trywarcraft

One of the changes made in Cataclysm that I love is flying in the old world, if only because it lets me do things I couldn’t/wouldn’t otherwise do. I loved that the instance portal to Blackwing Descent is only accessible via flying mount, and it’s actually up on the terrace we fought Nefarian on back in the Blackwing Lair days. It makes the place feel real to me, somehow, that there’s an actual uninstanced version of the terrace, complete with the scratches on the floor from Nef’s fight with Vaelestrasz.

But as cool as I think that is, I really love flying around the in-world version of Ruins and Temple of Ahn’Qiraji. I often run these zones for transmog gear, and when I’m done, I’ll zone out and just tool around the place looking at the statues, flying up to the floating platforms, landing on the temple and looking down the grating on the dome into the depths of the place. I like realizing that Moam was just a wall or two away from Skeram, that the vast majority of AQ-40 is directly underneath Ossirian’s open-air terrace. I love comparing the run-down, silithid-corrupted AQ to the Uldum architecture and pondering the connection between Moam and the tol’vir. There’s something about being able to go to AQ that makes it feel more tangible to me, that I can see it as it appears now, depopulated by all those raids years ago.

I’d love an AQ 5-man — not a retread or a revamp of the old raids, but a new 5-man set in the area that tells the story of what the qiraji are up to now. We know C’Thun still has a presence in the world. What are his servitors doing in that vast complex? The floating obelisks, the statues of obsidian destroyers just waiting to animate, the forest of pillars in Ossirian’s chambers, the connection to Uldum and the Halls of Origination — I want to see more because of what I can go visit.

Anyplace you like to go hang out in the world like that?

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider’s Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW’s third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.

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