World of Warcraft: Cataclysm - Features - Lore



Yes, she will make an appearance.

nevermind: delete please

Edit: nevermind that answer, something new instead.

It was mentioned that all four Elemental Planes will feature. A summary of what was said:

- Deepholm (Earth): Major hub zone, see above
- Skywall (Air): Dungeon/Raid
- Firelands: Dungeon/Raid accessed from Mount Hyjal
- Abyssal Maw: Accessed from Sunken City.

So instead of the "New Azeroth/South Seas" expansions that I (and others possibly) were more or less expecting, it's more like a "New Azeroth/Elemental Planes" expansion. A few bits of South Seas area were mentioned, but still no word on Kul Tiras and nearby islands. Presumably all lost?

She'll be a part of the story, but I wouldn't bank of confronting her or even her making a direct appearance.

I'd guess that she'll be about as directly involved with the events of Cataclysm as she was with the events of The Frozen Throne.

So it seems WoW info is over for a few hours. Up later today is the Classes/Items/Profs panel, and tomorrow is the very interesting sounding Game Systems panel, which will hopefully make some more sense out of the Paths and Mastery customization systems.

The Classes Panel will feature the new racials, and probably a lot more on Archaeology and new race/class combos.

Diablo 3 Monk Gameplay

Edit:
Official Monk Trailer

Official Monk Gameplay

Monk Abilities

Class-Race-Profession Panel Recap.

Soul Shards are being completely overhauled to be a way of enhancing other spells in the middle of fights.

Hunters will no longer use Mana, will use Focus instead.

Mp5 being completely removed.

Spirit getting changed, all healers will get Meditation type abilities.

Spellpower gone, Int now provides Spellpower/Mana.

AP Gone, Agility = 2 AP for Rogues/Hunter/Shamans/Druids.

Defense Gone, Anti-Crit now in talent trees.

Armor Pen Gone, replaced with a new stat called Mastery.

Haste now increases rate of Rune/Regen/Focus/Energy mechanics.

Block Value Gone. Blocks will now have a % reduction of damage.

Shadowmourne the new Legendary. 2H Axe from Icecrown.

Archeology, secondary profession. Seems to be a casual fun profession, in addition to working w/ the new Path of the Titans system. Appears to be an endgame-oriented profession.

Reforging- can be done by BS, JC, Eng, LW and Tailors, allows you to change the stats on gear, halving one to add a stat that's not already on the item.

Now going to have items that allow you to, for instance, make 1 item and get 5 trade skill points, to help with levelling trade skills.

Not mentioned earlier- Goblins have an Alchemy bonus, always get max % discount at vendors, and have a summonable pet bank (on a cooldown.)

Worgens have a skinning bonus, a sprint, and have both Worgen and Human forms, although Worgen Form is the only one used in combat.

Fishing going to be changed to make more fun, but he can't get into details yet.

First Legendary in Cataclysm will be for Casters.

They are getting rid of Ranks for all abilities- will now auto-scale with level-ups.

They are going to look at and adjust the levels you get class abilities out to try and smooth out levelling for problematic specs.

They want to give totems more active abilities.

Gathering bonuses will become more flexible. If you have 2 Gathering professions you can track both at once.

They intend for Shaman to be the best AoE healers, it sounds like Priests/Druids may have their AoE heals toned down a bit, from the tone of his comments.

Spellpower Plate sticking around, unfortunately.

+Hit may be taken out of talent trees, and available only on gear.

They don't want to give the ability to repair to classes because it takes away from Repair Bots.

All healers to receive all dispels, but each class will have one it's "best" at.

They are reworking treasure chests to make them better/less exploitable.

They're likely to have 3 new spells levelling, one at 81, 83 and 85.

Bows/Crossbows may go to Engineering.

"Improved Buff" Talents likely to be eliminated in the talent tree revamp.

Some more news... apparently intellect will now provide spellpower and mana and spellpower will be removed.

Which means mind mastery would have to be reworked?... I would say it just increases intellect but we have arcane mind already.

Spellpower, MP5, and Armor Penetration are now gone. ArP has been replaced by Mastery which will be explained tomorrow. Haste will now increase your energy gain, rage gain and rune gain rate. Because of the removal of those stats there will be a ton more stamina on gear.

This looks to be an even better expansion than WotLK with the streamlining.

Also, 2h legendary axe named Shadowmourne (for hunters, obviously).

Reforge items to reduce one stat for another - finally a way for proper plate dps items

Shadowmourne, not Frostmourne.

To be honest it sounds like this is more of a change to WoW 2 than a simple expansion to progress the game story.

Actually, the guy said First Legendary on deck would be for dps casters (in response to a complaint about lack of caster legendaries). The first legendary is going to be a 2h axe.

They also alluded to possibly making hit less of an issue for all classes, although it wasn't directly answered. All in all, the direction appears to be to simplify itemization choices for everybody.

One thing that worried me is the specifics of reforging: They stated that you would not be able to convert a useless stat to something that already existed on the item. That probably means that we're going to have to choose a stat other than our #1 stat. Casters generally don't have as many stats as melee do that directly affect our dps, so I'm thinking we're going to be at a slight disadvantage.

Now they have changed WoW Vanilla does anybody think that it has opened up more opportunities for more Caverns of Time instances, so people can still re-live some ex-azeroth?.

OF COURSE!

Or: Caverns of time is shattered and and the magics begin to take over southern Kalimdor/Tanaris is a bunch of random old-world phase zones mixed into one.

Daliy phases comes to mind: a new area each day with its own sets of dalies due to the instability caused by the cataclysm interacting with the CoT.

just random speculation.

With faction change now available, wonder if you could level a horde character to 80 now and change it to a worgen on the first day of the expansion.

You can choose the race you'll be transferring to, but if/when you want to return to your original faction, you'll return to your original race (race/class restrictions apply).

It's probably being done precisely because gear has gotten so jammed with stats.

I'm completely in favor of these changes, provided Blizzard doesn't mess it up. I feel like I need a PhD in mathematics just to figure out my gear upgrades. There was a time when I was willing to pour over spreadsheets and simulators for hours on end to find the optimal gear set, but that time is long gone. I really shouldn't need to spend hours outside of the game to play it well. If anything, that is what is really boring about the current itemization system.

No offense to those of you that enjoy crafting spreadsheets and simulators. Your hard work is always appreciated.

Yeah, but it seems there isn't going to be any way to have interesting items anymore. Especially for a class like mages/warlocks which apparently won't sue spirit, their items will look like: Stam, Int, crit/haste/hit; doesn't seem terribly exciting to me. Any thoughts on how they might remedy that? Not to mention haveing less stats means they'll probably have to redo the itemization formulas from the ground up, or have underpowered items for a while.

PS: For me at least, part of the excitement of getting into nicer, epic raid quality, gear was that it had more stats than the leveling blues and greens, which made them feel more powerful regardless of actual numbers. I can't say i really look forward to seeing my lvl82 of the bear with bigger numbers; though i suppose it won't necessarily go that direction

Catcalysm possible changes on Blizzcon today - Interesting. A lot of the shadowpriest current concerns - mostly scaling - were addressed.

Haste: Will increase the rate at which you gain energy, runes, and focus. Retribution paladins and Enhancement shaman will have a talent that allows them to take advantage of this benefit.

Shadow priests get a instant nuke with no cooldown. Cool.

Spirit-->Spellpower gone. No more worrying about our conversion compared to other classes. We all scale (exactly the same?) with Int.


All in all, it looks like this changes were made to basically address scaling. Every class now scales the same(with gear). I think Blizzard was finally tired of being beaten over the head with this, and can make changes more easily if a class is a little low on dps.

A dev mentioned today (my stream went out for a bit so this was via Tankspot's feed) that they'll be doing same-faction race changes after they make sure faction changes are working.

I understood that those lost stats in item budgets will be transferred to stamina (this is how they are planning on giving Mages and Warlocks as much health as a Warrior).