Doing what they are best in doing

WoW's next expansion  has been written about here and there (and their cousins), but I still decided to put my spoon into the mix. Cuppy wrote about how Blizzard finally is breaking the mold of taking parts from other games and polishing them in their own mix. In her words:

Finally, we can see Blizzard use their gigantic budget for something experimental, new, and exciting – an old world revamp.  It’s ballsy, it’s gutsy, and I cannot freaking wait to see what happens to the Azeroth that I love.

In a sense that's true, but then again isn't that exactly what Blizzard is best in doing? Taking parts and ideas from other games and making something polished in their own? How come SOE's disastrous attempt on doing the exact same in EQ2 comes to my mind in such a vivid imagery?

Because the idea is the same: the same world but after cataclysmic changes. Where SOE made a sequel to their former best seller (EQ), Blizzard is doing exactly the same by bringing the sequel of their best seller into the game itself! If you ask me, I think Cataclysm is the secret MMO project as it changes the ruleset and updates the game to the current standards. Well, more or less.

It's like in old Pen and Paper RPG's, when Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was upgraded from ruleset 3.5 to the current d20 set: the game stayed the same, the rules just got upgraded. It is a sequel, yes, but within the same world and generic ruleset.

The rest of the expansion is full of copy-polish-paste. Guild experience comes from EQ2, which has the best guild system currently in use (ok, the only I have tested so far). Worgen satisfy the need to play 'dark and sinister' race on the Alliance side: somehow I see this as a counter (or reactive) solution to the possible World of Darkness MMO by CCP. Also the kind of Victorian era is a bit missing from the MMO scene, if you think of it, so there must be some need to expand that way, too.

There has been discussion in this blog also from the beginning how the Old World is void and empty, and even some bloggers have suggested earlier that the Old World could be wiped. Well, Blizzard listened to that and does it.

But can someone explain to me why Northrend isn't affected by the rise of Deathwing? After all, it's shores are at least as near to the upheaval as Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor...

Do we see a recurring cycle of expansions?