It's gotta make sense!

So today, I was leveling yet another character in World of Warcraft. If you haven't leveled a second or even a third character, I advise you do. If you go through it and pay attention to what's going on around you, it's incredible. You can visibly see the improvement and growth of the designers through the game. Go through it again, look at the characters. Look at the gear, the monsters, the environments, the quests, anything and everything. Then compare that to the content we are being delivered now, it's really night and day.

With early vanilla wow, it feels somewhat haphazard. A lot of the what you see only makes sense because, well, because it is. The quests lines don't exactly feel like they are all tying into something bigger, the monster abilities are fairly similar across the board and the zones themselves feel very repetitive. I remember going from westfall to red ridge and feeling like I was in the same place. This makes sense if you take into account the real world as a whole, places that are adjacent to each other are likely going to be fairly similar. But that doesn't make for thrilling gameplay. Same thing goes with Thousand needles into Tanaris, it just felt like going from one desert to the other, then you get a nice break in un'goro and back to the desert in silithus. Even into the raid game, why are we killing this big ass fire demon guy? oh yeah, cause he's a big fire guy with purples in his pockets. Roger.

Luckily, blizzard is ever growning. You can see that things become more and more sensible as vanilla progresses. The opening of the gates of Ahn'Qiraj were incredible. I remember farming non-stop as a deputy for my guildie to open that gate. And when we did, I felt like a million bucks. I knew what I was doing, and why I was doing it. I think this is why I remember that as my most fond moments in vanilla wow. Once naxxramas loomed over Easter plaguelands, everyone in the world knew exactly why the argent dawn was ramping up. We didn't all know why Naxxramas was there, but we knew that we were fighting against it. This is the feeling that we didn't get from Molten Core or from Blackwing lair.

Then came outlands. A huge jump in the quality of zones here. Outlands really was fresh and new from Azeroth. Being that it's a completely new planet, the designers are freed from the shackles of the old world. I remember the first time I saw Netherstorm, I was blown away. Outlands succeeded wildly in the feeling of fresh and invigorating visuals, the zones were all very unique, from the landscapes to the creatures to the abilities they used. Each zone felt like a self contained world of their own. This also led to, what I feel is, the failure of the story.

I'm a big fan of story, I want to feel like what I'm doing, I'm doing for a reason. I want my work to be moving me forward to something bigger, something more meaningful. Outlands didn't feel this way at all to me. Late shadowmoon valley started to push in the right direction, but only took you part way. Again, the raid game brought something together, but also pulled a few apart. I don't know anyone who could tell me why we were storming karazhan. Or why gruul had to be killed, other than he's a big ass guy with purples in his pocket. Black temple moved into the right direction, with the intertwining storylines with shadowmoon valley, but it didn't get good until Quel'Danas. There were some wonderful strides with the introduction of Isle of Quel'Danas, of course, it was a small island that was covered almost fully by the raid instance. Though I never felt like there was any question as to why we were here, why we were doing the quests to break into sunwell, it just seemed to make sense there. Overall though, I didn't feel like there was a sense of a larger purpose in outlands. Yeah, we're killing the burning legion, cause they are bad. OK?

Finally, we get to northrend. From the moment you step off the boat, you know where this is going. Arthas. I love the northrend questing model. You get intimately involved with arthas from the get-go. I don't recall ever asking "why am i doing this" in northrend. I knew that I was doing this, to get closer to arthas. I was helping out the red dragonflight cause malygos went crazy. I always felt like I had a sense of direction, and a sense of reason. Even most of the monsters made sense, Vrykul are under arthas control, and theres no question with any undead. Even look at Scholozar, the reason WHY is clear as day in this zone. Why? because arthas' army is coming over the damn mountain! I think this feeling stems in large as to the feeling that we are not the aggressors in Northrend. In vanilla, i felt like I was attacking other people to take their stuff, no other reason. In Northrend, I feel like my hand is very much forced. Arthas is stirring up the pot, we are trying to save it. This contributes heavily to my understanding of the story, what's going on, and why I'm doing it.

Of course, even northrend isn't perfect. There were a few moments here and there where I had to ask some questions. Mostly with the npcs. Do you remember the "raven lords"? What the hell are these? Have you seen any ravens in northrend? I don't understand these mobs, they make no sense to me. Apparently, there's tons of ravens in northrend, they are just all under the control of shadow priests. Or the Brunhildar area. I thought this area was initially cool, then on my second play through I said "So... there's a village full of chicks.. and they never leave the village.. None over here, none over there, all right in this one spot!" I don't know about you, but I don't know any woman who would be ok with that.

Of course, one could argue that I'm getting into a "nitpicky" area here. But isn't that the idea? I'm not saying that Northrend, and wrath as a whole isn't incredible. What I'm saying is that if I had these thoughts, then someone else did too. The state of the MMO has come so far, and blizzard has set the bar so high, that I can't wait to see what's next! If cataclysm has half of the improvements in design, story telling, npcs, and features that the previous expansion have had, then we are in for a real treat.

I for one, can't freakin wait for it.

*edit: So a few friends mentioned to me that they felt like this was a 'bashing on wow' post, I didn't intend for that. This simply supposed to be my observations from going through the multiple expansions. Jeesh, don't be so touchy, I bet the devs look back at their work and say "wow, wtf man. We can do so much better."