World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Expansion Pack (PC/Mac DVD)

A couple months ago some weird stuff started happening in Azeroth. Sinister characters began to infiltrate the main cities, and as time progressed, giant, angry elementals began to wage war on the forces of the Horde and the Alliance. This was all the lead up to the release of the third expansion for Blizzard Entertainment's massively successful MMO: World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Blizzard uses this opportunity to take a broader look at their six year old game and figure out what needed to be updated to keep World of Warcraft relevant. They used the emergence of a main lore character, the massive evil dragon Deathwing, from his place of slumber to terrorize the mortals as the catalyst for the changes. Apparently, Blizzard figured a lot needed updating, because almost all of the old game has been completely redone. From the very start, the experience for players who pick up World of Warcraft now will be vastly different from the experience players had when the game launched in 2004. Quests, once splintered and sending players aimlessly across the map, are focused and quick to complete. Tales of having to kill fifty boars for three boar hides are done away with, and storylines -- actual storylines! -- populate the game world. It's a newer, friendlier Azeroth, and these changes span the entire original game. But seeing as how all of these changes are available without a purchase of Cataclysm, why pick up this latest expansion? Cataclysm unlocks all the level 80-85 content, which specifically includes five new zones for leveling, two new battlegrounds, a PvP and daily questing area, seven new dungeons (and two redone classics) with normal and heroic (max level) modes, and a few raid instances. It's a lot of content, but it's not as much as the previous expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. That said, you can still expect to play for well over a hundred hours before you've really touched upon everything Cataclysm has to offer. Buying Cataclysm also unlocks the Worgen race for the Alliance and Goblins for the Horde. The Goblins begin on the technocratic isle of Kezan, led by the seemingly malevolent Trade Prince. Their opening has an unusually small number of combat-focused quests, instead using the vehicle system introduced in the previous expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. I have mixed feelings about this choice, as although the quests are interesting and fun, they don't do a great job of teaching new players the ropes in the same way that the newly revamped starter areas for the original races do. On the other hand, the chances that someone brand new to World of Warcraft will immediately buy the core game and three full expansions is somewhat slim, so this little concern is just that -- a little concern. The Goblin race showcases World of Warcraft's more lighthearted side. The opening quests are all centered around greed and mafia-style beatings, all done very tongue-in-cheek. Playing as a Goblin also provides sassier feedback. Hammering buttons for skills that are on cooldown causes your character to say "nah, I can't use that yet!" in a tone of voice that makes you feel sheepish for even trying. It's pretty great. Their racial bonuses are also some of the most useful and flexible in the game, with a ranged damaging attack and a gap-closing leap sharing a cooldown, worldwide vendor discounts, a boost in healing from potions and a slight increase in attack and casting speed. Then there's an alchemy boost and the ability to summon a banker anywhere to ice the delicious racial cake. The Worgen seem frankly a little less powerful. They've got an increased critical chance and a sprint ability on a cooldown, as well as nature and shadow resistances. They get a bonus to skinning and skinning speed too, but overall their abilities seem less universally helpful. That said, the resistances are to arguably the two most frequently encountered schools of magic in the game, and the goblins have no resistances whatsoever. The Worgen origin story is much more dramatic than that of the Goblins. Starting you off as a human in the isolated city of Gilneas (which had been hinted at since WoW's launch, sitting just beyond the impenetrable Greymane Wall), you are given the routine task of getting orders from a superior, only to find him dead. Upon returning, everyone everywhere is under attack by wolfmen, and as the city begins to fall to the new threat, your do your best to fend off the attackers. Naturally, in Werewolf movie-style, you get bitten and eventually become one of the beastmen. Where the Goblin story was a tale of new beginnings and the struggle against a villainous dictator, the Worgen story is of a crumbled society trying to rebuild and find allies in a world they had long been segregated from. It's gloomy but involving. Stories of this depth would have been a rarity in World of Warcraft prior to Cataclysm, but along with the update, the eight original races have seen brand new storylines as well. By level 80, regardless of your race, you're fully assimilated into your faction and have even achieved some renown for your deeds in Northrend during the last expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. When you return to your capital city, you're given the choice of heading to Mount Hyjal, an important lore location throughout Warcraft and home of the World Tree (also important!) to aid the druids in the fight against rampaging fire elementals, or heading to the island of Vashj'ir, recently emerged off the coast of Stormwind and home to the Naga, a race of evil serpentine people. This was to ensure that the launch wouldn't have thousands crammed into one zone, but it also gives you something to check out later, or on another character. If you choose to journey through Hyjal, you'll interact with major lore characters from the very start, and come face to face with some familiar enemies from World of Warcraft's first raid instance, Molten Core. This will be a big nostalgia-blast to the face of WoW veterans, but is of little consequence to everyone else. Quests in Hyjal begin somewhat stereotypically -- your first has you collecting berries and killing rock elementals -- but peppered throughout the zone are vehicle quests, spaced out just enough to keep the standard quests from getting repetitive. The vehicle quests are a hoot, too. One is an airborne game of Joust, where you have to clumsily control a bird and knock others out of the air. Another has you climbing a tree and lobbing bears at a trampoline. The quests are spread across the zone around various shrines which you are tasked with cleansing or rescuing. You never dwell at a quest hub longer than a few sets of quests, which keeps you moving through the zone at a nice pace and in a logical order. Vashj'ir is aesthetically the opposite of Hyjal. Completely submerged, Vashj'ir introduces true underwater questing to World of Warcraft, and sustains it for the duration of two and a half levels. It's a huge and beautiful zone, full of vibrant colors and teeming with sea life. There are fewer novelty quests, but a long chain where you embody a Naga, one of the amphibious serpent-people that are regular enemies in Azeroth, tells the back story of Vashj'ir and fills in the Naga's sinister intentions for their current campaign of terror. Questing underwater provides a surprisingly different dynamic to the game, as threats lurk not just around, but above and below you now as well. There are also a couple stand-out set pieces: giant shelled creatures that serve as quest locations and help keep the constant swimming from becoming tedious. From there, you're onto either Deepholm or Uldum. Deepholm is an enormous circular cavern filled with crystals and living rock. It's the Elemental Plane of Earth for Azeroth, so you appropriately fight alongside and against a lot of earth elementals. The story here puts the entire plane in great danger of erupting into Azeroth, as the World Pillar, an ancient Titan construct that keeps the planes separated, was broken when Deathwing (the evil dragon!) emerged. The Horde and Alliance had seemingly put aside their differences in the face of this threat, but the machinations of the Twilight's Hammer, a fanatical cult, had severed those peaceful bonds. Naturally, as a veteran of many campaigns, it is up to you to help recover the fractured World Pillar pieces and prevent catastrophe. It's a bit of a complicated setup, but it's executed through a series of quests that help you piece together what's going on. Deepholm's circular structure makes questing in the zone a pleasure. It's never difficult to figure out where you are headed, and it's never a long journey. The occasional cavernous trek provides the sensation that the Plane of Earth is multilayered and far larger than the small portion you're questing through. Even though the vehicle system is rarely used in Deepholm, questing rarely becomes repetitive thanks to incremental boss battles. The fights aren't your standard "kill it before it kills you" scenarios; they require you to move and read patterns and act accordingly, and each fight is a little more complex than the last. Deepholm also has something very rare in an MMO -- closure. You are tasked with piecing together the World Pillar, and once you've done it, it's done. There is still stuff to do within the zone, but that threat is no longer omnipresent. Uldum on the other hand doesn't have the benefit of an ending. In fact, it's a tangled web of short little stories, often interspersed with clever cutscenes. When you first enter the zone, you are captured by natives. Although you can follow that story -- of escape, revenge and liberation -- to completion, it never feels "done". Luckily, so many of the quests in Uldum are inventive and original that it stands out as my favorite of all of Cataclysm. A sequence in the Harrison Jones (an Indiana Jones/Harrison Ford parody) quest chain simulates a turret level in a first-person-shooter with a surprising amount of responsiveness. A separate quest puts your character inside a giant ball of molten plasma and tells you to roll over a thousand gnomes (who stick to the ball Katamari style, and even reference Katamari in the rewards), and a couple others do a decent job of simulating a real-time strategy game. There are dozens of cutscenes scattered throughout Uldum to fill out the story, making the adventure-film feeling complete. Only the final leveling zone, the Twilight Highlands, failed to truly impress me. Although there were certainly some neat moments, for the most part it failed to showcase something new the way the other four zones had. The emphasis on story that permeated the others also seemed downplayed, with only a few select cutscenes of, well, very mixed quality. It also didn't provide any striking visual appeal the way the others did, instead looking like the crummy, run-down, ghetto parts of The Shire from The Lord of the Rings movies. At 85, there's still a good deal of content left. Nine heroic dungeons provide a decent challenge, with a very good mix of boss fights and gimmicks. Most of the people I've played with have been telling me how much harder they are than Wrath's heroics, although I personally found them to be on-par, and I think the perceived difficulty is mostly because of the gear reset -- people aren't in super strong equipment anymore. Heroics no longer reward players with epic items, which I think is a change for the better. Epics should feel like a major achievement. Guild level ups do feel like a major achievement, thanks to the new guild progression system. Doing a dungeon run with at least three other members of your guild or completing a quest will net you some guild experience. Everyone in the guild earns it, and it all contributes to a communal experience bar. It takes a lot to fill it, though. It took my (excellent) guild Pockets Full of Magic a week to get from level one to two, with two of us going from 80-85 being by far the largest contributors. There are 25 levels in total, with the earlier levels providing perks that benefit everyone regardless of goal (such as boosted experience gains, increased reputation, and bonus cash) and the later perks being more targeted towards raiding guilds (a button to summon all party members, and a mass-resurrection spell etc…). It's not something your guild can just grind out -- there's a daily cap that prevents you from gaining more than a certain amount of experience in a day -- so when your guild finally levels up, it feels like you and your guildmates have really achieved something. A big chunk of player versus player content comes with Cataclysm too; two new battlegrounds, Tol Barad, and guild PvP support. Twin Peaks, one of the battlegrounds, is a capture-the-flag style map like Warsong Gulch, but wider and with a river in the middle that can be a deathtrap if you're not mindful. The other, Battle for Gilneas, is a capture-the-node map like Arathi Basin, but with three nodes instead of five. They're both built for ten players, and while Battle for Gilneas seems balanced and built for fast-paced movement, Twin Peaks is asymmetrical and could theoretically have balance issues. They add a little variety to the random battleground button which is nice, but a new game mode might have been better. Tol Barad is pretty great though. Three structures are placed around a central fortress controlled by whoever won the last siege. The previous victors have to hold the structures while the attackers have to take them. It doesn't sound great, but each structure makes a different kind of character valuable. One benefits ranged defenders, while another forces close-quarters fighting. Winning Tol Barad doesn't give you the same worldwide benefits that the last world-PvP zone Wintergrasp provided, though. It simply unlocks a raid dungeon and extra quests to do while the zone is under your control. Finally there's Archaeology, the new secondary profession. It's really just an extra thing to do to kill time and won't really give you any real benefits. It does a good job of sending you to parts of the world you may not have ordinarily visited, and as you complete ancient relics (which you do by collecting relic shards scattered across the map), you get neat little insights into Azeroth's history. The Verdict If you include the vast changes to the core game, Cataclysm is far and away the most impressive expansion to an MMO ever made, but if you just isolate what Cataclysm itself gets you, it's ultimately less content than Wrath of the Lich King. It's also better content than Wrath, with engaging storylines, inventive quests, and some very striking visuals. Even without the core Azeroth changes, Cataclysm is an excellent expansion in its own right, and worthy of your attention whether you're a veteran of Northrend or a grunt just getting your toes wet for the first time.

So, like many others I tired of waiting for my game to arrive, so went online for digital download. My first pleasant surprise was that most of the game data for cata was already on my pc so I could play it immediately without waiting for a big download. The new cata content is mostly go here, kill x number of these, take this to that person, but they have really woven a story into a lot of the quest lines and there's a lot more cut scenes to enjoy, some of which are quite epic. Also there's quite a few novel new control quests, like defending a keep controlling an army of sun archers from above, or controlling a pack of lions to repel waves of attackers. Blizzard have addressed the major frustration of levelling that is waiting for mobs to respawn or a named single kill. The spawn rate for quest mobs/items are very high and you'll rarely be scratching around looking. Also a lot of the end of line/elite mobs you need to kill are self spawned and untagable by others. The travel around and to zones are again another plus, most with a portal to and from them. Twilight Highlands doesn;t start with one but your initial quests will build a travelling portal for later use. The levelling instances are nothing short of spectacular. With graphics on max the level of detail in there is just amazing. I ran some of them again just to have a proper look around! With quests that advance by themselves throughout the dungeon, you gain an easy 100k-250k xp for a first run in them. ICC heroic items are all replaced by level 83 and you'll be buying greens of the AH to replace those hard earned epics for 50g. The only issue I have really is the speed level 80-85 takes. Sure they have listened to the masses and made levelling fast so most people can get where they want to be and that is end of game raiding. What disappoints me is that with 24 hours gameplay my 80-85 experience is over, but onwards and upwards no heroic running for raid gearing starts. In full blue items for quests my holy paladin has 105k hp and 80k mana which means nothing becuase the mana usage for spells has gone up by the same amount so it's not really an upgrade atm. Dps seem to be cracking out 18k-20k single target in level 85 normal dungeons and personally with faceroll healing I'm doing 12k hps. How that will translate to raids I have no idea, but I assume from what I've heard content is a lot harder with no AOEing the mobs and cc required. Finally heroic running is kind of frustrating at the moment. A lot of impatient gamers are used to WOTLK heroic where you can just run in gather everything up and AOE rofl it. Well you should know that heroics like that are no more. There will be wipes in most groups you go to and 75% of the time people will leave and frustrate you with another 30-45 minute wait if you are dps. I guess that will improve as people get to know the encounter but atm the faceroll pouting casual gamer is in full effect. So all in all a great levelling experience and the anticipation for raiding is very high. My favourite moment from levelling? Using my sea horse water mount in Vash, pure awesomeness.

Got this expansion just before they bring out the new battle chest that includes this expansion. Was a tad disappointing that i purchased a disc that is now useless but oh well for the price it was a bargain so no complaints there. Apart from that it is worth getting the battle chest to play Cataclysm. This expansion includes two new character races to play as, Worgen (Werewolf) and a Goblin (Short green thing :D ) This unlocks the level cap of level 80 - level 85, It also has a total of 5 new zones or areas for everyone to level your character up with, two completely new battleground areas, PVP and daily questing zone, seven new dungeons however I did notice two of them are classic dungeons that have been completely modified. They all have the normal and heroic modes. Heroic modes being max level plus a couple of raid instances. Compared to the previous expansion Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm is a smaller expansion but to all World Of Warcraft gamer's there is going to be hundreds of playing hours before you manage to fight your way through everything on this expansion. Overall its an Expansion well worth getting for the World Of Warcraft series. Just note that if you dont have the full World of Warcraft game, the burning crusade expansion and the Wrath of the Lich King expansion Cataclysm will not work. In my opinion you should definitely get this expansion if you have all the others or if your a new gamer get the new battle chest with it in. Not only is it going to be giving you more to do there is also the option of upgrading to Mists of Pandaria which is also brilliant.

OK, WOW released finally long time annouonced CATACLYSM. I ordered short time ago, no rush this time, I wasn't sure if my a bit old PC will manage with the game. But it did. I don't have too much time to play all day long etc so my characters are leveling really slow, it's more like go for a walk but without moving ouot from home:). I noticed a lot of new flying points so communications is much better, or maybe it's just my strange impression, who knows;). And Goblins are nice:))) Of course there is some down point. Very annoying thig was wrong information written by Blizzard. All previous parts were looking during installation previous parts and installation was "continued" in the same folder. This time the only thing what you have to do is... put game key on your account and update it. Unfortunatelly Blizzard put note on game that you have to have previous parts etc, and in booklet was note: "put DVD into drive and start installation." I did it and... all my installed already game went straight to hell. It didn't want to work any more. I had to delete all WOW and install once again from scratch. Hey! Blizzard guys! Try to think about people, not everyone has to know that you make some crazy stuff in there! Not everyone spends time on forums to check how to install game etc. Thanks god, when I was reinstalling, I used last part, and it done everything:)

this game is great as i'm sure u all know pre-ordered it from amazon as soon as reliece date was announced looked forwared to it arriving even sneaked out of work to go collect it from home to get it downloading ready for when i finished. unfortunatly i didnt get to play the game on the reliece date or for the next few days because amazon didnt deliver it when i eventually gave up on them i downloaded it from the blizz site (which is a good job as its now 20/12 and still no game lolz) and have been lovin it ever since 2nd lvl85 on the way. hopefully in a couple years time another expantion will come out.... and ofcause i will be buying it from blizzard, Not amazon. 10/10 for the game except vish zone dont like that one cuz i cant swim probs -10/10 for amazon

Great expansion, I per-ordered this from Amazon before the launch date. I then decided to go with the virtual copy so upgraded my account so I could try for realm first fishing. It turns out that I could not get onto the server after the launch for 1 hr so I lost the chance of getting the realm first to a Gnome with Pink hair! If You do Play wow, this is a must as you need it to reach the level cap. It is far less hassel to upgrade your battle.net account through Blizzard but it is always nice to have a copy of the CD knocking around. So if you like to see a physical product in exchange for your money, get this!

After getting sick of Northrend and its bland environment and even more bland weapon/armour skins, I thought a return to an overhauled Azeroth would be refreshing. Only being a casual I probably didn't appreciate this expansion as much as more hardcore players and got bored quickly with the routine fetch/gather quests and the process of the quick dungeon system that was a good idea but not implemented I feel in the best way. I wanted a fast track to levelling to access content quickly but the game has lost its spark for me and I gave up at 83, only having the same 3 heroic instances available to me at the time that got repetitive to run. I liked and appreciated the simplified talents system though, but I would not have ventured into this expansion quite so soon if someone hadn't hacked my account and levelled my toon past 80!

This game is excellent thank you.

tres bien rien à dire je l'ai acheter pour colectionner mais a savoir que les code ne fonctionne plus dur battle.net

L'espansione fa ormai parte del gioco base di WoW. Quindi non serve a nulla acquistarla. Inoltre le card all'interno con il tempo di gioco possono essere utilizzate solo per nuovi personaggi altrui e non per estendere il proprio tempo di gioco.

Esta ampliación aún siendo Inglesa es totalmente compatible con las cuentas en España, y tiene idioma Español. En el momento de la compra me costó poco más de 7 euros. No he visto ningun precio que se le aproxime en otro sitio

Das spiel macht viel spaß und laesst mich als langjaehrigen fan des gernres weiterhin spaß an dem genre haben. Es gibt herausforderungen fuer extrem ganer aber auch casuals, die nur ab und an spielen laesst dieses spiel nicht haengen.

El juego ha llegado en su caja original y en muy buen estado, funciona perfectamente y puede ponerse en castellano