A special look at - the horde - part I

Due to my, by now usual, tardiness, I'm going to split this post into two. A while back, I did a special look at the alliance, where I mainly looked at the individual factions. The look at the horde is going to be a little different, focusing mainly at the horde as a concept. Why?

Because the concept of the horde is warcraft's biggest problem.

That statement may come as a bit of a surprise, considering I've already outed myself as a fan of the horde. And it's true, I like the horde. However, the problem with the concept doesn't lie with the existence of the horde. It lies with the horde being one of the two playable factions.

Progression of the horde

Over the course of the warcraft RTS trilogy, the horde went through a story arc, though certainly not one that was planned out from the beginning. In the beginning, the horde was simply an army of evil. Warcraft I actually treated the orcs very much like demons are treated in current lore, coming from a cold, dark realm of utter chaos. They were a swarm of locusts, descending upon the world due to the misuse of magic.

Warcraft II added more moral greyness. It revealed that it had been the warlocks that were responsible for many of the darker aspects of the horde, even controlling the first warchief. When Doomhammer killed the shadow council, the warlocks largely lost their hold on the horde. The horde was still evil, yes, but it became a mundane kind of evil, focused more on obtaining land and power then it did on being evil for the sake of being evil.

Lord of the Clans and Warcraft III then fulfilled the story arc. A young orcish warrior named Thrall had grown up amongst humans, isolated from his kin. In an effort to control him, Thrall had only heard idealized tales of his people, portraying them as noble warriors. When he finally escaped, he saw the orcs in the containment camps, reduced to husks of their former selves. He met the frostwolf clan, and learned of the shamanistic heritage of the orcs. He met the warsong clan, and saw the last remnants of the old horde as the noble warriors he envisioned them as. Thrall was blatantly ignorant of the true nature of the horde, but in the end, that ignorance was what allowed the horde to be redeemed. It could hold the horde to an idealized standard that no person with full knowledge of the actions of the orcs could ever hold it to. Unbeknownst to himself, Thrall was the one who made his idealized orcs a reality.

After freeing the camps of Lordaeron, the orcs retreated into the mountains of Lordaeron. Had it not been for a vision from Medivh telling Thrall to lead his people east, they'd probably have been hunted down by either the knights of the silver hand or the rising scourge, like what happened to the remnants of the blackrock clan. Instead, the orcs under Thrall and humans under Jaina were able to overcome their old hatred and unite against a common foe, and gain allies and a land to call their own. The story arc was completed during the battle against Lord-Admiral Proudmoore. We saw that, even when given the opportunity, the orcs would respect the new pact with humanity, and only harmed those who sought their destruction. The character arc was complete.

The problem: What was there to do with the horde after that?

Global Faction, local faction

Warcraft three had ended with there being six notable factions in the world: The alliance, the night elves, the illdari, the forsaken, the scourge and the horde. Each of these six had the potential to serve as a playable faction, as they had a variety of playable races, strong backstory and an appeal to fans. However, thanks to the nature of World of Warcraft, and limits in resources, not all of these factions could make it in.

Blizzard chose the horde and alliance for their playable factions. I can't be certain due to not knowing what happened in design meetings, but I'm guessing they just chose the two because of the history of the franchise. I have never seen any evidence or even heard any rumours of there ever having been plans for other or more factions.

That was where the mistake happened. Let's play game designer ourselves for a minute and make a list of basic requirements for the playable factions:

1) The factions should have some degree of conflict between them. Whether it is all-out war, a cold war or conflict through proxy nations, some degree of conflict is necessary. If there is no conflict, what's the point of isolating players into factions?

2) The factions should be roughly evenly matched. As established, the factions need to have some degree of conflict. However, if the factions aren't evenly matched, it would mean that any conflict would be quickly squashed by the superior side, which doesn't really make gameplay fun for the inferior side.

3) The factions should control roughly equal amounts of in-game territory. If not, players of one faction get screwed content-wise.

The horde and the alliance break all three of those rules.

Horde vs. Alliance, round one

That wasn't always the case though. The ending of warcraft III had the factions in a perfect spot. Each of the races in both the alliance and the horde had suffered a near-extinction, and had only just started rebuilding in Kalimdor. The horde had more established territory by this point, but there was unexplored territory in southern Kalimdor to compensate for that. Conflict is a bit harder, but still possible. For example, what if the alliance refugees had found out that Jaina was the one who gave the horde the information needed to invade Theramore? Some of the veterans of Mount Hyjal might have understood, but you can bet your ass that most of the alliance survivors would have called for her head.

Unfortunately, there was an RPG. Conflict was made nearly impossible by showing Thrall and Jaina having no real opposition as rulers of the horde and the alliance. Balance was also destroyed, by having Stormwind, Ironforge and Nighthaven (the night elf capital at that point in lore) all survive the third war relatively intact and joining Theramore. This also destroyed the balance of territory in a very major way, as the alliance now matched or even exceeded the horde's terrain in Kalimdor, and controlling even more in the eastern kingdoms, where the horde didn't have any presence at all. Let's pull out the old warcraft III world map and color it in a bit to demonstrate:

And that's being very generous. The Barrens probably shouldn't be listed as horde territory, as it was really under the control of the quilboar, the centaur and the harpies. The terrain of the alliance is also a bit on the conservative side. Aerie Peak, Stromgarde and Southshore also had a big chance of surviving the scourge, and it is likely that Stormwind retook the territory that was horde controlled in Warcraft I (so the Stormwind and Nethergarde territories would be connected).

Population-wise, let's also try to make a guess to the strength of the horde. The orcs that came with Thrall are all either from the frostwolf clan, the warsong clan, or freed from the internment camps. The frostwolf and warsong holdings are described in lord of the clans, with the former having a single village, and the latter staying in a bunch of inter-connected caves. Neither clan could possibly be more than a few hundred people (which fits with their portrayal in warcraft III). The internment camps are similarly small, containing a few hundred orcs each at best. The amount of internment camps didn't seem to be very high either, maybe one or two dozen. So let's be generous and say that Thrall's initial horde was eight thousand orcs, about the population of a large medieval town or a small medieval city. It couldn't really be any more, as they were able to fit the entire horde on a bunch of stolen ships from a small naval outpost.

On their way to Kalimdor, they met up with the jungle trolls. The jungle trolls had only a few small villages, no big towns at all, and were so low in number that they were losing a war against another small alliance naval outpost, even with the advantage of home terrain and voodoo. Then the murlocs attacked and imprisoned the jungle trolls, killing many of them. In the end, the isles sunk, the few surviving trolls joining the horde on their fleet. Let's again be generous and put the number of survivors at a thousand, which is a very large medieval village or a small medieval town. Any larger number couldn't fit on the boats.

On Kalimdor, they met the tauren, under the command of Cairne Bloodhoof. The tauren seemed to be even lower in numbers than the jungle trolls, just consisting of a single small caravan that couldn't even stand up to small bands of centaur marauders. 750 seems a good guess.

The horde was also joined by a single ogre clan, the stonemaul, who were brought in by Rexxar. Like the tauren and the jungle trolls, the stonemaul were a isolated bunch, occupying a single town. Let's once again be generous and put their numbers at 2000.

Factor in all the war losses the horde suffered, which included a large portion of the warsong clan (which lost in battle against the small naval base and was captured, and much later on was corrupted, with Jaina and Thrall killing a large portion of the clan to get to Grom) along with Samuro's entire village, and we can put down the final population at a solid 11000 people. Again, that's being very generous in all departments. 11000 people is a nice basis to start a new nation with, but it's not exactly a global super-power. It's not even a single large city. As a frame of reference, Venice had a population of 115000 people in the year 1500, and wasn't even the largest city in Europe, let alone the world.

Now, I don't expect WoW to really keep track of population numbers. Actually, I do, since, y'know, the RPG was planning to list them. But aside from that, this is just to give a general idea of relative sizes. The horde has the population of a mid-sized city. The alliance has the population of an empire. Obviously, those don't make for very balanced conflict, even with the physical advantages (greater strength for orc, tauren and ogre, regenerative abilities for the trolls) of the horde races.

We've covered point two and three. Let's cover point one now: conflict. From a storytelling perspective, the conflict between the alliance and horde was done. It already had the highest possible stakes and an interesting conclusion. From an in-universe perspective, conflict was still possible, but not in a way that would have fitted gameplay. None of the leaders of either the alliance or the horde on Kalimdor was going to provoke the other faction without it being utterly necessary. The horde has relatively crappy lands, but they have a lot of them, only have to support a very low population and they're used to living in such areas, so a big enough resource shortage to cause a war seems unlikely. Plus, the horde would be utterly annihilated during a real war, even without a resource shortage to weaken them.

So how about aggression from the alliance side? Well, some of the eastern members of the alliance probably still want the orcs dead. However, considering that she allowed her own father to die to preserve the peace, it's rather unlikely that Jaina would stay in the alliance if Stormwind or Ironforge were to attack the horde, and might even try to protect them. Without Jaina, the night elves don't really have any connection to the alliance either. So, an attack by the horde is going to be hilariously short-lived, while an attack by the alliance should make the alliance fall apart. That's not a good setting to have PvP with.

Also, before people say that you don't really need conflict outside a select few battlegrounds: Lemme stop ya right there, ya young whippersnappers. The original WoW was aimed much, much more at PvP outside the battlegrounds, to the point that it barely happened inside them. Tthere were no cross-realm battlegrounds, and the only way to enter the battleground was to actually walk (Warsong Gulch and Alterac Valley had no flight master near their entrances) to the in-game entrance and queue there, meaning that it usually took several hours to get enough people for a battleground. To still have some opportunities for PvP combat, PvE and PvP were much more tightly integrated. There were tons of quests that had you engage NPCs of the opposing faction, triggering a PvP flag. Hell, the questgivers were disturbingly casual about ordering someone to waltz right into supposedly allied territory and kill people. TBC and WotLK, despite there actually being a war between the alliance and the horde in the latter, turned down the random inter-faction conflict considerably.

Balancing it out

But blizzard decided to go with it anyway, taking various actions to ensure there was at least a degree of balance and conflict. Let's play spot the differences with the setting before and after world of warcraft and see if it made any sense.

First, the number of orcs was increased through what someone more professional than me has dubbed a “voodoo shark”. Basically, it's an explanation for a series of events that is so stupid that no explanation could possibly explain it. The voodoo shark in this case is the idea that other orcish clans sailed to Kalimdor to join Thrall's horde. The obvious questions:

-What clans? All the active clans of Azeroth and Outland are known, and none of them are unaccounted for. Blackrock got captured along with Doomhammer, Stormreaver and Twilight's hammer were destroyed at the tomb of Sargeras, the Black Tooth Grin retreated through the dark portal and became servants of Magtheridon, the Bleeding Hollow Clan survived the second war but was captured after fleeing from Draenor, the Dragonmaw was captured in Day of the Dragon, the Burning Blade destroyed itself, Warsong and Frostwolf already teamed up with Thrall, and Shadowmoon, Shattered Hand, Thunderlord, Laughing Skull and Bonechewer were still on outland when the dark portal was destroyed. While the shattered hand exists as an organization in the new horde, it has never been confirmed whether it is the actual clan or just an organization named after the clan. No other clans have been confirmed as joining the horde either, because any established clan joining the horde in an organized capacity would be a massive plot hole, and any new clan would need a very elaborate explanation as for where they'd been in the second war, which would require delving into more plot holes.

-Where have these orcs been? It's been about twenty years since the second war. How did these clans stay undetected for such a long period of time? If they're remnants of the old horde, their bloodlust should have made it impossible for them to just stay peacefully hidden. And if they aren't remnants of the old horde, what the hell are they doing on Azeroth?

-These orcs were able to come to Orgrimmar of their own free accord. That means that they weren't imprisoned. So why is everyone acting like the vast majority of the orcish race suffered the indignities of the internment camps when it was really only a tiny portion?

-If there are so many of these free orcs that they turn Orgrimmar from an average city into a global superpower, how was the second war ever over?

The answer to all of these is questions: “There is no answer, because it was a half-assed handwave.”

The number of tauren was increased in a similar manner, through the introduction of more tauren tribes. Unlike the example with the orcs, I wouldn't exactly call this a voodoo shark, since the existence of more tauren tribes is rather logical, and them joining the horde is certainly a possibility. That isn't to say that the introduction of these tribes was done well. Like the orcs, the only thing we ever heard of these tribes is that they just decided to join the horde. And like the orcs, that causes a giant yellow question mark to appear over my head, though this time for only one question:

-Why are the tauren tribes suddenly united under the bloodhoof? If they'd just joined the horde, I would have accepted it blindly (there's new enemies and the horde offers protection. Seems like a pretty sensible choice), but the extra addition of the tribes placing themselves under the leadership of Cairne Bloodhoof is what baffles me. Why would they ever do that? The bloodhoof tribe was portrayed as incredibly weak. I've heard it suggested that the other tribes joined the bloodhoof because the bloodhoof had retaken Mulgore (it's also on the wiki, though unsourced), but that doesn't make sense either. When Mulgore was mentioned before in warcraft III, the problem wasn't with retaking it, but with reaching it. In fact, the very reason that the tauren were trying to reach it was because there were no enemies. Plus, if retaking it was so significant, why didn't any other tribe ever do it? As I said, the bloodhoof were an incredibly weak tribe.

And like the orcs, the answer is: “There is no answer, because it was a half-assed handwave.” However, with the tauren it's even worse. With the orcs, we at least know something of the history of its members. For the tauren, that is not the case. Seriously, tell me anything about what happened to the tauren between the war of the ancients and when they were found by Thrall. Tell me something about the various tribes, like where they lived or how they interacted with one another.

Three, the horde started founding random strongholds outside their territory. Why do places like Bloodvenom Post, Grom'gol Base Camp, Hammerfall or Stonard exist? They're not sending valuable resources back home, they're not outposts against known threats and they're too far away from the horde homelands to protect them in case of a war. Seemingly, the only reason these exist is to piss off the alliance, contributing to the conflict that shouldn't exist anymore because we did an entire damn game where the crux was overcoming that conflict and the leader of the horde desperately wants to avoid that conflict. GAH!

Four, the conflict in Ashenvale. By the end of Warcraft III, the horde was led by one of the greatest supporters of inter-faction peace, Thrall. By the start of WoW, the night elves were hippies with giant cats. As you can imagine, it's kinda hard to have a conflict between the two. Blizzard's solution? Be as vague on the specifics as possible. Has the warsong clan invaded Ashenvale, with the sentinels nobly defending their sacred forests? Is the warsong clan simply keeping to the territories they kept from warcraft III, with the brutal sentinels trying to slaughter their former allies at Hyjal because a few trees are more important to them than orcish lives? Was it something in-between, with minor incidents caused by people working independently being answered by organized efforts on both sides? Even now, I still don't have an idea.

Five, dwarves become dicks. While the dwarves were never exactly morally superior to the other races, WoW makes it absolutely ridiculous. The dwarves invade the territory of the tauren twice, blowing holes in sacred mountains while slaughtering an entire tribe. The dwarves also decide that the alterac mountains are theirs, and use a misunderstanding with the frostwolves as an excuse to order the death of every orcish man, woman and child in the alterac mountains. Again, how can you have such major conflicts, but still be at peace?

Six, the alliance was severely weakened. I know, I keep talking a lot about both factions in my special look at the horde, but that is because a lot of problems with the alliance stem from it having to be balanced with the horde. The Night Elves and other human nations in particular were hit with the nerf stick. The elves lost almost all of their natural allies, and there were a few bits of dialogue that implied things had gotten so bad that they were fleeing to Stormwind in massive droves (So yes, I was wrong when I stated that it was never explained why there was suddenly a night elf district in Stormwind. I apologize for the error, though I still think it was a stupid decision on the writers' part. Night elves are supposed to be fierce warriors, dedicated to protecting the forests of Ashenvale. Them running to the other side of the planet is just wrong.). Theramore, previously the last great city of humanity, was reduced to a mid-sized town. Stromgarde was torn apart between games with nary an explanation. And we still don't know what the hell happened to Kul Tiras.

Okay, that last one isn't entirely true. Contrary to what most fans seem to remember, there is nothing in the game to indicate that the forces of Tiragarde are from Daelin's invasion force. More likely, and suggested with the year between Proudmoore's invasion and the arrival of the reserve fleet, is that the reserve fleet was left in Kul Tiras. Which means that the only thing we hear of Kul Tiras is them invading the orcish homeland. That seems like the kind of thing that would be important enough to warrant an occasional mention, doesn't it?

Seven, the alliance was given a ton of enemies that really should be gone (and admittedly a few that made sense). Again, this was another reason why the balance between the alliance and the horde neccesary for the plot couldn't exist. The alliance just had more control over their territory lorewise. The dark horde is probably the single most blatant example of this. Last time we saw the Black Tooth Grin Clan, they weren't even on the same planet any more, with Rend and Maim last seen as fel orcs in the service of Magtheridon, being killed by Illidan during his conquest of the Black Citadel. And yet now they've suddenly returned and are in control of former old horde holdings, with no explanation whatsoever. Seriously, what happened? Were the guys in outland just two people who coincidentally had the same name and similar positions of power? Plus, if these guys were still around and fighting both dwarves and Stormwind, were in control of blackrock mountain and had an army of dragons, I have to repeat my old question from both Day of the Dragon and this review: “If these guys are still around, raiding your kingdoms, how can the second war be considered over?”

The dark horde isn't the only example of this though. The denizens of felwood are another big one, as they were defeated by Illidan and the source of the corruption in the lands was destroyed. Yet by the time of WoW, felwood is still firmly in the hands of demons, and corruption continues to spread, even affecting Darkshore and Winterspring. You'd think that once the games made a specific point of the spreading corruption being stopped, it would actually have stopped spreading, wouldn't it?

Eight, the introduction of fake alliance-horde conflict. Now, I've made it obvious that a conflict between the alliance and the horde just couldn't work. The writers actually seemed to be somewhat aware of this (though not often enough), instead using fake horde-alliance conflicts a lot of the time. Instead of fighting the actual alliance, the horde would fight the scarlet crusade, remnants of Gilneas or the Kingdom of “we're-still-members-but-not-actually-working-with-the-Alliance” Dalaran. Or the fights with the alliance were caused by neutral parties, with the horde players only acting as mercenaries, like with the attacks on Northwatch or that one Theramore tower. Similarly, the alliance fought the dark horde and the grimtotem tauren quite a lot. This way, people who were only vaguely familiar with the lore would get the idea that the conflict was larger than it was.

Nine, neutral factions, neutral factions, neutral factions. The alliance was much more diverse and had a wider cultural spread by the time WoW rolled around. It had druids, mountain kings, rangers, paladins, priests of the Light, priestesses of the moon, wardens, two flavors of shaman, and several flavors of mage. Meanwhile, the horde only had blademasters and a lot of shaman flavors. That's not exactly going to amount to an equally varied gameplay experience. As a result, a lot of unique racial traits were suddenly represented through neutral factions, or were left out completely. Argent Dawn and the Brotherhood of Light became the main paladin and priest of the light players, Cenarion Circle distanced itself from the alliance-aligned other night elves, and about half of the other alliance-unique classes were left out completely. This gets them a lot of flack, but the only real alternatives doing the same thing as the RPG and just giving the alliance more, or adding a ton of people to the horde without any justification.

Which, bringing us to ten, they also did:

The Forsaken

In The Frozen Throne, the forsaken were an interesting development, and one that opened a lot of possibilities. The forsaken were absolutely ruthless, doing anything to further their goals without being hindered by any morals. While not nearly as great in number as the scourge, or even the dreadlord insurgents (three dreadlords who kept control of an army of undead after Arthas broke away), they made up for that through the control of others, either through the magic of banshees and dark rangers, or through trickery.

And that's the entire problem with the relation between the forsaken and the horde. The entire gimmick of the forsaken was controlling others and having no morals to hinder them in that regard. This makes the entire excuse about Sylvanas seeking allies (and therefore joining the horde) moot. If Sylvanas needed more manpower on her side, she would brainwash or manipulate people into joining her. Her placing herself and her faction under the control of a foreign power is both completely out of character, because it is completely unnecessary.

Which is also a problem for the vast majority of forsaken quests, because the solution for them should be the same: Brainwash someone. The gnolls are worshipping the scourge and stealing corpses for them? Brainwash the leader and make them worship Sylvanas instead. The local humans are aggressive against the forsaken? Brainwash the leader, let him lead his subjects into a trap, and use the corpses to build abominations. Apothecaries need murloc parts for a new version of the plague? Brainwash the tribe leader, and have him send you a few murlocs to be quietly killed, and then train the rest as warriors for your army.

There are so many ways to use the forsaken in your story, but you simply can't use them as mere member in a playable faction because there is no way they're going to play nicely, and they have other ways of gaining “allies”. Because of this, the writers had to completely cut the brainwashing aspect from the forsaken, leaving them without their single most defining characteristic. Why even use the forsaken if you're just gonna cut their unique qualities?

Still, to give some credit, the writers did seem at least somewhat aware of the fact that the forsaken were in no way going to play nice with the rest of the horde. Hence, the forsaken conspiracy storyline, which I mentioned in my last post. The forsaken were basically doing everything that Thrall was against. They were aligning themselves with the burning legion, aiding the burning blade and the cult of the dark strand. They were corrupting nature and enslaving the elements, raising the elementals of Mystral Lake and brutally poisoning the druids of the Dor'danil Barrow Den. They brutally capture, experiment upon and kill the humans Thrall tried so hard to make peace with. They did everything the new horde shouldn't.

And that was admittedly a fairly interesting idea, with Sylvanas effectively using the horde's trust of her against them, creating a dark horde of her own (in fact, the comic had them connected to the actual dark horde). However, it was an idea that absolutely didn't belong in World of Warcraft. Why? Because the second Thrall discovered the forsaken were working with the burning legion, the dark horde or corrupting the elements, he would have kicked them out of the horde. Instead, despite all the tons upon tons of in-game evidence to their betrayal (seriously, did Thrall's massive network of spies just never walk into a forsaken town?), he must remain unaware of it for the sake of maintaining this stupid faction-vs-faction conflict that completely goes against the ending of the last game. Simply put, it was a status quo that couldn't possibly last long lorewise, but had to last forever to maintain gameplay.

As a final note, the forsaken really don't fit the horde thematically. The horde are former villains turned good, content to just try and make a new homeland for themselves and live in peace with the land. WoW even added an implied dark past to the tauren to fit with this (check the scrolls on the Elder Rise in Thunder Bluff). The forsaken are former good guys turned amoral, out for nothing but revenge. These are two philosophies that are not very compatible for anything beyond short-term cooperation. To say nothing for the completely incompatible aesthetics of the horde and the forsaken. Could you ever imagine the forsaken trying to live in the barrens? Or the orcs in Tirisfal Glades? They're too divergent to form a horde.

World of Warcraft - Cataclysm - Night Elf starter zones

Sorry for the month-long wait, everyone. After all that time, let's look at some individual zones. For our first look, I've decided to go with the night elf starting zones, since they're the most varied of the bunch. Plus, most of the zones don't have a lot of “comedy”, meaning I am less likely to strangle someone.

Teldrassil

Type: Unwritten zone.

The Original Zone: I think I've spoken plenty about how little sense this zone made, so lets just keep to plot this time. Almost every quest on Teldrassil involved the growing demonic corruption in the tree and fighting the corrupted creatures it created.

What should have changed: Pretty much everything. While there was no real progression against the corruption in the original Teldrassil quests, the entire plot was actually resolved in one of the books, Stormrage, in which the emerald nightmare was defeated and contained, Fandral Staghelm captured and Malfurion woke up and became the co-ruler of the night elves. Teldrassil even got blessed by Alexstrasza and Ysera.

As a result of this, there should have been a ton of major changes. The timberlings should no longer be corrupted and hostile, the gnarlpine furbolgs should be friendly now and the sleeping druids should have awakened.

In addition, there was another major change: The shendra'lar, a group of surviving highborne, decided to return to night elf society. As such, the night elves now have actual mages again, which should probably be reflected in their homeland. A minor change that happened in the same book was that the wardens were reformed, this time under the command of Jarod Shadowsong.

What has changed: Pretty much nothing. Almost every single quest is recycled from the original world of warcraft, with the excuse that “the corruption has suddenly returned again, omgz0rs!” Of course, that doesn't explain why the characters that were killed in vanilla are suddenly alive again, or why the corruption takes the exact same form as it did previously, or why the druids are still asleep, or why the green dragonflight still isn't helping out.

Teldrassil is an example of one of the big problems with the direction in Cataclysm: The stakes for every zone must be as high as possible. Every zone is a battle for complete domination, survival and/or global annihilation (seriously, you save the world like 6 times). For some zones, that just doesn't work. Teldrassil should be a mostly peaceful area, like Dustwallow Marsh, the original Elwynn forest or Scholazar Basin. There's still plenty of story opportunities in a more low-key story. You could have a murder mystery causing rising tensions between the shendra'lar and the furbolg. You could have harpies fleeing to Teldrassil in large numbers. You could have a quest about helping the worgen, the shendra'lar or even the green dragons set up a new village. You could have a quest series about helping the shadow wardens capture a dark cult, satyrs or demon hunters. I can think of dozens of possibilities for questlines beyond simply recycling the old stuff, and I'm not even fully awake yet.

Darnassus itself could also use a bit of an update. While the worgen having their own tree is nice, the reformed watchers and the returned Shendra'lar should also have gotten lodgings.

Darkshore

Type: Finished zone, probably the most complete example amongst the redone zones.

The Original Zone: As I've mentioned before, MMOs are not exactly the best medium for story-telling. Back during the original world of warcraft, this was even more true, as there wasn't anything like phasing yet. You couldn't change the world depending on a player's actions.

However, some of the WoW writers found a way around this. Rather than telling a full story, they instead set-up a mystery to be solved at a later date. Usually, the player did achieve something during the mystery, like stopping one evil plot, or destroying one branch of a conspiracy, but the actual resolution was kept for a later date.

A lot of these mysteries were actually connected, though few players were bored enough to read through all the quest text and think about the implications. Luckily for my readers, I have no life and a good memory. In the case of Darkshore, there are two relevant mysteries.

Lets call the first mystery “The forsaken conspiracy” (or “The unofficial main plot of Vanilla”). Throughout vanilla, we saw that the forsaken had ties to numerous dark factions, including the Defias Brotherhood, the Grimtotem tauren and the new shadow council. The comic actually very briefly featured this conspiracy as well, tying the black dragonflight (and thus the dark horde) to it as well. The forsaken conspiracy only features very briefly in Darkshore, with a group of forsaken scouts trying to assassinate a member of the argent dawn who is investigating the Cult of the Dark Strand, a branch of the new shadow council led by an ancient, powerful highborne warlock by the name of Athrikus Narassin, who has feasted upon thousands of souls and is looking for new ones.

The second mystery was the “OMG, ocean = scary” plot. Around the time of Warcraft III, something started to stir beneath the ocean, causing many of the inhabitants to flee. You may be thinking it refers to the naga, but most of the hints we received pointed to something far larger. Darkshore was the most important area where this mystery featured, with many large animals washing ashore. While the beached turtles turn out to have been caused by the naga (who were using them as cargo transports to Blackfathom Depths), the whales and threshers were left unexplained.

Aside from that, most quests in Darkshore were pretty similar to the quests in Teldrassil, mostly revolving around fighting the spreading corruption. The player also helped a group of dwarves investigate a titan ruin in the southern part of the region, and dealt with highborne spirits haunting ancient ruins.

What should have changed: Honestly, there aren't really any changes in Darkshore that had to happen. There is nothing about any of the questlines that indicated they had to take place before the cataclysm. As such, its a bit bizarre that this zone is one of the most thoroughly updated.

What has changed: EVERYTHING. It's one of the big problems of cataclysm that the zones that needed the least changes to fit story advances were the ones that needed the most changes to fit smoother gameplay. It's one of the big reasons why cataclysm as an expansion could never have worked, even if the premise had been better. There just isn't enough time to do everything.

That brings us to another big problem of cataclysm: The revamped zones don't really have anything do with the old zones. As a result, fans of the old zone usually hate the new zone for taking away their beloved storylines and completely replacing them, making them forever lost to the mists of time. You're taking something we've grown to love and replacing it with something new. Even if the new thing is great, that's still a bad idea.

In the case of Darkshore, there's two new main plots. First, the shatterspear tribe of jungle trolls has joined the horde, and is invading night elf territory. While they were a bit of an easter egg in the original world of warcraft, we did actually get a bit of lore on them when blizzard released the troll compendium, stating that they were reclusive and uninterested in claiming territory. As such, having them join the horde just to take more territory is a pretty blatant breach of canon.

The other main plot is a bit smarter, for the most part. As part of the cataclysm, a massive tornado is ripping apart darkshore. In addition, the twilight's hammer, naga and corrupted furbolg are doing their best to mess with the people in the south as much as possible. The player must help Malfurion control the tornado, getting a moonkin, green dragon and furbolg leader to aid him. In addition to the tornado, the twilight's hammer, naga and corrupted furbolg are making a whole mess of things. All good so far.

However, the ending to the questline is simply glorious. Queen Azshara appears, explaining that the entire plan was to keep Malfurion busy, so he couldn't lead the night elf defense of mount Hyjal! It's the perfect evil plan! MUHAHAHAHA... wait... didn't the night elves have two racial leaders? Last time I checked, Tyrande also led the original defense of mount hyjal, so the idea that only Malfurion could lead the night elves to victory is ridiculous. Since when is malfurion a tactical genius anyway? Plus, it's not like racial leaders are the only commanders. Jarod Shadowsong, Shandris or any of the archdruids should have enough experience to lead a defense. And Malfurion does actually show up for the battle of mount hyjal, so it's not like this plan even makes sense in context of the story. Actually, now that I think about it, that ending is rather stupid.

However, I will give credit where credit is due: Cataclysm is much better at showing what the night elves are supposed to be, getting back a few of their old traits. The sentinels actually appear as amazon-like warriors rather than peaceneck tree-huggers. Natural allies are seen throughout the zone. In addition to the moonkin, green dragon and furbolg, numerous ancients fight alongside the sentinels, and the player awakens an even larger amount of ancients later on.

Ashenvale

Type: Unfinished zone

The Original Zone: If I had to pick one zone that perfectly represents the typical zone of the original WoW, it would be ashenvale. The way the zone had central towns with a ton of annoying, hard to reach minor hubs that you had to go to way too often (maestra's post, silverwind refuge). The way the zone had a really nice-looking subzone that looked like it would be interesting but was underused (thistlefur hold & village). The way the zone had random violence between the alliance and the horde that should only be happening if the factions were at war (the destruction of silverwing outpost, the assassination of Overseer Gorthak). The way TBC added a bunch of quest that honestly didn't make a whole lot of sense (seriously, how the hell was forest song founded behind horde lines? And who thought that was a good idea?). The way you had to search your ass off to find quest targets (Dammit Ursangous!). The way one questline looked like an interesting premise but ended up making no sense as part of warcraft lore (Raene's Cleansing, about an evil human mage who tried to use arcane powers to become a druid, so he could become a furbolg, so he could infiltrate furbolg society and turn the furbolg tribes against each other. The reason is never explained, nor is it explained why imitating druidic powers was a neccesary step. Also, this takes place before the third war, night elf arrogance is destroying the furbolg, night elves wouldn't kill an infiltrator that used arcane magic to pit them against each other and the furbolg gave a mythical artifact to druids without the night elves knowing of it). The way it had one RPG idea that was really cool (vale of beasts), one that only worked in the weird context of the RPG (wildhammer peaks) and one that made absolutely no sense (how do you make a statue of aessina, a glowing ball of energy, and how do you give her clothing made out of ivy?). Long story story short, it had a ton of potential, some of which shined through, but the overall execution was rather flawed.

Storywise, Ashenvale was much like Teldrassil, with a focus on fighting corruption, mostly in the form of corrupted furbolg, satyrs and demons, though there were some corrupted timberlings as well. To bring some variation, it also had naga and twilight's hammer cultists invading the east coast to search for a lost beast of the old gods, a group of ancient night elf worgen in the north and a few more hints of forsaken conspiracy, with undead harvesting rare herbs and corrupting an ancient night elf artifact that let the forests of Ashenvale recover much faster.

What should have changed: In Wolfheart, this is where the war between the horde and the alliance first started, with Garrosh launching an offensive against night elf territory to obtain supplies following a massive drought and fire in Orgrimmar.

In Wolfheart, Garrosh' insane love for physical strength over anything else was actually used in a clever way, with him becoming sort of a dark beastmaster, unleashing enslaved magnataurs and proto-drakes against his enemies. It was a really good idea (though the way it was implemented was definitely not that good), as a reliance on such creatures would go a long way towards explaining how the horde (a collection of nations that by all means should be near-extinct) is actually capable of taking on the alliance (the three mightiest kingdoms on the face of the planet plus more than a dozen allied factions).

What has changed: Of course, it being a good idea means that it never shows up in the game, with the horde instead relying mostly on goblin technology. Even in ashenvale, which was invaded before the goblins joined, there is no sign of enslaved monsters, with the attack relying on normal soldiers, demolishers and goblin engineers. You could have given us magnataurs and proto-drakes vs. mountain giants and chimaeras, damn it.

Instead, we get the half-assed attempt at a war between the horde and the alliance, really showing us just how ill-suited a medium world of warcraft is for this kind of conflict. There's no tactics, no characterization, no intelligence involved at all. The NPCs are simply waiting for the player to show up and throw the magic switch labelled “quest completion”, after which all their problems are solved instantly.

Well, at least that's how the story goes. In-game, there is a distinct underuse of phasing for some of the zones that really call for it, and the most blatant example of this is Ashenvale. No matter what the player does, Maestra's post will always be under siege by the horde, even after the fighting has supposedly been pushed back all the way to Silverwing Refuge. The most annoying example of this has to be Lord Magmathar though. Lord Magmathar is constantly yelling throughout the zone, is perched on top of a volcano in the middle of the area, visible from afar. I don't expect every single quest NPC to be phased, but if you're going to rub my face in his presence at every opportunity I do kind of expect the facerubbing to stop after I'm supposed to have killed him.

As I'll explore in future posts, I really hate how cataclysm handled both the core horde (orcs, trolls, tauren) and the core alliance (stormwind, theramore, ironforge and gnomeregan). The members of the horde turned from small tribes of redeemed savages looking to forge a new homeland into militaristic thugs looking to conquer the world. The nations of the alliance turned from a diverse pact of nations with widely different views of the world around them into a homogenous mass that only serves as an extension of Varian's will. Even more notable is that the factions lose their moral greyness. The horde attacks neutral nations with chemical weapons and dark magics just to get a better position to commit genocide and enslaves tribes of humanoids to use as disposable cannon fodder. The alliance ceases all of its questionable actions, with the war stopping and restarting between expansions just so the alliance leadership has no responsibilities for the events in the war.

In Ashenvale, this is all too apparent. The horde is suddenly corrupting the land all around, with the assault against Maestra's post being led by a warlock, shaman magic being used to enslave elementals, an entire tribe of furbolgs driven to corrupted madness by troll voodoo and natural artifacts corrupted just for the hell of it (seriously, wouldn't the horde, a faction suffering wood shortage, want an artifact that boosts forest growth to remain intact?). The fact that the player actually gets in trouble at one point for using fel magic is simply jaw-dropping.

Actually, lets talk about that last one some more. When the horde player arrives at splintertree post, it is under siege by night elf forces. With the likelihood of death, Draaka asks the player to put some of the energies from felfire hill in a canister, so that the orcs can enhance their demolisher ammo. Draaka remarks that if Garrosh found out, he'd likely call for the heads of everyone involved, which is seriously questionable continuity considering all the other corruptive magics the horde is employing in ashenvale (or this quest is the sensible one, and all the other examples are questionable continuity). Draaka sends you to Durak, a warlock in the splintertree mine, that does the actual enchantments. When the night elves launch their final attack, the player lays down clusters of enchanted ore to direct the fel meteors Draaka's demolisher launched.

Up to this point, the questline has actually made some sense. However, here is where that stops. Draaka, regretful of her actions, but hoping Hellscream will forgive her for saving Splintertree post, sends the player to Orgrimmar to deliver her apologies. However, when you arrive at Orgrimmar, Garrosh suddenly claims that Draaka had been manipulated by a demon. I originally assumed that this was just Garrosh being Garrosh and whitewashing orc actions by assuming that all dark magics used by orcs were a result of demonic manipulation. However, it turns out he was actually right when Durak transforms into a dreadlord. Garrosh also remarks that he can smell the taint of the demon affecting the player, and actually puts a price on the player's head for a while, even saying that he should probably still kill you after you give him the head of the demon.

However, that raises a number of questions.

First, how can Garrosh, and no other orc, smell which people have been influenced by demons? Last I checked, we've seen numerous covert demon-worshippers in orcish society, and Garrosh doesn't have special training of any kind. I'd buy that he could just sense lingering magical fel energies from the battle, but that doesn't work since any person involved in the defense should have had the same smell due to proximity to the fel energies, which means it's not exactly evidence of involvement.

Second, how did Garrosh come to the conclusion that Draaka had been manipulated by a demon? Draaka didn't know that Durak was a demon, so it wasn't in her apology. And Durak was posing as a warlock, so just using some pretty mild demonic magic wasn't evidence enough. Hell, come to think of it, how did Durak manipulate Draaka anyway? Draaka was the one who originally came up with the idea to use the felfire anyway, to the point that she actually had to give Durak instructions about what do to. And there is no evidence in the other quests of Ashenvale either. His only other involvement is with the corruption of the forest heart, and in that case, he was again working under orders from another orc. Basically, from all appearances, he's just an evil warlock that does his part in serving the horde.

Third, Garrosh is an idiot. Why is the player the one getting in trouble over this? We're only smelling like fel energy because of orders given out by one of his officers. And guess what? Garrosh knows this, because he has a written confession from that person in his hand. If you're gonna kill every person in the horde who got in contact with fel magic due to his superior officers, you're going to have to kill the vast majority of the orcish race, bub. Or do you think all our fancy green skins are just for show?

All in all, what I got from the entire affair was that Garrosh had no idea what was going on in Ashenvale despite it being his primary battlefront, jumps to conclusions on the flimsiest of evidences, executes members of the horde because they followed orders from officers he appointed (and Garrosh is consistently terrible at appointing competent officers) and just happened to be incredibly lucky in this specific situation.

Durak: No! My planning was impeccable! I did nothing to show my hand! How did you see through it all?

Player: Foolish demon! All your plans are limited by the precepts of reality! Our warchief's idiocy has no such limits!

Durak: DAMN YOU, IDIOCY!

Another thing that's really annoying about Ashenvale is the inconsistencies between the horde and the alliance quests. The biggest example is probably Chief Murgut of the Foulweald furbolg. The alliance player gets to kill this character for selling out his people to the horde, becoming their stooge. The horde player gets to kill this character for refusing to submit to the horde. So which is it supposed to be? The selling out/refusing to submit is supposed to have happened before the player even arrived, so its not like the actions of the player influenced his decision in any way.

And now for a bit of visuals. The view range at maximum settings in the original World of Warcraft was a lot lower than it is in cataclysm. This is a problem when it comes to the static fog that hangs in most zones. In the original world of warcraft, this fog served as a way to make the cut-off of the terrain after this range less obvious by gradually making things less visible until they were nearly wholly invisible at the cut-off point. However, in Cataclysm, the fog is obscuring things long before they would have been too far away to see, which is a waste of processing power and only makes the zone look worse. This is very noticeable in Ashenvale, because there is one small area, Thunder Peak, where the fog is removed. Just compare the view of Silverwind Refuge with the normal ashenvale settings with the view seen from Thunder Peak:

Left: Normal ashenvale view range, Right: Thunder peak view range.

Okay, more things to gripe about. In the original world of warcraft, zones didn't get long quest chains connecting everything. Each town just had a bunch of unrelated quests, and quest chains within a zone were usually no more than five quests long. As such, they didn't have an overall narrative, nor did they try to have one. With a few very specific exceptions, stakes outside instances were kept low, and quests were mostly doing odd jobs for local traders or helping take out annoyances to the guards. Because of this, quests had little do with one another, allowing for very varied zones.

In Cataclysm however, most zones have a continuous narrative, with nearly every single quest connected to a single chain. As such, you kind of expect the quests to actually form a story, rather than a loose collection of unrelated quests that come in a chain for no real reason. However, here's where the problem of lack of resources due to trying to make the expansion far too big comes in again. Because the original zones weren't meant to fit in an overarching plot, the subzones were rather diverse. As such, they need a lot of retooling to fit into a narrative. However, as stated before, blizzard simply didn't have the resources for that. So now, we have a narrative with incredibly high stakes... and the majority of quests ignore it. While the horde side deals with this okay, the alliance side basically amounts to “OMG, the horde is invading! Quickly, spend half your time on random assignments trying to cure a single sick kid! Also, this random archeologist needs help! No, I don't want you to deal with the giant horde outpost, I want you to completely ignore it and grab some statues instead!”

The opposite happens as well, with what should be very important events being shoved into a small subzone. For example, the player single-handedly stops an invasion by the burning legion at one point. This whole plot point comes out of nowhere, takes two quests, and is never mentioned again.

Despite the fact that Cataclysm was supposed to be a jumping on point for new players, there's actually a bunch of areas that expect the player to know the events from the original world of warcraft, despite never mentioning them anywhere. For example, there's no explanation of who the hell Dartol is, or why his rod was so important. The quests simply expect the player to know.

Finally, many cataclysm zones have a problem with the story just kind of petering out at a point in the story before any sort of climax can be reached. This is a result of cataclysm making leveling much easier and streamlining questing zones, as the player is now expected to simply do all quests in a zone before moving on to the next. As such, each zone has a very strict limit on the number of quests. Couple this with leveling having become much easier, and each zone still covering about as wide a level range as the original, this number of quests becomes even more limited. Simply put, there aren't enough available slots to tell a full high-impact story, unless you completely focus every single quest on it, requiring a very thorough overhaul (and thus more of the unavailable time and resources). The alliance quests again suffer from this, with the story randomly ending after you've freed a group of enslaved furbolg, but before the night elves can push the advantage and retake silverwind refuge.

Stonetalon Mountains

Type: Unpolished zone/unfinished zone

The Original Zone: Stonetalon was one of the those zones in vanilla that lacked any semblance of a greater plot. The player just did a string of random odd jobs for random people, with no real focus on any particular development.

What should have changed: As far as I know, nothing of importance has happened in Stonetalon between Vanilla and Cataclysm, so the zone should pretty much be the same.

What has changed: Everything. Like I said before, it is a very unfortunate coincidence that the zones that needed the least story updates needed the most game updates. It is especially unfortunate in the case of Stonetalon, since the updated zone is absolutely terrible.

Most of that has to do with the main story, which revolves around a goblin-built super-bomb. Initially built for use in Ashenvale, the alliance player halted that plan, causing it to be diverted to stonetalon instead. Here, the horde and the alliance have a number of brief tugs-of-war, surrounding the main plot of the bomb. In windshear crag, the horde player gets drafted by Overlord Krom'gar, gaining the rank of grunt in an admittedly clever rank mechanism. Meanwhile, the alliance player gets orders through a German-accented gnome on the radio, because if you can't make sense, you might as well make your setting look stupid while you're at it.

After enduring a few terrible jokes, silliness that degrades the setting rather than enriching the play experience and shout-outs where the entire 'joke' apparently revolves around a subject existing and being present in a different setting, the horde player upgrades the goblin bomb with some special ore, making it even more powerful and sending it towards the night elf outpost. The alliance player, having endured the same thing with the added 'benefit' of that damn radio gnome, manages to damage but not destroy the bomb in another quest that relies on being silly to justify it making no sense (specifically, the reason we don't fully destroy the balloon is because we're attacking the “power coupling”. Apparently, gas-powered balloons are powered by electricity now. Also, our character suffered brain damage, as that is the only reason I can think of why you're attacking a thick piece of metal, rather than destroying the balloon, cutting the cable connecting the bomb to the balloon or cutting the wires that connect the balloon basket to the balloon). After the alliance player damages the balloon, it gets redirected to be deployed further up the mountain range.

Up till now, the questline has been extremely stupid due to its forced attempts at humor superseding the warcraft setting. However, its stupidity was not extraordinary by cataclysm standards. This is the point where that changes.

First of all, let's go from the perspective of the alliance player. In the second questing hub, a goblin fueling station called the sludgewerks, the alliance player discovers a log book that shows that the Krom'gar forces are planning to bomb Thal'darah Grove, a school for young druids located near the peak of the mountain range. To stop this, the alliance player gets sent to Master Thal'darah at Thal'darah Overlook, an alliance outpost. However, the player is too late. He only manages to safe a handful of students before the entire grove is annihilated by the bomb. Three obvious problems:

1) Why is there a school for druids located in the stonetalon mountains? Moonglade is supposed to be where all new druids are taught, so having a school anywhere else seems like a pretty big breach of canon. If the school was in ashenvale, darkshore, mount hyjal or Teldrassil, I could still accept it, but the school is built right at what would have been the border of night elf territory, which seems like the dumbest possible location, as it's out of reach for new students, and the night elves are unable to defend it.

2) Master Thal'darah. According to lore, most, if not all, druids are members of the Cenarion Circle, an organization that has distanced itself from the alliance and remains neutral even during the events of Cataclysm. As such, all druidic schools belong to the circle (the horde questline confirms that this also goes for Thal'darah). As the name of Master Thal'darah suggests, he is the head of the Thal'darah Grove, and is therefore currently a high-ranking officer in the neutral cenarion circle. However, like his name also suggests, he is the head of Thal'darah Overlook, an alliance stronghold actively fighting the horde. As such, Master Thal'darah is a high-ranking alliance officer. Obvious question: How the bloody hell are you staying neutral and acting as an alliance officer at the exact same time? (And yes, the same thing extends to Malfurion, though we'll address that later)

3) The horde, in a pre-planned attack authorized by an overlord that answers directly to Garrosh, destroyed a school for druids, killing all the students contained within. How the hell doesn't this count as an act of war against the cenarion circle?

The horde version has it worse however. After doing stupid quests in the sludgeworks, the horde player goes to Cliffwalker Post, a tauren village. Here, they encounter General Grebo, the second-in-command of Overlord Krom'gar. Grebo claims that the tauren (especially high chieftain Cliffwalker) are seeking to commit treason against the horde, because they claim that the druids of Thal'darah Grove aren't secretly storing WMDs. Grebo isn't trusting the cliffwalker inspectors, and is instead planning to launch a first strike attack again Thal'darah Grove to prevent them from using the WMDs on the horde forces.

Okay, first of all, that commentary on the iraq war is terribly out of place in world of warcraft. The pop culture references were already stupid, but this is just... just no. Second, why is the leader of the cliffwalkers called a high chieftain? The title of high chieftain is reserved for the chieftain of the united tauren tribes, individual tribes simply have chieftains. Third, how is claiming that intelligence is wrong “seeking to commit treason”? I can understand (though definitely not agree) the “treason” part, but I'm having real trouble with the “seeking to commit” part. Nowhere does it seem like he thinks the tauren are actually planning to stop him, and the only events that he ever mentions (claiming his intelligence is wrong, sending a scout to double-check whether the night elves have WMDs) took place before he makes the claim.

The general is allowing the high chieftain some time to gather evidence, as the chieftain has sent his son to obtain proof that the night elves don't have WMDs (how exactly do you obtain proof that something doesn't exist?). However, when the son doesn't call back in, the high chieftain asks the player to go Thal'darah grove and look what happened. There, the player finds the dead tauren, clutching the insignia of General Grebo!

Dun-dun-du...wait. How exactly did General Grebo manage to slip away from the tauren village and into the grove without being seen by anyone? And, considering he's a general, why would he even do this himself? Also, if he took this huge risk to prevent the high chieftain from obtaining proof (seriously, how do you get proof of non-existance?), why didn't he bother retrieving his insignia? In unrelated news, there is a pretty big lore error when High Chieftain Cliffwalker claims that the tauren have studied druidism in the grove for as long as he could remember, unless his memory only goes back ten years.

High Chieftain Cliffwalker confronts Grebo over the insignia, and the latter attacks, with the tauren and the player cooperating to kill him and his personal guards. At this point, the questline turns even dumber, as well as becoming slightly incomprehensible. High Chieftain Cliffwalker has a bit of a panic reaction, thinking that now the horde will surely kill him for treason. Initially, I was ready to call this out as another bit of idiocy, since there are no surviving witnesses, we are close to a war zone and the player is the most trusted and highest-ranking remaining officer of the overlord. However, mr. Cliffwalker probably isn't used to crafting alibis for murder, so his initial panic reaction is understandable.

… not that I'm used to crafting alibis for murder or anything >.>

However, here is where things get confusing. I'll give the events first, then the commentary. The high chieftain sends the player to go explain the situation to Overlord Krom'gar. Krom'gar somehow comes to the conclusion that this means that the tauren betrayed the horde, and travels to cliffwalker post, killing everyone but the high chieftain by the time the player arrives. Krom'gar also drops the bomb on Thal'darah Grove. At this exact moment, Garrosh arrives, gives a speech about how he learned honor and the ways of the horde from Saurfang in Northrend, and kicks Krom'gar off the mesa. Garrosh is planning to do the same to the player, but high chieftain cliffwalker says that the player was helping him out. Instead, Garrosh strips the player of his rank and friendly asks him to go help out in Desolace or the Southern Barrens.

Okay, now for the commentary. My first point is that I'm not exactly sure what's going on with Overlord Krom'gar and his destruction of Cliffwalker Post. The most likely explanation is that Krom'gar and Grebo were in some sort of weird conspiracy to destroy both Thal'darah Grove and the Cliffwalker tauren. When Grebo's plot was uncovered, Krom'gar then used his death as an excuse to execute the plan anyway. However, we're never given any explanation for why Krom'gar and Grebo want to destroy Thal'darah Grove instead of Thal'darah Overlook, which they told the player the bomb was intended for and a highly important strategic location.

In addition, Krom'gar's dialogue doesn't fit this at all. Instead, his dialogue suggests that the only information the player character gave to him was that the tauren killed General Grebo, which actually makes him striking back against the tribe rather reasonable. Hell, when Krom'gar tells the player that he's going over to Cliffwalker Post to kill the tauren, there is no dialogue or any sign that the player is trying to protest. Making any character stupid to justify your plot is questionable. Forcing the player into a role of stupidity so great it makes Garrosh look like a rocket scientist? That's just dumb.

Speaking of Garrosh, where the hell did he suddenly come from? And why? We're never given any explanation of why exactly the warchief of the horde suddenly decides to open a portal to a random tauren village. Or does Garrosh have the natural ability to sense plot developments?

Garrosh is also acting completely out of character. He's actually in possession of both brain and ethics here, having learned from his mistakes and condemning the mass murder of innocents. It's rather sad that this is something I have to condemn as out-of-character for Thrall's successor, but it's the truth. Garrosh does not care about the killing of innocents, nor does he care about using super-weapons against civilian populations. Hell, he ordered both on several occasions throughout this expansion.

Furthermore, why is the player stripped of his rank? I guess that we need to return to the status quo, but it makes no sense in-universe. Garrosh mentions that the player's rank is moot because Krom'gar's army has been dissolved, but that makes no sense either. The war in stonetalon is still going on, and Garrosh still wants Stonetalon conquered. Garrosh knows that the player is trustworthy, because the high chieftain is vouching for him. So shouldn't the obvious solution be for the player to get Krom'gar's position? Sure, that doesn't work from a gameplay perspective, but that's why we should have never gotten into this position to begin with. If the only logical outcome of a series of events is one you can't do for gameplay reasons, change the series of events. Have the bomb dropped on Thal'darah Overlook, meaning stonetalon mountain has been conquered, and have Garrosh only get angry over the deaths of the Cliffwalker tauren.

As an aside, cataclysm has some really terrible voice acting (also inconsistent voice acting, but we'll cover that when we do Uldum or the undead starter zones), which really shows in this series of quests. I just don't understand what Krom'gar's voice actor was trying/told to do here. No wait, I do understand. He's trying to sound like a weaselly villain. He's trying way, way, way too hard to sound like a weaselly villain, to the point where the guys who voice villains in Saturday morning cartoons are telling him to tone it down a notch. Just to be nice though, I'll say that the voice acting for Garrosh is pretty good, as it's always been. It's one of the few positive things I can say about the character.

Now, one thing that will explain a lot of the seeming inconsistencies in cataclysm is that the expansion was made over a rather long period of time. If I remember my blue posts right, the zone reboot was already being worked on before Wrath of the Lich King was even out. As always happens when you have a long period of time to work on a story, you go through multiple drafts, adding new elements that you just thought up or removing elements that didn't work. However, because cataclysm was released in an unfinished state, there's a good chance that some elements of earlier drafts are still present. I'm thinking that Stonetalon Mountains is also from one of these earlier drafts, before it was decided that Garrosh was going to be a two-dimensional genocidal idiot. Possibly, it's also the same draft as Durotar, which had the alliance as the aggressors in the war, as that would fit with Garrosh being portrayed righteously and the alliance committing somewhat darker deeds, like teaming up with the grimtotem.

Now, we've covered the main story and you can probably see why I call this “unpolished”. The main story doesn't work but can be salvaged with a bit of effort. However, why did I also call this zone “unfinished”? Well, that is because there are several areas that were obviously intended to be more developed or have more quests. The most notable example is Farwatcher's Glen, a night elf town populated mostly by worgen that only has four quests that don't lead anywhere before the player is sent to an entirely different zone. However, the biggest example is Sun Rock Retreat, the main quest hub for the horde back in vanilla, which isn't visited during the questline at all and had all of its old quest-givers removed from the game without any in-universe justification (I guess it was too much effort to just remove the quests and leave the people). Aside from these two, there's tons of little signs that the zone isn't being used to its full planned capacity though.

On a final note: Does Garrosh really need to keep trying to kill the horde player? This is two zones in a row! That's not counting the time in Borean Tundra where he almost killed the player through suicidally stupid orders. Or the time his choice in officers nearly led to the player's death. Or the many times we haven't even covered yet. Man, blizzard really wants horde players to hate the character. You'd think that getting the player killed because of deep personal incompetence once would be enough.

Anyway, that was it for today. Sorry for the month-long wait, I'll try to keep the next one shorter.

World of Warcraft - Cataclysm - premise

Okay, Cataclysm time. Today's subject: The premise.

The Cataclysm

I'll admit, the premise of Cataclysm really confuses me. From what everyone tells me, the idea is that Deathwing emerged from his hiding place in Deepholm. From there, the explanations start to vary.

Explanation one is that the very act breaking through caused The Shattering, doing massive damage to the world by breaking the world pillar. This one is supported by most in-game sources.

The problem with this one is that at least some of the damage was already done before Deathwing emerged. In particular, the cataclysm pre-game event, “Elemental Unrest”, indicated that the elementals of Azeroth were already going nuts several months before Deathwing emerged, with frequent earthquakes and invasions by elementals. It makes no sense for them to be going crazy before Deathwing shattered the world pillar. I could buy some sort of prophetic vision of the future, but then why wouldn't the elemental spirits pass that along to the shamans?

Plus, the entire idea of the world pillar is stupid. The concept is that the barrier between Azeroth and the elemental realm is somehow resting upon a titan-created pillar located in Deepholm. Except, why would that thing exist? We know that the elemental planes and Azeroth were already separate and that the elementals were already bound to their native realms before the titans came. So what is this pillar supposed to do that's so important you add a massive weak point to Azeroth? And why is the pillar located in Deepholm? We know the elementals were fighting constant, massive wars after they were first imprisoned. Wouldn't you want to keep it in a more secure location than that? Like, say, a massive cloaked titan city guarded by four god-like beings and a race of stone cat-people that you're also using to house your planet-extinguishing super-weapon? Just sayin'.

Also, if causing the cataclysm was as easy as breaking a single pillar, why didn't deathwing ever do so before? We know he regularly visited Deepholm back when he was still Neltharion, so it's not like the world pillar was out of his reach or anything. Had he destroyed the pillar anywhere between ten thousand and ten years ago, the shamans of the world would be too disorganized to stop him.

Explanation two is that, after breaking through to Azeroth, Deathwing simply started flying around, destroying stuff. This one is confirmed for at least a number of the zones, like Kezan, the Badlands and Stormwind. While there is still the problem with several events having occurred before the cataclysm, another problem with that is that Deathwing simply doesn't have the power to do that for some of the other destruction (even some of the destruction that's confirmed to be caused directly by him). He got his ass kicked by mortal mages from the Kirin Tor by the end of the second war. He's powerful, sure, but he's not a worldbreaker. If he had that power, he would have used it ages ago.

To be fair though, it's been stated that Deathwing's power has been increased. However, that doesn't make sense either. The idea is that Yogg-saron and C'thun, being unchained, have increased his power. However, C'thun has been unchained since, at the very least, the first scarab war. More likely is that he was never chained to begin with, since the titans thought he was dead. If he was gonna empower Deathwing, he would have done so a long time ago. Yogg-saron has also been free for quite a bit, though we don't know how long (so he could have been freed at some point between day of the dragon and WotLK). However, we've destroyed his form and reactivated his keepers. There's no way he's still sending power to ol' Fluffywing.

What makes it more confusing is that everyone in-universe seems to treat the cataclysm like a singular event, despite the fact that even the changes that are actually explained have vastly different causes, some of which took place over long periods, others which were caused by singular events that couldn't have taken place simultaneously. Hell, in some areas the cataclysm is actually still going on, with parts of Vashj'ir rising to the surface and Darkshore being torn apart by a massive tornado.

Of course, I'm ignoring the blatantly obvious here: The reason the premise doesn't work is that it wasn't the original premise. Remember that dreadful, dreadful last arc of the World of warcraft comic? That arc revolved around a particular prophecy, recovered from a random cave in outland:

"When the child of the three realms becomes as light, the ancient power will be released. The earth will tremble, the seas will rise up in answer, and all will be madness. A new day will dawn, bringing with it chaos or peace..."

The chaos part got elaborated on a bit later, explaining that it would mean the barrier between the elemental realm and Azeroth would start to dissolve. Now, is all of this starting to sound familiar?

So it's pretty clear that the cataclysm was intended to be a result of the events from the comic. However, no connection between the two is ever seen in-game, and none of the events are even alluded to. Hell, some events from the comic even seem to be contradicted, with cho'gall walking around all fine and dandy in the game despite being at the receiving end of the full power of an atiesh-wielding mary sue in the comic.

On the other hand, basing an entire expansion around something as stupid as that comic would certainly rub me the wrong way too. It's certainly a good thing that Blizzard recognized legitimate fan outrage and altered their plans (lets hope the same happens for the elune/naaru thing). Making the comic a full-on tie-in like it was for WotLK would not be a good idea, for the sole reason that it'd get people to look up the comic. However, I still would have preferred a solution that made actual sense.

Elementals

Another issue present here is that we simply don't have all the relevant information to make sense of the backstory for this expansion. Elementals are a good example of this. I'm gonna give you four short bits of lore:

1) When the world was young, it was dominated by elementals, who were servants of the malefic old gods. When the titans came, they were disturbed by the old gods' penchant for evil, and waged war against them and their elemental servants. Eventually, the titans won, and they shattered the citadels of the old gods, killing or imprisoning them. Without the power of the old gods to sustain them, the elementals were banished back to their native realms, where they waged eternal war. However, over the years, a number of elementals have managed to enter Azeroth, bringing their war to the mortal realm.

2) It is the way of the shaman to communicate with the five great elemental spirits: fire, earth, water, air and the wilds. Each world has these five spirits, guiding its natural processes. When there is a drought, the shaman can call upon the spirit of water to provide rain. When there is hunger, the shaman can call upon the spirit of the wilds to sacrifice living creatures to provide food. However, these gifts are not to be taken lightly. The bond with the spirits is one of respect and moderation. Do not call for what you do not need and do not call without respect, for the spirits may not answer your calls for a very long time. However, strengthen your bond, and you may even call upon true representations of the spirits in the form of elementals.

3) On the world of Azeroth, it is important to properly respect nature, for if you don't, nature may just take its revenge. From befouled lakes, defiled earth and destroyed forest rise powerful creatures, restless by the destruction of their homelands. However, it is not just mortals that may give rise to these elementals. Natural disasters can also disturb the land, causing such creatures to rise.

4) In rare locations throughout the world, one may find locations of exceptional elemental power. Even with no gate to the elemental plane or outside disruptions, elementals spawn in these locations, bound to these sacred spots.

Now, we know that these four things are somehow related, since they all involve elementals and we've seen some crossover between them. However, their exact connection has never been made clear. Previously, that was fine. The elementals were a pretty minor element of the setting, and it was always assumed we'd get an explanation later.

However, now we've got an expansion where the elementals take center stage. Two of the raid bosses are elemental lords, the main good guys are shamans and all of the elemental realms play major roles in the events of the expansion. And yet, we're still not given any new background information. We're just supposed to accept shamanism is connected to everything that's been going on, but it's never explained how. What is twilight magic, and how is it connected to shamanism? Why is a shaman able to substitute a black dragon in certain magical rituals? What is the difference between binding an elemental through elementium cages and bracers of binding? Why are elementals that appear from disturbed ground wearing bracers of binding? How are giants and elementals related? If there are five elemental spirits, why are there only four elemental lords? What came first; elemental spirit or elemental lord, and who or what created one from the other? If the elemental spirits represent the planet, how can they be connected to the elemental lords that are native to another realm? And why can they still be called upon in the elemental plane? Why does the original well of eternity serve as a gateway to the realm of earth? What position does the tauren belief the earthmother have in relation to the elemental spirits?

I can understand keeping a few things vague in order to keep the setting somewhat mysterious. However, it's really not too much to ask for at least some basic background for the story you're telling.

Actually, that seems to be a recurring theme for cataclysm. Despite the fact that the content for the expansion takes place across the entire planet, we barely get any new background details at all. It is by a very, very long shot the expansion that added the least amount of backstory. I'll probably go more into detail about the lack of detail in upcoming parts that take a closer look at specific zones.

War

Of course, we've only covered half the premise. There's another important story: The horde and the alliance go to war! Ugh, I still can't believe they go with that plot. Apparently, all the alliance leaders just up and drop their own quests for peace when king Paranoid tells them that orcs were mind-controlling the forsaken into killing their own men to somehow gain a victory against the alliance by killing as much horde as alliance soldiers. Seriously, at the very least Jaina should have left the alliance. She isn't going to follow that windbag Varian....

What do you mean, Varian isn't behind the war? I played Wrath of the Lich King. He was the one that declared war, ruining six full years of peace negotiations. And the alliance and horde are pretty clearly still at war. There's been no mention of any change in the game and...

Varian stopped the war? When did that happen? Also, who restarted it?

Garrosh!?! That's just crazy, imaginary voice in my head. I mean, sure, Garrosh was kept in a position of power after doing terrible things last expansion, but even Thrall wouldn't be stupid enough to let him restart the war. I mean...

Did you just say that Thrall made Garrosh warchief? But.... but... but...

No...

You're kidding...

That's.... what.... No...

I'm sorry. I can't do this. Clearly, I'm in a coma and cataclysm is just a delusion. And if I'm having delusions, I'd rather go talk about something else.

Let's see.... Digimon! Now I loved the first digimon show. Still do actually. Sure, the animation was terrible and there were some really annoying deus ex machinas (most notably the digivices developing new powers as the plot demanded), but...

The voices in my head have just informed me that I'm not delusional and should return to talking about Cataclysm. Darn.

Okay, so Garrosh becomes warchief. How did that happen? Well, apparently, there were numerous massive story events that happened completely off-screen, one of which was Garrosh becoming slightly more likable for a bit, being promoted to warchief when Thrall left for shaman reasons, after which Garrosh returned to his stupid, aggressive self. From a narrative perspective, this is just pure insanity. Garrosh has spent an entire expansion screwing up in every possible way, always in front of either Thrall or an adviser to Thrall. Having him promoted to warchief without any in-game explanation after that is just ridiculous.

And that is another one of the great mistakes of Cataclysm. The entire plot absolutely depends on you having read just about every single warcraft material that had ever come out. From the novels, to the short stories on the site to, in some cases, promotional material. Almost no exposition is ever given in-game. Remember the good old days, when warcraft games came with manuals that explained the relevant tie-ins? Yeah, those are over.

Honestly, with the sheer amount of content that's skipped over in-game, you could easily fill an entire expansion, probably one much better than cataclysm. It would have at least ensured there to be some measure of continuity, because that's almost completely absent from Cata. Almost none of the consequences of the events in the expanded universe are fully implemented.

Too Much

Which brings us to the final premise problem we'll discuss today: Blizzard bit off more than they could chew. Was the idea of integrating the entire world in the original WoW already questionable, this is just madness. You can't redo the entire world in a single expansion, let alone redo the entire world and still add tons of new content. You simply don't have the resources.

As a result, none of the story ideas for cataclysm were fully developed, resulting in incredibly shoddy story-telling (Garrosh becoming warchief), plot developments that get dropped halfway through the expansion without another word (grimtotem tauren becoming allies of the alliance), other plot developments coming out of nowhere despite the fact that they should have become important much earlier (Al'akir joining forces with Deathwing), massive inconsistencies across the board (the alliance killing a character for helping the horde, the horde killing the very same character for leading a war against them), massive events being brought up and resolved off-handedly (the new legion invasion in Ashenvale), entire zones that resolve around plot elements that should no longer exist (searing gorge, eastern plaguelands, dustwallow marsh) and just general incompetence (arathi highlands).

When I call Cataclysm half-finished, I mean it literally. WotLK had obvious missing content as well, but the vast majority of content was implemented and polished before release. For cataclysm, this isn't the case. Take the zones for example. Cataclysm zones can be divided into four categories, depending on how much of them has been finished.

• Finished Zones
  In some very rare cases, the zones have actually not only been finished, but have also been refined and tested. It doesn't have to mean that the zone is good (most still exhibit other cataclysm-related problems), but it does mean the zone actually appears to have been made by professionals. Examples of this are the goblin starting zones, darkshore and silverpine forest.
• Unpolished zones
  For the majority of new zones and a few old zones, the content has been either finished or mostly finished. However, they didn't go through the review phase. No one double checked for incredibly blatant plot holes, superfluous elements, fluent story-telling or general bugs. Good examples here are Mount Hyjal, Deepholm, Swamp of Sorrows and the first half of the worgen starting experience
• Unfinished zones
  These are zones that haven't even gotten to the review phase yet, still needing extra content to fully fill the zone out. Either portions of the original quests are left in in places where they don't make any sense, or there are areas that were obviously intended to have larger story-lines but don't. The degree to which zones are unfinished can vary heavily. At the mostly done end of the scale there are Vashj'ir and Stonetalon Mountains, while at the barely started end of the scale, you can find Ashenvale and Durotar.
• Unwritten zones
  Most of the redone zones sadly fall under this category. Normally, a zone starts with a few ideas, which lead to a concept, which includes the basic visual style for the zone and main story-line(s). The concept then gets implemented and expanded, expanding details or adding new ideas. Then, the zone gets reviewed, fixing mistakes, adding more consistency to the story and removing bugs along the way. The other categories have the zones fall short in later parts. Here, it fails at the beginning: The zone simply doesn't have a fully developed concept.
  In most cases though, this doesn't mean that the zone is left untouched. The designers simply started to implement various unrelated ideas. The best example of this is Tirisfal Glades. By all means, the entire zone should have been revamped since most of its quests involved fighting the scarlet crusade and the scourge, factions that should no longer exist, at least not in the state they were in the original world of warcraft. However, the majority of the quests is actually updated in some way, just not in a way that addresses the changes that should have happened to the area.
  For other zones, the ideas implemented were a lot less extensive though. Teldrassil only had one tiny little series of quests added that would serve as a handwave as for why all the corrupted elements of the tree were still around after the entire emerald nightmare plot had been resolved in a novel.

Next time, we're going to be looking at a couple of updated zones in particular.