Tuesday, August 25, 2009

WoW: Cataclysm

This past weekend the fourth annual (expect in 2006) Blizz Con which took place in Anaheim, California. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go due to lack of funds. However, I did order the live internet stream and watched most of it Friday and Saturday. The biggest and most exciting news of all…wait for it….they officially announced Cataclysm!!! Finally, the third expansion for WoW (World of Warcraft) has been announced. And it didn’t stop there! Blizzard gave us a huge amount of information on what to expect. Today I am going to go over a lot of that information to fill everyone in on what they might have missed out on. There’s a lot to talk about so you might want to grab your Mountain Dew WoW Game Fuel (FOR THE HORDE) before we start.



General:
In Cataclysm players will see the next part in the World of Warcraft story. Here, most of Azeroth has been destroyed and players now have more quests, monsters, zones, dungeons, and raids. No one will ever be able to go back to the Old Azeroth, so take in as much of it now as you can. Soon we will see new zones such as Lost Isles, Hyjal, Gilneas, Grim Batol and Uldum.


With the new quests the leveling cap will be increased from 80 to 85, but don’t fooled by just the 5 increased levels, there is much to discover and will take a while to cover it all. You will also be able to fly with your mounts for the first time in Azeroth and they are even releasing a full speed under water mount for the first time. With two new classes, new professions, and guild leveling players will be able to explore and discover the never ending story of the World of Warcraft.

New Races:
There are two new races that were announced. There is the Worgen for the alliance and the Goblin for the horde. Each race will start in a new area and we look forward to finding out more about their histories.

Worgen:
Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, Priest, Death Knight, Mage, Warlock, and Druid

Goblins:
Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, Priest, Death Knight, Shaman, Mage and Warlock

New Class Options:
So Blizzard has also decided to give the player more options with the current races. There are several new choices that you can make with the races that are already in place. Here are some that they have announced already:


However, there are also a lot of other changes being made to each current class as well. For example, Blizzard is trying to make it less complicated for the player when they are choosing what gear is best for them and also when deciding on what talents to pick for their talent tree. For the talent trees they are taking a lot of the spells, such as Anticipation which increases your dodge by 1% for each talent, and making it so they are almost given to the character after a certain point. This is so that each player will be able to choose more “fun” talents. Blizzard wants each player to be able to have more of a choice on what kind of talent they have, rather than using up all of their points on things that are a given and necessary.

There are also some other class stat changes being made, some good and some bad. A few examples are:
No more attack power on gear
Spell Power, completely gone and replaced with more Intellect
MP5 (Mana per 5 seconds) is gone and Spirit is now the new mana regen. For all other classes that need it, there will be new modifications as well. For example, Hunters will no longer use mana at all
Armor Penetration is gone (people found it too confusing)
Defense is gone and Tanks will not be defense capped through talents (same as Druids)
Haste now increases your regen of spells other than just mana; energy, rage, runes and focus
Block Value is gone, but now block alleviates a percentage of the damage
Stamina is also going to be more equal across all different types of armor

New Secondary Profession:
Along with cooking, fishing and first aid, there will be another secondary profession that you will be able to work on; archeology. This profession is a way to explore the new Azeroth. Since Azeroth has been destroyed and there are ruins everywhere, as an Archeologist, you will be required to go around and explore these ruins, study them and take notes; and with new discoveries being uncovered with this lead to the new character progression, Path of the Titans. Many speculate that the Path of the Titans with have different paths that the player can choose from. Again, this wasn’t officially announced, but according to other sources the paths to choose from are not limited based on your class and each path will lead to learning new abilities and passive bonuses for you character.

There is still so much more that I haven’t even talked about yet. In the coming days I hope to talk about the new guild leveling, which many of us are very excited about (Side Note: Don’t try to mess with Harbingers of Pain). One new feature of leveling guild is that it will allow guilds to have their own talent tree, meaning that if they work together they can spec into different talents, such as a spell that could summon the whole guild to one location (great for raids). I can’t wait, and hopefully with a 2010 release date (still not official) I hope we don’t have to for very long.

Is there anything that you are most excited for? Also check back later for the official trailer!

1 comment:

  1. I have to admit you will hear me bitching about this expansion to no end. I've bitched at every expansion and most of the patches. It is ashame you and mike didn't get into this game in vanilla. Every single patch has made this game a cakewalk to the point where you don't even need to play to be good. And this is going to destroy the old world. The world where many of its inhabitants started and learned and loved. Back when epic battles raged across Hillsbrad and Ashenvale. Back when you learned the names of your servers top pvpers and admired the raiders. Back when a raiding guild was 80 top players all yearning to get a spot to raid that night and knowing they had to have everything enchanted, flasked, pots, buffs, foods, etc. and if they didn't they weren't coming. Those were epic battles of immense size. le sigh...

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