I went to Chromie to start Cataclysm and she pointed to the mission board. The mission board is showing Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor zones for leveling. Yet, that isn’t really the Cataclysm expansion. You know the old level 80-85 experience starting in Mt. Hyjal that I believe ends in Uldum. Can I not do this expansion via timewalking campaign? Or is it confusing on how to start this?
Went to Hyjal and all the quests are greyed out and the portal to Orgrimmar says requires level 35. I’m guessing this expansion wasn’t added to the leveling scaling, or I’m missing something.
in standard form, all cata zones scale up to 35, 10-35… the original lvl 80-85 cata endgame zones are 30-35… meaning i believe in chromie time they translate to 30-50… either way they are not equivalent to the revised old world zones, much like og cata, you need to wait til youre much higher to go to hyjal or uldum, not off the bat
weird I wanted to do the cataclysm expansion but I guess they thought this was a good solution. Granted it isn’t too hard to get to level 30, but it’s a bit confusing and had no idea they did this.
It’s because the reworked “vanilla” zones are Cataclysm. They were reworked with the expansion. Almost every zone received a brand new questline or 2 tying into Deathwing and/or the Old Gods. Some like Darkshore were completely redone, with almost no quests from the original version remaining, and the new one being themed almost completely around the expansion. Some of the most famous questlines in the expansion are actually from the old zones (for example, the Day that Deathwing Came resulted in one of the most popular memes during that time). Part of the story of Cataclysm is how Deathwing wreaked havoc and destruction across Azeroth. So in this implementation the first 20 levels is you witnessing that devastation firsthand and then getting to avenge it and put a stop to him in the next 20 (or 5 if not using Chromie Time). Hope this makes a little more sense.
Four of those Cata zones require flying, which you can’t train until level 30. I’d bet that’s probably a big reason for it. For a lot of them if you went in at 10 you’d eventually just get stonewalled while questing because you can’t fly to do certain parts and Deepholm can’t even be done at all.
It’s only 20 levels to get it, but it still does mess up the flow of things depending on where you go.
The problem is that Blizz designed some quests in the 80-85 zones to require flying to complete. If you went to Hyjal at 10, you’d be stuck once you hit Aviana quest chain.
Blizz didn’t want to make flying available at 10, and they didn’t want to put in the effort to, say, implement Stormheim’s grappling hooks to parts of those zones to make them doable without flying, so this is what we get.
Yeah that’s true the flying thing would make some zones pretty unplayable for sure. I suppose they could give you a mount similar to the chauffeur at level 1 if you bought enough boa gear. Could be fun to ride around with Malfurion for example haha, but it would be only for each zone if needed. Yet, I suppose this is a decent work around.
I, too, wish they had scaled Vashj’ir, Hyjal, Twilight Highlands and Uldum to level 10-50 so we could start a level 10 character out in Vashj’ir. Even if they had just done Vashj’ir and Hyjal, a player could easily level to 30, and get flying, before moving on to Twilight, Uldum and Deepholm.
At least then we would be able to gather crafting mats starting at level 10 for Cataclysm specific crafting professions, which you can learn no problem from any ‘Vanilla’ profession trainers. You just can’t do anything with the patterns until level 30.
A missed opportunity, IMO, for Blizzard to truly make Cataclysm relevant again. Those handfuls of Cataclysm storyline quests in the reworked ‘Vanilla’ zones don’t cut it for me.
Thank you for this. It would be nice if they made it clearer. My first time trying to level a new toon in old zones, and it seems like it would really be fun if it worked, but yet again I seem to have the most interest in the least appealing choice.
