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 doWho 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.