The floodgate of brand-new Cataclysm info was opened after Blizzard invited several press websites to an event held in their headquarters. The big bummer is that Path of the Titans was scrapped, and instead the developers will focus on enhancing the Glyph system, introducing Medium Glyphs and refining the Major and minor glyphs.
On the bright side of things, a new Cavern of Time dungeon will take us to the War of the Ancients sometime between patch 4.1 and 4.3 — it’s not yet developed. One of the interviews reveals some of the starting zones will have phase technology here and there like the Death Knight, Worgen and Goblin ones.
Certain quests will have individual phases. This is pretty good. Imagine you need to kill Hogger to complete your quest. However, there are 5 players who want to kill Hogger. Three are Alliance and two are Horde players. Not everyone likes to group. Some people are just mean. Well, worry no more. Certain quests will make the NPC mob react to you as if only you are in the area even if there are 20 people in the same spot. No more crowding on X mob or Y item and waiting for long respawn times.
Remember all those level 1-70 quests sending you to kill X mob and get Y items — you know, those annoying get me 10 legs of this, and you need to kill like 30 mobs to get those legs as if you broke all four legs? Those quests were redesigned so that they have actual storylines attached to them instead.
Exodar now has a portal to take you to Stormwind and viceversa. The Worgen have a druid district in Darnassus.
Guild Achievements will encourage you to go back to vanilla dungeons. The motivation to get your guild going there? Special rewards via achievements.
Shadowfang Keep and Deadmines (level 85 Heroic) won’t be available at Cataclysm launch date. These will be added in patch 4.1 later on.
Westfall has changed a 95%. The Defias is no longer a threat, so it didn’t make sense in the times of the Cataclysm. So the quests in Westfall are new to go along with the Cataclysm vibe.
Stratholme, Scholomance and Diremaul are on the TODO list for a dungeon revamp at some point in the future via patches to be level 85 dungeons with brand-new boss encounters. This strongly hints the dungeons are not just getting recycled, but will align somewhat with the Cataclysm storyline moving the story forward. Call it for example Stratholme past and Stratholme present.
If you are not into PvP, you better brace yourself. According to Cory Stockton, Tol Barad will be the Daily quest hub for all of Cataclysm. Ouch? It will be the Isle of Quel’Danas (patch 2.4) of Cataclysm.
Cataclysm will be the biggest downloadable patch ever, but they will stream it in increments as each zone is completed over a period of four months before the game ships.
The Cataclysm Launch Event will be similar to the Zombie Plague. Deathwing is emerging into Azeroth, the fabric of reality between Azeroth and the Elemental Plane will break apart. Expect an invasion of all types of Elementals in all major cities and probably villages escalating up in phases for three weeks until the release date of the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion.
The last three days before launch will be utter chaos.
The Bastion of Twilight in the Grim Batol dungeon has the Twilight’s Hammer leader Cho’gall as the end boss. This will be the first raid in Cataclysm.
Considering he’s the master head that caused the fabric of reality between Azeroth and the Elemental Plane to fall apart and merge, it’s well deserved.
Which brings to question, will the new Order of Tirisfal, Med’an and Garona play any roles as NPCs in Cataclysm? For those interested in this storyline, get yourself the World of Warcraft comic books # 13-25 as a prequel to the Cataclysm event and the upcoming novel by Christie Golden titled World of Warcraft: The Shattering to hit bookstores on August 31, 2010.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is surely causing a lot of hype, and this press event held last week is surely as hot as it can get.
Cataclysm Reviews
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