World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

This is true right across the old world: the game is better and more eventful, but also easier, less serious, and more ruthlessly efficient. That makes me sad – a sentiment echoed by Blizzard itself in a few poignant quest lines – even if I would be mad to actually want things back the way they were. Classic WOW, the game which launched 12 million grand adventures, has died, taking with it most of its flaws and a little of its epic mystery. There's no need to mourn its passing, but it deserves a moment's recognition at least.

So what else is new? Everything. The free patch also offered some new combinations of race and class, a major interface update and radically re-sculpted each class's levelling progression, including a total overhaul of the talent-tree specialisations.

There's absolutely nothing to regret here. Combat is tighter and more interesting across the game, with most classes enjoying some fun new mechanic. The talents are fewer, more varied and more useful, while locking you into one path for much of the levelling really helps define each specialisation as a mini-class in its own right. There are too many welcome changes and useful systems to list, but it's worth celebrating the death of weapon skill and the birth of item reforging (a wonderful boon for endgame min-maxing).

Everything is also prettier, more helpful and easier to use, right down to tooltips that suggest which situations you might want to use a particular skill in. Nearly all MMOs are poor at explaining themselves, and mechanically dull for the first dozen hours, but WOW is no longer one of them.

A staggering amount of work has gone into what must be the biggest, deepest and best free update to any online game, ever. It does beg the question: what's left to put in the expansion itself?

More than enough, but there's no disguising the fact that Cataclysm has less to offer the high-level player. For many, the most enticing attraction will be starting a new character in one of the two new races – Goblins for the Horde, and werewolf-like Worgen for the Alliance – and enjoying their action-packed starter zones. Goblins are blasted through hilarious pastiches of Grand Theft Auto and The Land That Time Forgot; the Worgen introduction is even better, a stirring Gothic fairytale about the fall of the kingdom of Gilneas.

Only five zones take you from 80 to 85. They're spectacular, packed with riotous adventure and emphatically varied, from Vash'jir's love-it-or-hate-it undersea exploration to the Indiana Jones-quoting, Egyptian-themed matinee antics of Uldum. Mount Hyjal represents the Warcraft series' vivid take on epic high fantasy at its absolute height.

Whether the five zones gel as well as the unforgettable unfolding of Northrend in Wrath of the Lich King is up for debate. What's not is that it's much, much shorter - you'll sprint through four of those five levels fairly quickly, before slowing down on the long climb to 85.

The emphasis, this time, is on delivering a more substantial endgame from the off. It's naturally not that easy to tell, at this early stage, how successful it is. In terms of dungeons, there are fewer options for five-man levelling and Heroics, although they're packed with novel mechanics and some of them – including the Vortex Pinnacle and Halls of Origination – are up there with Blizzard's peerless best.

There are more raids than Lich King had at launch, though, and a relaxation of raid locks makes raiding easier to get into. Don't think it's easier overall, though. The difficulty on even Heroic five-man dungeons, combined with the rebalancing of healing, has been a brutal slap in the face for many players.

Item level requirements help sort the wheat from the chaff, but it will be a while before you can get your equipment, and skills rusted by Lich King's quick-fire dungeoneering, up to speed. Opinions are very strongly divided on this, but if you were worried about the amount of actual high-level content in Cataclysm, you cannot complain about the deadly, long-haul seriousness of the dungeon and raid endgame.