Posts tagged cataclysm 
Second Wind: World of Warcraft
When I originally started playing World of Warcraft, things were different. Priests were still waiting on their first big class patch. Regular mounts required level 40; most players couldn't afford the 100ish gold fee without a loan from their guild. Epic mounts were so prohibitively expensive as ...
Parting the mists: World of Warcraft turns eight
World of Warcraft's eighth anniversary arrives after a rough year for the franchise. Cataclysm, the expansion that redesigned much of the old world and trumpeted the return of archvillain Deathwing, also saw subscriber numbers drop from their highest point, reached during the Wrath of the Lich ...
Flameseeker Chronicles: A brief history of Guild Wars 2's Tyria
I see a lot of questions about whether or not people who want to play Guild Wars 2 should jump into the original in the (increasingly diminishing) time left before launch. I don't think there's really a one-size-fits-all answer to that question. For those of you who are worried about missing a ...
The Daily Grind: Is it lazy to retool classic dungeons for endgame?
Over the last few expansions, Blizzard has been attempting to transform antique World of Warcraft dungeons into modern, heroic experiences, from Cataclysm's reimagined Deadmines to Mists of Pandaria's level-cap Scholomance. But most of WoW's dungeons -- and most dungeons in ever-changing MMOs ...
The Daily Grind: Should new expansions include old expansions?
When Cataclysm launched, a friend of mine who hadn't played since the days of Vanilla World of Warcraft wanted to join in the fun, but when he saw the cost of catching up -- nearly full box prices for The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, on top of Cataclysm itself -- he balked and ...
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm post-mortem reflects on success, failure, and lessons learned
World of Warcraft's Cataclysm expansion is over a year old now, and Mists of Pandaria is looming just over the horizon, which means that it's time for a Cataclysm post-mortem. The infamous pony-promiser Greg "Ghostcrawler" Streets took some time out of his day to set aside the nerf bat and ...
Achievement Unlocked: A look at the Guinness world records of online gaming
We're just over a month into the new year, and already we've got plenty to look forward to: The Secret World is expected to hit in April, TERA will follow shortly in May, and Guild Wars 2 will be out... sometime this year (we hope). But before we all start looking toward the future, let's take ...
World of Warcraft's patch 4.3 to be last major update until Mists of Pandaria
World of Warcraft's lead quest designer, Dave Kosak, let slip in an interview today that the recently released patch 4.3 will be the final major content update to hit Azeroth until Mists of Pandaria goes live. This is obviously a notable discovery, since it either means that Mists of Pandaria ...
Blizzard seems to think that Cataclysm was too linear
Designing MMOs is often the art of shepherding players in a given direction while at the same time giving them a sense of freedom. Even in a themepark environment, players want to be invested in areas, to have reasons to come back and explore and go off of the rails should they want to. World of ...
World of Warcraft is going down in Europe... in price, that is
Reports of the demise of World of Warcraft have been greatly exaggerated, but the price of the game is falling. This isn't entirely unexpected, but the game's two more recent expansions have just seen a significant drop in their EU prices, with Wrath of the Lich King dropping to €19.99 and ...
