Warning: Possible spoilers ahead, read at your own risk.
When Cataclysm’s Friend & Family Alpha began to leak its sticky ink over the inter-tubes, Lore Hound felt the same itch of excitement that was shared throughout the World of Warcraft community.
MMO-Champion spearheaded the onslaught by posting a large amount of screenshots of the early Alpha client and the world inside it. From what people saw, before Blizzard’s unsurprising C&D on Boubouille and MMO-Champion, there was quite a bit of unfinished details. Most prominent was the image to the left, showing the Skywall Raid.
From those images, and the subsequent leak of Deathwing’s dragon model, people were left feeling that a giant measure of Cataclysm was unfinished and/or untouched. Others pointed to the fact that it was content from the Alpha, and certainly should not be expected to be at 100 percent complete.
Some are even still worried that most of the features will be unfinished by Cataclysm’s release. Clunky and vague systems such as Mastery bonuses, Archeology and others (the fabled dance studio).
After two months of private client testing, the attached NDA agreement has been lifted, and beta drawings commenced. Multiple people have strapped on their goggles, grabbed their bottles of Mountain Dew (in the color representing their faction of course), and begun their datamining of audio files, script files, and features, posting them all over the internet. Some of the less linguistically inclined have simply filmed themselves playing the Beta client, posting what new things they’ve found and things that are missing.
What conclusions can be reached after searching the web for the latest Cataclysm tidbits? Read on for more.
Amatera recently posted his thoughts that Blizzard is struggling to meet Cataclysm’s planned release date, and therefore ripping out, replacing, simplifying or delaying systems and content.
With Beta out, and more information pouring into the databases around the world like a boiling pot of tar on to invading soldiers during the Middle Ages, the situation on what we know is developing and changing daily.
Based on what I’ve seen from this content, I firmly believe that even in early Beta, Cataclysm is very, very well polished and is extremely close to being in its retail state.
Of course, there is still some final development and testing to go and more features to test, such as mechanics for raids, instances, professions, flying around the Old World, and other features — but most of what’s going to be shipped with the game seems to be already intact.
Spots where just structure images were — including the previously worrisome Skywall Raid — are now replaced with full detailed walls and textures. Features that were still on paper and only conceptual are now coded and being tested. Cataclysm’s coming is rumbling like Mt. Saint Helens before May 1980, and I’m trembling in my Heroic: Forge of Souls tanking boots.
What do the readers think? Do you all agree with that Cataclysm is almost ready? Or are you on the completely opposite spectrum and think that Blizzard developers have a plate that is much too full to hope for a quick Cataclysm release?
IMO. Blizzard has one of the best (types of) betas around. Betas are meant to be buggy and sorta lame, not a marketing scheme. So what if right now they aren’t looking so great? Blizz is a reputable company and will get it done. And until the closed beta ends, there will be large “improvements” made to Cataclysm. So I am not worried at all.
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