Welcome
to The
Overpull, Ten Ton Hammer's weekly newsletter that discusses all things
WoW.

 

style="width: 250px; height: 50px;"
src="http://images.tentonhammer.com/newsletters/wow/farmwipe.gif"
alt="Now on Farm or That's a Wipe">

Blizzcon
was so full of "teh win," the only negative I can find is me missing
the event in person!



Let's hit the high points of Cataclysm:

  • style="font-style: italic;">Complete Re-working of
    Azeroth with flight included.
  • style="font-style: italic;">Guild Leveling System
  • style="font-style: italic;">Stat Simplification
  • style="font-style: italic;">Deathwing -
    a favorite of mine
  • style="font-style: italic;">Finally seeing Hyjal in
    all it's glory
  • style="font-style: italic;">Goblins and Worgens
    - jury is a bit mixed, but the racial bonuses rock.
  • style="font-style: italic;">New Class options, Tauren Paladins
    and Dwarf Shaman means more people can see the light and enjoy two of the
    best classes in the game.
  • style="font-style: italic;">Talent Masteries and Path
    of the Titans, no idea what
    these are in any kind of real depth, but sound quite cool. style="font-style: italic;">
  • style="font-style: italic;">Rated Battlegrounds

And the high points Pre-Cataclysm:

  • Return
    of the Brood Mother, Onyxia
  • style="font-style: italic;">Cross-realm LFG channel

And tons more...



Did I mention more Paladins? My only issue is that I've never seen a
Light Dwarf..ba dum bum.

 

  style="font-weight: bold;">Blues Clues 



style="text-decoration: underline;"> href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=19378792832&pageNo=2&sid=1#30">Messiah
was right, people aren't smart

class="blue">Last week we had the href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/72853">Overgeared
Underskilled debate, apparently
feeding right into Blizzards desire to make things easier. Ghostcrawler
on Simplifying Stats:

"What
we were finding is that in many cases things
had just become so complicated that players were not making intelligent
decisions based on their knowledge of how various stats benefited them
."



href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=19377464491&pageNo=1&sid=1#7">Don't
squash the small guys!

Nethaera on how guild leveling won't punish smaller guilds:

" class="blue"> style="font-style: italic;">Guild advancement is
based on the performance of the
top 20 producers within the guild. If you have a small guild of 20 (or
less), then every person's contributions will count."



href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=19381854481&pageNo=1&sid=1#2">Nothing
to see here...yet.

As always we want to get into the beta and we want it now! Nethaera
says hold on to your horses, " class="blue"> style="font-style: italic;">As always, when there is
a beta, we will announce
it. Please be wary of any and all claims of a beta or alpha for the new
expansion being held."

  valign="top">  

style="width: 250px; height: 50px;"
src="http://images.tentonhammer.com/newsletters/wow/mishapsmayhem.gif"
alt="Medeor's Mishaps and Mayhem">

Palms
sweating, blood pressure rising, nerve endings blaring, is the
Cataclysm upon us? Oh wait that's an injury and why I'm hopped up on
muscle relaxers. Don't expect full and complete thoughts or sentences,
just ride along on today's magic carpet ride.



The last few days have been nothing short of staggering when trying to
weed through all of the changes coming to style="font-style: italic;">World of Warcraft
in the recently announced expansion Cataclysm. 



I was shocked, impressed, curious, skeptical and even grateful as the
news seeped out of Blizzcon. While I'm very excited about the changes,
Ethec brought up a major point of contention for me in today's href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/73307">"Loading...Blizzard's
Master Stroke."
Namely, that Cataclysm is really WoW 2.0 and changes everything. The
old game will be gone, stats are being removed and changed. Whole
character progressions will change, not to mention the addition of two
new races and their starting areas. Almost every zone appears to be
touched by the expansion (they've said some won't change drastically
but will still be reworked). Are we ready for that? If I knew that
everything I worked for so far could be for naught, I might be a bit
peeved. Blizzard has been very good at transitioning, but as Ethec
pointed out, every company can have their Waterloo..aka NGE.



I know you're curious about my thoughts, so I'll go ahead and share my
gut reactions to what I heard:

  • style="font-weight: bold;">Before the
    expansion rolls out we get Onyxia
    - this is the start of the "New" Blizzard that goes back and reworks
    worlds. I'm a big fan of this change.
  • style="font-weight: bold;">New races -
    I
    went from meh to thinking the new races might be kind of cool. I'm an
    alt-aholic so leveling another character never bums me out. Will they
    keep the refer-a-friend live when the expansion hits? I see a lot of
    people speed-leveling to be server-first either way.
  • style="font-weight: bold;">Re-working Azeroth.
    In a word, brilliant. Why drag around this long-in-the-tooth content
    when re-tooling and reshaping it would be so much fun? And add flying,
    check.
  • style="font-weight: bold;">Deathwing.
    I'm not a total lore-whore but I do enjoy some of the books. Deathwing
    should be in the game.
  • style="font-weight: bold;">The Trailer,
    there always has to be a trailer. It is pretty good, but their
    cinematics are so much better that it's always hard to get too excited.
  • style="font-weight: bold;">Character changes.
    These are too numerous to name or even speculate, but we are going to
    see a complete wipe of current itemization. The line for QQing forms to
    the left. I am concerned here. Blizzard is struggling mightily to
    balance the game as it is, will a complete switch help that or destroy
    what's been built? On the flip side, they seem to be simplifying the
    system so maybe they've realized they'll never get the right mix with
    so many variables. When in doubt reduce the variables in the equation.

Next week we'll dive into more of the specifics, but for now I'm left
with more questions than answers as usual:



What
if they wiped the servers?
Seriously.
They won't, but they could. I can hear that baritone voice now "In the
Sundering all heroes fell into the Maelstrom or were devoured by
Deathwing. It is time for new heroes to emerge..."



Which
class will be the Cataclysm class?

Each round of major changes seems to elevate one or two classes over
the others in "fun factor" or makes them attractive in raids or they
just feel over-powered. This is all subjective according to me, and as
far as I know, I'm always right. In vanilla WoW I'd say Warlocks and
Shaman got to reign supreme. The Burning Crusade was all Druids and
Wrath of the Lich King has been Death Knights and Paladins (this is
changing though). Who gets the love in Cataclysm? So far I'd say it's
Hunters and maybe a swing back to Warlocks. The new shard system has me
dusting off my Warlock I can tell you that.



Will
people come back for Cataclysm?

Many of my raiding and non-raiding friends have dropped off over the
last few months. With absolutely nothing scientific to back it up, I'd
say the drop off was more severe and sooner than after The Burning
Crusade launched. Each expansion acts as both a welcome back and a swan
song it seems. Cataclysm won't launch until 2010 (hopefully) which
means we could be a year away plus. Can Blizzard carry this momentum
for a year? Will we be attending next year's Blizzcon saying "so how
about them Worgen and Goblins, when we gonna see them?"



My
last question
. Does this mean
we can put Dalaran back where it's supposed to go?



href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=45688">Stop
and share at our forums and feel
free to weigh on on anything here or elsewhere that excites you or
concerns you about the changes coming to WoW.



Have a great week, and thanks for reading.



-Jay "Medeor" Johnson




target="_blank" href="http://wow.tentonhammer.com/">





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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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