Some thoughts I’ve had while leveling my human paladin in the Cataclysm expansion. I’m more into the game now that I’m doing dailies, and I’ve also been doing a lot of archaeology recently.

Yesterday I finally completed the high-level zones in Cataclysm. The last zone, Twilight Highlands, has an almost dried-up river bed that reminded me a little of Thundering Steppes in EverQuest II. Still, I thought the atmosphere in Deepholm was clearly the best of them all. Mount Hyjal was a little bland, Vashj’ir refreshingly different with its undersea paradise (but in the end a bit too samey quest hubs) and Uldum had too many pop culture references for my taste. The Indiana Jones quests were imaginative but also an almost direct copy of numerous scenes out of the famous movies.

It took a bit longer to get through it this time because I felt a little burnt out (as mentioned in my previous blog post about the expansion) but when I finally completed the last zone, I was actually more inclined to do the dailies from then on. Maybe it’s because the dailies represent standard quests I quickly get used to, and because of that I can really relax. Without vehicles.

Finally it happened – my account in World of Warcraft got hacked. It was the usual stuff; gold missing, items missing, characters parked elsewhere and even a new level 1 Warrior created with a nonsense name (probably used for selling gold).

I’ve had a World of Warcraft account since I’ve started playing in 2005 as the game was released in Europe and I’ve never been hacked before. Sure, I read a few forum posts about the authenticator but always figured that if I was careful, I would never be hacked. I had AVG installed, scanned regularly, never visited any ominous web sites and never clicked links in questionable e-mails. I wasn’t always subscribing, but when I was (usually for several months after an expansion was released), I never had any problems and trusted my ability to avoid all attempts at keylogging. I didn’t use an authenticator and was confident I would never have to.

And then I got hacked anyway.

After having contacted a GM and replaced my passwords, I started reading various forum threads about other people being hacked. It dawned upon me that the hackers don’t even need keyloggers. I could be clean as a whistle (as described above) and still get hacked. I’m pretty sure I was; I scanned with both AVG 2011 and Spybot and they didn’t find anything at all.

Cataclysm for World of Warcraft arrived in December 2010, and just like all the previous releases I rushed to the local shop and bought the box so I could play on release day (I’m still a little old fashioned when it comes to software – I like to have a physical disc in my mitts). I played the original game in 2005 as it arrived and I was enthralled. I soloed, I grouped, I crafted, I raided. It was fascinating and I played regularly. This repeated itself as the next two expansion packs were released. Maybe the game was starting to grate a little, but I still soloed, grouped, crafted and raided. In other words, I was still dedicated.

This time around I just haven’t been able to capture that feeling again. I have been playing my Paladin in the high-level zones – Mount Hyjal, Vashj’ir, Deepholm and currently I’m level 84 in Uldum. It’s indeed very pretty and the quests are often hilarious and sometimes ingenious. The blocky low-polygon graphics annoys me, but it also did that in 2005 so that hasn’t changed. It looks like the textures have improved, however, which makes it a little easier to tolerate the lack of polygons. The underwater zone in Vashj’ir felt very different and the atmosphere in Deepholm was really good (it reminded me Mines of Moria in LOTRO, the best interior zones I have ever seen in an MMORPG).