Ending a two-week nerd rage debate about the authenticity of supposed leaks of information, Blizzard just confirmed their next expansion for WoW.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will feature:

- Revamped classic world (torn asunder via storyline), for flying mounts
- Level cap of 85
- New Worgen (alliance) and Goblin (horde) races
- Extra class capabilities (Troll Druids, Gnome Priests, etc)
- New and recycled dungeons
- Guild leveling and achievements

Commence WoW bashing, now.

Promoted forum item

f***ing SWEET!

I'm impressed. Wrote the leak off initially as stuff like "gnomergon reclaimed" etc have popped up in fake leaks for years now. The artwork & stuff looks awesome as always!

Now we can pve some MORE giggidy

General

* Level cap will be 85 because developers wanted to focus on the right things: redoing Azeroth and providing more end-game content.
* A new guild advancement system will let you earn guild perks and level a guild through 20 levels with points to spend in a talent tree. You will access abilities such as cheaper repairs, less durability loss on wipes, or mass resurection.
* Phasing can now add and remove terrain based on your progress. Coasts will be progressively more flooded depending on how far you are in a storyline for example.


Path of the Titans

* Talent trees won't be extended, you will just get 5 more talent points.
* The Path of the Titans will let players follow a path (not restricted to classes), this is a new talent system with new skills and passive abilities.
* A mastery system is being added as well, a lot of talents will be reworked to be more fun. The point is to get rid of a lot of the talent skills and not make you spend all your points in a talent tree just because it gives you more damage or higher crit chance.


Archeology

* Archeology is a new secondary profession, not many details about this one but we'll probably hear more about it in future panels.


Deathwing

* Deathwing, the leader of the Black Dragonflight will be the main vilain of the expansion.
* Deathwing heard the whispers of the Old Gods after the arrival of the Burning Legion, he eventually grew very powerful and also became very very crazy.
* His plan was to catch the Alliance and Horde unaware with something so massive that it would bring up the Elemental Planes.
* The Elemental Planes were created by titans to contain the elementals, they weren't happy with this decision and some of them like Ragnaros got really angry.


New races - Worgens

* Other races were discussed for the alliance, but the developers really felt that the alliance needed a monstrous race and horde needed something fun and tiny.
* Genn Greymane closed the Greymane Wall to block the Scourge's plague. Gilneas got nervous as the Scourge progressed to the south.
* Arugal was a patriot, he called the Worgens to battle for Gilneas but eventually was surprised by how dangerous what he called down was.
* Worgens are from somewhere else ... or even someWHEN else. They have a wolverine temperament and spent a lot of time trying to contain the beast within.
* One of the Worgen racial will be Dark Flight, a short duration sprint


New Races - Goblins

* Goblins are a technological race from Kezan, their society is broken up into trade cartels run by trade princes. They are new factions and not the ones you can already see in game.
* The Cataclysm hit Kezan really hard and it's possibly destroyed. The goblins are now refugees on the Lost Isles.
* As a goblin you start as a neutral cartel and eventually join the horde as you progress through the questlines.
* Racial - Rocket Belt will have multiple functionnalities, you can use it to launch yourself forward or launch rockets at targets.


The World

* Azeroth is now flyable. Pretty much all the zones will be changed to some extent, some of them like Elwynn Forest won't change too much but others like The Barrens will be sundered in two by Deathwing.
* The Wailing Caverns are now a lush and verdant Area.
* Desolace now has a lot more waters and a lot of plants can be seen in the screenshots.
* The Horde finally conquered Southshore.
* Auberdine was destroyed and the night elves have set up a new camp north of it. Garrosh wants to expand the horde and has built a fortified camp at the south of the zone.
* Stonetalon has been cleaned by the Goblins, Azshara will be the new Goblin zone, and are using quarries in the mountains of Azshara to build their town.
* We all left a little part of ourselves in Northrend and the old world will be much darker than it was to make heroism and brotherhood more meaningful like Warcraft should be.
* Every zones will be revamped with new quests, items, and art. The old world will be a brand new experience and you won't have to deal with the annoying agility/spirit quest rewards anymore.
* 7 new zones will be added : Twilight Highlands, Mount Hyjal, Deepholm, Uldum, Gilneas, The Lost Isles, Sunken City of Vash'jir.
* The Worgens and Goblins starting zone level goes from 1 to 15.
* Sunken City of Vashj'ir will be an underwater zone and was the home city of Lady Vashj before the original sundering, this is a gateway to the Abyssal Maw. Going through the Abyssal Maw will take you to the Elemental Plane of Water, even if the zone will be underwater you will be walking on the sea floor here, new underwater mounts will be available and should have the same speed as normal flying mounts.
* Deepholm will be the new hub of the expansion, you will have portals here to let you teleport to Hyjal, Uldum, etc ... The Twilight's Hammer now serves Deathwing and have brought him back to full health in the Temple of Earth at the center of the map.
* Uldum will have at least two dungeons and is heavily inspired from Egypt. The sea at the west of Tanaris was just an illusion created by the Titan and Uldum is actually a brand new zone. It is rumored to hold a super weapon. Uldum is also the home of the Tolvir, a race of stone-like cats created by the titans.
* Ragnaros used the cataclysm to come back from the Plane of Fire where we sent him and his now sieging the World Tree in Mount Hyjal to burn it down. Malfurion is back from the Emerald Dream. The whole zone (Hyjal) will make extensive use of phasing.
* Twilight Highlands will feature Grim Batol,
* Apparently Orgrimmar will be rebuilt and reinforced with steel, it now looks a lot like Garrosh strongholds...
* Undercity has been redesigned to be flyable, it now looks much more impressive from the outside.
* Deepholm isn't really connected to Azeroth, the connection is where Deathwing
* The Twilight Highlands will feature Grim Batol, Deathwing literally broke open Grim Batol as he emerged from the ground. This is the new Twilight's Hammer base in Azeroth and both Horde and Alliance will have a new port town with boats here. The Red Dragonflight is still here but has been pushed back to the west of the zone near the Wetlands.


Dungeons & Raids

* The Firelands will be a new raid dungeon, it will let you go to the Elemental Plane of fire and visit Sulfuron's Keep, Ragnaros will be here and he's really pissed.
* Uldum will feature two new dungeons, the Lost City of Tol'vir and the Halls of Origination (a titan city)
* Grim Batol will have a level-up dungeon and a raid instance.
* Skywall (Air Elemental Plane) will have a level-up dungeon and a raid instance.
* The Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep will be back in a brand new level 85 heroic version.
* Blackrock Caverns will be a new level-up dungeon located in Blackrock Spire. This is an entirely new dungeon, new art, new creatures, new everything.


Player vs. Player

* Battle of Gilneas will be a new battleground where the objective is to control the city by controlling as many districts as possible.
* Tol'barad will be a new PvP zone and will also be the most important daily quest hub. Just like Wintergrasp a battle will happen every few hours and the winning side will get access to the Tol'barad Prison and extra daily quests, the really profitable ones.
* Rated battlegrounds will be added to the game and should get you the same rewards as Arenas.
* New arena maps will be added.

Interesting...

Is there a release date yet or is it "when its done"

My wow account has been sitting deactivated for about 6 months now.

Holy f***, can't wait!

I guess they realised they were onto a winner with WOTLK, where they could serve up the same old content to people and tell them it was new and people would keep giving them money.

"Hey guys, its the Deadmines, but you can do it at level 85 now, isn't that awesome?" And all these wonderful new zones, like its the Barrens, but now its in TWO PIECES! And we added some grass! I bet they're patting themselves on the back for pulling this off.

Does this look really tacky to anyone else?

good to see EA blizz still flogging that dead horse!

After reading thru all the notes I'm a little worried about the phasing. If it's anything like Ice Crown it's gonna be impossible to help lower lvl toons do stuff. Hmm

The voice in that trailer just s***ted me too no ends and I think that is the main reason it felt so tacky.

Man I'm kind of sick of these doom and gloom storylines, like "oh no the whole world is being devoured!"
Meanwhile a plague threatens to destroy all life and demons want to corrupt everything for no particular reason.

I wonder if I'm the only one who misses the good old days of orcs vs humans. Those were simpler, better times.

I haven't played Warcraft in ages, never bought the last expansion anyway.

FAQ says that all subscribers will see a sundered Azeroth - so phasing won't be quite to the extent of "I can't go to Undercity at the moment"

That is a good point, horde vs alliance isnt as strong as it once was. They should have introduced the new classes as a fuelling war and the alliance horde factions took sides and off too battle. That would have been simple and cool.

feels like a "cheap" way to do an expac to me

Dunno...on the flipside, if you don't expand, the 4.0 patch will yield a s*** load of changes that you don't have to pay a cent for (entirely new grind 1-80)

i'll be playing this until FF14 comes out

After ~4yrs of playing WoW and seeing this new expansion, I can't wait for Aion!

It's cool, but it's nothing new... if you can follow that.

Piss poor trailer, played like something from a free-to-play MMO :(

i've heard a little about Aion but why is everyone so hyped about it? Please explain

I for one welcome our new WoW overlords!

Human hunters.... about f***ing time & lolz at cowadins.

Human hunter

And undead hunters

cant wait....











to not play it

Human hunter

And undead hunters

Undead hunters!!!

and...

Hunters

Also receiving a massive overall are hunters.The hunter’s need to rely upon mana is completely gone, and instead they will use focus. This means hunters will no longer care at all about Intellect, mana regen or Aspect of the Viper.

Focus will regenerate continually, similar to how rogues or feral druids regenerate energy. For comparison, rogues regenerate approximately 10 energy per second, whereas hunters will regenerate 6 focus per second.However, Steady Shot can also be used to improve focus regen, and bring the rate at which hunters regenerate focus to 12 per second.

The hunter will have a maximum of 100 focus, and shots might cost 30 or 60 focus, with fewer cooldowns on abilities. Another exciting and long-awaited change regards the ammunition system. Ammunition will become an equipable item, and will no longer be consumable.

More details on that later!

They are really trying to get me back lol, even tho it's still for the most part a re pack of the same old, I'm liking the hunter love.

... legendary for hunters...

I Laughed at the video.They are really targeting this at younger players....

Certainly isnt tempting me too start playing again. Not yet anyway.

So let me get this right... they rehashed dungeons in wrath... and now they're rehashing vanilla wow but just breaking it apart... and they expect people to buy that s***?

Ever since hunters got aspect of the viper they've never had to worry about mana

And never will.

Sigh... that is the most pathetic sounding expansion iv ever heard! its all good though, Aion is just around the corner :)

any d3 news?

Monk is the new character class for D3!

Monk vid looks aweful.

Heh monk vid was meh but 1000x bettter than WoW expac vid.

There is a lot more to the expansion than what you've read at that site including a caster legendary item, seven new zones and reforging your gear. Expect the expansion to be as polished as anything that Blizzard releases.

Expect the expansion to be as polished as anything that Blizzard releases.

Yep but it will still just be World of WarCraft.

I'll get the expac, level up my guys to the new cap, play the new dungeons, go on a few raids, and then get bored and re-realise I have more important things to worry about and deactivate my account.

LFG Hogger 25!

The most annoying thing I find with WoW is the constant balance changes. Either after 4 years they have no idea how to properly balance their game or they deliberately do not want to. Every patch of Wrath has had balance changes to multiple classes and yet they seem to be simply cycling through which class/profession gets to be OP this patch and which gets to be useless.

I have no faith that this expansion will be any different and it won't be getting me back on the crack wagon. Guild Wars 2 and Aion look promising though.

I smell 2 more expansions (lvl 100) after this at which point warcraft dies or wow 2 start

There will not be a wow 2, blizzard are already developing a new MMO set in space. Has nothing too do with any license they currently own, its a completly new IP

Sorry for the double post but um runes of magic which is the biggest wow ripoff ever already has focus instead of mana for there hunters, its like a ripoff of a ripoff

So they've still done basically nothing to help us run quests through to level 80 from the low levels :(
I mean at the very least give us some decent mercs to hire or something if we can't get groups.

There will not be a wow 2, blizzard are already developing a new MMO set in space

I think you mean there isn't one in development at the moment. Given that we're at Diablo III, StarCraft II and WarCraft III saying there will be no WoW sequel is a big call.

Not Really

That article confirms what I have been told by a friend who works for blizzard

True, I should not have said there wont be a wow 2, what I meant was the next big thing wont be wow2, from an mmo standpoint. But in saying that, I would be surprised if there was a wow 2.

Also the games you have listed are not on going MMOs, technically the expacs would be 2 3 4.

I know all about the new IP, but thanks for the link. I've posted about it on this forum before.

True, I should not have said there wont be a wow 2, what I meant was the next big thing wont be wow2, from an mmo standpoint. But in saying that, I would be surprised if there was a wow 2.

You said "there will not be a wow 2". I'd be very surprised if there wasn't a wow 2 eventually, once the money making machine that is the original pales. Blizzard has a strong history of successful sequels.

Also the games you have listed are not on going MMOs, technically the expacs would be 2 3 4.

An MMO has a different definition of an expac? I don't think so!

Brood War was the StarCraft Expac.
StarCraft II is the sequel.

There have been two expansions released and one announced for World of WarCraft. I'm sure your friend at Blizzard can explain the reasons why they are definetly not sequels (aside from the very obvious lack of II, III, IV in their name...)

So they've still done basically nothing to help us run quests through to level 80 from the low levels :(
I mean at the very least give us some decent mercs to hire or something if we can't get groups.

Its a mature MMO - there just isn't a lot going on in the levelling game, you have to solo to within 20% of max level to see much action. This is another reason why a sequel will eventually become appealing, a lot of people get sick of continual endgame.

last edited by Hogfather at 14:46:19 22/Aug/09

f***ing yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn

Who ever it was before that mentioned Blizzard recycling the same old s*** over and over is right on the money. As for Blizard failing to balance classes over all these years since it's release... well it became pretty damn obvious early on that they never had any intention of balancing the classes. What they did intend though was every few months give a class it's little bit of time in the sun while shafting the pervious OP class back down the list.

All wow is is a never ending cycle of buff nerf buff nerf. To add even more insult though they add in things years after people screamed for them . Blizzard then have the f***ing nerve to trot these ideas out as if they were the first to think of them or like they are doing the player base some kind of huge favour.

All wow is is a never ending cycle of buff nerf buff nerf

This is true of most MMOs, at least the ones that make any pretense to care about class balance. Its the nature of the game - players obsessively min max to get the best character, devs constantly need to tune as a result.

The only way to 'fix' it is to have a single class for each role.

Wow, I just watched that trailer, if I didn't know it was official I would have thought it was some fan-made thing. So amateur compared to Blizzard's trailers in the past :(

send icefrog in, he can balance anything!

Hogfather, Blizzard would have to be oh so careful if they released a wow 2, because of their existing player base. My reasoning was, the xpacs were wow 2 , and 3 and soon 4 because you can't really release a whole new game where you start from scratch as the player, like most sequels of video games are. That was my logic behind it. If they started a whole new MMO and released it as wow 2, then in theory everyone would start over which would upset the original wow fans.

Has an MMO had a sequal released before? I have no idea to be honest as wow was the first MMO I actually played a lot. What I meant above is that releasing a sequel for a static video game and for an MMO would be two very different things, which is why I said the xpacs were almost the sequal and really they are. The story continues on from xpac to xpac, like a static video games sequal would.

My friend at blizzard is an artist and only started a few months back and had never played wow until they started there so they arnt much use in defining things :)

Actually Hogfather I kind of disagree and only for the simple reason that the game has been around as long as it has. Honestly after this many years if they were at all fair dinkum about it they would of nailed it by now.

Wow shouldn't be a hard game to balance when compared to the games that went before it. s*** wow doesn't even allow you to place your own stat points or even have secondary classes to add to your primary class skill set. Right from the word go you are pointed down 3 talent trees that are utterly rigid in what you can and can not do. The options for players because of this are extremely limited so balancing based on that really shouldn't be hard at all. Some how Blizzard doesn't seem to be able to do it though and it seems to me that they really never had any intention of doing it.

As I said they give every class their 15 minutes of power and then a few months later take it away and give it to someone else. This isn't balcning this is fence sitting. It keeps players busy working and adjusting their characters in order to cover up for the total lack of choice in class development which some games that preceeded Wow had in truck loads. What it also does is push fickle players into rolling and rerolling more and more classes thus keeping them playing.

Again I say, they simply aren't trying to balance anything they never have. These aren't stupid people and the fact that they can't strike a balance only points to one thing .... they don't want to.

Yes eds everquest and everquest 2.... not to mention Asherons call and asherons call 2.

There you go, I am wrong :)

How did they work, did you continue on your character or did they start again?

Everquest 2, Guildwars 2. Ultima?
They were generally for major engine and coding upgrades though I think.

Yeah, theres been a few sequels to mmo's, whether they were any good or whether it was a smart move is a different story.

But nah, you couldn't carry your character over, they were essentially whole new games cashing in on the popularity and existing customer base of the original ones.

Looks good to me.
Shame I don't play it anymore

All wow is is a never ending cycle of buff nerf buff nerf.

This is in just about ANY multiplayer game you can play. Everything from FPS, to RTS and MMO's have patches and updates that buff or nerf units, weapons, classes, etc. It isn't something uniquely Blizzard and WOW...that said...wow looking back at...WOW after a few years it looks like s*** now :p The graphics seemed so much more OK before...

Blizzard are not stupid. They are simply not letting the game stagnate. Hence the ever changing classes, adding content, changing existing content.

They probably reached a plateau of new customers quite some time ago and have focused on rehashing older stuff to not bring brand new players in, but to pull the ones that have left back, even if it is only a month or 2.

There is a lot more to the expansion than what you've read at that site including a caster legendary item, seven new zones and reforging your gear. Expect the expansion to be as polished as anything that Blizzard releases.

You sound like a GM, head up your ass and say look at all the new stuff.. which is still old... and still plenty of retarded bugs / balancing thrown in.

Hell DK's weren't even balanced till about 3.2 and even then are hella good still.

Naxx has a f***ton of bugs not to mention, THE SAME CRASH BUGS THAT WERE IN THE INSTANCE FROM VANILLA WOW! I mean seriously, not only did they rehash content but they brought the bugs back with it.

The raids are a shadow of their former self, they nerf s*** like 1 week after the top guilds do it so even the top 100 don't always get a shot at the same content before the nerf so that casuals can run rampart through it.

PvP is the same joke, only decent bracket is 3v3 and even then you've got RMP there after years ... obviously the most powerful combo but never touched.. Then a bunch of cleave teams which main focus is to sit on 1 guy and kill him before they kill 1 of you.

Sorry but i can't see where the finesse / balance is in the game anymore.

(This is someone that's played beta through to 3.2, cleared all the instances and got glad every season) The games degraded, most people will all agree and it seems like they're putting less effort into creating the game and fixing it.

Check out the new mounts. Goblin one looks f***ing awesome.

http://www.members.optushome.com.au/gpahl/goblin.jpg

http://www.members.optushome.com.au/gpahl/worgen.jpg

why would worgens need a mount?

yer worgens should just have an abil like a mount which lets them run heaps fast.

Because their feet would get sore. Plus it will unbalance the mounts if they don't get one seeing as Blizz just added a new horde mount to even it up.

Yeh, the mounts aren't just for the racein question, if you grind your face off you can get them for any race on the faction.

You don't have to grind much at all for rep any more.

orly, just hlf a face gone? :p

Well you get full rep for everything now regardless of rep level and character level. So you get 250 rep for starting quests even if you are a level 80. Also turn ins for rep don't end once you get over a certain rep level any more either. So basically you wouldn't even get key imprints in your cheeks.

It's one of their casual changes which I think was very good since it will stop them from using faction grinding as a form of content filler.

Haha, the worgen mount looks rather ridiculous, looks like some kind of kinky wolf on wolf sex position.

Haha, the worgen mount looks rather ridiculous, looks like some kind of kinky wolf on wolf sex position.

RE-ACTIVATING ACCOUNT NOW!@

Worgen mounted on a Raptor
Yeah, your pretty much f***ed