WoW: Cataclysm Cinematic Intro Blows Everything Up Forever

The Cataclysm intro cinematic is here, and Azeroth is pretty much screwed.

Whatever you think about Blizzard’s games, its franchises, or its ridiculously slow development time, I think we can all agree on this: Blizzard’s in-house cinematic department makes ridiculously cool pre-rendered cutscenes. I would gladly watch an entire full-length CGI movie from that team, but it would probably take over a decade to make.

Blizzard has just released the full-length Cataclysm intro cinematic to coincide with the first commercials airing during the Vikings/Cowboys game, and it’s a doozy.

While it’s definitely more action-packed than the relatively subdued Wrath of the Lich King intro, it’s also much more coherent than the “Hey let’s show random player characters doing cool things!” style of the original World of Warcraft and Burning Crusade cinematics. Truth be told, I don’t have a problem with it, except Gnomes still haven’t been in a pre-rendered movie. Alas.

But you don’t care about any of that, do you? You just want to watch Azeroth getting blown up by a huge dragon made of lava and evil with molten dark iron armor bolted to his skin, don’t you?

In that case, you should be very, very satisfied.