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.
