Heh, well... just toss the final dungeon behind a zone composed primarily of an nearly impossible to penetrate 3-dimensional labryinth (full of mermaids and walruses), followed by a tundra with huge incredibly-hard-to-see-while-auto-running valleys in it, and we've got ourselves some nostalgia!

I hereby predict the next expansion will be set on Elune.

If I were to guess wildly (which fits the theme of the thread anyhow) I could easily come up with some simple suggestions for inscriptions that would work for all classes (balance issues? Let's leave that to the testers )

1. Basic boring stat inscriptions: +10 primary stat of your choice while equipped (or +20, +50, +100 or whatever)... or like suffixes "I've got a permanent Crimson Totally Awesome Inscription of the Bandit (40 agi, 60 sta, 80 AP)" as my "red" inscription, or whatever.
2. Resistance inscriptions: + some huge amount of resistance to one (or two, or all) particular elements - hey, why not?
3. Hit, crit, spellhit, spellcrit rating inscriptions: You get the idea.

Okay, those are the obvious boring ones, but just because they are obvious and boring doesn't mean they might not make an entrance, and they would certainly be reason enough for everybody to inscribe. "Free" statboosts you can change once per day is something nobody will say no to. I like your idea of applying minor stacking debuffs - a fun one could be something like "when critically hitting your opponent with melee or ranged weapon, a stacking -200 armour debuff for 8s is applied, this debuff can stack 25 times and is refreshed with each crit" or something like that.

Let's go a bit farther afield, then

• Many spells and abilities arrive with a fixed interval of levels between each new variant and with an upgrade in power that is firmly based on the level. Allow players to inscribe what'll effectively be "this ability/spell of my choice counts as one rank higher". To take your example, Sinister Strike receives a new rank every 8 levels. Rank 10 arrived at level 70 so you will get rank 11 at 78 in Northrend (and rank 12 at 86 in whatever expansion comes after that). Inscribe your "Improved Sinister Strike" and you'll be using rank 11 from 70 to 77 and 12 from 78-80 in the expansion. (Okay, the effect of going up one rank of Sinister Strike is not all that big, so apply it to another of your abilities or spells)
• Ignore XXX armour from your target - I can think of many who wouldn't mind such one.
• MIGHTY ONE! - +10% to your primary stats, a personalised permanent blessing of kings that stacks with everything else. Why not?
• Aspect of <PRIMARY STAT> - the primary stat of choice is doubled.... (or multiplied by 1.5 or whatever). Powerful? Yes, surely.
• Protection - reduce all incoming damage by 10% (or by a flat -500 or something). In the first case everybody will love it but tanks more than anybody else, in the second case it is like a permanent "block" applied to all damage taken and hey, you just might have a killer inscription vs. DoTs in PvP.
• Killer - all your damage is increased by 5% (or variants of "crit damage is increased", "bleed damage is increased", "<element> damage is increased"

The possibilities are endless - how about some truly outrageous ones?

• Vitality: Increases energy gained per global energy tick by +5
• Extremely Thick Hide: Increases the armour cap by 5% (from 75% to 80%) - bears will kill for this.
• Elementalist: Your melee or ranged attacks deal an additional 25% of its damage as <fire/frost/nature/arcane> damage
• Mana focus: Allows 100% of your mana regeneration to continue in the FSR.
• Doubleup: Each attack or spell you cast has a 5% chance of performing an extra identical attack or spell instantly at a cost of zero energy/rage/mana. (Just like Lightning Overload, just much, much, better

When I can come up with something that simple and silly in 10-15 minutes, I'm sure Blizzard can too (though they'll probably look just a tiny bit more at the balance aspects ). I'm sure there'll be something useful from inscription whatever class you are.

Not quite a good enough resolution to use for much of anything, but that picture is going to become my cellphone wallpaper as soon as I get home.

I think every warlock and shadow priest is praying for that to be true. =P

This part of the speech has the double voice of Arthas and Ner'zhul. It's awesome.

The screenshots on MMO-Champion seem to have a much higher poly count than anything we've seen so far. This one in particular:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/images/n...creenshot2.jpg

I hope they take some time and update the old instances so they all look this good.

It says technical upgrades are in the works in the WotLK faq, my guess is yes they are.

On a topic that was brought up about the world map...

Anyone else notice the little island just northwest of the blood elf starting zone. Do I see possibility of the Sun Well area finally going in?

With Northrend being the focal of the expansion, I'm really looking forward to have a fire-immune-raid-boss-less expansion.

That, and to remove the piercings from my character's face that I didn't notice when creating her.

I'm personally hoping for an ice-immune boss just to piss off all those mages who went around making the "lol spec frost" posts.

I hope they do some model updates though... They said "yes" to some graphical updates and I can't think of anything that needs it more than the character models (would fit right in with giving us new dances/hairstyles). I'm rewatching the facial close-up portion of the video now... is that higher-polygon version of a human male?

Watching the feed, some new information coming out right now, from an expansion overview + Panel with Q&A. Remember, this information is LIVE:

* Likely to have *MORE* zones than Outland - many snowy, but they really don't want to do all snow
* They want to let characters "of all levels" interact with the characters (specifically Arthas) - they want to have interaction with him all along. Maybe similar to the Palatheon interaction in TBC?
* The Death Knight can "summon stuff" (Ghouls/Skeletons perhaps?)
* Inscription: Full-on (primary, I guess) profession, "similar to Jewelcrafting" - add effects "like maybe a knockback" to spells (their example)
* Character customizations: change your hairstyle + new hairstyles available ("Epic Barbershops are coming!")
* We will, "for sure" get to investigate Icecrown Glacier
* FLYING MOUNTS in Northrend

Zones:
* Two points of entry (we already know this) - Howling Fjord/Borean Tundra.
* Howling Fjord - zone split by the chasm of the Fjord (cliffs all around). Vrykul at "13-foot-tall Viking badasses", and are "really really evil ... starting to feel the call of the Lich King".
* Quick video of Howling Fjord -- looks a bit Hinterlandsy, but colder and dirtier. Very steep cliffs everywhere. Several large Titan-like statues poking out of the rock (think Archaedas)! Dragon sculptures in the rock (dragons flying around). Very scourgy and very snowy part, with mystical vents leaking some kind of energy.
* Borean Tundra - Home of the Tuskarr (from WC3 - "transient Walrus fisherman"). It's in the process of being transformed - the Naga have invaded and are melting all the ice! There are large Easter-Islandy Tuskarr standing stones (we'll get some of the "Tuskarr story" in the zone).
* Quick video of Borean Tundra - Warsong Hold is very ominous and VERY VERY warlike. Weird gnome town with an airstrip! :oD A primitive tuskarr town - they called it, maybe suggestively, a "Starting Town". Eerie, fog-laden ice cavern, to an underwater channel, to a large outdoor area of glaciers and icebergs.
* Grizzly Hills, north of Howling Fjord - home of the Furbolgs, home town Grizzlemaw, ANCIENT dwarf town of Thor Modan (sp?). It's a redwood forest-style zone, think pacific northwest.
* Quick video of Grizzly Hills: very tall trees, spaced-out, rocky with fog - think Silverpine but much older, "warmer, more inviting", and more lush. The zone *appears* to be split into two sections (they have a design schematic for the zone) but it's hard to tell, honestly.
* Dragonblight - Wyrmrest Temple, ancient meeting place of the Dragonflights. The zone has an entrance to Azjol-Nerub!! It looks cold, bleak, with deep, craggy ice caves, harsh terrain and, of course, HUGE dragon skeletons everywhere. One of the largest zones in Northrend.
* Quick video of Dragonblight - lots of expansive snow areas, a creepy forest ("spooky", they call it). A very short video indeed.

Capital Cities:
* Where's our Shattrath? What's our capital city?
* IT'S DALARAN!! :oD
* The Kirin Tor, to set up a final front against the Blue Dragonflight - who have been going nuts and are SO against magic, under Malygos (who's gone a bit nutty?) - have MOVED Dalaran to Northrend!
* CONFIRMATION - You can use your flying mount in Northrend. They mentioned it in getting to Dalaran.

Improvements and Additions:
* "With the impending addition of Gnome Death Knights ..." *laughs*
* Siege Weapons
* Entirely new type of outdoor world PvP zone - capturing objectives, having it impact other things on Northrend. It will be called "Lake Wintergrass", dedicated PvP zone even on PvE servers. It's located between Borean Tundra and Dragonblight.
* Destructible buildings - primary goal for the new BG is to blow up the enemy base!
* New BG is expected to be about 15 vs. 15, typical match maybe 30-40 minutes at most.
* New Arena seasons - new maps and gear of course.

Death Knight Class:
* Tanking/DPS roles
* Expected to tank with 2-handers or DW, no "wussy shields"
* Death Knights will be oriented around bladed weapons, talking about the relationship that DKs have with their "Rune Weapon". Will be extended to axes and such also. "Or the little sword gnome, whatever."

Gah - they interrupted the panel to watch a tournament! Grrr. Will update if/when I get more information.

I'll keep this updated as it comes in. Slow day in research today.

Other stuff: They apparently planned Daily Quests as a way to specifically fight gold buying/selling.

NM, fast moving topic.

Once the DL on the higher resolution trailer finishes I'm definitely going back and looking closely at the models. Most of the races need some facial work. Moustacheless human males definitely need to lose the cleft palate.

All those changes to the world map.
I guess they are simply adding some of the already known areas to the world map, they forgot in vailla WoW. They know they will get back to them some day, no need to have more islands suddenly popping up, like the Draenei isles, if they should have been there already.

The skin etching thing sounds like it could be a pretty good lead in for the implementation of Inscriptions. Possibly a etched rune for each body part for that skill/stat boosting effect.

A full zone of PvP... so much that can be done with this. Whoever controls the main city makes the whole zone thiers, letting you do quests with your own questgivers and flight paths. Make the other faction fight to take it back.

Something that was overlooked by a lot of people was the following three words "World wide buffs" This is obviously an attempt to beat WAR to the punch, and is a brilliant move on their part. WoW players have been craving meaningful wold pvp for years.

Well, there's already a half frost immune one in Hydross and a frost immune one in Sapphiron (maybe KT, I didn't get to him). But I think there'll be lots of frost immune ones that will be lol spec fire/lol spec arcane.

Kind of expand Halaa for the whole area instead of the town. Can't wait.

Well I meant on the order of magnitude that there were fire immune ones.

Anyone notice that they mention the Tuskar town as their "starting town" ?

I wonder what they're going to do to make holding it an actual contest on servers like mine, where there's a huge imbalance.

My own thoughts are, whichever side has the tactical disadvantage from population and gear should gain some kind of advantage from NPCs and environments; the more one side wins a battle, the harder it should be for that side to win the next battle.

I mean, my server still has a lot more alliance than horde (1.6:1 ratio according to warcraftrealms). During prime time, alliance control most of the outdoor PvP objectives. Late at night, horde do, as a kind of server-wide Turtle Wax. That's stable, and therefore boring. Any clue how they'll avoid that?

Hm... I supppose one method is hero classes. Sure, our server has a 1.6:1 ratio today, but once anyone on any server can create a high-level Death Knight on the horde side on our server, maybe it'll change.

I could see them using Halaa as the example and making it almost a epic type zone. They are trying to push PvP to become a alternate to raiding, so why not have a 24/7 Alterac Valley zone with rewards equal to level 80 epics.

Seige weapons to destory cities to the point you "leave" and the other side takes it over and rebuilds. Once rebuilt, it's thier city until it's destroyed.

Or the longer you own the city, the better the rewards get that you can turn in for. Give people a reason to fight for it.

This could backfire though on 1 faction heavy servers (which I think are almost all of them)