll like Vashj'ir, as it's all about the naga and is full of them. Peppered throughout are deep sea murlocs, gilblins - which are ocean-dwelling goblins (and are kinda stupid), and an array of underwater wildlife of surprising variety. The place looks pretty great, if a bit by the book - giant coral reefs, expansive ruins draped in seaweed and moss, as well as two huge stationary urchin-like creatures whom characters can travel inside.

The naga have gotten substantial attention at times before, none moreso than Zangarmarsh, but never with the same kind of attention to detail. It almost feels like Lady Vashj was wasted, as Lady Naz'jar has much more presence as a villain throughout, including a short (and pretty awesome) flashback questline explaining how she and her forces came to Vashj'ir and what they hope to do there. Although maybe she seems like a better character because Naz'jar seems to be doing a better job. The Horde forces fight a losing battle, and even though your character is victorious in her quests, they are small victories that only set Lady Naz'jar back, but not enough to thwart her. Eventually, in a climactic submarine battle, she is successful in breaching the Abyssal Maw, forcing a confrontation in the dungeon, the Throne of the Tides.

Legionnaire Nazgrim was a surprisingly good character considering he's pretty much just another grunt. Players may remember seeing him at Conquest Hold back in Grizzly Hills when he was just a sergeant - he gave a lot of the Voldrune quests. Though determined, he also sees the hopelessness of the situation and muses frequently in quest dialogue that he thinks this will end in failure. There is less to Erunak than Nazgrim, though Erunak plays a more important role throughout. Two other interesting characters are the undersea demigods, Nespirath and L'ghorek. These are giant immobile urchin-like creatures who Naz'jar is trying to corrupt to use against Neptulon, and the player attempts to free them. Despite resembling beings who might be affiliated with the Old Gods, Nespirath and L'ghorek are more benevolent entities. Though your interactions with them are limited, they are apparently a preview to a similar third creature who is to be a boss battle in a later dungeon in the Abyssal Maw.

Dungeon: Throne of the Tides

The action of Vashj'ir culminates in a battle to secure the entrance to the Abyssal Maw, which the naga win. Just as the characters are about to regroup, the leviathan Ozumat grabs Erunak with its tentacle and pulls him in. Nazgrim follows in the hopes of saving him. Nazgrim is then found just inside the dungeon entrance and commands you to find Erunak and free him, and kill Lady Naz'jar.

The dungeon is engaging enough. Aside from Commander Ulthok the bosses are all significant characters from the Vashj'ir storyline, and the fights are generally straightforward but demanding - you can learn the mechanics with ease but you need to be paying attention. All round, the dungeon serves as a good conclusion to Vashj'ir. The only problem I had with it is that the final battle with Ozumat is disappointingly easy - you find Neptulon under attack by Ozumat and must protect him from waves of murlocs and faceless, after which Neptulon gives the party a buff that makes them all but invincible, at which point you turn on Ozumat. You can lose key members of your party to the waves and still survive the fight with Ozumat, and as a rogue, it's impossible to attack Ozumat from behind, so you can't employ your more devastating strategies on it. But at least it's a fight with a lot of weight to it lore-wise, and Neptulon's involvement makes it epic enough in the greater scope of the Vashj'ir story.