World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

What big ears you have..

The Worgen starting zone is super creepy, Gilneas resembling old school Peckham on a Saturday night (brrr!) and taking game immersion to a whole new level. Starting out human (gack) does not appeal to me, but with waves for Worgen on the hunt, happily you’re soon dog-meat. Oh but you’re not dead dog-meat, just turned into a surprisingly dapper werewolf with a top hat. Come on, I just had to model Worgen in tuxedos! Luckily our alchemist friend is on hand to dish out the drugs, giving us temporary respite from fetching sticks and licking our balls. With all the quests around this starting zone, if there are any noobs left who haven’t tried WoW yet, they’re in for a gentle learning curve - not only of their class, but of all things WoW. Leveling is now superfast and no longer the grind I felt trying to start a Draeni or Blood Elf.

Wassup, dawg?

Apparently the Goblin starting zone is more of a fun slum and is all about the LOLs, so I don’t really feel like I’m missing out by rolling Alliance.

Level cap to 85? Disappointing. First, becuase it would’ve been super cool to get to 90 and, second, unless they plan in coming out with another five-level expanision in six months' time, an awful lot of people will be cancelling their subscriptions by summer. Blizzard almost saves the day by mixing up the classic race and class combinations - something to please the most jaded player. Now that gnomes can be priests will we have all-gnome guilds? You bet your arse we will, and about time too. Can Taurens be rogues, or will their cloppy hooves give them away? This cowgirl hunter just dropped her milk.

So, after a brief fling with the Worgen, I went back to being a cowgirl in an effort to get my existing level 80 character to 85. I grabbed the quest from moonglade and started in Mount Hyjal, and I am happy with the storyline as told so far - Blizz does have a habit of bottling it in the end-game when it comes to lore. Being on a RP server, for me it is all about the lore and some elemental bashing. Deepholm unfortunately seems basically just a dark hole, which didn’t appeal to the graphics whore in me. My verdict on this zone: samey and long.

Stand your grounds

In Uldum Harrison (Ford) (Indiana) Jones starts you on an archeological themed chain quest, sphinxs and pyramids abound! Now this is more like it!

I have yet to get the Twilight Highlands and am savoring getting to 85 till Christmas day.

I would like to know what it is like in these zones on a PVP server as the quests see Horde and Alliance leveling together in pretty close proximity… could be messy? Maybe Blizz is trying to revive the corpse of unfettered world PVP?