It’s no secret that certain things (and even whole zones, in their current state) are going to go the way of the dodo when Cataclysm arrives, and both players and developers have talked a lot about the changes in Azeroth and environs beyond. By contrast, today I’m interested in hearing about what you don’t want to see eighty-sixed — the quests you’d miss, the factions or NPC’s you hope will cling to life, the dungeons or raids you don’t want to see go gentle into that good night. Personally, as dumb as I know this will probably sound, when I think about old Azeroth my mind immediately returns to a tiny quest called Until Death Do Us Part. It’s started by a bitter Forsaken who wants you take a pendant to her husband’s grave at the Sepulcher. If you only wanted to look at it in terms of game mechanics, then it’s a Fed-Ex quest designed to get you across the ocean and questing in Silverpine, but even with all the improvements to Overhaul status unknown: Badlands Searing Gorge Burning Steppes Redridge Mountains Deadwind

I think this is an interesting post by Grancran over on the official forums. We’ve already talked about how Blizzard is revamping the newbie experience in upcoming releases (including the next patch and the expansion), but he wants to know: for whom? Sure, there are going to be lots and lots of people going through the starting experience again when the expansion rolls around, both because of the new class combinations and the new races, but all of those people have already played the game. Why update a tutorial system when the majority of gamers have already played WoW? It’s an interesting question. Neth answers pretty tamely, saying that we were all noobs at one point, and that they want to make the starting areas as welcome as possible. But the question remains: is Blizzard expecting an influx of new players at some point in the future? If so (and why else would they completely revamp the tutorial system and starting experience in a five year old game?), we have to wonder where they’ll come from. Will Cataclysm bring in a swarm of new players? I’d

The Wrath storyline factored heavily into the official WoW comics, albeit slightly late, and continues to do so with the release of the upcoming Thassarian manga. And now it looks like it’s headed on a collision course with the storyline to Cataclysm! Ogre-turned-Liefeldian-monstrosity Cho’gall recites a prophecy in the latest issue related heavily to the Old Gods, Mary Sue shamagadin Med’an, and the Elemental Planes. BlizzPlanet has a pretty good writeup of what the prophecy could mean and its consequences down the road, but I’ll give you a brief summary here, too. Of course, I’ll toss it after the jump for those inclined to avoid spoilers. Ready? Cho’gall, empowered by C’Thun, says that when the child of three worlds, Med’an, becomes “of Light” — dies, in the vernacular — then the barrier between the Elemental Planes and terrestrial Azeroth will shatter and they’ll begin to merge. Well, we certainly know that the merger (or, more fittingly, hostile takeover) happens, so it stands to reason that

As you may recall, Blizzard announced their intent to get rid of consumable ammo in Patch 3.1, only to withdraw the change a short time later, with the promise of reimplementing it at a nebulous later date. Now, it’s been more or less assumed that said later date is Cataclysm itself, or at least Patch 4.0. In a general forum post created to discuss ammo replacements, Ghostcrawler piped in to remind us that the only change announced for Cataclysm was the removal of ammo, with nothing else yet decided (or, more accurately, announced). While he did acknowledge the possibility of adding in new situational ammo, he did observe that the hassle of collecting and swapping different ammo types might grow old pretty quickly, especially for a class like the hunter that already needs to push a lot of buttons to play at peak potential, in addition to already having a pet to manage. I do see some wisdom in Ghostcrawler’s words. As someone who played a hunter relatively extensively during Burning Crusade and has recently begun leveling that hunter again via random dungeons, I can

Cataclysm’s coming, but thankfully you appear to have a bit of time left in Wrath’s lifespan to decide how you’re gonna tackle the expansion first. Me, I haven’t decided yet. I want to level my shaman to 85 first — maybe even go for realm first shaman/draenei if I’ve got the time and inclination — or go for broke and level the hell out of a worgen in New Azeroth. I know for a fact that I’ll be rolling at least one worgen. My class selection’s probably going to be a male worgen fury warrior, for the “hell yes” factor, and a female worgen frost mage because it appears they’ll be tall, svelte things. And yes, I plan to roll a goblin too. So what about you guys? Excited to blaze new trails and be Eastern Kingdom pioneers with your wolfman (or -woman)? What are you going to roll? Does your worgen have a backstory you’re building? Let us know in the comments and in the poll below! What’s your worgen going to be? Death Knight Druid Hunter Mage Rogue Priest Warlock Warrior I’m staying fully Horde,

Now, the problem is twofold here. One, Armor Pen does increase your white DPS. It’s not a good stat for an enhancement shaman, oh my no. But if you had to choose between two sets of bracers, with identical stats except bracer B also has armor pen on it, bracer B would grant more DPS than bracer A. When you end up with the avalanche of ArP on mail after Ulduar came out, it becomes quite the effort to avoid the stuff to the point where you’re better off simply accepting that there’s going to be some armor pen on your gear. The second problem is, since we share our gear with a ranged DPS class, we’ll always be forced to seek out those stats that benefit us as caster/melee hybrids on gear for ranged physical DPS. Cataclysm will make this gear sharing conundrum even more interesting for us shamans. While patch 3.3 promises a mountain of new gear, it will be gear built around the same design philosophy we’ve seen up to now. But Cataclysm promises to upend a lot of current sacred cows with the removal of mana from hunters and the alteration of how stats

Welcome once again my friends to the lore that never ends, we’re so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside Know Your Lore. When last we got together over the nonexistent campfire to share stories of Azeroth and Draenor and the peoples of both, our heroes were either fleeing the destruction of Stormwind or destroying Stormwind, depending on who you think of as the heroes. Once again, the ‘canonical’ nature of these events has shifted somewhat from the time they were first presented to now, so bear with me if you see any inconsistencies as I attempt to work several disparate accounts together. Also, wow, did a lot happen in the Second War, so please forgive anything I miss or merely allude to from the Alliance and Old Horde KYL’s. We know that following the loss of Stormwind (and by following I mean that they could probably see the buildings burning as they sailed away) the survivors, led by Anduin Lothar, sailed north for Lordaeron and the court of King Terenas Menethil. It was this journey and Lothar’s arrival that led Terenas and Lothar to

explosion987 asked… “Can you fly from Hellfire Peninsula to the Netherstorm over the abyss in Outland on your flying mount?” Yes. It even counts as its own little zone. Your channels will switch from Hellfire Peninsula to Twisting Nether before becoming Netherstorm. Mayahh asked… “In the Azeroth there are siege engines, guns, helicopters, robots, motorcycles etc. Since that type of technology exists why would anyone continue to ride on a horse or dragon? They smell, they poop, they need food, it’s silly.” Do you really want to lay your cushy behind on a giant hunk of metal wrapped around a Goblin-made engine? I don’t. I’ll stick with my gryphon, thank you. corwin asked… “When the new arena season starts will honor reset?” No, honor points do not reset with new arena seasons. Arena points do, but honor points do not. R. asked… “How do gold sellers get all of the toons that they use for these marches/dead body graffiti? Do they buy that many trial accounts? Hack into character creation servers?

Rated Battlegrounds will be an alternative way to gain Arena points for those who prefer large-scale PVP. Your personal rating gain for a win will vary depending on the specific Battleground. There’ll be featured Battlegrounds each week with bonus rating gain for wins. You will not lose points or rating for a Battleground loss. Arena points can be used to purchase pets, mounts, vanity items, and perhaps best of all, the old honor system PVP titles like Grand Marshal. Tol Barad will provide bonus daily quests and instances for the faction that wins the battle for the zone, somewhat like, as Brack put it, a cross between the Isle of Quel’Danas and Lake Wintergrasp. You can check out our previous IgroMir post here, or read Blizzard’s official recap on their IgroMir site. There’s lots of lore to mine there, too: Magatha is the reigning matriarch of the clan, and not only is she buddies with the Forsaken (obviously there’s been something happening with them during Wrath), but she’s rivals with Cairne Bloodhoof as well. It would definitely be

hile it’s not a direct confirmation that warlocks will be getting a new pet in Cataclysm, I think it’s safe to read into this and maybe get a bit excited about this one. I doubt they’d mention warlocks getting “new spells” in relation to getting a new demon if such an addition to the warlock class wasn’t planned. So, new demons for warlocks? Probably. My guess is that it’ll be a pet lava monster or something related to the elemental plane. Just the perfect kind of thing to pop up into the evil hands of warlocks from the sundered land in Cataclysm. With hunters, warlocks, and unholy death knights, there are a lot of talents and glyphs that affect the scaling of stats to your pet. If you allow certain stats to scale too well, you suddenly unbalance the class. If the stat scales poorly, then the class falls in the other direction. Every talent and ability that taps into these has to be checked to make sure it doesn’t throw things out of whack. Considerations on diminishing returns on certain stats scaling would also need to be