The new content for level 80 characters begins with either a flight to Mount Hyjal or a boat ride to the underwater continent of Vashj'ir, where you'll start the standard fare of leveling quests. Collect items, kill bad guys, talk to people, level. A nice surprise is that the uncommon (green) items you'll be earning as early quest rewards are significantly higher quality than many of the epic (purple) items you'll have brought with you from the Lich King days.

Once you hit level 82, you'll be able to visit Deepholm, home of the earth elementals. It's a dark, jagged area full of bright, colorful gems and glowing spires, but questing is essentially the same as you're used to in earlier versions of WoW. Collect, read, kill, repeat. The storylines make your work feel important to saving the world, but heroism can be tiring. If only there were a resort where you could earn achievements for relaxing and sitting on the beach, or maybe meeting new people. Sort of an anti-dungeon.

Two new rated battlegrounds, Battle for Gilneas and Twin Peaks, have been added to the world. In addition, Tol Barad, a new player-versus-player area, is available to players who have reached level 85. Tol Barad is similar to Northrend's Wintergrasp, but adjacent to it is the Tol Barad peninsula, which is home to daily quests available only to those who've already reached the highest level of the game. PvP hasn't changed much, though, even with these nice-looking new spaces.

The dungeons and raid instances are, as expected, really challenging at level, but, again, there's nothing revolutionary about the way they work. Each new dungeon has a heroic mode for greater challenge once you hit level 85 (most servers saw their first level-85 players by the end of the first day that Cataclysm was released). The mechanics of gameplay have changed significantly for many classes, though, especially during dungeon play.