Cataclysm isn't the end of the world(of warcraft)

Warcraft has been out for five years now and for those of you that have been playing since day one it's probably impossible to see an end in sight. Ask your average hardcore raider if they think WoW will end soon and you're likely to get laughed at. Surely the game as aged but Blizzard appears to have found the wine and cheese of online gaming. WoW might be five years old (making her a veritable milf in online gaming years.) but the old girl isn't showing gray just yet.


With graphics updates and an entire change in the way Blizzard handles raid and quest content WoW has been looking better and better in the past few years. We've come a long way from Diablo talent trees and negative rested exp that's for sure. On top of this all of the early info coming out of Blizzard points to Cataclysm being truly world shaking for everyone. The Barrens being split in two means much more than Alliance players now getting their own Barrens chat. It means a complete retooling of old world content. Old quests and leveling paths will be gone, replaced with a new leveling flow and brand new content for both beginners and higher level players alike. They're redoing the way all of our stats and talents work, providing new race and class combination, new races to both factions, letting you FINALLY fly over that dang airport without being jailed by a GM for it! Cataclysm isn't simply an expansion, it's World of Warcraft 2.

With the end of Wrath of the Lich King approaching some gamers might look beyond the improvements that have come and are to come to. With no release date for Cataclysm and another simple Wrymrest raid on the horizon, some gamers might be growing restless. It's a cycle that's quite common with online games and Warcraft especially. We saw a similar sort of lethargy set in on the hardcore and casual sets alike during the end of the past expansion. With nary a drop of expansion news from Blizzard some players began playing less or quit all together until the expansion was finally released. Our own guild saw a large decline during the last days of The Burning Crusade. (That had absolutely nothing to do with Sunwell, nope not a thing.) These fickle gamer friends may be gone for now but mark my words they will return. You see this natural population flux at the end of most expansions. When the content that exists has been run to death and players are looking for new challenges.

Blizzard has never been that concerned about permanently losing these people to a competitor and for good reason. Blizzard simply makes a superior product. Think back to all of the "WoW Killers" that were released, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Aion, Vanguard Saga of Heroes, the list goes on...Many of these games lost the majority of their player base in months after release. Those that had left WoW to try out the competition quickly returned to good old Azeroth. And while some of these games were lucky enough to find their niche many have had to result to consolidating servers so very early in their gaming life spans.

Warcraft it's self could have suffered a similar fate if not for the dedicated Blizzard development team. Always reinventing the wheel when it comes to their own game. Providing compelling and new challenges in each expansion and keeping a constant line of dialogue with their players as they patch and tweak the game. It's this kind of dedication that keeps WoW feeling like a fresh game and keeping it's players paying that fifteen bucks a month now and well into the future.