WoW: Cataclysm - SPOILERS WITHIN

That was the very first thing I noticed in the preview trailer. It also appears that they've made a lot of additional (primarily subtle) updates to the graphics engine, and it may possibly include a new texture overhaul.

It does note in the new FAQ that the minimum spec may have changed now, and that they will announce what exactly it is in the future; this more than anything is the 'balls of steel' change I admire them for. might annoy some, but I think most folks would agree that running Wrath on the published min spec was akin to wading thru glue. Question is how far will they move the minimum forward; I know a number of teens still playing on old fixed function card based laptops, could spell the end for that type of setup, we'll see.

So I guess this is basically WoW 2.0 or close to it.

I wonder what the new character advancement "titan" is.

And did they say heroic Deadmines? Man, if that doesn't tickle something nostalgic...

gewy wrote:

For a casual, mostly solo, rarely PVP and never raiding player like myself, I wonder how much content this is going to have for me (compared to past expansions)... I don't know how eager I am to level a new character from 1-85.

You've described me right there. But I am eager to level a Worgen. One of my WoW pleasures was leveling alts - until I just did it too many times - the same quests, the same zones, really there is only so many times you can do the same thing before you just go nuts. Changes to the old world are a perfect solution to this - being able to level another alt or two and see totally new things, new quests. I can't wait.

And nostalgia has always been part of the experience for me, having been playing since beta (with a few months' hiatus here and there) - and it will be cool to really have that nostalgia be a part of your memory, since we'll never be able to go back ... kinda makes it more special in a way, corny as that sounds.

gewy wrote:

For a casual, mostly solo, rarely PVP and never raiding player like myself, I wonder how much content this is going to have for me (compared to past expansions)... I don't know how eager I am to level a new character from 1-85.

Considering how much effort seems to be going into the new zones, remaking the old world, as well as keeping the level cap lower, I think Blizzard sees this as the expansion to target new players and re-rollers. I enjoyed the one human character that I took through Elwynn Forest, Westfall, and Duskwood. Those probably won't see much of a change. But after doing that once, every single character since then has been a blood elf because I prefer the newer starting zones. I'm really looking forward to rolling a new character to see everything they update.

AcidCat wrote:

You've described me right there. But I am eager to level a Worgen. One of my WoW pleasures was leveling alts - until I just did it too many times - the same quests, the same zones, really there is only so many times you can do the same thing before you just go nuts. Changes to the old world are a perfect solution to this - being able to level another alt or two and see totally new things, new quests. I can't wait.

I'm with you - this last trip through, levelling an alt with my wife, got really dull at certain points. Some of those old world quests are just ridiculously tedious. I really hope they do rework all the old quest lines so that I can justify levelling another alt (or two) all the way up with her.

It seems strange that this would be the focus of the expansion, though. For the last couple of years, they seem to devote most of their resources to the hardcore raiders/PvPers. It would be a pretty big change to focus on the average player again.

Lol tauren Paladins? that brings "holy cow" to a new level, and now we have goblins, the gnomes of the horde, personally though I am angered and excited that there messing up the whole world. At least i was half right, i thought the new expansion was going to be Deathwing but in the Emerald dream, *sigh* we can now only sit and wait.

Now that im finished reading your posts its obvious that what blizzard wanted is for players getting bored to stay and retired players to come back, us wow veterans are going to be rolling out the alts by the dozens not only will the world be changed and well have new races but imagine redoing human quests as hunters or dwarve quests as a mage

Is it weird that I'm excited by the elimination of lots of stats and a back to basics approach? Bye bye mp5, spell power, armor penetration, AP on gear et al

im cuirios about this new proffesion Archeology

You make artifacts with it so I wonder if this is going to be like making trinkets or some sort of Diablo 2 charm system. Or maybe a hybrid charm system with special holding bags like how they made special key bags or soul stone bags for warlocks.

And yes I am totally with you Ely on coveting the less stat intensive content. I can only imagine how awesome it will be to go through all the revamped newbie zones with death knight style phasing. They may totally deflate SWKOR's big selling point, its story focus. Downright vicious they are, them Blizzards.

Elysium wrote:

Is it weird that I'm excited by the elimination of lots of stats and a back to basics approach? Bye bye mp5, spell power, armor penetration, AP on gear et al

I don't dread it nor am I excited. I'm in "hmm..interesting" mode. But I get where you are coming from.

I quite like the prospect of 'basic' stats, as it's a pain in the a** working out every detail of a spec with gear, talents, gems, glyphs (and they're adding another facet in the 'path of the titans') for 6 characters, some with dual spec. As a warlock main, I also like what they're doing with shards, getting rid of the items, and making them into DK style 'runes' to charge up an ability.

Elysium wrote:

Is it weird that I'm excited by the elimination of lots of stats and a back to basics approach? Bye bye mp5, spell power, armor penetration, AP on gear et al

Not weird at all. The stat proliferation that came with the combat rating system just added more gear complexity. Less specific gear will mean leaner drop tables. You're not the only one excited.

I know I wouldn't mind having a lot less JC cuts and enchants as a result of stat streamlining.

Getting rid of defense and the whole catch-22 of needing to run instances to gear up before you can tank those instances is an overdue change IMO.

Reforging gear is interesting too. I wonder if you'll be able to do it for people via the trade window or if it'll be like BS sockets / scribe shoulders, etc.

Dr.Ghastly wrote:
Elysium wrote:

Is it weird that I'm excited by the elimination of lots of stats and a back to basics approach? Bye bye mp5, spell power, armor penetration, AP on gear et al

I don't dread it nor am I excited. I'm in "hmm..interesting" mode. But I get where you are coming from.

I think overall it's a good change simply because with such a huge range of available stats on gear, there was no way to make them all - 1) See play without dropping a million items, 2) Balanced against each other without one just being "as much as you can" and possibly another being "avoid at all costs" (I'm looking at you mana/5), and 3) Needlessly confusing for players (if all the stats were balanced against each other, you'd have to spend hours finding the right mix of all of them).

I don't like that the cop-out for ArP was "it's too mathy". I hate armor pen mostly because it's hard to conceptualize even from a mechanics point of view, was either too good or completely unwanted (arms warriors vs ret paladins) depending on who picked it up, and was in fact far to hard to really understand. Just saying "it's too mathy" indicates a somewhat lazy attitude and I hope it's just shorthand for the above. Otherwise it's a little belittling. Math is hard, guys.

There's just alot of things here that have me on the fence between "that's lazy design" and "that's very elegant and genius". One of them is the fact that items are being completely flattened out, and then players are going to be expected to customize them with the reforging that will be available to crafting classes. On one hand it solves the problem of overspecialized gear - for pure example, when the only plate that drops is str/stam/crit and holy paladins are expected to take it to someone to switch the str with int, that's a pretty good way of solving "oh god spell plate again seriously". On the other hand, it does somewhat feel like they just threw their hands up in the air and said "we can't figure it out, you do it." It'll allow intelligent players to make intelligent decisions about their itemization (there's too little of this right now), but again it puts a little too much of an onus on the player to make things up. Like I said, kinda wavering back and forth there.

I do like that they're not going to continue with the talent trees. I'm interested in seeing how they slim it all down, really.

All in all when I saw the stuff posted on MMO Champ, I was thinking "well if this is all true I just don't really care and I'll be done after 3.3" but seeing some of the stuff on top of this has me at least holding out to see how it plays out before I make that choice.

Elysium wrote:

Is it weird that I'm excited by the elimination of lots of stats and a back to basics approach? Bye bye mp5, spell power, armor penetration, AP on gear et al

I guess this means there'll be an open chair for the Conference Call.

As the type who enjoys leveling characters the most, I can't wait for all the new low level quests. Based on some of the flybys and screenshots, pretty much every starting zone will be redone. All new terrain, all new quests, and probably new creatures, too.

Giving me a reason to level another half dozen alts to max level would really glue me to this game. Since I don't raid, there's pretty much nothing to keep me playing once I hit max level. The achievement system was a good start, but it's missing something. The ability to create several significantly different characters with the new talent customization stuff just sounds great.

Also, I hope Teldrassil sinks and takes that jerk Staghelm with it.

Scratched wrote:

As a warlock main, I also like what they're doing with shards, getting rid of the items, and making them into DK style 'runes' to charge up an ability.

Really? My Warlock is only 70, but this change seems very much like a "dumbing down" of the class. It's like, people complained, so they did things like the "multiple shards from Drain Soul" and making 10000 slot shard bags, but people still complained, so "fine you only get 3, and you have to stop your rotation if you want to get more in the fight, as opposed to being rewarded for preparedness."

It's too early to say "it's awesome and nothing can go wrong with this idea for soulshards", but at the moment, I welcome the change and want to see what it's like.

Having been the summoning b*tch in molten core ("hey, i'm just going to hearth to get repairs. summon me back, ok?") so many times because I spent 20m farming spiders beforehand, using shards as a reagent on mostly trivial spells isn't my idea of a fun class mechanic. They've improved the situation since then, but this is a step above what I had hoped for (an item in your bag like the shaman totem that gets charges).

Armor Penetration: This ability is too confusing and "mathy."

The reason, in a nutshell, why I am quitting, and why I am satisfied that quitting is the right choice. I'll kill Arthas, and then, good luck, warcrafters butanmashers!

(btw vacation is awesome)

Seth wrote:
Armor Penetration: This ability is too confusing and "mathy."

The reason, in a nutshell, why I am quitting, and why I am satisfied that quitting is the right choice. I'll kill Arthas, and then, good luck, warcrafters butanmashers!

(btw vacation is awesome)

This is the reason, in a nutshell, why I will most likely be coming back. I love that they're getting rid of the boring annoying stuff. Less time min/maxing, more time having fun.

Warlock wrote:
Scratched wrote:

As a warlock main, I also like what they're doing with shards, getting rid of the items, and making them into DK style 'runes' to charge up an ability.

Really? My Warlock is only 70, but this change seems very much like a "dumbing down" of the class. It's like, people complained, so they did things like the "multiple shards from Drain Soul" and making 10000 slot shard bags, but people still complained, so "fine you only get 3, and you have to stop your rotation if you want to get more in the fight, as opposed to being rewarded for preparedness."

Dumbing down? You know what I use shards for at 80, top 10 man horde raiding guild? Jack sh*t. I don't use them.

This is not dumbing it down at all..

Seth wrote:
Armor Penetration: This ability is too confusing and "mathy."

The reason, in a nutshell, why I am quitting, and why I am satisfied that quitting is the right choice. I'll kill Arthas, and then, good luck, warcrafters butanmashers!

(btw vacation is awesome)

Bye.

While Im glad to see Armor penetration going away (btw, its not! (afaik) only from gear/armor, they stated armor penetration or similar might still exist in talents) I can somewhat follow Seths point of using complexity as a reason to remove stuff.
If they really think something is too complex (and isnt it okay if something is complex once in a while?) maybe try to explain it better in the game, instead of taking it away.

At first when I heard about 'making the talent trees simpler' I thought this too. Talent trees complex? Really? However, after hearing more, and thinking a bit about it, the talent simplification actually sounds great. Removing some of the talents everyone take, make them 'free bonsuses for choosimng that talent tree, and leave the talents behind where there are actual choices. Thats not even simplification imo, rather it might become more difficult to spreadsheet the best talent spec (or maybe it wont, we still don't know enough obviously).

For the same reasons Im not sure about streamlining the stats. Its good to see some of them go, but at the same time Im worried if this streamlining, which went on through Lich king as well, are the road to '1 stat to rule them all' (exaggerating a bit) giving whatever your class needed from it.
At that point they might as well remove gear and call it a day (which in another perspective might not be so bad after all! although I guess a few million WoW players might quit in rage).

On a different note, Im a bit dissapointed about the removal of the old world. I liked it. Sure, I didnt enjoy it after lvling thorugh it for the 7th time, and thus a new world is nice I guess. But for new players I would have preferred if they had simply streamlined the old world/quests a bit (kept the most importat ones storywise, removing the fillers for the speeded up lvling etc).
And if nothing else, at least kept the old world as some sort of instance through Caverns of Time. Its a sad loss of good content.
Might also feel awkward jumping back in time if you are one of the people who actually read the quests (which I guess a Blizz dev tried to argue no one does) when you hit lvl 60 and outlands.

Shadout wrote:

On a different note, Im a bit dissapointed about the removal of the old world. I liked it. Sure, I didnt enjoy it after lvling thorugh it for the 7th time, and thus a new world is nice I guess. But for new players I would have preferred if they had simply streamlined the old world/quests a bit (kept the most importat ones storywise, removing the fillers for the speeded up lvling etc).

I definitely get where you're coming from here, and feel a bit of the nostalgia for what's about to be lost myself. The thing is though, that I am utterly confident that they are making a wonderful decision here. If you log into any traditional MMO that's been running for a few years and has had an expanded world you'll find that the "old" zones are almost invariably totally empty. At best they will have an alt or two in them that is being powerleveled through by a max level avatar and will only be in the zone a matter of hours before completing it. The rare real newbie in these zones will find themselves in an oddly barren "single player MMO" devoid of the interaction most are looking for, and it leads to people quitting after the trial or first 30 days out of the box.

MMO's seem to grow like cities. Eventually the original game is like the downtown area of a city, it gets old and run down and nobody really wants to go there anymore. Blizzard seems to be acting like a forward thinking city council and renovating their downtown to bring it new life, rather than letting it slide into urban decay and disuse.

Shadout wrote:

Might also feel awkward jumping back in time if you are one of the people who actually read the quests (which I guess a Blizz dev tried to argue no one does) when you hit lvl 60 and outlands.

The first time I run any quest, I actually do read it.

Elycion wrote:

MMO's seem to grow like cities. Eventually the original game is like the downtown area of a city, it gets old and run down and nobody really wants to go there anymore.

Just not sure this will change it. The low lvl areas of Azeroth will probably still be empty after a some months, except for people flying over on their mounts once in a while to reach the new high lvl zones.
In any case, its not like a lvl 20 in Azeroth will have a whole lot interaction with any lvl 85 which might pass by anyway (beside maybe being ganked by them).

Renewing the old content and replacing it is entirely different ways to handle the issue as well. For instance they could have picked some zones as lvl 1-60 lvling zones (the 'best' ones, with most story content etc), refreshed them (but kept them pre-cataclysm), and then picked other zones (like those people never bothered going to/low on content) rebooting those into new high lvl zones within the cataclysm story.
From what Blizz showed, it seems like there might be 3-4 separate major areas to lvl from 1-60 in Cataclysm. In some ways it seems like a waste of potential, using all those remade areas for something which goes pretty fast these days.

Will have to see how it all turns out though. Its not like it will be a disaster or anything, just makes me a bit sad to see some of the nice content in the old world getting removed, and at the same time, when they do choose to make a reboot, it seems lackluster to remake all of it into new 1-60 zones instead of making some of it high lvl content.

Authors of levelling guides are probably having a breakdown right now, all that work to be redone.

One thing I am a bit pleased about: No new 'main' capital city like Shattrath or Dalaran. People will either use the existing ones, or return to the faction cities.
Do the worgen/goblins get a city each? The cataclysm site doesn't mention any new capitals in gilneas/lost isles.

Think they mentioned Worgen would get their 'own place' in SW. Which might mean they wont get their own place anywhere else.

So, still no housing?