This week, The Care and Feeding of Warriors looks back at the legacy of the Warrior class through the original game and two expansions. Matthew Rossi remembers when Taunt cost rage. Remember that? Makes you shudder, doesn’t it? I don’t mean crotchety guys in stained overalls working on your car. No, what I’m talking about is the foundation of the warrior class itself, those abilities that are holdovers from the very beginning of the game. It’s hard to remember sometimes, with a game that changes and flows with time the way WoW has, that things were once very, very different… I still remember when they fixed the bug that kept dodges, parries and blocked attacks from generating any rage, hoo boy was that one a killer for warriors… and some of our abilities date back to the very beginning of the game or shortly after it. (Pummel was removed in patch 1.1.0, for instance, and returned in patch 1.2.0, when Maraudon was introduced.) I personally have a very hard time remembering not having Pummel, which is probably because I didn’t use

This morning I want to play the hypothetical game a bit and talk about what would happen if Cataclysm included a new class. Not only what it would be, but how it would fit into the overall balance of WoW. And just to be clear, there won’t be a new class in Cataclysm. Numerous Blizzard employees have stated that doing one new class an expansion would be too much work (paraphrased, don’t go complain to your favorite blue that this was a direct quote). The Death Knight in Wrath of the Lich King was the first class introduced to WoW, and it’s inclusion in the game has had mixed reviews. Most folks agree that the class provided a great new element to play in the game, however its balance in raids and PvP is something that is constantly under the microscope. Ghostcrawler has mentioned numerous times that the Death Knight has taken up more time to balance in Wrath than any other class. This is problematic for numerous reasons, but has been able to be handled nicely by the designers and programmers (I’m sure there’ll be some who disagree, however show some

The patch 3.3 PTR notes are out, and the most interesting thing to me, after just a first look, is that Blizzard is making some serious tweaks to the level 1-10 experience, of all things. Dazed is getting changed a bit — characters from levels 1-5 will be completely immune, while characters 6-10 will have a much lower chance of getting slowed down. Health and mana regeneration at the lower levels is being increased (mana costs on the lower levels of spells are also being decreased, though we’re not sure yet which spells are being changed and what the difference is). The default equipment is being tweaked, and most notably, rogues will start out right away with dual wield and two daggers do it with. Andy says Goblin males should go for a West Side Story-style classic number, while Worgen should definitely do Thriller. For some reason, I see Goblins breakdancing, but I have no idea what the Worgen might be doing. If it’s something befitting their starting area, I have to think And finally, the devs tell us that the in-game event that kicks off Cataclysm will be

Here’s the podcast we recorded last weekend, ready for your listening enjoyment. In it, Eddie “Brigwyn” Carrington, Dominic Hobbs, and Turpster and I chat about what’s going on in the patch 3.3 PTR, as well as the new details we heard about Cataclysm last week. We answer your emails, too, including what will be possible and what won’t if you don’t buy the next expansion, as well as whether there’s more war in Warcraft than there used to be. Two show notes for you: first of all, as we talk about in the show, our podcast is now featured in the Ustream iPhone app, so if you have an iPhone or iPod touch and don’t happen to be near a computer on Saturday afternoon when we record, you can still tune in and listen. And secondly, we’ve never really done this before, but we’ll try it: the Podcast Award Heroic status (we know Shadowfang and Deadmines are already getting that treatment, so it wouldn’t be too far off to expect other old instances to come around in future content patches). There’s probably more things it

While we have covered the fact that new totems are coming out for orcs and trolls in patch 3.3 so that the taurens don’t have to keep sharing with everyone. We’ve also mentioned the fact that dwarf totems have been added into the PTR files for when Cataclysm hits. At the time, we only had the front view images from MMO-Champion. This caused a bit of an issue with the Dwarf totems as it’s hard to distinguish what exactly they’re supposed to look like We work with what we’ve got, and sometimes we just need to skip it for a day or two for the good of the column. Nobody wants to read us type “idk” for 30+ questions in a row. During these lulls, when we write The Queue we want you to enjoy it and have fun. And it should be informative, of course, but that’s a given. models, might be a good time to do exactly this and revamp players’ looks as well. We can tell you for sure that the worgen and goblins are going to look very nice (not to mention the

Ghostcrawler’s hoping this answer “gets read,” so we’ll help. A player asks why Blizzard is worrying about armor penetration with the Scourge Strike ability — isn’t, they ask, ArPen getting removed in Cataclysm like we heard at BlizzCon? The answer is basically no: Armor Penetration rating is getting removed from gear (along with Block value, Defense, Attack Power, and a number of other gear stats), but Armor Penetration as a stat is not getting removed from the game. Talents and other abilties will still depend on removing and penetrating armor, even if your gear selection won’t revolve around it. They’ll still be balancing it, but as players choosing gear, it won’t be a part of our calculations there .Mconniff asked… “Why are Tabards cut off at the waist when you put on a robe? Is that good?” It doesn’t look very good, but it’s a victim of World of Warcraft’s graphics engine. If the bottom of the tabard were displayed with robes, the two layers would mesh together and become some

  WoW.com’s prestige in the community has afforded us the opportunity to speak to major Azerothian leadership figures on any subject, and we’re letting you, the reader, Ask A Faction Leader! We recently spoke to Garrosh Hellscream, leader of the Horde’s Warsong Offensive, and he shed light on several key issues, including moral dilemmas, basic campfires, faction changes, draenei donk, and the merits of getting eaten by sharks. In this installment of Ask A Faction Leader, we’ll be sitting with venerable draenei leader Prophet Velen. Dear Velen, Being a prophet, you are probably aware of forthcoming cataclysm. With Thunder Bluff built on 4 mesas, I am worried about safety of the city and its citizens. Since you guys possess some kind of expertise in crashing things (specifically capital cities) I was wondering if you could lend some advice for case it gets struck down. Best Regards, Baine Bloodhoof Velen replies: Ah, it’s good to see Horde leaders initiating a rapport. While I’m certainly not an architect or artificer — trades better

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com’s daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Puppies. Puppies. Aliceness asked … “Where might Blizzard go in terms of (maybe) implementing a new class for the next expansion? What kind of class haven’t we seen?” If and when we get a new hero class, you can probably count on it being a healer/DPS hybrid that wears mail at maximum level. We only have two specs that take advantage of spellpower mail, and they’re both the same class. We also could probably use a new perspective on healing like death knights did for tanking. But, of course, they couldn’t be only healers, because that’s not how classes in the game work (anymore). That’s my prediction, and I’m sticking to it. Also — Blizzard has said many times there will not be a new class for Cataclysm, so this is a ways off. Danielspeaks asked … “With the introduction of reshaping Azeroth in Cataclysm, do you think they’ll

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