Project Lore

"I'm Ron Burgundy?" One of the biggest side effects to the upcoming cataclysm is the destruction of Azeroth by Deathwing's return.  The Earth Warder - or Warderer for the overzealous, over caffeinated, under REMed writer - will return with a bang.  The leader of the Black Dragonflight will cut a hole in the world and leave a fiery trail from his exit wound across the Eastern Kingdom.  The effects of such a tumultuous event will be felt as far away as Kalimdor (no mention of major Northrend changes have been made), shattering The Barrens, ravaging the coastline of Auberdine and refreshing the Wailing Caverns.  It's only natural that the quests and tasks we've done over, and over, change alongside the world. To my knowledge no developer has abandoned old content entirely.  We players do it all the time though.  When was the last time you spent more than a few minutes running around Outland?  (Farming old achievements does not count!)  For us, it makes sense to move on to the new hotness for leveling, loot and a myriad of other reasons.  Being the efficient minded players that we are, we do just that. This, unfortunately, leaves the old areas crawling with tumbleweeds, bored mobs and unchallenged raid bosses.  Why shouldn't Blizzard nuke it and start over?  Nearly no one is using it, and to top it off, Blizzard is often ashamed of the archaic design ideas that the company implemented so long ago.  By combining the release of new races with Deathwing's destruction players will have a perfect reason to rerun all of the "new" zones, but that leads us to the bad - the disappearance of the old. This may sound contradictory to the good point.  That is because it is.  The removal of the old content, by way of the new stuff, is going to upset a lot of people.  Blizzard surely agonized over the decision to abandon all the vanilla WoW content, but that doesn't matter to the old school.  No matter what, those rose colored glasses will make players remember the "good ole days." *cough*Perhaps someone should archive the old dungeon content before it disappears?!  I wonder which site would be capable of such high quality hijinks?!  Any ideas?*cough* As a consolation prize, much of the old world raids will be returning alongside Cataclysm, albeit in an entirely new form.  Apparently beheadings do not kill dragons. The ugly is simply laziness.  I've seen, and heard, people claim that Blizzard isn't redoing anything, the company's artists are.  Subscribers to this philosophy believe that the massive changes will just be updates to art, textures and models, with little gameplay being modified.  I put the question mark in the title on purpose, as I have no fuel to add to this fire.  Are any readers out there capable of making a poignant case of laziness on Blizzard's part?  In my opinion, there are simply too many zones drastically changing, and too much raid content incoming for me to see the light. The keen-eyed readers will note that the post lost meat as I continued down the list of topics.  The Holmes-ish readers will then deduce my stance on the subject, which applies to my girlfriend as well.  I hate to see it go, but love to watch it leave.  What about you?  Feel free to leave my girlfriend out of your comments.

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