Even successful games can benefit from a post-mortem analysis, a look into what went right with the game and what went horribly wrong. In World of Warcraft, that means Cataclysm, the current expansion to Blizzard’s unstoppable juggernaut fantasy MMORPG. While Blizzard runs down the details on their side, check out this article about the Cataclysm experience from a player. Ten Ton Hammer has the story.
There’s a sense that Cataclysm was World of Warcraft 2, and in a sense that’s true. It certainly modernized the game from a technical and design standpoint. In a sense, though, it’s still the original Warcraft with all the play experience that implies. If WoW has a weakness, it’s that the game’s play experience is stuck in the past when technical limitations defined what could and couldn’t be done in an MMO. Those limitations no longer apply. If anything, WoW needs to get with the times.