Community Blog Topic: What do you think of persistent changes to Azeroth?

This week’s Community Blog Topic takes a look at the constant changing of Azeroth. Change is good–most of the time. It’s a necessarily evil. In WoW or any game, it kind of needs to happen to keep things fresh. When the Cataclysm happened, these changes to Azeroth as we knew it were quite devastating in many areas. Some for the better, some for the worse. I have mixed feelings on this of course.

The good: Red Ridge is a nice example of the “good”. They streamlined the questing there and made it tighter. They kept almost all the core quests that were there and put a spin on it. We got John J. Keeshan and Colonel Troteman, an obvious and perhaps over the top reference to Rambo. The zone itself features a fixed bridge, after 6 years, it was long overdue.

Silverpine Forest got a pretty amazing rework and epic quest chain featuring Sylvanas. Have to say this was a win. As someone who plays alliance most of the time, I make sure to take any horde toons through there.

Winterspring was mostly untouched, which is a good thing. One of my favorite zone’s to quest in. Blasted Lands got a nice facelift. The southern end of the zone got some greenery. The questing was streamlined. The major quest chain was shortened a little. I wish they would have done more with the Gilnean portion of the zone, which is kind of out of place there but, we on the Alliance side take our baby spoons of lore when we can!

Things may never be the same, Westfall.

The bad: Westfall is probably a good example of the bad. They pretty much totally reworked the questline and story. Gone are the Defias of old. Enter in Vanessa VanCleef and her new Defias. It’s still a cool story to run through, but it’s a lot different. There is the whole CSI thing, that I think was kind of a flop. A prime example of Blizzard giving you cheese when you really weren’t asking for it. It’s cheese though, which is good unless you are lactose–nevermind. The questing was streamlined, which takes some of the sting out of it. I do miss the old Moonbrook and Defias messenger quest. The sense of danger that was there.

Loch Modan pretty much got forked over. The dam collapsed and most of the loch spilled out into the Wetlands. The questing took a big hit. They put some archeology flair into the zone but it’s kind of disconnected. Hopefully they will updated it some point and have us rebuild the dam.

Seriously? Who puts a goblin head on a cannon?

The ugly: Azshara and Darkshore are probably the two biggest examples. Totally changed the face of two iconic zones. Remember Auberdine? Of course you don’t, especially if you started playing after December 7th, 2010. I barely remember it myself. I do miss how it was a transportation hub. Horde used to attack it all the time. It was a nice opportunity for some World PvP. Now they attack Lor’danel occasionally, but who cares?

Azshara. Love it or hate it, the old Azshara was vast, somewhat majestic. You knew you were in a higher level zone filled with mystery and danger. It was something to explore. There were class quests there. Many players found it beautiful. There was the 2nd part of a major quest chain that took you back and forth to the Blasted Lands. Now, it has been corrupted by the goblins and their terrible, environmentally killing technology. I gave up on questing there on any horde alts I make. It just feels wrong. The whole tone. I do like the raceway they built there but it’s so out of place.

Honorable mentions: Thousand Needles and Tanaris. I never quested that much in Thousand Needles, but I did farm tin and iron there. I kind of miss the old Mirage Speedway. Perhaps they can rework it in the future. As for Tanaris, I prefer the old zone to the new one. I would say it’s neither good, bad nor ugly. It’s just kind of, “yeah, whatever”.