Whenever we post a story about World of Warcraft, we invariably see two responses time and time again in our comments section. The first is how ugly it looks with its six year old engine, and the second is how easy it is and how horrible all the players are because of this. Deepholm, the level 82-83 zone in the upcoming World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion seems a stark contrast to our commentators' ideas of the enormous MMO.
Set within the plane of the earth elementals, Deepholm held the injured and shamed Deathwing as he recovered from his defeat at Hyjal. His presence there, and then his subsequent escape to Azeroth, has shattered the world pillar and opened a rift between Azeroth and Deepholm. This rift has the potential to destroy both worlds, so shortly after you arrive, you are told you need to help repair the pillar.
What follows is a series of quests with a story arc that brings you to all the areas of the circular zone. Playing through, I came into contact with some very important lore figures, from Thrall, who keeps the rift adjoining the worlds as stable as he can, to Therazane -- the Stonemother and the leader of the earth elementals (basically the earth equivalent of Ragnaros). There is also a surprising amount of voice acting within this zone. A fairly simple quest atop an Alliance airship turned into a fully voice-acted interrogation between two characters.
I had already played through the majority of Mount Hyjal and large portions of Vashj'ir before I began my journey in Deepholm, so I was expecting something around the same difficulty level. This is not at all the case -- at least, not at this point in time. Deepholm, and all its denizens, are tough. As a mage, I now have around 40,000 HP thanks to a change Blizzard made to close the gap between tanks and their enormous amounts of health, and every other class and spec. This, combined with all the tools I have at my disposal to get me out of danger, made me virtually invincible in the other zones. Here, enemies dealt about 4k damage per hit, with some spells hitting me for upwards of 10k. Oh, and they all had well over 50k health, with important enemies having double that. Even using all of my dirty tricks, I found I was typically only able to slay two, maybe three enemies before I would have to sit and munch down on some restorative food.
Whereas the other zones had a lot of mini-game quests, like Hyjal's bird-back jousting series, where gameplay consisted of amechanic that wasn't really tied to your character's skills, Deepholm was very much combat centric. The great majority of quests were your standard "kill X, gather Y, talk to Z" that many of you are probably very familiar with. However, there were also typically a few interesting quests in each quest chain that made the chain worth doing.
One quest chain had me luring out a dragon so that I could lay waste to it. The dragon was a strong opponent and would, under normal circumstances, require a group to kill. This dragon, however, had been snared and was incapable of chasing me, instead being able only to turn on its haunches. It would continuously shoot magical attacks where I was standing, so I had to constantly be on the move, or else I'd get hit for heavy damage. Occasionally, it would charge up an attack that would hit anything in the open and give me just enough time to duck behind a pillar to avoid its shadowy blast. Another fight combined this constant-movement mechanic with what amounted to a chase throughout a winding cave, while another had me fighting an enemy while flying on the back of a drake.
Some of these encounters were pretty easy, while others managed to decimate me multiple times. The way the story unfolded was surprisingly interesting, and phasing (where the environment changes depending on how far along a quest chain you are) was used to great effect in several areas, especially during the elemental raid, and the showdown at the temple.
Deepholm looks extremely pretty at times and has some stunning set pieces. Therazane's throne takes its cues from the oft-ignored dungeon Mauradon, which is fitting given the relation of Mauradon to Therazane (there's a solid chance that if you played through Mauradon, you wiped Therazane's daughter, Princess Theradrass, off the face of the map). The brightly colored crystals throughout the zone shine against the darker hues of the walls that encompass Deepholm. It's the first zone in World of Warcraft that is essentially fully enclosed, and the sensation of being deep in the bowels of the earth is effectively portrayed. When I first began exploring the area, I noticed that, like most of World of Warcraft's zones, the ground was littered with detail. On closer inspection, however, I discovered that I wasn't simply looking at a 2D rock-sprite, but thousands upon thousands of fully 3D rock fragments. It's a small, almost negligible detail, but that's the sort of thing WoW is known for -- the little details that surprise you long after you ought to have noticed them.
It's entirely possible that Deepholm's difficulty will be toned down, but it seems more likely that Vashj'ir and Hyjal will be made more difficult. To those who say WoW is too easy, or looks ugly, I say "Behold Deepholm."
