Umbrood's window to the world

I have stopped playing World of Warcraft regularly a few years ago, only sporadically returning to Azeroth and only casually playing. The game is still a good game but it doesn’t  capture me as it used too do. I still keep up with the goings on in the game and the community just too see how things are changing, mainly because it interests me how virtual economy works and how the gaming landscape is changing with each year.

[

So now the Lich King has been defeated and all is well until the next expansion, or something like that. The new things that Blizzard has been experimenting with the last few years are in game cut scenes to make the players feel more involved in the world. As most of the MMO is just a grind fest galore, and don’t bring any sort of story driven game play. I know that you cant expect the same kind of unique game play experience as you get with the single player games, but the gaming companies should try and make there games more fluid and adaptive. The cut scene and the phased content that Blizzard introduced in Wrath of the Lich King made it possible to have limited playing experiences where the world actually changed based upon where in the storyline you where. When you started as the Death Knight the first hero class introduced in the game, you started in a new phased part of the world only able to see other players on the same part of the beginning storyline for the Death Knights. This is the closest any MMO to my knowledge have come to giving an in game single player like experience, there are a few games that have used the same techniques before Blizzard incorporated it into their game.

There where a quest line end that gave you a small cut scene, involving Sylvanas Windrunner singing that came with The Burning Crusade this was the first time Blizzard used this in the actual game.

[

This was only available to the horde, and Blizzard has always been striving towards equality after they realised that they needed too make Horde and Alliance sides equal. This is both good and bad, if we go back to the early days of WoW there where several distinct differences between the two sides. Horde had the Shaman as an unique class and the Alliance have the Paladin, and several of the classes have unique racial abilities. The most useful of these where the Fear Ward of the Dwarf Priest, this was a very useful ability as many of the raid bosses had a fear mechanic that would make tanking difficult. The most famous was the Onyxia fear that was more difficult to raid on the horde side, due to the lack of Paladin buffs and priest fear ward.

The first big story line that gave you a cut-scene was the Wrath gate storyline in Wrath of the Lich King which was actually a fun little storyline but the drawn out ending wasn’t great it was just a big battle. Sure it was a vital story element, retaking Undercity, the battle you kinda knew that you couldn’t lose.  So all this was just a big cut scene that you could walk through with your friends, but I was memorable and good first effort from blizzard im expecting more of these things to appear in the near future.

So I haven’t been back to Azeroth in the last 6 months and I haven’t been keeping up to date with the latest developments, other that the whiny complaints about the difficulty level being too low and the servers being crap. But I might be returning for a last visit to Azeroth in the near future to just keep me from going insane and taking my mind of the choirs of life and the stress of getting everything done before heading out for greener pastures. I also have the urge to get some Machinima stuff put together but that is after I have edited together the small films from various outings and travels around Norrland.