Has anyone seen Grimclaw since the quake?

I have to say that I quite admire the work that goes into online games such as World of Warcraft - or in fact any computer game. I mention Warcraft simply because it’s the one I play. I’ve never been a computer gamer and I got into this largely because over the years it’s swallowed a great deal of Furtle’s time and so I thought I’d have a go.

That was in April. Here I am now, desperately trying to level up my main character to level 80 ahead of the release of the latest expansion, Cataclysm (I shan’t make it – the expansion goes live on, I think, Tuesday next and I am away for biggest part of four days this weekend and at work today and tomorrow, so at level 73 it’s just too big a leap in the time available to me). Not having played as previous expansions took place, I have no feel for the differences in approach this time around, but the game interface and world has been upgrading progressively over the past couple of months or so in preparation. I don’t think the new instances or encounters are live yet, but many of them are in place and there’s enough going on that hostile NPCs will ambush you where once you might have been safe in a particular area.

One of the things I have done as I have levelled up my character, is to explore as much of the game world as possible. I am not a great fan of dungeons and much prefer soloing or playing in occasional small groups, so a lot of in-game achievements are not available to me unless I radically change my playing style. I’m cool with that; not being a long-term computer gamer I really haven’t developed many of the skills others just take for granted and I have never mastered the in-game chat while trying to stay alive and kill the baddie shtick at all! Anyway, one thing I could do solo to get a cumulative achievement was to explore every region of every continent, each one an achievement in itself and at the end, the overarching achievement that gives you the title ‘The Explorer’ so people know you have done it.

‘Tis a small thing, but fun in game terms.

What surprised me the other night, though, once it became apparent that many of the geographical changes had already been made in the basic game ahead of the expansion going live, was just how attached I’d become to certain parts of the game world. Strange but true. I spent an evening re-exploring some of the places I’d wandered around as I was levelling up at a much lower level. Some of them are only tweaked, others completely different.


Auberdine before the Cataclysm

Daft as it sounds, there was a little piece of coast in Darkshore around Auberdine that I liked to visit from time to time, just to work on my character’s fishing skill (!), and that’s all gone. Auberdine is a ruin and Darkshore has been chopped to pieces. It is no longer possible to run the road north to south; bridges are down, huge crevasses split the landscape and new rivers race through the gaps. The devastation of the cataclysm is very well done indeed and the graphics are much improved. But for all the sense of excitement – the whole reason was to refresh the game and give players a reason to revisit the old, originally low-level areas by mixing it all up again – there’s a feeling of sadness, too. Or at least there is if you’re an idiot like me. For all it was dark and gloomy, I liked Darkshore and I liked Auberdine. I spent a lot of time there when I was levelling up as a relatively new player and it’s destroyed. No more fishing in my favourite spot!


The Ruins of Auberdine

I should get a life!

Has anyone seen Grimclaw since the quake?

I have to say that I quite admire the work that goes into online games such as World of Warcraft - or in fact any computer game. I mention Warcraft simply because it’s the one I play. I’ve never been a computer gamer and I got into this largely because over the years it’s swallowed a great deal of Furtle’s time and so I thought I’d have a go.

That was in April. Here I am now, desperately trying to level up my main character to level 80 ahead of the release of the latest expansion, Cataclysm (I shan’t make it – the expansion goes live on, I think, Tuesday next and I am away for biggest part of four days this weekend and at work today and tomorrow, so at level 73 it’s just too big a leap in the time available to me). Not having played as previous expansions took place, I have no feel for the differences in approach this time around, but the game interface and world has been upgrading progressively over the past couple of months or so in preparation. I don’t think the new instances or encounters are live yet, but many of them are in place and there’s enough going on that hostile NPCs will ambush you where once you might have been safe in a particular area.

One of the things I have done as I have levelled up my character, is to explore as much of the game world as possible. I am not a great fan of dungeons and much prefer soloing or playing in occasional small groups, so a lot of in-game achievements are not available to me unless I radically change my playing style. I’m cool with that; not being a long-term computer gamer I really haven’t developed many of the skills others just take for granted and I have never mastered the in-game chat while trying to stay alive and kill the baddie shtick at all! Anyway, one thing I could do solo to get a cumulative achievement was to explore every region of every continent, each one an achievement in itself and at the end, the overarching achievement that gives you the title ‘The Explorer’ so people know you have done it.

‘Tis a small thing, but fun in game terms.

What surprised me the other night, though, once it became apparent that many of the geographical changes had already been made in the basic game ahead of the expansion going live, was just how attached I’d become to certain parts of the game world. Strange but true. I spent an evening re-exploring some of the places I’d wandered around as I was levelling up at a much lower level. Some of them are only tweaked, others completely different.


Auberdine before the Cataclysm

Daft as it sounds, there was a little piece of coast in Darkshore around Auberdine that I liked to visit from time to time, just to work on my character’s fishing skill (!), and that’s all gone. Auberdine is a ruin and Darkshore has been chopped to pieces. It is no longer possible to run the road north to south; bridges are down, huge crevasses split the landscape and new rivers race through the gaps. The devastation of the cataclysm is very well done indeed and the graphics are much improved. But for all the sense of excitement – the whole reason was to refresh the game and give players a reason to revisit the old, originally low-level areas by mixing it all up again – there’s a feeling of sadness, too. Or at least there is if you’re an idiot like me. For all it was dark and gloomy, I liked Darkshore and I liked Auberdine. I spent a lot of time there when I was levelling up as a relatively new player and it’s destroyed. No more fishing in my favourite spot!


The Ruins of Auberdine

I should get a life!