World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Expansion Announce at BlizzCon '09

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Expansion Announce at BlizzCon '09

Post by Creepy @ 05:38am 22/08/09 | 72 Comments

Ending a two-week nerd rage debate about the authenticity of supposed leaks of information, Blizzard just confirmed their next expansion for WoW.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will feature:

- Revamped classic world (torn asunder via storyline), for flying mounts
- Level cap of 85
- New Worgen (alliance) and Goblin (horde) races
- Extra class capabilities (Troll Druids, Gnome Priests, etc)
- New and recycled dungeons
- Guild leveling and achievements

Commence WoW bashing, now.

Promoted forum item

world of warcraft expansion

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Eds
Posted 09:12am 22/8/09

Is there a release date yet or is it "when its done"

My wow account has been sitting deactivated for about 6 months now.

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Reverend Evil�
Posted 09:36am 22/8/09

Holy fuck, can't wait!

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Khel
Posted 09:40am 22/8/09

I guess they realised they were onto a winner with WOTLK, where they could serve up the same old content to people and tell them it was new and people would keep giving them money.

"Hey guys, its the Deadmines, but you can do it at level 85 now, isn't that awesome?" And all these wonderful new zones, like its the Barrens, but now its in TWO PIECES! And we added some grass! I bet they're patting themselves on the back for pulling this off.

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Lits
Posted 09:50am 22/8/09

Does this look really tacky to anyone else?

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d[o_0]b
Posted 09:56am 22/8/09

good to see EA blizz still flogging that dead horse!

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Reverend Evil�
Posted 09:57am 22/8/09

After reading thru all the notes I'm a little worried about the phasing. If it's anything like Ice Crown it's gonna be impossible to help lower lvl toons do stuff. Hmm

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Eds
Posted 10:03am 22/8/09

The voice in that trailer just shitted me too no ends and I think that is the main reason it felt so tacky.

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Anonyname
Posted 10:07am 22/8/09

Man I'm kind of sick of these doom and gloom storylines, like "oh no the whole world is being devoured!"
Meanwhile a plague threatens to destroy all life and demons want to corrupt everything for no particular reason.

I wonder if I'm the only one who misses the good old days of orcs vs humans. Those were simpler, better times.

I haven't played Warcraft in ages, never bought the last expansion anyway.

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Creepy
Posted 10:12am 22/8/09

FAQ says that all subscribers will see a sundered Azeroth - so phasing won't be quite to the extent of "I can't go to Undercity at the moment"

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Eds
Posted 10:15am 22/8/09

That is a good point, horde vs alliance isnt as strong as it once was. They should have introduced the new classes as a fuelling war and the alliance horde factions took sides and off too battle. That would have been simple and cool.

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Fade2Black
Posted 10:20am 22/8/09

feels like a "cheap" way to do an expac to me

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Creepy
Posted 10:32am 22/8/09

Dunno...on the flipside, if you don't expand, the 4.0 patch will yield a shit load of changes that you don't have to pay a cent for (entirely new grind 1-80)

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DM
Posted 10:36am 22/8/09

i'll be playing this until FF14 comes out

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TicMan
Posted 10:44am 22/8/09

After ~4yrs of playing WoW and seeing this new expansion, I can't wait for Aion!

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Trauma
Posted 11:08am 22/8/09

It's cool, but it's nothing new... if you can follow that.

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Hogfather
Posted 11:13am 22/8/09

Piss poor trailer, played like something from a free-to-play MMO :(

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DM
Posted 11:16am 22/8/09

i've heard a little about Aion but why is everyone so hyped about it? Please explain

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Tanaka Khan
Posted 11:20am 22/8/09

I for one welcome our new WoW overlords!

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Trauma
Posted 11:21am 22/8/09

Human hunters.... about fucking time & lolz at cowadins.

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DM
Posted 11:22am 22/8/09

Human hunter

And undead hunters

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ravn0s
Posted 11:24am 22/8/09

cant wait....

to not play it

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Trauma
Posted 11:32am 22/8/09

Human hunter
And undead hunters

Undead hunters!!!

and...

Hunters

Also receiving a massive overall are hunters.The hunter�s need to rely upon mana is completely gone, and instead they will use focus. This means hunters will no longer care at all about Intellect, mana regen or Aspect of the Viper.

Focus will regenerate continually, similar to how rogues or feral druids regenerate energy. For comparison, rogues regenerate approximately 10 energy per second, whereas hunters will regenerate 6 focus per second.However, Steady Shot can also be used to improve focus regen, and bring the rate at which hunters regenerate focus to 12 per second.

The hunter will have a maximum of 100 focus, and shots might cost 30 or 60 focus, with fewer cooldowns on abilities. Another exciting and long-awaited change regards the ammunition system. Ammunition will become an equipable item, and will no longer be consumable.

More details on that later!

They are really trying to get me back lol, even tho it's still for the most part a re pack of the same old, I'm liking the hunter love.

... legendary for hunters...

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elachlan
Posted 11:34am 22/8/09

I Laughed at the video.They are really targeting this at younger players....

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Eds
Posted 11:38am 22/8/09

Certainly isnt tempting me too start playing again. Not yet anyway.

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Raider
Posted 11:45am 22/8/09

So let me get this right... they rehashed dungeons in wrath... and now they're rehashing vanilla wow but just breaking it apart... and they expect people to buy that shit?

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Reverend Evil�
Posted 11:47am 22/8/09

Ever since hunters got aspect of the viper they've never had to worry about mana

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Trauma
Posted 11:54am 22/8/09

And never will.

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Aseenus
Posted 12:03pm 22/8/09

Sigh... that is the most pathetic sounding expansion iv ever heard! its all good though, Aion is just around the corner :)

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ravn0s
Posted 12:13pm 22/8/09

any d3 news?

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Creepy
Posted 12:17pm 22/8/09

Monk is the new character class for D3!

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Trauma
Posted 12:25pm 22/8/09

Monk vid looks aweful.

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Hogfather
Posted 12:33pm 22/8/09

Heh monk vid was meh but 1000x bettter than WoW expac vid.

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HurricaneJim
Posted 12:33pm 22/8/09

There is a lot more to the expansion than what you've read at that site including a caster legendary item, seven new zones and reforging your gear. Expect the expansion to be as polished as anything that Blizzard releases.

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Hogfather
Posted 12:36pm 22/8/09

Expect the expansion to be as polished as anything that Blizzard releases.

Yep but it will still just be World of WarCraft.

I'll get the expac, level up my guys to the new cap, play the new dungeons, go on a few raids, and then get bored and re-realise I have more important things to worry about and deactivate my account.

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ViscoS
Posted 12:41pm 22/8/09

LFG Hogger 25!

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deadlyf
Posted 01:00pm 22/8/09

The most annoying thing I find with WoW is the constant balance changes. Either after 4 years they have no idea how to properly balance their game or they deliberately do not want to. Every patch of Wrath has had balance changes to multiple classes and yet they seem to be simply cycling through which class/profession gets to be OP this patch and which gets to be useless.

I have no faith that this expansion will be any different and it won't be getting me back on the crack wagon. Guild Wars 2 and Aion look promising though.

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Foxbane
Posted 01:23pm 22/8/09

I smell 2 more expansions (lvl 100) after this at which point warcraft dies or wow 2 start

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Eds
Posted 01:28pm 22/8/09

There will not be a wow 2, blizzard are already developing a new MMO set in space. Has nothing too do with any license they currently own, its a completly new IP

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Foxbane
Posted 01:28pm 22/8/09

Sorry for the double post but um runes of magic which is the biggest wow ripoff ever already has focus instead of mana for there hunters, its like a ripoff of a ripoff

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Raven
Posted 01:53pm 22/8/09

So they've still done basically nothing to help us run quests through to level 80 from the low levels :(
I mean at the very least give us some decent mercs to hire or something if we can't get groups.

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Hogfather
Posted 01:58pm 22/8/09

There will not be a wow 2, blizzard are already developing a new MMO set in space

I think you mean there isn't one in development at the moment. Given that we're at Diablo III, StarCraft II and WarCraft III saying there will be no WoW sequel is a big call.

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Eds
Posted 02:32pm 22/8/09

Not Really

That article confirms what I have been told by a friend who works for blizzard

True, I should not have said there wont be a wow 2, what I meant was the next big thing wont be wow2, from an mmo standpoint. But in saying that, I would be surprised if there was a wow 2.

Also the games you have listed are not on going MMOs, technically the expacs would be 2 3 4.

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Hogfather
Posted 02:46pm 22/8/09

I know all about the new IP, but thanks for the link. I've posted about it on this forum before.

True, I should not have said there wont be a wow 2, what I meant was the next big thing wont be wow2, from an mmo standpoint. But in saying that, I would be surprised if there was a wow 2.

You said "there will not be a wow 2". I'd be very surprised if there wasn't a wow 2 eventually, once the money making machine that is the original pales. Blizzard has a strong history of successful sequels.

Also the games you have listed are not on going MMOs, technically the expacs would be 2 3 4.

An MMO has a different definition of an expac? I don't think so!

Brood War was the StarCraft Expac.
StarCraft II is the sequel.

There have been two expansions released and one announced for World of WarCraft. I'm sure your friend at Blizzard can explain the reasons why they are definetly not sequels (aside from the very obvious lack of II, III, IV in their name...)

So they've still done basically nothing to help us run quests through to level 80 from the low levels :(
I mean at the very least give us some decent mercs to hire or something if we can't get groups.

Its a mature MMO - there just isn't a lot going on in the levelling game, you have to solo to within 20% of max level to see much action. This is another reason why a sequel will eventually become appealing, a lot of people get sick of continual endgame.

last edited by Hogfather at 14:46:19 22/Aug/09

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Taipan
Posted 03:53pm 22/8/09

Fucking yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn

Who ever it was before that mentioned Blizzard recycling the same old shit over and over is right on the money. As for Blizard failing to balance classes over all these years since it's release... well it became pretty damn obvious early on that they never had any intention of balancing the classes. What they did intend though was every few months give a class it's little bit of time in the sun while shafting the pervious OP class back down the list.

All wow is is a never ending cycle of buff nerf buff nerf. To add even more insult though they add in things years after people screamed for them . Blizzard then have the fucking nerve to trot these ideas out as if they were the first to think of them or like they are doing the player base some kind of huge favour.

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Hogfather
Posted 04:18pm 22/8/09

All wow is is a never ending cycle of buff nerf buff nerf

This is true of most MMOs, at least the ones that make any pretense to care about class balance. Its the nature of the game - players obsessively min max to get the best character, devs constantly need to tune as a result.

The only way to 'fix' it is to have a single class for each role.

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Khel
Posted 04:20pm 22/8/09

Wow, I just watched that trailer, if I didn't know it was official I would have thought it was some fan-made thing. So amateur compared to Blizzard's trailers in the past :(

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konstie
Posted 04:20pm 22/8/09

send icefrog in, he can balance anything!

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Eds
Posted 04:31pm 22/8/09

Hogfather, Blizzard would have to be oh so careful if they released a wow 2, because of their existing player base. My reasoning was, the xpacs were wow 2 , and 3 and soon 4 because you can't really release a whole new game where you start from scratch as the player, like most sequels of video games are. That was my logic behind it. If they started a whole new MMO and released it as wow 2, then in theory everyone would start over which would upset the original wow fans.

Has an MMO had a sequal released before? I have no idea to be honest as wow was the first MMO I actually played a lot. What I meant above is that releasing a sequel for a static video game and for an MMO would be two very different things, which is why I said the xpacs were almost the sequal and really they are. The story continues on from xpac to xpac, like a static video games sequal would.

My friend at blizzard is an artist and only started a few months back and had never played wow until they started there so they arnt much use in defining things :)

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Taipan
Posted 04:42pm 22/8/09

Actually Hogfather I kind of disagree and only for the simple reason that the game has been around as long as it has. Honestly after this many years if they were at all fair dinkum about it they would of nailed it by now.

Wow shouldn't be a hard game to balance when compared to the games that went before it. Shit wow doesn't even allow you to place your own stat points or even have secondary classes to add to your primary class skill set. Right from the word go you are pointed down 3 talent trees that are utterly rigid in what you can and can not do. The options for players because of this are extremely limited so balancing based on that really shouldn't be hard at all. Some how Blizzard doesn't seem to be able to do it though and it seems to me that they really never had any intention of doing it.

As I said they give every class their 15 minutes of power and then a few months later take it away and give it to someone else. This isn't balcning this is fence sitting. It keeps players busy working and adjusting their characters in order to cover up for the total lack of choice in class development which some games that preceeded Wow had in truck loads. What it also does is push fickle players into rolling and rerolling more and more classes thus keeping them playing.

Again I say, they simply aren't trying to balance anything they never have. These aren't stupid people and the fact that they can't strike a balance only points to one thing .... they don't want to.

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Taipan
Posted 04:43pm 22/8/09

Yes eds everquest and everquest 2.... not to mention Asherons call and asherons call 2.

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Eds
Posted 04:46pm 22/8/09

There you go, I am wrong :)

How did they work, did you continue on your character or did they start again?

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Varchld
Posted 04:49pm 22/8/09

Everquest 2, Guildwars 2. Ultima?
They were generally for major engine and coding upgrades though I think.

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Khel
Posted 04:51pm 22/8/09

Yeah, theres been a few sequels to mmo's, whether they were any good or whether it was a smart move is a different story.

But nah, you couldn't carry your character over, they were essentially whole new games cashing in on the popularity and existing customer base of the original ones.

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Noonga
Posted 05:23pm 22/8/09

Looks good to me.
Shame I don't play it anymore

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Twisted
Posted 09:05pm 22/8/09

All wow is is a never ending cycle of buff nerf buff nerf.

This is in just about ANY multiplayer game you can play. Everything from FPS, to RTS and MMO's have patches and updates that buff or nerf units, weapons, classes, etc. It isn't something uniquely Blizzard and WOW...that said...wow looking back at...WOW after a few years it looks like shit now :p The graphics seemed so much more OK before...

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Tollaz0r!
Posted 09:19am 23/8/09

Blizzard are not stupid. They are simply not letting the game stagnate. Hence the ever changing classes, adding content, changing existing content.

They probably reached a plateau of new customers quite some time ago and have focused on rehashing older stuff to not bring brand new players in, but to pull the ones that have left back, even if it is only a month or 2.

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Raider
Posted 02:06pm 23/8/09

There is a lot more to the expansion than what you've read at that site including a caster legendary item, seven new zones and reforging your gear. Expect the expansion to be as polished as anything that Blizzard releases.

You sound like a GM, head up your ass and say look at all the new stuff.. which is still old... and still plenty of retarded bugs / balancing thrown in.

Hell DK's weren't even balanced till about 3.2 and even then are hella good still.

Naxx has a fuckton of bugs not to mention, THE SAME CRASH BUGS THAT WERE IN THE INSTANCE FROM VANILLA WOW! I mean seriously, not only did they rehash content but they brought the bugs back with it.

The raids are a shadow of their former self, they nerf shit like 1 week after the top guilds do it so even the top 100 don't always get a shot at the same content before the nerf so that casuals can run rampart through it.

PvP is the same joke, only decent bracket is 3v3 and even then you've got RMP there after years ... obviously the most powerful combo but never touched.. Then a bunch of cleave teams which main focus is to sit on 1 guy and kill him before they kill 1 of you.

Sorry but i can't see where the finesse / balance is in the game anymore.

(This is someone that's played beta through to 3.2, cleared all the instances and got glad every season) The games degraded, most people will all agree and it seems like they're putting less effort into creating the game and fixing it.

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Reverend Evil�
Posted 02:17pm 23/8/09

Check out the new mounts. Goblin one looks fucking awesome.

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ravn0s
Posted 02:23pm 23/8/09

why would worgens need a mount?

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Raider
Posted 02:28pm 23/8/09

yer worgens should just have an abil like a mount which lets them run heaps fast.

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Reverend Evil�
Posted 02:29pm 23/8/09

Because their feet would get sore. Plus it will unbalance the mounts if they don't get one seeing as Blizz just added a new horde mount to even it up.

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Hogfather
Posted 02:53pm 23/8/09

Yeh, the mounts aren't just for the racein question, if you grind your face off you can get them for any race on the faction.

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deadlyf
Posted 03:20pm 23/8/09

You don't have to grind much at all for rep any more.

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Hogfather
Posted 03:35pm 23/8/09

orly, just hlf a face gone? :p

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deadlyf
Posted 04:05pm 23/8/09

Well you get full rep for everything now regardless of rep level and character level. So you get 250 rep for starting quests even if you are a level 80. Also turn ins for rep don't end once you get over a certain rep level any more either. So basically you wouldn't even get key imprints in your cheeks.

It's one of their casual changes which I think was very good since it will stop them from using faction grinding as a form of content filler.

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Khel
Posted 04:51pm 23/8/09

Haha, the worgen mount looks rather ridiculous, looks like some kind of kinky wolf on wolf sex position.

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TicMan
Posted 05:27pm 23/8/09