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[Doom]

Biggie Sized.

Cataclysm!

Or Hey Everybody, Deathwing's Back!

Cataclysm is the planned third expansion! It intends an incredibly ambitious polishing and redoing of the original World of Warcraft content as opposed to tacking a land-mass onto a mess of separate servers! Just as soon as the Lich King falls over, Deathwing is going to erupt out of Grim Batol, a significant chunk of the planet itself, and rupture the Elemental Planes! Damn! This will set off a world-wide earthquake that redoes several of the old Vanilla zones. Also I guess Varian and Garrosh are going to declare total war and serious lore ramifications! You can FLY in Azeroth! After a modest 30,000 Gold investment into Old Weather Flying.



Rather than introduce a new hero class, Cataclysm will introduce a pair of new player races! Goblins are going to blow up Azhara to impress the Horde and I guess the Worgen are tired of being the subject of fanfiction speculation and are ready to become the subject of direct fanfiction writing! Popular fan theory that the abandoned nation of Gilneas has succumbed to lycanthropy was validated and woof woof aroooo, the proud Gilneans decide that they're not too cool for the Alliance as soon as somebody breaks their gate down!



Cataclysm will also do several other things!



New Races!

Gobbos can be anything but Druids and Paladins! They can shoot rockets or rocket jump! They get magical retarded inbred goblins that grant them bank access! They drive rocket-powered go-karts!

Worgen can be anything but Shamans and Paladins! They have Human and Werewolf form! They automatically shift into Werewolf form in combat! They can sprint and skin shit with their bare hands! I guess they do extra damage!

New Class Mechanics!

Hunters use Energy!

Warlocks use Rune-style Soul Shards to Empower Spells!



New Class/Race Combos!

Orcs can be Mages! Why!? Who cares! I guess they're Warlocks who slow down a notch!

Forsaken can be Hunters in the spitting image of everybody's hero, Nathanos Blightcaller!

The Tauren worship the Sun now! This lets them be Priests and Paladins! I can't wait to argue about lore!

Trolls can be Druids! Even though we've had at least four instances worth of build-up, I'm sure there are people who are very upset about this "sudden" development!

Blood Elves can be Warriors because Blizzard redid some of their ancient Burning Crusade era code to allow an extra class option on the Character Generation Screen!

Humans can be Hunters! Who'd have thought Homo Sapiens could wield rifles?!

Dwarves can be Mages and Shamans! OH MY GOD DWARF SHAMANS!

Night Elves can be Mages! Why?! Because when was the last time a Night Elf didn't pursue a questionable source of power that might endanger himself, his species and his very world?!

Gnomes can be Priests! I guess somebody noticed that their Orb of Deception form was pretty awesome!

Draenei can't be anything new! You can't stealth with hooves and I guess they aren't going to Night Elf things up and succumb to Warlock teachings! Hahahaha!

But the Worgen will provide the Alliance their second Druid race! Good on them!

Troll and Worgen Druids will have new animal forms! Wow!

Racials!

Races are being redone to make them less terrible and laughably imbalanced! There's a fair chance that everyone who didn't roll Orc or Human will not be horribly depressed! We can hopefully assume that every race will have the 6-7 Useful Racials that Goblins and Worgens have shown as the standard!

And we're all hoping, but no real word on an old race model revamp!

A New Profession!

Archaeology is a sub-profession that you can learn without impacting your 2 Major Professions! It's supposed to relate to Path of the Titans, or Post-Level Cap customization and progress! I hope it involves Achievement Style pursuit of doohickies of all levels and locations!

Talent Trees!

Every Talent Tree is being redone! The Word of God itself is that "there need to be more fun talents, instead of +1% crit for five levels!" Does this mean more Warbringers and Moonkin Forms and Focus Magics?! I hope so!

But how will they compensate for the removal of those boring but valuable baseline talents!? Mastery! Points invested in a talent tree provide passive benefits on top of the actual talents! Great!

Level 85!

The new Level Cap is 85! Talent Trees will not get new tiers, so you effectively get 5 more talent points to play with! There's something called Path of the Titans to account for as yet unexplained post-85 unique character progression and customization!

Rated Battlegrounds!

Will PvP ever be consistently useful, helpful or even accessible?! After Wrath of the Lich King left us with literally meaningless battlegrounds, here's hoping!

New Leveling Experience!

They're redoing all the zones! Dang! Even terrible places like Aszhara are being blown up into exciting lower level questing zones that don't look like something the Devs shamelessly forgot or ignored! Imagine reliving the grandeur of Azeorth with the modern-day sensibilities of 2010 quest design!

They're making Heroic Shadowfang Keep and Deadmines! Damn!



What about My Epics!?

Hahaha, they'll probably be relatively worthless or just cushion your leveling! Not only are they proposing a wide-spread "stat reset" to crush stupid shit like Armor Penetration, they'll probably add another boost to raw Stamina. It's really no surprise by now that even if you're wearing Heroic Lich King ilevel 280 Underbritches, they'll be worthless shit compared to the gate-keeper boss of the first Cataclysm raid! Heirlooms will still function from 1-80, so go grab a set for your next planned alt!



Doom I am abnormally excited, what do or when do

Who knows, man! As of my posting this dang old article, we haven't even seen how the Lich King fight works and Arena Season 8 is starting! If we go off previous tends and reasonable assumptions, Cataclysm probably can't come out for a minimum of 3-6 months, given the length of the average Arena Season and the minimum months needed for Hard Modes to get down to business! Look for Late Summer/Fall or even Winter, and keep your internet tuned for the first Alpha or Beta leaks!

If nothing else you can count on everything that matters to be utterly reset when the expansion actually hits, so maybe go put together a set of heirloom gear for a planned alt and cancel subscription for a few months. Obviously does not apply if you are digging the Wrath end-game, whether Icecream Citadel or Arena. Also if you enjoy Achievements then have at it, and if you enjoy Achievements AND Paranoia, who knows what'll happen to all those old world instances and raids and loremasters and stuff when Cataclysm hits! Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoooo!



Here are pictures.

[Niku]

NOPE STILL DIDN'T DO IT

BETTER LUCK TROLL DRUIDS

I MEAN NEXT TIME

[Doom]

Whatever man, just wait until screenshots of Birds, Velociraptors and Palm Trees with Tusks are leaked.

[Kazz]

i am so excited

i am going to level a Goblin to 20

[Bal]

I really want them to redo the models of all the launch races. It's getting embarrassing standing next to Draenei and Blood Elves with my fucking triangle fingers and shit. Just up the poly count by half and give me some new textures, and I'l solid.

[Shinra]

what's really embarassing is playing a human and standing next to Varian or Jaina or Kalecgos.

God damn.

[Büge]

I think Doom likes Draenei girls. Call it a hunch.

[Mongrel]

Now all he needs is one with glasses.

[Büge]

So what's the deal with Cataclysm, anyway?



Is it gonna be new from the start, or will it be progressive?



Like will the starting zones from here on out be in this new crazy wrecked-up world?



Or will the world change dynamically, as you complete quests and stuff?



And how will the changes affect people who haven't upgraded to the latest expansion?



Help a noob out plox

[Doom]

All of non-BC/Wrath content is getting thrust forward. There may be phasing in other matters, but there is no Old World or New World. The Old World becomes the World.

If you are some sort of dude who only has Vanilla, you will be forcefully thrown into the brave new earthquake'd world. Vanilla WoW is dead. Period.

That is why there's some paranoia regarding doing Vanilla achieves NOW NOW NOW.

This does mean that you can probably just grab a copy of WoW once Cataclysm launches and see if you like the 1-60 before you sink fat-cats on expansions. But given Blizzard is Blizzard, I'd wager there'll be a very nice combo pack to get you up to speed on the cheap.

I don't know if it's feasible to hit 85 without BC and Wrath, as it seems to be fully intended that you go to BC at 58-68 and Wrath at 68-78 probably. There's even a giant lore thing that the Lich King will exist as a probably benevolent Bolvar, so you can hack through zombies to get dem levels, man.

[Doom]

Also I guess you can't be Blood Elves/Draenei if you don't have Burning Crusade, Death Knights if you don't have Wrath(and you gotta hit Level 55 on another class first anyway) or Goblins/Worgen without Cataclysm itself.

[A²]

I don't know if it's feasible to hit 85 without BC and Wrath

Going by blue posts a few days ago, no. They fully intend for you to Burn the Dread I mean Legion and go to Santa's Citadel-land to level up.

[Doom]

You could hit level 68 on level 60 mobs in Azeroth if you really wanted to. I wonder if they'll check for that sort of thing when they redo Winterspring, Silithus and Plaguelands? Or if that'll combat the fact that Outlands is really good, streamlined leveling.

[Doom]

They had some big fancy meeting or something today and the nitty gritty came down to "Cataclysm this year, probably in the latter half. And Starcraft 2."

Well uh dang that's a lot of months.

[sei]

preventing guild explosions by allowing time for three shadowmournes

[Royal☭]

I longed onto WoW.com (nee wowinsider.com) for the first time in like a year today.  Is this what a heroin addict feels like after being off the smack so long?

[Niku]

I actually used WoW.com and MMO-Champ to wean myself off the game for a while afterward.  I knew I was clean once I could not give half a shit about anything they were posting (excepttrolldruids)

[Norondor]

(TUSKBEAR)

[Doom]

Blizzard has decided to start releasing actual Cataclysm info before the anxious nerds of the internet began mass suicide.

We wanted to introduce some of the changes to dispel mechanics coming in Cataclysm. Our goals were to make dispelling a little less trivial to do in PvP, and to make sure there is more equity in dispel capabilities among healers in both PvP and PvE.

Within the system, there are currently five types of dispellable (or curable) buffs and debuffs: curse, disease, poison, defensive magic, and offensive magic. An example of defensive magic dispelling would be using a dispel to free a polymorphed ally, while offensive magic dispelling would be utilizing a dispel ability to strip away an enemy’s buff or heal-over-time (HoT) spell. The main distinction between these two types is in whether or not you can target an enemy with your dispel.

In Cataclysm each healing class will be getting three out of the five types of dispels, with one of these always being a defensive dispel magic. This design makes sure that finding a healer with the ability to remove magic isn’t restrictive in building teams for Arenas or rated Battlegrounds. It also allows the encounter designers to assume, when designing dungeon or raid fights, that every group can dispel magic.

In addition, we're making the opportunity cost (what the player could have accomplished with different actions) for dispelling a bit steeper. We think the cost is too low for three reasons: 1) The actual mana cost is low. 2) You never waste a dispel. If you try to dispel a debuff that isn’t there then the dispel just won’t go off. 3) We have spells that remove debuffs with minimal input on the part of the player. In Cataclysm we are raising the mana costs, making it possible to waste mana by casting a dispel when there is nothing to dispel, and removing Cleansing Totem, Abolish Disease, and Abolish Poison from the game. With these changes in mind, we are working to plan dungeon and raid encounters where dispels aren’t in constant demand or spammed in order to be successful, though some need for dispels will still be a part of the design.

As previously mentioned, we are providing three dispel capabilities to all healing classes as follows:

* Druids will be able to dispel defensive magic, curses, and poison.
* Paladins will be able to dispel defensive magic, diseases, and poison.
* Priests will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and disease.
* Shaman will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and curses.


There is some trade-off that is being made in making these changes and we wanted to expand on this further.

* Protection and Retribution paladins will lose their current ability to dispel magic.
* All shaman will lose dispel disease and dispel poison in exchange for Restoration gaining dispel magic.
* Restoration shaman, Restoration druids, and Holy paladins will need to talent into their defensive magic dispels.
* Shadow priests won’t be able to remove disease in Shadowform.
* Mage, hunter, and warlock will retain their current dispel mechanics.
* Body and Soul remains the same, and basically any dispel mechanic not mentioned above is currently planned to remain as it is.
* When possible, we’d like to combine dispels into a single action. For example, the druid ability to dispel curses and poisons might be a single spell with a Restoration talent that also allows it to dispel magic. This part of the design isn’t finalized, however.


As with all of our Cataclysm previews, keep in mind that any of these decisions could change when we’re in beta.

Interesting all around. I lament the loss of Disease/Poison dispels in the most efficient manner, but surely the entire face of the game will change.

[Doom]

ACTUAL CLASS PREVIEW INFORMATION BEING RELEASED SOON




   *  Shaman - April 7
    * Priest - April 7
    * Warlock - April 7


    * Warrior - April 8
    * Death Knight - April 8
    * Rogue - April 8


    * Hunter - April 9
    * Druid - April 9
    * Mage - April 9


    * Paladin - April 16*

*As per tradition, it seems Paladin is getting an extensive overhaul and Blizzard will wait to display their preview a bit longer.