Staff writer and veteran World of Warcraft player LockeColeMA feels completely reinvigorated by the launch of Cataclysm. He explains how the third expansion was able to lure him back to Azeroth.

When you have the title "The Insane," people assume two things about you: You like grinding, and you have no freaking life. I'm pretty sure that's what maxed archaeology will require as well. The newest secondary profession gives fishing a run for its money in terms of tedium. After two days of several hours playing this game of hot and cold to find fragments and make lore-filled and mostly worthless items, I've only hit level 225, which is 300 points from the cap. And that was the "fast" part. Taunting me with promises of clockwork gnomes and Bind-on-Account epic items, archaeology has sucked me in with hardly any compensation besides a ton of hilarious flavor text. On the plus side, finding artifacts gave me almost a level and a half worth of experience, so my next step was to check out the newest level 80+ zones. Aureliano the Insane, my main character, is a druid, so Mount Hyjal seemed like the obvious first choice.

And here I ran into the slowest part of the expansion. While the story is well thought-out for Mount Hyjal, it offers very little in terms of "new." Visiting the changed old world is amazing because of the differences I've seen, and digging up artifacts is fun because it's a mini-game that appeals to my obsessive-compulsive nature. But Mount Hyjal thus far is the same old tricks in a new location. I rushed through the quests in record time, and I enjoyed seeing old faces from my Molten Core days, but my biggest issue was dealing with the rush of other players in the same area. Either I was waiting for respawns or getting overwhelmed by enemies instantly reappearing once I killed them. Large players on their huge mounts would plant themselves firmly on quest givers, leaving the rest of us to try in vain to find a pixel to click. Minerals and herb nodes were rare and snatched up in a moment. And embersilk is fast becoming the rarest cloth I've ever seen!

While leveling in the new zones wasn't bad, it wasn't new. What was new were the two new races. I started a worgen, mostly just to try it out, and ended up playing far past the first part of the story... which, by the way, is excellent. The human-turned-werewolf story is cliché, but the fall of Gilneas and the rise of the worgen are done very well. My only critique might be that the entire story moves along too quickly. Often I would enter a building, turn in a quest, and exit the building to find the world completely changed. The old English setting, dreary atmosphere and constant action made the Worgen my favorite new race.

Not to be outdone, the Horde now can play as goblins, and for all the darkness of the worgen storyline, the goblin storyline was by far a truly unique beginning. The entire affair plays out like something from Grand Theft Auto, where you get a vehicle early on and travel around the most technologically advanced city in WoW. All that quick changes when Deathwing appears and your Goblin goes from being a high-roller in Kezan to a washed-up (literally) has-been in the Lost Isles. While the story has its dark moments (particularly disturbing was the cut scene of the sinking Goblin ship with the people in its hold screaming to be let out or they'd die), the goblin beginning was much more lighthearted and entertaining. Goblins like money and explosions; how could I not enjoy that?

With all the new quest lines and achievements and content, it is worth noting that just flying around Azeroth is both liberating and entertaining. From the air, the entire world looks different. For example, I always knew there was a giant tree in Duskwood's Twilight Grove. But the first time I took off out of Stormwind and saw a bulge on the horizon, I didn't realize how freaking huge it really was until I was flying through its branches. The entire map is completely opened up now, and I feel like this is a game I can explore, not simply play. It's refreshing.

Almost a week after the Cataclysm altered the World of Warcraft forever, I still find myself in a pickle. I've tried almost all the new content, and I love it all. When the only complaint I can come up with is "the newest content feels too similar to what we've been doing all along," you know the expansion is good. For the first time since the summer, I actually want to log in. And I still have no idea what I want to do. I haven't even looked at the new achievements, including the guild achievements. PvP has new battlegrounds, but I'm holding off until level 85. I've played a Horde low-level character, but I hit maybe only a third of the level-appropriate areas; plus I still have the Alliance. And the only new instance I've run through is Blackrock Caverns, which taught me that I need to relearn how to tank. One thing is for certain: I want to take my time leveling up. Some players hit 85 the first night, but for me the journey up is most of the attraction, and despite all I've done there is still so much more to do. Blizzard succeeded in making the game new and exciting, and I know I'll be playing for the next several months without getting tired of it!