Pygmies
That’s right pygmies.
Blizzard is freaking brilliant. The soft, pasty skinned, badly socialized, dorky players of the World of Warcraft felt like they waited for ages for the release of Cataclysm and I, for one, feel that it was worth it. The first two expansions were super cool; new races or a new classes, new lands, lore, newish mobs. This was all super cool but the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King have nothing on Cataclysm. It is fairly evident that Blizz worked really hard to make sure that they really changed up the game. I have said this all before so I won’t repeat myself, much, but I do want to highlight a few of my favorite new things.
Peacebloom versus Ghouls technically came out with patch 4.0 but I think it counts. PvG is a mini game in the Arathi Highlands that asks a player to fight off undead using flowers. It is a direct take off of the Pop Cap game Plants vs. Zombies and it is awesome. The player has to plant various plants with different abilities on their lawn to ward off the undead trying to break into their house wanting to eat their brains. Nothing more awesome than saving the world with gardening! My only complaint is that you can only play the game once. If you need another fix you have to go get the Pop Cap game on the interwebz. I guess that is only fair.
In the new zone in Uldum the Blizzard developers let their creativity go crazy with two things: Harrison Jones quest lines and pygmies. Harrison Jones is an Indiana Jones spoof character. He is an archeologist that leads the player through the various temples in the zone. He gets players blown up, shot at, attacked by zombies, nearly crushed by falling debris. In other words, HE IS AWESOME.
Pygmies are new mobs in Uldum. They are small humanoids with huge heads and hands that make have a great battle cry when they attack you. Make no mistake, I got my ass handed to me a few times by some pygmies, but I died laughing. They are also part of the best daily quest ever: Thievin’ Little Pluckers. A farm owner asks the the player to take a mallet and beat down the pygmies that are stealing from his trees. There are groups of three pygmies standing on each others’ shoulders trying to steal from the trees and you have to smack them with the huge mallet. Whack-a-Mole with the crazy pygmy battle cry, what is not to love?
Also new with Cataclysm is a new string of dirty hippie quests. The druids have massed in Hyjal and they want to save the world and they want your help. There are many standard quests like killing the evil dragonkin or harpies (I love killing harpies) like Blizz has always put into the game but they add a new level of tree hugger with quests like rescuing panicky bunnies and squirrels from fire or save the hatching turtle eggs from the bad men waiting to corrupt the newly hatched baby turtles. One quest has you leading mostly dead baby fawns from fiery fields and another has you climbing trees and rescuing scared bear cubs from trees and throwing them onto a trampoline. They even get players to try and redeem an evil satyr. Okay. Okay. The quests where kinda cute and quite funny considering that I enjoy making fun of the touchy-feely nature of the druids. (I know I play one, but I am not the hippie druid, I am the cynical rebel druid gorram it.) So, yeah, pretty genius on blizzards part.
Now I am off to do real life stuff. In case you guys didn’t know, tomorrow is Christmas Eve. I leave you with this thought: OOOOOGGGGGGAA BOOOGA (pygmy battle cry)
Geeks a Geeking