With the large number of cutscenes created for the game, I think having a portion of those dedicated to catching players up on what happened with the Cataclysm would have been a much better. By inserting them in the starting two zones, each telling a different tale of the Cataclysm, Blizzard could have primed all players for whats happened and whats changed at an early point. We don't need to really see Harrison Jones walk to a console, but we do sort of need an explanation about the current affairs of state.

This expansion is exceptionally good at story telling, but it could also have been exponentially better.

Have to agree with Bierzkrieg, the story tellingin this expansion has been top notch. I think that between what you are told in quests and what we know from the opening cinematic you can piece the whole thing together. For some aspects you do need to play both factions though i.e. The Hillbrad example which started this discussion would only be explained to horde players levelling in that zone.

I'm not saying it wouldn't have been nice to have a little cinematic intro to what has happened since DW burst onto the scene (and indeed the big events of the alliance v horde conflict) but we can't have everything and I think that Blizzard have (rightly) concentrated the cinematics/cut scenes in the new high level zones with each zone having a dedicated introductory quest and plenty of scripted scenes taking place because this is the bleeding edge of the expansion.

Some of the VA is woeful though, the green dragon (is it Aronus?) who taxis you to Hyjal is one of the worst i have ever heard, and I was somewhat underwhelmed by the Twilight Highlands intro (alliance side, plane crash and you wake up in the zone with no aerial tour or much introductory chatter, felt unfinished to me)

The part that has always been lost on me is how Deathwing managed to get into Deepholm in the first place, and then managed to bring in Twilight Hammer members too (presumably years later?)

DW was the aspect of earth, Deepholm is his original domain before going all batty as it where. As for the twilight there, I couldn’t begin to guess, there where alot of elemental gates in deepholm we had to deal with in various quests, including the one prepared to send twilight cultists to uldum. Maybe they built a portal to take them to deepholm, also DW's entrance into azeroth could be looked at as means of destroying the world pillar, step one in destruction of the world, or maybe distraction for us to deal with while he sets other balls rolling?

It's Kor the immovable:

So Deathwing returned to Deepholm after being defeated (presumably by the other aspects at the end of Day of the Dragon) and eventually the Twilight Cultists joined him and re-armoured him. I guess he will have been in contact with the Old Gods while he was in Deepholm (as it seems they will have made the neccessary introductions to get Deathy and Twilight Hammer working together) and I seem to remember reading somewhere that somebody (Metzen perhaps?) had said that Deathwing had been super-powered by the old gods so he is even more powerful than before so presumably that took place in Deepholm also.

Now I haven't finished all the quests in Deepholm by my reckoning I have another 20-30 to clear the zone, is any mention made of the Old Gods by Therazane or any of the Stone Lords? I know that one of the stone lords (Gorsik the Tumultuous) has us stopping the spread of the flesh curse in Deepholm by killing the fungal giants but I don't recall any mention of the Old Gods and their influence within the plane of earth.

Catching up with the Old Gods is probably why he shifted from going against their will (War of the Ancients) to calling them "this world's true masters" (Twilight Highlands), which is disappointing because that makes him seem like just another pawn.

Do the old gods truly command Deathwing's loyalty? Or is he mereley using them, their agents and whatever new 'gifts' they may have bestowed upon him to further his own goals of world domination?

I wouldn't really bet on either as nobody knows what Deathwing is thinking.

Furthermore, we are dealing with Deathwing this expansion, and presumably Azshara in the next. How powerful do the old gods now become if we have devoted two entire expansions to simply dealing with their minions? A common criticism is that the old gods seem too fallible and easily disposed of. If we go through two entire expansions only dealing with their henchmen, they gain a lot of respect from me. If we use levels as a power scale (which is dangerous but seems to be unavoidable due to the nature of teh game), then two of the old god's minions are more powerful than Arthas, Kil'jaedeen and Illidan - so how powerful does that make the masters?

Of course the paragraph above assumes that we are not going to be killing old gods in this expac or the next (which is a pretty massive and almost certainly erroneous assumption), I guess I'm hoping that this and the next expansion form the prelude to an Old Gods expansion because while the old gods are lurking everywhere in the background in this expansion, they do seem to be staying there for the time being.

You're right, from what I recall, Bender. In the Sunwell Trilogy, upon finding out that the Old Gods were behind the Demon Soul and getting ready to ambush Sargeras, everyone started saying the Dark Titan was going to get his ass kicked and were genuinely more terrified of them than of Sargeras.

Still, this power level seems to only be achieved as a group. Old Gods, I think, function at their apex when working in networks, either among their kind or through their minions. They were defeated by the Titans long ago and the lore doesn't make it seem that hard. Against a sole Titan, though, they would've surpassed his power for sure.

Though there's no lore to support it, I stick by my theory that Old Gods, while possessing their own personalities, form a sort of higher conscience.

I don't doubt that the Old Gods are ultimately the most powerful antagonists in the Warcraft universe (that we know of so far). The titans were only able to seal most of them, and C'thun ended up not having been defeated after they thought he was. They're harder to get rid of than Dreadlords (which is saying a lot), and they have near-unlimited patience. You kill a physical manifestation or powerful minion and they taunt you rather than sound even somewhat disappointed. It's hard to say if we're even setting their plans back with the way they act.

Yogg-Saron even sounds excited about his defeat in Ulduar.

He seemed pretty damn serious about what he was saying when he was yelling at Alexstrasza in the Highlands about them being Azeroth's true masters, as opposed to "dragons are the best and I'm the bestest."

I'm not sure the Old Gods would like to see the Titans again in the nearest future. At least not the whole Pantheon like the last time. It ended up with them getting a giant black eye - at least for C'thun - and the lot of them imprisioned. And even if they have infinite patience, a day on which they don't rule Azeroth is another day of failure. Being the scheming SOB's they are, they probably know the Titans will eventually come, hence why they've attacked Ulduar and Uldum.

Right now, Deathwing's loyalties are a complete mistery to me. In the past, he was pretty mad when he found out he was just a pawn in the Old Gods'...tentacles...He seems pretty sure of their superiority, as Blayze pointed out. He might be biding his time or he might just have descended even more into madness and become almost mind-controlled (like a Death Knight of sorts). Still, one never knows, and Deathwing has always ended up serving only himself and his goals. And right now I'd say he's as powerful as an Old God, at least while they remain somewhat weakened.