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| Worgen creation is a bit limited right now - no girls allowed! |
It’s also a little difficult to decide what to sample first when an MMO like World of Warcraft gets another expansion, especially one that not only adds in two whole new races, revamps the entire first two continents of the game world but also remoulds core mechanics. Well alight it was perhaps made a little easier thanks to my fondness of werewolf like creatures, so yeah after I suffered the agony of beta updates (which are far nastier than retail ones) I made my way to the new character screen. Unfortunately the model for female worgens hasn’t been dropped in yet so it’s a right sausage fest in Gilneas. The options for customising your furry virtual self are rather limited too right now as you can only alter the worgen's appearance and not your human form. Yeah there’s a bit of Star Wars clone syndrome right now.
Still this is just a beta; a close beta recently kicked screaming into life, so certain features missing are to be forgiven. This forgiveness unfortunately had to extend to frequent crashes as well, with my first delivered just as the mini introduction cut scene was wrapping up for my worgen character. It had no narration which exists to quickly summarise your race and predicament, but did climax with a world ending crash to desktop. Booting it back up and logging in once more I found myself in the beginning area of Gilneas City, which just so happened to be under attack by savage worgen. This is how you come to be one, suffering a nasty bite a little later in the prologue story chain. At this time you’re just human taking marching orders from your betters who are desperately trying to defend.
I choose a mage for my worgen, which admittedly is a little odd for a race that can tear a man’s throat out, and so proceeded to undertake my first few quests. Blizzard much like they did with Wrath of the Lich King’s Death Knights, make your character the full centre of attention in the prologue story lines. You bump into a load of Gilneas’ top brass and big wigs all addressing you like you often share a mug of ale down the tavern. This is great and helps make the world’s lore around you feel that much more important, mainly because its future hinges on your actions. The only way Blizzard can get us feeling more responsible for events in WoW has been through the introduction of ‘phasing’, and the studio has been none too shy using the technique in Cataclysm. It works by meeting certain conditions which trigger a ‘phase’ like having completed a certain quest chain or hub – this can cause bad guys to disappear, or to show up if none were there before and even alter entire parts of a zone’s environment.
There are a number of these phases in Gilneas, and most are attached to the mighty struggle for the city against the worgen and then eventually the Forsaken. Another increase from Blizzard has been the number of more special or unique quests that involve either a scripted NPC doing something or a contraption of some kind, like mountable cannons or a bombing run. Frankly these are all great as they thin out the number of more traditional fetch or ‘kill this many of that’ quests. Soon enough I was level 10 and I was relieved I could finally choose my first talent point. Things aren’t quite the same though as Blizzard is overhauling the talent tree system with Cataclysm so the old ways of mixing and matching the three categories goes flying out the MMO window. Now you can only invest in one of the three, making the first choice a critical one, and only until you reach levels past 70 can you spill over talent points in the other two. As a low level mage I wanted my water elemental so the choice was easy for me.
The beta certainly needs better balancing as my summonable elemental wiped the floor with anything I came across, which actually proved quite useful in the later quest hubs. One took place in a long abandoned town that was overrun with spiders, and I do mean overrun. The spawn rate for the eight legged buggers was frankly a little too high as spider carcasses littered the floor making it a little difficult to complete one of the quests; picking up diary entries off the floor. Blizzard are running a survey and suggestion service in the beta, alongside the reporting of bugs, asking testers how fun, clear, rewarding and difficult quests were after they completed them. This only seems to be in effect for the worgen race as the goblin character I made never had any questions.
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| Welcome to Gilneas, enemy to Transalvanian tourist operators |
The worgen quest chains take you away from the Gilneas City and out into the sticks, so to speak, where we also get a glimpse at the arrival of this world shattering Cataclysm. An entire invasion by the Forsaken is thwarted thanks to a massive earthquake that gobbles up the coast and obliterates their naval fleet. It was here an interesting quest popped up that had me rescuing drowning militia from the water. You had to carry NPCs back to the shore and you did so by having them thrown over your shoulder – it’s nice to see Blizzard is really making head way in getting more unique interactions for their quests now. Before you are forced to leave the city you get played a special cut scene which shows you changing into a worgen for the first time, though unfortunately it wasn’t included yet in the beta – but they did write us a note. Suddenly we’re outside in the stocks and given a potion that lets us control our bestial nature. It's here we have a quick chat with major NPCs again.
Eventually the worgen quests lead to a crossing with the druids who show your character how to permanently dominate your new shape shifting predicament and it's how the worgen race comes to be accepted into the Alliance. Eventually things lead back to Gilneas City where Blizzard have cooked up a huge showdown between the Forsaken, their banshee Queen, and the remnants of the Gilneas people. Annoyingly at the time the actual battle event was bugged, like really bugged, and I and plenty of other beta guineas pigs couldn’t move past it at all. It was a painful stop and I was left with little choice but to abandon my worgen mage for the time being and so I decided now would probably be a great window of opportunity to try out the other new kid on the block – Goblin – but that adventure will have to wait until next time.
Eventually (after many logins) I was able to get past the super beta bug, in fact I appeared just as the scripted battle was wrapping up so I was pretty damn lucky. I had thought that would be it for the prologue worgen adventure but I was wrong, Blizzard had a few miles more worth of quests and events yet before I could head off into present day Azeroth. Now that the city had been liberated from the Forsaken, so to speak, it was time to evacuate our ancestral Gilneas home and find new pastures. After fleeing the city thanks to a conveniently built tunnel, that happened to be rat infested, I was now working my way to smashing the Forsaken blockade and sail away with the worgen’s new Alliance allies. Before that though I was driving an elven war machine head long into battle with orcs, blasting away as their numbers fell. It was one of those kill x number of these, these and those thingies. After a good long wait for the damn orc wolfrider group to respawn, as there was only one included, I thought I was ready to leave. Nope – one more task lay ahead.
To send our worgen characters off with a bang, Blizzard have us pilot a daring raid on a large Horde siege airship. It’s another NPC scripted event as we landed and proceeded to butcher the airship crew high on the gangway connecting the blimps, before using rope to descend to the actual ship part of this might floating monstrosity. Finally it’s down to the engine room to sabotage the thing, with our NPC allies, and to take on the large airship commander. It’s an easy event as the NPC companions and other players don’t struggle. I was hoping for a major explosion or two as we all made our escapes... but the game crashed. Logging in as fast as I could – it crashed again. Third time’s a charm right? Right! Sadly I found myself flying back toward the harbour base we had taken off from with the airship destroyed so I missed the action, although maybe they haven’t coded it yet?
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| Beware the spider capital of the world, Stormglen Village |
Now all is done as there are no more quests in Gilneas for my worgen mage. An elven ‘quest giver’ was standing by the only boat docked offering to teleport me away with a note from the Blizzard team about how things are hardly finalized yet, with a hint at more quests added in the future? All-in-all the worgen starting zone is great in atmosphere with its heavy Transylvanian vibe. Sure there were problems here and there but that’s what a beta is for. Next time I’ll be exploring the Goblin origins of the Bilgewater Cartel, and what it means to be an upcoming Trade Princess – stay tuned!
Top Game Moment: It was a blast playing as the worgen, but I guess finally being able to contol the 'change' myself topped it.
