Arathi could have seen some of that development time.

Britain’s Telegraph newspaper has news about addiction therapists joining the game themselves, specifically to find and seek out players who might meet the definition of addicted to World of Warcraft. They’re actually looking for official Blizzard support, too. I’m not sure how much help you can actually provide by chatting with a player in the game (“Hello, it looks like you’ve been online for the last 16 hours, are you addicted?”), but they want to do it.

Dr. Richard Graham wants to launch a program by the end of the year that includes some in-game outreach, and even he agrees that it’ll be tough sell. Then again, maybe the guy just wants to play some WoW for free:

“While a psychiatrist may excel in what they do in the real world, they’re probably not going to be very good at playing World of Warcraft. We may have to work at that if we are going to get through to those who play this game for hours at end.”

Now that we’ve talked about pre-expansion and Theramore, there’s one thing I really felt Cataclysm missed out on, and that’s Arathi Highlands. Frankly, with zones like the Eastern and Western Plaguelands, Hillsbrad/Alterac and Silverpine all heavily redesigned, Arathi sticks out like a sore thumb. Yes, I’m arguing that even more time should have been spent on a pre-sixty zone in an expansion that split its focus too much between zone revamps and new content, but hear me out before getting the torches and pitchforks ready.

I’m not arguing that they should have done more with Arathi in addition to all the zones they revamped. I specifically think certain zones like Desolace and Feralas could have done with less (especially Desolace, which just seems odd nowadays) and Arathi could have seen some of that development time. There are hints of this in the zone, with the Forsaken establishing a camp to the west with Galen Trollbane raised as a Forsaken. Frankly, there was a lot of potential for Horde/Alliance conflict here that really didn’t get realized. We have Danath Trollbane, who really should long since have gotten to come home and set his family’s house in order, and Galen the risen servant of Sylvanas seeking to bring the oldest human kingdom on Azeroth into the undead fold. Symbolically, whoever controls Stromgarde holds the history of humanity on Azeroth in their hands.

I also believe that it’s long past time that we get a five man dungeon out of the ancient Trollbane vaults and the treasures that would have collected there after the Troll Wars. Forsaken would want to claim those for Sylvanas, Horde troll players would want to keep them out of anyone’s hands because most of them were either seized from trolls or designed to be used against them, and the Alliance would want them both for the prestige and as weapons to use against the Horde. In the end, the lack of development in Arathi was, in my eyes, the biggest loss in terms of what might have been in the entire Cataclysm.