by Medeor on Aug 25, 2009
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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:
And the high points Pre-Cataclysm:
And tons more...
Did I mention more Paladins? My only issue is that I've never seen a
Light Dwarf..ba dum bum.
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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:
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