WoW: Cataclysm - SPOILERS WITHIN

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EDIT: Blizzcon just confirmed the vast majority of the MMO-Champion rumors!

MMO Champion is reporting that all the rumors are true: Cataclysm drastically changes Azeroth. Spoilers aplently if you delve further - this is your last warning.

I was just going to make this thread.

MMO Champion's post, if you dare seek out the spoilers, but don't blame me for clicking if you didn't want to know:

[size=20]WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS[/size]

More Spoilers wrote:

[color=white]I would actively campaign for a wholesale faction change of GWJ Alliance to GWJ Horde if I could make Narayan a tauren.[/color]

Wow -- looks like exciting stuff.

I'm... very skeptical. Could be very cool if true though.

Regarding your spoiler, Mike, the first thing I thought about that availabilty was that it was totally awesome.

More SPOILERS:

I am so all over rolling a w*****. I assume about 100% of Alliance players are. Wonder what classes? Hunter seems an obvious fit.

If true, I am pleased.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

I am so all over rolling a w*****. I assume about 100% of Alliance players are. Wonder what classes? Hunter seems an obvious fit.

Maybe we should just mark the whole thread as spoilers and talk openly?

If you ask me, worgen will have hunters and druids for sure (assuming the news of troll druids is true), and probably warriors as well. Other than that, who knows? I'd love to be a worgen hunter, but since I'm not as crazy as Zee I'd probably roll a druid (or a shaman if that was available).

All I want is that joy of getting Benediction just one more time. Is that too much to ask? Probably my best gaming moment. Nobody took me seriously as a priest until I rocked it.

This sounds great!

Is it wrong to get excited over the next WoW expansion even though I haven't gotten a character past 75 in WotLK yet? I still love WoW, I just don't play as much as I used to.

Flippin' heck! That sounds pretty damned awesome if true...although some of the stuff sounds just a little ambitious.

I'm thinking I might spring for that Blizzcon live feed thingy they are offering now...and not just for Grunty

I guess I'm going to have to surrender one of my bank alts to be rerolled as a worgen. Oher things that strike me is that current endgame LK raids could still be useful at 85 for a bit of gear, similar to getting 10 people together for UBRS at 60. Also, they seem to be playing up 'war' again, could there be more PvP focus outside of instanced battles?

edit: Even worse, I have to think of a new name to reserve for my new alt. I'm quite pleased that I managed to get Cthulhu for my male draenei DK

Hmm... some of that is interesting, although some of it strikes me as unlikely. I'm bummed about no new classes, if it's true - while new races are nice, new classes definitely provide more variety in play. I know it's hard to balance classes, and adding one or two more would make it harder still, but personally that would excite me a lot more.

While Bababouille has a very strong track record, some of this stuff sounds pretty wild. Like Baylie, I'm just very skeptical.

The thing I'm wondering is...if they are ravaging old azeroth, doesn't that completely screw up the timeline for new players?

Not that that's neccessarily important in an MMO, just seems a little strange. They could always have "new Azeroth" as a whole separate area for 80+ I guess, but that wouldn't fit with the new (I assume level 1 to begin with) races which are tied to the new material. Just seems a little odd.

Give me more than 10 character slots on a server so I don't have to delete any of my toons!

I don't want to do it, but I WILL delete my level 40 night elf priest in order to roll a gnome one.

stevenmack wrote:

The thing I'm wondering is...if they are ravaging old azeroth, doesn't that completely screw up the timeline for new players?

Not that that's neccessarily important in an MMO, just seems a little strange. They could always have "new Azeroth" as a whole separate area for 80+ I guess, but that wouldn't fit with the new (I assume level 1 to begin with) races which are tied to the new material. Just seems a little odd.

It actually seems like they're restructuring Azeroth to allow for better leveling; breaking up the Barrens, reimaging Azshara as a low level zone, stuff like that.

All in all it seems sorta likely, but too little, too late for me. WoW has lost it's glamour for many of the same reasons that FFXI did a few years ago.

Some of this seems very likely, and some seems insane. So Ill believe the framework, but not the details so far.
The next expansion focusing on the old world, adding the two proposed races, and likely some maelstrom stuff has been the logical step for a while. Combining this with a revamp of the rest of Azeroth would fit well, I just cant see them redoing EVERYTHING + blowing up the timeline for the lvl 1+ story progression (would you go back in time when lvling up?).

No new classes is actually what makes this quite trustworthy. I wouldnt expect Blizz to add more than a few new classes at best over the lifespan of WoW (which I assume will be very long still). New classes create too many problems (imagine having 20 classes balanced to make them useful for 10man raids, not to mention arena).

I have a hard time believing any of that. Maybe opening up the classes to other races, but almost all of the rest of it I am taking with a grain of salt.

If it is true, will I play it? Sure. But WoW really doesn't shine for me anymore. I think I am mostly past that phase in my life.

Nonetheless, consider me extremely skeptical. So much about this just flies in the face of so many of their past design decisions.

So many of the things talked about basically destroy old content, but Blizzard has been very careful not to cut off old instances to people. The destruction of Blackrock Spire? Wailing caverns? Orgrimmar? They have never taken instances from the game and just completely thrown them out never to be seen again. Why would they start now?

Also, I think Thrall handing off the Horde to Garrosh is bullsh*t. Thrall knows Garrosh is not ready to lead. And plus, the comics (however terrible they may be) have already reestablished the Guardians of Tirisfal. They were restarted by Aegwynn and contain Garona, an undead warlock (can't remember her name), and Me'dan (the son of Garona and Medivh). Me'dan was seen as the new leader of the Guardians of Tirisfal. I doubt Thrall would ever take that job. He has too much loyalty to his people.

If this is all true. I will eat my hat.

It could certainly be a fanboy wishlist. We'll see. It would answer one of my biggest complaints about WoW, that the world and story never change or progress. They did a little bit in Wrath, but I'd like more. Tell an epic story with epic events, it's a video game! You can do ANYTHING! I'm constantly disappointed that developers tell pretty humdrum stories, when they can put anything on the screen that they want. This version of Cataclysm would be a response to that, so I'd love it.

Thread now marked with more serious spoiler warnings. Say anything you like.

- Another update from the Something Awful forums

You're reading stuff that originates from SA.

I can just imagine all of them laughing

Despite the seemingly HUGE changes to Azeroth, they did toy with phasing a great deal more than ever before in Wrath. I could see all of old Azeroth being a huge phasing area, with a "never go back" choice for your high-level mains. It would also explain the rather slapdash nature of Wrath's major content, i.e. Naxx rehash instead of a real new raid, the long wait for Ulduar, and the raid boss arena model of Call of the Crusade; they were rebuilding parts of Azeroth.

NSMike wrote:

Despite the seemingly HUGE changes to Azeroth, they did toy with phasing a great deal more than ever before in Wrath. I could see all of old Azeroth being a huge phasing area, with a "never go back" choice for your high-level mains.

Yeah, the way I could see it working is if the continents you return to from post-80 Northrend is a completely different set of zones, leaving the low level stuff intact. It's the two new races that throw a spanner in those works though, as you couldn't really introduce them 'pre-cataclysm' as far as the lore is concerned.

More than anything though I'd appreciate the ability to fly through old Azeroth

stevenmack wrote:

It's the two new races that throw a spanner in those works though, as you couldn't really introduce them 'pre-cataclysm' as far as the lore is concerned.

They can always go the DK route and make them start at 58 (or even 68) once they're out of their starting zone.

Sonicator wrote:
stevenmack wrote:

It's the two new races that throw a spanner in those works though, as you couldn't really introduce them 'pre-cataclysm' as far as the lore is concerned.

They can always go the DK route and make them start at 58 (or even 68) once they're out of their starting zone.

That would mean you'd have a quick way to get a character of pretty much ANY class at a high level from the start - I was pretty sure Blizzard were against doing that sort of thing. Maybe they've changed their tune about it.

Would be quite an interesting option to implement for veteran players though (although, personally, I think I would have a hard time keeping track of all the stacks of abilities available for an unfamiliar character class/spec unless I'd followed the progression from level 1 upwards. It's why I've had difficulty sticking with the Death Knight.)

stevenmack wrote:
Sonicator wrote:
stevenmack wrote:

It's the two new races that throw a spanner in those works though, as you couldn't really introduce them 'pre-cataclysm' as far as the lore is concerned.

They can always go the DK route and make them start at 58 (or even 68) once they're out of their starting zone.

That would mean you'd have a quick way to get a character of pretty much ANY class at a high level from the start - I was pretty sure Blizzard were against doing that sort of thing.

Except for Death Knights.

Seth wrote:

Except for Death Knights.

Yeah but with limitations. They were a class designed to work that way from the start in a way that the existing ones aren't (unless they plan a major revamp) and they have an extensive tutorial campaign to run you through an introduction to how they work. You are also locked out until you already have a level 50 character and then rationed to just one per server (at least, last time i checked - can't remember if that changed recently or not).

I suppose they *could* set up similar tutorials/introduction campaigns for each class in the two new races but that would be..what? 5 or 6 different combinations for both the two new races? Seems like a LOT of work.

Also, starting a new game with a 50+ character and some initial gear sounds a lot like the sort of thing they'd add to their list of "charged for extras" like server changes, modifying appearance/gender, etc.

Then again, maybe their experiences with the DK has softened their stance on this going forward. Guess we'll see at Blizzcon

This all seems a bit far fetched... if Boubouille is right however, I don't think I could ever doubt anything I see on MMO-Champ again, this is all pretty far out stuff.

It sounds amazing, I hope it's true, and I assume we'll find out for sure during Blizzcon. I had managed to kick my WoW habit a few months ago, but this has me all excited again, I'm patching up to 3.2.0 as I type this. There was a quote from Metzen months ago, when asked what was next, he said "Boldness is next. Unbelievable Boldness is next.", I think this would qualify.

I hadn't heard that quote. This could be it though, and it would be "next", because BC and Wrath were basically more of the same.

Funny story: I've been listening to old Penny Arcade podcasts, and in an episode from (I think) 2006, they were discussing rumors about the new Alliance race coming in BC. Gabe was really hoping it wasn't the rumored Draenei, and instead suggested, believe it or not, Worgen. And then they riffed on that idea in an amusing way for a few minutes.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Funny story: I've been listening to old Penny Arcade podcasts, and in an episode from (I think) 2006, they were discussing rumors about the new Alliance race coming in BC. Gabe was really hoping it wasn't the rumored Draenei, and instead suggested, believe it or not, Worgen. And then they riffed on that idea in an amusing way for a few minutes.

They weren't the first ones to suggest it. Before the official BC race announcements were made, the WoW forums were full of fake "leaked new race info!" threads - a large number of these threads mentioned Goblins and Worgen, complete with the backstory that the Worgen were the cursed residents of Gilneas. If Blizzard really does release these races, it's definitely because players have been asking for them for years.

Mordiceius wrote:

So many of the things talked about basically destroy old content, but Blizzard has been very careful not to cut off old instances to people. The destruction of Blackrock Spire? Wailing caverns? Orgrimmar? They have never taken instances from the game and just completely thrown them out never to be seen again. Why would they start now?

I think the question is not really "why?" but "why not?"

I think what Blizzard has learned from BC and Lich King is that people really, really like Azeroth. So why not revamp it?

Yes, Blizzard has a track record of dumping old content -- the Onyxia quest line is dead and buried, for instance. It's not a long track record, but such a move in Cataclysm wouldn't be unprecedented.

And, true, Blizzard hasn't ever closed down an old instance. But it nerfed all of the old-world dungeons a while ago. (With patch 3.0? I don't recall.) Might as well close them all -- good luck finding 5 people at level to go through anything before you get to Hellfire.

Tell you the truth, I'm really excited about New Azeroth, especially with the idea that Things Have Changed since we've been away in Outlands and Northrend. That's pretty dramatic.

Playable gobins and worgen seem to be more of a sop to the well-we've-gotta-offer-the-fanbase-something-new dynamic. I've already got enough alts, thanks.

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