Cataclysm

[Kaxhra]

So yeah, at the behest of Trieste, I'll start off the newly announced WoW: Cataclysm thread.

So first question.  And be honest.

Did anyone else other than me have a nerdgasm after watching the trailer?

[Bayushi]

Did anyone else other than me have a nerdgasm after watching the trailer?

I'll admit that I did.

They're finally opening up Hyjal!

But hey, they're gonna get my IRL friend back to Alliance! Goblins are joining the Horde, and he HATES the Goblins. Not to mention, his favorite race will be able to go Shaman, the Dwarves.

I'm just annoyed that Goblins will have a racial that should've been an Engineering creation, the ability to access their bank for 1-minute, with a 30-minute cooldown.

Information about Cataclysm at World of Raids

[Andy]

I gasmed so hard my pants flew off..

EVERYTHING IS JUST SO FRIGGIN AWESOME!!!

[Callie Del Noire]

Been looking for the 'classes/races' list... or are they opening ALL races to every class?

[Serephino]

I'm actually kind of ticked off that they're going to change all the areas.

[Bayushi]

Been looking for the 'classes/races' list... or are they opening ALL races to every class?

No.

It appears that there will be two new races able to be druids, and a few more races capable of being hunters, etc.

Every race but Draenei is getting a new class or other. I'm looking forward to this, as Dwarves will be getting Shaman. One of my best friends, who plays WoW, only plays Horde, and Shaman is his favorite class. However, his favorite race is Dwarf.

So, this change should make him quite happy, particularly with the faction-change service that's due at about any time now.

[Ryven]

I like the concept behind what they're doing, but I don't think I can play it again.  After trying it for a week or two once the last expansion came out, it left a bad taste in my mouth.

[ZK]

Well, the guy who did the 3D design for James Cameron's Avatar is doing the redesign of Azeroth, so it'll be spectacular.

[Aestas]

When I got home from work my SO informed me that he was leaving me when the expansion came out. (kidding, of course)  When he showed me the teaser, i could see why.  *laughs*

[Alexander]

Aye. I nerd-gasemed with the best of them... Cataclysm looks like it will make WoW fun for me again.

[Callie Del Noire]

Of course I'm curious about this 'Titan's path' bit myself ..that and the new skill

[Andy]

Though.. Cataclysm will make it Impossible for new players to experience the Original wow  :-\ which i also adore

[Diabolus Lupus]

Me and my sister are gonna temporarily shift alliances  to the the alliance because of the Worgen, which look cool in my opinion. Not to mention them being druid, which is my favorite class.

I'm also glad that Blizzard finally opened more of the classes. But why not the Tauren Rogue? My sister made a really good argument about this last night: If the gnomes can be tiny bad ass warriors, why can't tauren be big bad ass rogues? Yes, I know that it has to do with the physical stuff, but I still think it'd be cool.

[Andy]

Hooves, they clop on woodne floors.

[Callie Del Noire]

Yah that is why Dranei aren't rogues either. :D

[Andy]

I think that the forskaken should have been pala's instead.. seeing as many of them were paladins before death.

[Bayushi]

I think that the forskaken should have been pala's instead.. seeing as many of them were paladins before death.

They do.

Undead Paladins are called Death Knights.

[Callie Del Noire]

http://www.wowwiki.com/Paths_of_the_Titans

And here is where the new profession comes in.. hoo boy.

Rated Battlegrounds
Rated Battlegrounds will be an alternative way to get arena points.
Each week, one of the BG will be the Rated Battleground of the week. Winning in this battleground will improve your rating and give you points. Losing will not lower your rating.
New PvP titles will be added, as your rating progress you will unlock higher titles. If you earned a PvP title you will keep it.
When a Battleground is rated for the week, its normal non-rated version will still be available.
The amount of Arena Points will be limited to prevent grinding.
You will also earn guild level by playing these rated battlegrounds with your guildmates.

Tol'barad
Tol'barad is a mix of Lake Wintergrasp and the Isle of Quel'danas.
Every x hours the Daily Quests of the zone will shutdown and players will fight to capture the control points, the first team to get all of them wins.
The winning team gets access to better daily quests rewarding more gold/better items.

Guild Leveling
Guild experience is earned through multiple ways, players leveling, killing bosses, leveling professions, PvP victories, reputations.
Each guild level rewards you with one talent point, these talents affect the whole guild. The top 20 earners of the guild will contribute to the guild experience for the day.
Some of the guild talents will allow you to remove reagent costs from spell, get increased gold drops, summon your entire raid, rez your entire raid after a wipe, automatically transfer a % of gold dropped by bosses to the guild bank. Guild talents can be reset.
Once your guild reached level 20, the guild experience becomes a currency and let you buy things like mounts, professions plans, banners, potions, rare reagents and guild talent respecs.
Anyone can learn a guild profession recipe, if you leave the guild after learning it you will loose the recipe and it will be transferred back to the guild bank. Guild heirlooms also work the same way and are bound to the guild.

Guild Interface
Guilds will have their own achievements, some of the old achievements might be converted to guild achievements. Some of the achievements are building a legendary item, maxing out every profession, etc ...
A guild news feed will be added, it will shows boss kills, items looted, it will come with different filters to let you find specific information.
You can now check the professions of every members of your guild and check their recipes list to see if they can create an item.
You will also be able to invite other guilds to your guild events through the in-game calendar.

Mastery system
There are too many talents right now and a lot of them are boring and just give passive bonuses. (1% hit bonus, etc ...)
The goal is to make talents more fun and useful, Body and Soul or Juggernaut are a good example.
The old passive bonuses will be automatically added to your character through the Mastery system as you spend more points in a talent tree. Spending a lot of points in Fury will give you extra crit, etc ... this will be implemented for all classes.
Mastery bonuses will lower energy cost, increase your armor penetration, etc ...

Path of the Titans
Character progression slows down drastically at level 80. Players will improve their character through the Path of the Titan by using the new Archeology profession.
Archeology rewards you with "Ancient Glyphs" and give you bonuses reduced damage, reduced stun duration, etc ...
They are NOT inscription glyphs and are totally different, as you progress after level 85 you will earn points to buy more glyphs. They are tied to your talent specialization and cannot be respecced.
You will eventually get all your ancient glyphs, but hardcore players will get them faster. There will be a weekly limit to how fast you can get them.

[MisterYada]

Day after it comes out (I'm not dumb enough to try and log on the day an expansion comes out again) I'm making my Worgen Warlock. Plus 1% damage to everything will probably make the DoTs ungodly.

Also, I think Azeroth needed a facelift. Deathwing just did what some of us that were a bit bored with the old zones wanted to do. Also, got my Deathwing background from the WoW site... fucking SEXY as hell. Every dragon in the world of Azeroth probably wishes they looked as badass as him.

[clover]

Heroic Deadmines. That's all that needs to be said!

[Bayushi]

Heroic Deadmines. That's all that needs to be said!

Indeed!

However, I must admit that I hope they NEVER make a heroic Blackrock Depths. Good god, that instance should be made a 10-man raid, if anything.

[Callie Del Noire]

Indeed!

However, I must admit that I hope they NEVER make a heroic Blackrock Depths. Good god, that instance should be made a 10-man raid, if anything.

Really?

Kyriee my palidin was 1 manning it @ 70

It would so rock as a heroic. :D

[Bayushi]

Really?

Kyriee my palidin was 1 manning it @ 70

It would so rock as a heroic. :D

Not with that many bosses, it wouldn't.

Also, as a stealth class, I have to say one thing. THOSE FUCKING DOGS SUCK!

[Callie Del Noire]

Not with that many bosses, it wouldn't.

Also, as a stealth class, I have to say one thing. THOSE FUCKING DOGS SUCK!

Yeah but I had so fun.. Heroic BRD an some other instances would be so much fun.

[Bayushi]

I'm not looking forward to Heroic East Stratholme. That place was BALLS at 60. Don't even want to think what it'll be like updated to level 85.

[Callie Del Noire]

Maybe they'll increase the bloody drop rate of the mount if they do that!

[Bayushi]

Knowing them, they'll just remove it entirely.

I STILL don't have it. And I've cut my solo clear times down to 12 minutes. And that's clearing EVERYTHING!

I LOVE Fan of Knives!

[Callie Del Noire]

12 minutes? I've done it in like 10 once.. but that was before the exorcism nerf (what the devil? A casting time!?) and I definitely didn't do everything.

Just the bosses, in to meet the 'football team' and on to beat down the baron. Most often I take about 18 minutes or so.

Of course I haven't done it since I got my 'Argent Crusader' title.. working from honored to exalted in 1 day sort of burned me out.

[Bayushi]

Heh.

Realize that's 12 minutes to kill everything in the instance(and loot scourgestones), as a leather-wearing class with no healing, no armor to speak of, and no real defense outside of Evasion every couple of minutes.

Eating takes too long, especially when 50% of the time any eating you do is interrupted by the Eye of Naxxramas.

[Callie Del Noire]

Well before the Mana potion nerf I could do it faster.. Pali dps requires Mana..

I'm contemplating deleting the new 'lock I made to leave room for a Worgen type.. of course I shold be online right now doing dailies to get my rogue her 'legacy' armor chest to up her xp grindage.

[Bayushi]

I'm waiting for the faction switching service before I come back, personally.

I'd like to move my 80 to the Horde(probably to a BE, as I don't care for Trolls and despise UD). Then I'd be able to find my IRL friend and run stuff with his 80 Shaman or his 80 DK.

[Callie Del Noire]

Perfectly happy with my Alliance heavy account. :D

3 80s, 2 70s, 1 50 and a scattering from there.

[Serephino]

My question is, is the instance situation going to get better or worse?  For the last two weeks I've had trouble getting into them.  You have to sit there trying to get in over and over for gods knows how long.  Tonight it took a half hour to get into BRD. 

[Callie Del Noire]

Sounds like a server population issue.. we had it for a while (some moron at Blizz thought it would be absolutely brilliant to open an original server for free transfers).

[Serephino]

That's probably part of it.  Another part is high levels farming lower level instances.  I admit I do it myself once in a while, but now that we have Death Knights it seems to be worse.  It probably wasn't a good idea to have a class that starts off at 55.  That puts them way behind on things like professions and rep.  I've been on lower level alts and unable to quest because a DK was killing everything. 

[Callie Del Noire]

I tried to do what I had to for my profesison (Herbalism) but having MULTIBLE 70+ toons at the time I managed to get my DK through her low level skill stages quickly enough.. about 3 hours in the 20s zone followed by a few spots in the 40s and 50s..then it was time to rush through the BC content.

[Bayushi]

I tried to do what I had to for my profesison (Herbalism) but having MULTIBLE 70+ toons at the time I managed to get my DK through her low level skill stages quickly enough.. about 3 hours in the 20s zone followed by a few spots in the 40s and 50s..then it was time to rush through the BC content.

Not to mention, farming the consumables for things like tailoring, first aid, and enchanting is easiest done in instances. For most of my low level Disenchanting materials, I took my Death Knight to the Deadmines and ran it to it's hourly limit. Repeatedly.

Best part was, as a blood specced DK, I could pull everything possible at once by running through, and tank it all in one spot and have little worry about health.

[Callie Del Noire]

Not to mention, farming the consumables for things like tailoring, first aid, and enchanting is easiest done in instances. For most of my low level Disenchanting materials, I took my Death Knight to the Deadmines and ran it to it's hourly limit. Repeatedly.

Best part was, as a blood specced DK, I could pull everything possible at once by running through, and tank it all in one spot and have little worry about health.

Oh yeah.. the Blood specc.. or as I call it when I was tanking Naxx. "Mr. 4th on the Healing list'. :D

The paths bit looks interesting. I seriously want to check out the other paths.

[Bayushi]

I had fun with the Death Knight.

The Deadmines was a boon in more ways than one. I had chosen to go tailoring and Enchanting on my Horde death knight. Deadmines has a high amount of wool cloth, which is difficult for Horde to acquire. With the wool, I skilled up in Tailoring. While I was disenchanting the greens and blues that dropped in Deadmines.

Some wool also tailored into green items, which were disenchanted for skill ups and for further enchanting materials for yet more skill ups.

The tailoring from the wool raised the skill level enough so that I could move on to Scarlet Monastery and farm Silk to do the same thing, except that silk tailors into far more green/blue items than wool did. Which only accelerated the enchanting skill up process.

I do believe my DK is already 350ish Enchanting and just over 300 Tailoring. That's in less than 2 days played overall.

[Callie Del Noire]

It's those last 40 points or so that my enchanter had problems. I hate the idea of MORE enchanting grindage. :(

[Chris Brady]

So I downloaded the trailer (Would have been nice to have a link in the first post, but meh, not like World of Warcraft is hard to find) and I have to say...

Not all that impressed.  They increased the Level cap AGAIN?  So everyone's level 80 gear is now invalid?  Just like the 60 stuff, or the 70 stuff?  What are they?  SADISTS?

I was wondering when they'd bring Deathwing back.  He sorta disappeared in WC3.

And it's sorta telling when they have to REDESIGN the entire game world JUST to allow flying mounts.

You all know WHY Blizzard didn't allow flying mounts pre-Cataclysm, right?  Well, they never finished all of Azeroth before Burning Crusade.  There were huge gaping holes in the world that they had put those big place marker Infernals to keep people out, which were hard to reach from land, but by air?  Easy peasy.  They didn't want that.

So instead of actually finishing Azeroth they redesgin it.  Well, it did need a good kick in the teeth as for setting.  Still, it's pretty crapsack.  They've got how many enemies going now?  Yeesh.  Too bad they could be fighting each other as well as the Players.  :p

I wonder if they'll ever get around to fixing the memory leaks in the major cities, but namely the one in Shatt.

Well, there seems to be new stuff, so apparently, it's finally moving out of the beta state it's been in since release.

I hope all you current players of WoW have a kick ass time!  Seriously, it looks like a lot of stuff is happening, and hopefully, you guys will be having fun during the entire time.

Me?  Sadly, this sort of bloat is no longer appealing to me, and thus is the end of my even contemplating WoW ever again.

[Bayushi]

Not all that impressed.  They increased the Level cap AGAIN?  So everyone's level 80 gear is now invalid?  Just like the 60 stuff, or the 70 stuff?  What are they?  SADISTS?

Cause releasing an expansion we pay money for, that players actually WANT, would go really far with nothing to do, right?

You all know WHY Blizzard didn't allow flying mounts pre-Cataclysm, right?  Well, they never finished all of Azeroth before Burning Crusade.  There were huge gaping holes in the world that they had put those big place marker Infernals to keep people out, which were hard to reach from land, but by air?  Easy peasy.  They didn't want that.

Azeroth was designed in a manner so that the landscape was to be viewed from ground level. The top of each city is pretty empty, Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff excluded(of the original game's cities). This was done to improve render times for the players, as it would otherwise take an exorbitant amount of memory to load up everything in a city section, not to mention all the NPC's, players, mounts, cosmetic pets, combat pets, et al.

You can see just how the 'top' of cities weren't done by going up to 'Thunder Falls' in Elwynn Forest, and moving east, move into the actual Stormwind City zone. Then you can look down at Stormwind City itself, and it's really REALLY screwy looking. Thunder Falls is almost directly above Crystal Lake, which is right outside the City itself.

I wonder if they'll ever get around to fixing the memory leaks in the major cities, but namely the one in Shatt.

I am unaware of any actual memory leaks. Shattrath is merely memory intensive, as it does not use the 'distance rendering' and ground-level rendering model that Stormwind and other old Azerothian cities use currently. It also has fifteen BILLION NPC's that do nothing but walk around, swing swords, and laugh.

Not to mention, EVERYONE hung out in Shattrath. EVERYONE.

[Callie Del Noire]

I am unaware of any actual memory leaks. Shattrath is merely memory intensive, as it does not use the 'distance rendering' and ground-level rendering model that Stormwind and other old Azerothian cities use currently. It also has fifteen BILLION NPC's that do nothing but walk around, swing swords, and laugh.

Not to mention, EVERYONE hung out in Shattrath. EVERYONE.

AND there FRIGGIN DOG!

Once upon a time I used to AVOID it like I do Dalaran when Wintergrasp is about to start.

I know for a fact that one a peak hour a GOODLY portion of any server's popultion has to be going though Dalaran.  <god it was awful till I got my MacPro>

[Bayushi]

AND there FRIGGIN DOG!

Once upon a time I used to AVOID it like I do Dalaran when Wintergrasp is about to start.

I know for a fact that one a peak hour a GOODLY portion of any server's popultion has to be going though Dalaran.  <god it was awful till I got my MacPro>

It was HELL on a High-Pop server, let me tell you!

I play the game with all settings at Max(Max draw, detail, shadows, etc). NOWHERE in the game does it lag like it did in Shattrath. The closest I've seen was when they unlocked the badge vendor on the Isle of Quel'Danas for the first time on my realm. Every retard(this was on a pvp-enabled realm) and his mom was Elekk/Kodo camping the vendor. And all THEIR buddies were standing inside the Elekk and Kodo's, to further make things suck.

It's really one of the biggest miconceptions about WoW. People claim WoW is a horrible game.

No, WoW in itself is actually a very well put-together MMO, as evidenced by the fact that no MMO can touch it's subscription base. The problem with WoW is the patently RETARDED portion of the playerbase. Rooftop Campers, Corpse Campers, Meeting Stone Campers, Ninjas, RP grievers, Speed hackers, Elitist Raiders, Elitist PvPers, Forum/Internet Tough Guys, ArenaTards, etc.

[Chris Brady]

No, WoW in itself is actually a very well put-together MMO, as evidenced by the fact that no MMO can touch it's subscription base. The problem with WoW is the patently RETARDED portion of the playerbase. Rooftop Campers, Corpse Campers, Meeting Stone Campers, Ninjas, RP grievers, Speed hackers, Elitist Raiders, Elitist PvPers, Forum/Internet Tough Guys, ArenaTards, etc.

No offence, I'm calling Bullshit on this.  The NO.1 reason why WoW is so popular is because it's based off Warcraft, which had a HUGE following.  Actually, I need to correct myself.  It HAS a huge following, still going strong.

WoW itself is a bog standard MMO, nothing overly revolutionary.  Which is also good, because no one wants revolutionary.  They want something familiar.  And seriously, the game runs on low end basics.  One or two combat animations, chunky low polygon count models, small zone maps.  If it were any other company, it would have been laughed out of the MMO arena.  The only reason they've survived is the strength of the love of Warcraft.

The stuff they bolted on after the fact is evidence they weren't ready for it.  The PvP system and various reboots.  The Arena addon, which is.  The constant rebalancing of the classes.  The Server Upgrades.

WoW on a purely level is nothing special, in fact, it could be another Everquest clone.  But attach the name Warcraft or Blizzard to it, and they are golden.  They are the ONLY game company where they can say "It's done when it's done." and no one will be bothered by it.

[Bayushi]

WoW on a purely level is nothing special, in fact, it could be another Everquest clone.  But attach the name Warcraft or Blizzard to it, and they are golden.  They are the ONLY game company where they can say "It's done when it's done." and no one will be bothered by it.

Other than the fact that WoW's "low poly count" and the like makes Everquest look like it was running on an Atari 2600?

The fact that they have "low poly counts" makes the game run on just about any hardware made in the past 6-8 years. That is one the major reasons so many people play it. I first played it on an 800 mHz Athlon Thunderbird with 512mb of ram.

I can play it at max graphics on an old dual core machine. As in, the machine was purchased in 2006, and has only had upgrades in memory and video card(it had onboard graphics)

Most games now CANNOT be played by the majority of PCs available. For instance, I can play WoW at it's highest settings with no problems(as I can with Elder Scrolls Oblivion and a number of other 'high poly' games), but couldn't even get Age of Conan to START. FunCo's response: Your graphics card sucks!

At the time(and probably not even now), an 8800GT that's factory overclocked does NOT suck.

Finally, WoW was done well as in it has CONTENT. It MAINTAINS a large playerbase with the amount of content available and SOME linearity available to keep people on track. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there is Warhammer Online. It has a middling amount of content, but has large gaps in the leveling curve where there is little to nothing available, and ZERO linearity to help new players figure out what they're supposed to do, or where to go.

I will, however, say that I am NOT a WoW/Blizzard Fanboi/girl. I enjoy WoW for what it is. I've quit the game twice now, and have decided to return to the game both times. I've played other MMO's and have enjoyed things about them(Warhammer, Guild Wars, Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online, City of Heroes/Villains) but I just don't feel as involved there as I do/did with WoW.

Dislike it all you want. Don't mock those who do, however, or make uninformed assumptions.