Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsThe problem of Outland in Cataclysm
by Mike Schramm 
Sep 15th 2009 at 4:00PM
Bornakk's reply hints that Blizzard will probably just gloss over it as best they can -- they're not going to build a whole new 1-85 experience involving Deathwing. When you constantly update a five-year-old persistent world game like this with new stories and content, something's got to give somewhere. My guess is that Blizzard, being the perfectionists they are, will probably come up with a quest or two that gives a lore reason to go out there ("Hmm, you're too green to face the power of Deathwing, but our companions in Outland need help holding what's left of the Burning Legion at bay!"), and leave it at that. They may increase the XP and get you out of there even quicker, but going to Outland at 58 is still a gameplay necessity (Northrend shares the problem at 70, but of course we don't actually know what's going to happen with the Lich King quite yet). It's likely the lore will just have to deal.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgen to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Instances, Expansions, The Burning Crusade, Leveling, Alts, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 6)
HappyFunBall Sep 15th 2009 4:19PM
Is there a link to Bornakk's post in there? I missed it if there is...
kia Sep 15th 2009 8:43PM
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=19820526504&pageNo=1&sid=1#8
Babar the Elephant Sep 15th 2009 4:20PM
Don't worrry :-) Those at the Blizzard are quite smart. They shall figure it out somehow how to put that little piece of Outland into the big puzzle of the... thing...
OFF: BTW Three cheers for the new lock-columnist :-))
Kaijin Sep 15th 2009 4:22PM
Think of it as a military operation. Sure New Big Bad is the biggest threat so you want to put all of soldiers fighting it. But you cannot forget that even though new Big Bad is here, little Big Bad is still waiting in the background for an opening to attack. So what better way to handle this that to have your top soldiers (80+) fighting the new Big Bad (Deathwing), while your new recruits(60-70) fight the little Big Bad (Legion). This would allow all your borders and enemies to be dealt with (with a soldiers of equal strength to the Big Bad) without one being forgotten about and having time to launch a surprise attack.
If the Horde or Alliance were to completely forget about the Burning Legion they could do all kinds of bad stuff while we have out attention elsewhere. Honestly, had we nipped the whole Arthas thing in the bud, I doubt he would have this entire zone made into a fortress.
gamma-roo Sep 15th 2009 4:23PM
OK, let's look at the lore here:
Deathwing is a fallen aspect, Neltharion. To put into perspective how bad it is to base an entire expac on an aspect, one needs to look no further than the Eye of Eternity. Malygos, believe it or, is an Aspect. You can also PUG a 1-shot of him in like 90% of the cases out there. So, right there, this fails. No matter how corrupted Deathwing is, he's an Aspect, meaning logic dictates there's some cap on his power, especially considering you just blew the hell out of Maly in less than 6 minutes........at a lower level.
Let's delve deeper:
The Lich King is the creation of Kil'jaeden, who was empowered by Sargeras.
Basically, you can look at it two ways:
1) The expacs until you actually Engage Sargeras are all filler because he is who needs to die. He is the baddest dude. Hence, you need to hold the portal line in Hellfire.
2) Why wouldn't you want to go to Outland? It rules and recalls the pinnacle of WoW.
As an aside, here's your baddest of the bad heirarchy:
Sargeras
Kil'Jaeden
Lich King
Archimonde
Yogg
C'thun
Medivh
Gul'dan (most powerful mortal ever)
Deathwing
Azshara
Magtheridon (don't forget that Mag is weak when you kill him)
Illidan
Kael'Thas
Vashj
Nefarian
Ony
Ragnaros
That's your heirarchy of evil in WoW. Hopefully they can tie the lore together for some sort of logical linear progression for this. But I smell Retcon.
snowleopard233 Sep 15th 2009 4:30PM
Deathwing is an aspect but he was also considerably altered by the demon soul into something more terrible and powerful. Chances are he’s found a new source of power in the elemental plane that has strengthened him. Also, keep in mind that Malygos, albeit powerful, had been asleep for thousands of years and was arguably weakened. We still haven’t seen the full extent of Alex’s powers and we have yet to see what state Ysera or Nozdormu are in. So, there are not a lot of good comparisons available that we can use to figure out how powerful Deathwing is.
Matthew Rossi Sep 15th 2009 4:51PM
Aspects are ridiculously powerful. For instance, how long would your raid group have lasted without the direct aid of the Red Dragonflight? Phase 3 would have killed you dead if Alexstrasza hadn't sent you 25 red dragons to ride into battle. Go ahead and try and kill Maly without their help sometime.
Furthermore, not ONLY is Deathwing directly corrupted by the Old Gods and his use of the Demon Soul (to the point where he has to constantly have Adamantite Plates welded onto his body to contain his out of control power) but he's operating in a world where it once took four of the other aspects to stop him. Even when the Demon Soul was destroyed, Deathwing weathered full-power assaults from Ysera, Malygos and Nozdormu, and only succumbed to Alexstrasza after being battered by three of the five Dragon Aspects in sequence. In other words, he's at least as tough as three of the other four Aspects put together.
Plus he's insane.
So we have a corrupted dragon aspect who's been driven mad by Old Gods and once created an artifact so powerful that it would have allowed Sargeras himself to come into our world, who has been infused with so much power over the millennia that he's literally burning up from within with it... and you think he's less powerful than Arthas?
Sorry, but I don't buy it. Deathwing's been around in Warcraft lore forever, he's well established as ridiculously powerful and vindictive.
mtsadowski Sep 15th 2009 4:58PM
@Matthew Rossi
"Sorry, but I don't buy it. Deathwing's been around in Warcraft lore forever, he's well established as ridiculously powerful and vindictive."
And we have to kill him... lucky us ;-)
chewy Sep 15th 2009 5:30PM
@Rossi:
Sorry big guy, Gamma's right here. Deathwing was only that powerful while in possession of the Demon Soul, which has since been destroyed. He definitely remains bad-ass, but:
Is he spawning Demons from the Nether across multiple planets? (Sargeras)
Is he psychically controlling probably somewhere in the billions of Undead Soldiers? (Arthas/Ner'zhul/Lich King)
Can he blow up a planet in a single spell? (Sargeras, Archi, Kil'jaeden)
Can he corrupt the most powerful beings in existence? (Old Gods)
No, he is the result of madness overtaking one assigned to protect (similar to Sargeras). Except that Neltharion/Deathwing certainly can't blow up planets (would've been done already). Just totally terraform them (LOL).
Baddest of the baddies:
Sargeras
All Old Gods
Kil'Jaeden (for creating the Lich King)
Lich King
Archimonde (FINGER OF DEATH, /END OF PLANET)
Aspects (if they were that powerful, why do they need mortal help in protecting Azeroth? Includes Deathwing)
Medivh (he's something totally different than the Guardian of Tirisfal at this point)
Gul'dan (the most powerful Mortal ever.....ironic he's an OP warlock)
Mag
Illidan
Kael
Vashj
Nef
Ony
Rag (and the rest of the Lieutenants)
Siddaru Sep 15th 2009 7:07PM
Just something I'd like to point out:
The leaders of the Burning Legion, in order to invade Azeroth, have repeatedly needed to corrupt powerful native casters who collect magic artifacts that they use in a complex spell to open a portal through which the demons can invade. Then they engaged is pretty standard land invasions.
Deathwing just physically punched a hole through dimensions, all but shattering two different worlds, then flew out to leave a wake of destruction as raw molten power oozed out of his body. Behind him followed armies of Elementals, including one that it took 40 of us to take down at level 60, which are chaotic beings that would only follow something they knew was greater than any of them.
Which of those sounds like the stronger opponent?
Zanathos Sep 16th 2009 2:07AM
@chewy
With the demon soul, Deathwing was untouchable to the other aspects. Without it, he's still the most powerful one. It took all 4 to drive him off when he lost the demon soul, and that was just to repulse him. I think it's safe to say deathwing has previously been extablished as more powerful than malygos.
chewy Sep 16th 2009 10:30AM
I'm not denying that Deathwing is powerful. But comparing him to Sargeras and the Legion, who have destroyed worlds and basically turn Drainei and Orcs into what may be the most powerful warlocks in the universe, regardless of how they are summoned into those planes of existence, is folly.
Deathwing is incredibly powerful. I just don't see how anything that affects a single planet (i.e. Old Gods, Aspects) can be held in a comparable light to a being of the race of what created that planet (Sargeras, Titans, Azeroth) who fell and has corrupted and destroyed races across an entire universe.
The lore writers know their stuff, I fully expect that at the end of Cataclysm, after Deathwing dies, you will find a near-fully functional Portal in Nazjatar. And hopefully, the return of Kil'jaeden or even Archimonde to set up the next Expac following Cataclysm.
Prucha Sep 15th 2009 4:26PM
Is it possible that, much like zones in Icecrown, this "new" Azeroth will only be visible/developed upon either level 80 or a quest line completion? This would leave all of old Azeroth as it is for those leveling and only have the Deathwing story line come into play once you have completed said quest line or reached the appropriate level. It would then make sense from level 1-80 that you would be leveling up through the wotlk storyline and Deathwing would attack old Azeroth as you are in Icecrown - thus keeping the same story line flow in place.
Kaijin Sep 15th 2009 4:27PM
Nope, no phasing. Old World Azeroth is being completely destroyed in Cataclysm. You will not be able to go back to old world.
Tiberius Sep 15th 2009 4:31PM
Old Azeroth will be gone with the expansion because they have to rebuild it from scratch pretty much to allow flying mounts etc.
There will be phasing but its associated with going through the new storyline.
Candina@WH Sep 15th 2009 4:28PM
Flee to outlands, Azeroth is lost! [but please come back at lvl 68, we will need you to take back Azeroth]
Owen Sep 15th 2009 4:36PM
Personally, I'm expecting Blizzard to completely eliminate Outlands from the required levelling progression for the simple reason of economics...
Cataclysm is a great opportunity to introduce WoW to brand new players...by redoing the starter levels, graphics, and game feel, blizzard can open up the game to a whole new audience that hasn't played before and felt intimidated by the number of exapansions to purchase in order to start.
New plays won't have to worry about expansion packs, etc, just buy cataclysm (and no other packs) and start from level 1 like oodles of other existing players will be doing at launch date. I fully expect outlands to become optional content when blizzard releases cataclysm...and I'd bet new players will only have to purchase wotlk to get to 85.
tgrhwke Sep 15th 2009 4:56PM
New players will only have to buy the latest expansion to play the game. Each new expansion disc already includes all the previous disc's content on it also. If you ever need to reinstall your game, you only need the most recent disc to do a full complete install. The older discs are no longer needed.
I've had to do this a few times when a patch update corrupted my game and I had to reinstall again.
Mark Sep 15th 2009 5:56PM
Incorrect, you must buy all of the expansions. You cannot buy Wrath without having BC first. Wrath of the Lich King does not include a free BC upgrade (the content may be on the disc but that's irrelevant). Likewise you will have to have both BC and Wrath before you can upgrade to Cataclysm.
It would be nice for us of course if we could just buy the latest expansion and be done with it, but is Blizzard going to cut out their revenue from the previous expansions like that? I think not. :)
ash Sep 15th 2009 5:59PM
I was kind of thinking they might do the same thing. Why not make it so people can level straight to 70 (if they want) in Azeroth and then they can head to Northrend like the rest of us did before. Otherwise I think they would need to add quite a few quest to Outland to make it relevant and even then it would sort of be like one of those old school vanilla wow quest that sent you to parts unknown for whatever reason. I say just do what makes sense and add content in Azeroth to get you from 60-70. Its not like they can't add a little more filler to 60ish zones to get you to 62 easily. Then its just 6 more levels to 68 and you can jet to Northrend and I think they can come up with some content to raise people 6 levels in Azeroth proper.