Cataclysm

[Simond]

Goblin mount concept art: http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/august/cataclysmpreviewpanel_020.jpg 

[Malakili]

I'm preparing to go through my normal WoW expansion stuff.

1) See all the changes incoming
2) Think - Meh, most of the changes to game mechanics to make things "simpler" are just going to have to cause me to RELEARN the game mechanics, therefore actually making it more complicated.
3) Say - screw it, I'm not buying this.
4) Eventually buy it anyway.

I am  a little disappointed that they are doing away with so many stats though.  It seems like they want you do be able to see very clearly "this item is better than this item" right away.  My only problem with this is that, well, as it stands items can be good for different things, i.e. BOTH are worth keeping.   Now its just going to be Stack your classes most important stat + stamina and thats it.  I enjoy tweaking my gear slightly to see the results.  I'd also like to add that I haven't raided since about SSC in Burning Crusade, so its not like i'm some hardcore raider who plays this game for theory crafting anymore, but I do like the variety.

Anyway, when you see me in this thread for the next year, it'll be me bitching about the game, right up until I eventually buy it.

[Merusk]

I don't think Mastery will be an actual stat, more like a side effect of speccing into a Talent Tree.

Nope, just rewatched the panel. Mastery is a stat meant to replace AP, ARP, etc.  The exact quote was, "It makes you better at what you do.. more damage, better tanking, your pet gets better if you're a hunter.. etc."   They said they'll go into it in more detail at the systems panel at 1:00 today.

My concern with all of this is that it feels like they're trying to go back to vanilla wow with the stats.  It's been 4 years and people seem to have forgotten why they added spellpower, etc in the first place.   Perhaps they've figured it out by now but I'm almost expecting to see the caster whines from the MC days making a return with int stacking and no mana regen worries for anyone but healers.  Making the current stats easier to understand and less mathy is sensible, returning to a system that didn't work and so you changed it, isn't.

[Malakili]

I don't think Mastery will be an actual stat, more like a side effect of speccing into a Talent Tree.

Nope, just rewatched the panel. Mastery is a stat meant to replace AP, ARP, etc.  The exact quote was, "It makes you better at what you do.. more damage, better tanking, your pet gets better if you're a hunter.. etc."   They said they'll go into it in more detail at the systems panel at 1:00 today.

My concern with all of this is that it feels like they're trying to go back to vanilla wow with the stats.  It's been 4 years and people seem to have forgotten why they added spellpower, etc in the first place.   Perhaps they've figured it out by now but I'm almost expecting to see the caster whines from the MC days making a return with int stacking and no mana regen worries for anyone but healers.  Making the current stats easier to understand and less mathy is sensible, returning to a system that didn't work and so you changed it, isn't.

It doesn't strike me as a return to that system really.  Now int is going to GIVE spellpower.  It seems designed so a caster can go "Oh, this has higher stats than my last item, therefore its an upgrade" straight up, no decision making, etc.  No more, well, if I take this, I'll have more spell power, but I trade off some other stats, and so forth.  It seems like they are especially doing this for melee.

[Kirth]

[Drubear]

re: confuzzling stats. Actually doesn't the change actually make things easier for (multiclass) itemization: just put STA, {class stat} and Mastery and you're done? Pretty much write a script to apply the fn(#) stats budget for a "Rogue" item @ item level #. Just making less work for themselves. Only 4 rings/necklaces, etc.

[tmp]

a big glowing pink crystal spaceship loaded with blue catgirls

Fixed..?

[Lantyssa]

Yea, getting there as a level appropriate Alliance is pretty much a PitA.

Unless you're a Warlock, then it's just a quick little detour from your run all over the world.  Yay for flight points in zones 15-20 levels above level.

[Tannhauser]

Yea, getting there as a level appropriate Alliance is pretty much a PitA.

You can say the same about Horde trying to get to Deadmines.

[WindupAtheist]

I've done both. As an Alliance paladin I had to get into SFK for part of the Verigan's Fist quest. Boy let me tell you, Alliance pretty much doesn't bother with it. Eventually a high-level paladin took pity on me and ran me in there to grab the widget I needed. Fun instance though, with nice loot, and one I'd make a point of hitting whenever I was helping a lowbie friend level.

As a Horde shaman I was in a guild with a lot of my old UO friends, and I used to run them through a lot of stuff since I was on the higher end of our leveling curve. Everyone wanted to go through Wailing Caverns in their late teens, but Wailing Caverns sucks and I fucking hate running it at any level. So instead I would pack up 4 newbs and have them take the zepplin to Grom'gol in STV, cast water walk on them, and jog across the ocean to Westfall to run Deadmines instead.

Mind you, this whole Horde-in-Deadmines adventure was on a PVP server, and it was STILL way less of a pain in the dick than just running Wailing Caverns. Fuck that instance.

[DraconianOne]

Mind you, this whole Horde-in-Deadmines adventure was on a PVP server, and it was STILL way less of a pain in the dick than just running Wailing Caverns. Fuck that instance.

If they said they'd done a heroic WC instead of SFK, I would quit in a heartbeat.

Although that being said, with the Barrens being divided into two zones and part of the advancing story supposedly being that Naralex succeeded in making the Barrens fertile again then I can't help but feel that there's going to be some return to WC.

[Tannhauser]

I recently solo'ed WC as my 80 Mage and it was STILL annoying!

I think before Cataclysm, I'm going to make an alt and try to do as many Barrens quests as I can, just to remind me of the horror.
Plus I'll call everyone 'faggots' in general chat.

[Righ]

The Goblin starter zone looks very generic Horde lumber fort, not very Goblin. I presume that once you sign up to the Horde you have to follow their cultural zoning laws. Worgen look like playful cuddly dogs, not savage slavering wolves. Can't wait to see how that plays out with the perverts. Meh on the artwork generally apart from a couple of weapons on the Goblin side.

[Koyasha]

I managed to ask about players of widely differing levels playing together, and the answer sounded reasonably positive.  They mentioned having looked into it, and that some of their new systems like the removal of spell ranks and having them scale with level makes it more technically possible.

[Gobbeldygook]

They're choosing to implement rated BGs in a manner customized to piss off arena players.  You gain rating every time you win, but don't lose any when you lose with a weekly cap on how much rating you can gain.  It doesn't matter if you have a 1:10 win:loss ratio, as long as your team -ever- wins and gets in their weekly matches, you get gear.

[Koyasha]

It sounds like you'll be able to increase rating as much as you want each week if you play enough, it's points that are capped per week.

With the return of titles, it sounds like being Grand Marshal will still be a matter of playing more than anyone else again.

[Khaldun]

The simplification of itemization just kind of unearths the perennial discussion of whether it's better to have stats or game mechanics be highly streamlined and transparent to players or whether there's some value to having gameplay be a "black box" where it's not always clear what the exact relationship between action and consequence is.

In a theme park MMO like Warcraft, streamlining and transparency seems to me the way to go, but even there you're going to hit a point where it's not clear why you should have more than three classes and more than three stats--everything is going to seem like unnecessary noise if all it comes down to is "fulfill your role with the greatest efficiency possible". You still have to have trade-offs and decision points in gameplay.

In a more sandbox MMO, I think you need less transparency--after all, in the world as we know it, it's not always clear how our actions relate to the consequences of our actions.

[Sheepherder]

I'm surprised they didn't replace both attack power and spell power with strength, replace crit with agility, and make int/spirit do something useful for mana-less classes so they could stop itemizing spell power/int/MP5 plate for that one class.

Quick question: for melee, is haste now melee haste and energy regen, or just energy regen?  I'd suspect the former if they want it to have parity for casting haste.

[Merusk]

Guild leveling introduces something a few people around here have asked for over the years... guild-owned equipment.  Heirloom items a guild profession guy makes and anyone in the guild can wear so long as they're a member.  Interesting.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Guild leveling introduces something a few people around here have asked for over the years... guild-owned equipment.  Heirloom items a guild profession guy makes and anyone in the guild can wear so long as they're a member.  Interesting.

I believe all the boe epics in naxx and ulduar were for this same purpose, gearing up new recruits.  Now I bet the guild gear won't be awesome but it will probably give new members a footing to compete in raids etc.

[Delmania]

/sigh

Once again, I find myself falling victim to trailer, artwork, and the brief lore, but ithis time, after Wrath, I don't know if I want to take the quest grinding and stat min/max the game has become.

[Merusk]

Hmm.. little more info on Mastery.  What will happen is with the talent tree revamp (No more passive bonuses) you'll buff 3 aspects with each point in that tree. 

The first aspect is Tank/Heal/Damage based on the tree (with a side comment of "We don't know what we're going to do for Death Knights here...),
The second is something I forget and can't rewatch yet. I want to say it was the passive stat buffs of the tree, like Str/ Stam/ Dodge/ etc.
The 3rd aspect is your "mastery stat"  This is what the mastery points will buff.. the example they gave was Arms warriors got more armor pen.. and more mastery buffed arpen even higher.   

So we can infer that Arpen isn't going away as a Theorycrafting stat, just as an itemization stat. 

Diminishing returns may apply to the talent points buffs of that tree.  So going a full 61 in combat won't buff you much beyond 51 points, encouraging speccing into a secondary tree like the current system.

[patience]

If your OK with Forsaken, you should be OK with Worgen. That's all they are in the end.


Well, minus the Yiffing.

There's only one way to fix this. Give the forsaken (and by extension the Horde) vampiric allies.

[dusematic]

I'm so fucking relieved this expansh doesn't appeal to me.  If it were a pirate-y/islandy/maritimey expansh, or a Emerald Dream expansh, then, maybe.  But a redone Azeroth?  Look, that's a great idea.  It's convenient to fly in old world.  It will help their bottom line through better retention of new custs.  But fuck my ass if I'm going to delve into this game for that and the chance to YET AGAIN level a new race of the same classes that have been available since 5 years ago.

[Koyasha]

Race change service is coming, so if you want a new race of a class you already have, no problem, just race change.

[Ingmar]

The new starter zones are both very good, from the little we got to see them (about levels 6 through 8). They've worked little mini cut-scene type things in, etc.

More when I am more awake and stuff.

[Koyasha]

I played Gilneas more than the goblin zone, but that's not saying much considering I played WoW twice while there, and the first time I split my time between Worgen and Goblin so I could take a look at them both.  I just decided that I had better chances of winning the prizes in single-player games rather than competing with every other person there for the abomination spawns and forsaken pops (or whatever they had in the goblin zone that was equivalent).  I liked Gilneas, it was ok, seemed interesting. Didn't seem to be any worgen NPC's at all, I'm sure that's different in other areas.

Ran into a guy that claimed his friend who works at Blizzard told him what happens in the super seekrit level 1-5 area that they skipped us past.  In Gilneas it's supposed to be kind of a recap of how things progressed since the Scourge and how the curse came about, and in the goblin areas you're supposedly chilling like a pimp goblin when the ground starts shaking and shit and you have to pay almost everything you own in order to book passage on a boat outta there run by the trade baron or something.  Only you didn't read the fine print and you just paid your entire fortune to sell yourself into slavery, but luckily your ship gets wrecked on this other island.  I sorta believe them because I got hints leading toward both of those when I was playing.  Some of the goblins were cursing the trade baron or whatever, and they did mention that the story behind Gilneas was going to be told so that's a no-brainer on that side.

WoW seems pretty good at catching my attention with expansions, since all three now have been quite interesting and gotten me somewhat interested in playing when I'm tired of the game.  EQ, the only other game I've ever consistently gone back to, never did that with expansions specifically - I just tended to drift back of my own accord.

On another note, I find it interesting that patch 3.3 is going to bring in Icecrown  Unless they take even longer than usual between patches (entirely possible), that probably means about 6 to 8 months before patch 4.0, then Cataclysm a month or so later.  They may be further along with Cataclysm development than they're letting on just yet.

[K9]

We can always have interim patches; if Icecrown is 3.3 it just means that there's no other major content patches until then. I hope it comes fairly soon though, as the Argent Tournament looks to have very very little longevity.

[Simond]

I'm so fucking relieved this expansh doesn't appeal to me.  If it were a pirate-y/islandy/maritimey expansh, or a Emerald Dream expansh, then, maybe.  But a redone Azeroth?  Look, that's a great idea.  It's convenient to fly in old world.  It will help their bottom line through better retention of new custs.  But fuck my ass if I'm going to delve into this game for that and the chance to YET AGAIN level a new race of the same classes that have been available since 5 years ago.

So you think Blizzard is expecting people to level from 80 to 85 by the power of positive thinking? Of course there's new content as well. Hell, the 1-60 revamp is being given to everyone in a patch - expansion not needed.

[Jayce]

I've been thinking Icecrown after Christmas and Cataclysm next spring/summer.

[K9]

While January for Icecrown sounds about typical for Blizz, with the Argent Tournament hardmodes opening up reset after next that's going to be a long four months with very little novel content.

[Merusk]

I've been thinking Icecrown after Christmas and Cataclysm next spring/summer.

That's been my thinking as well.  We'll get Ony in November (possibly along with the x-server pugs) and  Icecrown shortly after that.  We'll then have the usual 5-6 months of farming that before 4.0.   Blizzard has been maintaining a fairly regular content pace throughout this expansion.

[K9]

I was under the impression that Onyxia 2.0 was supposed to be timed for the anniversary, which is October(ish) isn't it?

[Kirth]

I was under the impression that Onyxia 2.0 was supposed to be timed for the anniversary, which is October(ish) isn't it?

November, and yes. is it just me or when I watched the trailer for Cataclysm right at the start they said something like "While the heroes match on icecrown deathwing returns..."

It would be funny if 3.3 wasn't icecrown.

[bhodi]

Firstly, to all those people who didn't believe or scoffed at SA and the leaks - suck it. Everything was confirmed.

For priests, here's what I gleaned from all the blizzcon info:


All healers will be able to dispel (presumably priests will keep mass dispel as a class ability).

Spells will have no ranks and will now automatically scale with level.

Shadow priests will get a nuke with no cooldown - The cast time is unknown but I highly suspect 1.5 or 2.0s and it might address the 'ramp up time on trash' issue (see below)

No more mp/5, no more +Spellpower, all mp/5 will become spirit

Spirit will be the Spellpower stat for disc/holy priests and the "primary" healer stat, since it provides both mana regen and spellpower (but not mana pool, so there could still be balance issues due to replenishment/spells that are based on total mana). All healers will be given a meditation-like ability (regen % of spirit while in combat)

Disc and Holy will have closer best in slot itemization, disc will no longer poach caster DPS items for BiS due to the +sp/spirit changes. It seems as though an 'all the time healer' will be able to switch between disc and holy without much trouble or gear swapping.

There will be no 3rd spec so you can forget your do-it-all shadow/disc/holy priest.

Huge talent changes mean that a lot of passive talents or ones that don't provide new abilities or twists on current abilities are going away - "boring" ones that provide things like +1% crit/level (and thus presumably ones that provide +2% healing and +5% spirit, spellpower, things like that). Since this is almost all of the talents in all our trees and they said "a lot", not "all", continue to expect some filler +healing talents. They specified "body and soul" as a stellar talent that is in the direction they want to take talents.

New caster Legendary in Icecream Citadel that Shadow Priests will presumably want.

Lots of "mathy" stats will vanish (arpen, dodge) but apparently +hit will stay. (Hurr.) You'll use "Reforging" to exchange one stat on an item for another (like +hit) that is not currently on the item. It should be easier for shadow priests (and other casters) to both reach and not exceed the hit cap using this ability.


No real information about healer mechanics or how to make healing more attractive, nothing about the infinite mana problems, nothing about how to balance healing to make it less 'stressful' or how to make it more challenging without raw DPS on tanks. I'm personally surprised how there were NO healing questions at all answered during the entirety of Blizzcon. Either they are keeping something cool under wraps until it's fleshed out or they don't have a good solution for this and are punting.

No real information about shadow priest's overly complex rotation, lowish DPS and extremely high ramp-up time. Possibly the new no-cooldown spell will fix the high ramp-up time by providing an alternate rotation for quick / trash mobs. Since the shadow priest boss rotation is already full, and mind flay is the current filler, the new spell doesn't really fit into boss rotation without making it even more complex. That is, unless things are wildly changed (possible, I guess).