(WoW) The Future

Blizzcon is over and the flood of reports slow to a trickle. People will be picking at this stuff for months, if not years.


Y'know, I do remember seeing a globe in, I believe, Halls of Lightning that seemed like Azeroth only a little "off." I recognized this, but didn't contemplate it too deeply at the time. Now I wonder if that was a hint of things to come.

So... World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has been officially announced. To say it involves big changes is probably an understatement. Really, it's all about change. Burning Crusade added Outland and a couple starting zones. Wrath of the Lich King added the continent of Northrend. Cataclysm is slated to add a few new zones, but mostly remake Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. Geographically, Azeroth as released in the base game will cease to exist. That's potentially good and bad, though I think Blizzard is savvy enough to pull off more good than bad.

I can just picture it. Burning Crusade has been released and Wrath is early in development...
"Okay, so people are clammoring about wanting to fly in Azeroth. That'd be cool. Let's do that."
"Whoa, whoa. Have you seen the geometry we've got set up? We'd have to rebuild it all from the ground up. That's way too much work just to let people fly in Azeroth."
"C'mon, the players want this. Heck, I want this. You know you want this."
"Okay, it would be awesome, but... cripes, if we're going to remake Azeroth entirely, that's so much effort we may as well make an expansion out of it or something."
"Okay!"
"Wait... what?"
"We make an expansion out of it. A big deal. We shake things up in the old world, it'll be great!"
"Hmm..."

Blizzard doesn't always give the player base what it wants (usually the player base, as a whole, doesn't know what it wants), but the people at the company know enough to listen. The whole expansion sounds like it's based on what players have been asking for. Redesigning the old world for flying? Sure, but why stop there. Shake it up. Make the old world new again.

The two races chosen have been speculated about for years. If I recall, when race additions were mentioned for BC, goblins were probably the number one guess for Horde. Worgen and the residents of Gilneas have been talked about close to (if not exactly) as long. Both were certainly talked about as possible additions in WotLK, before it was made clear there wouldn't be new races in that one. Sure, we got blood elves and draenei instead then, but now things are coming back to just what the players expected and/or wanted.

Guilds are going to be getting customizable traits and benefits, making them more unique and meaningful. They have said they won't be doing guild halls (yet?), which have been asked for, but it's still fleshing out an aspect of the game people have wanted to see more of. Personally, I would love (in a perfect world) to see guild halls done as a single (or two, one per faction) building in the new hub city with guild-based phasing - so everyone uses the same physical location in the city, but they appear only in the phase/version of it that belongs to their guild. This would make the hall seem more a part of the city than instancing it. Unfortunately, for all the spiffiness of phasing, I doubt the technology is quite there to flawlessly phase dozens or hundreds of versions of an area at once. I still see some phasing crossover in Icecrown sometimes, and that would ruin it pretty much.

And as far as phasing goes, I'm interested to see how they use it in Cataclysm. It did lighten the load somewhat on the death knight starting area (and I imagine phasing starting zones will be popular), and it's great for making areas develop progressively. Unfortunately, it also makes it more difficult to synch up with friends, as we've seen mainly in Icecrown, where people at different steps of key quest chains can't do certain things together. So I'm hesitantly optimistic, as I think Blizzard has learned a lot and generally know what they're doing.

There was mention of more class-based quests - which I absolutely loved. As was pointed out, such things aren't a very efficient use of resources (as only a percentage of the player base will ever see them), but they're great for flavor, and I hope to see more.

Archaeology, Path of the Titans, Mastery? I'll just have to see more detail on this. It sounds like more ways to customize characters, and some incentive to visit areas high-level characters might bypass. While spokespeople have expressed some effort to give players ways to customize without shoving them into cookie cutter patterns, I have trouble imagining how there won't still be a best option for any particular build.

Reforging? It's an interesting thought to be able to pull a bonus to one stat off an item and give it a bonus to a different stat. That makes specific items a little less valuable. It'd be nifty to, for example, swap the +hit off something when you're at the cap. I still have a lot of questions about how that'll work, though.

Then there's the simplification of other gear stats, which I have mixed feelings about. I'm always wary of such "dumbing down" of things. I kind of like having to concern myself with +defense on gear, and they're going to roll the benefits of that into talents? Well... it will probably be a good thing overall, though it may take some getting used to.

All-in-all, I'm excited. Of course, this isn't coming out tomorrow, so I'm trying not to get too excited. A 2010 release has been stated. This is Blizzard, so "it'll be done when it's done." BC to WotLK was just under two years. If we follow that pattern, Cataclysm should be out around September of next year. On the other hand, patch 3.3 has been said to be the last major one for WotLK. Judging from the past patch releases, that will probably go live toward the end of this year, hinting at a Cataclysm release around March, more likely a little bit later than earlier. That's my (very loose) guess.