Cataclysm press event roundup
by Matthew Rossi 
Jun 14th 2010 at 11:00AM
Well, we all lurched one step closer to the Cataclysm this weekend, with a surprising amount of details released on the eagerly anticipated expansion. From new raids to proposed mechanics getting either an overhaul or removed entirely, plus an exclusive interview with everyone's favorite crustacean-avatar lead systems designer, there's a lot to catch up on if you do silly things like sleep.
So let's dig right into it, shall we?
So let's dig right into it, shall we?
- Ziebart, he whose name casts a shadow, broke down pretty much everything he could get his hands on about the new information released this weekend.
- Ghostcrawler sat down with the fine folks at Wowhead and gave an exclusive interview discussing all sorts of topics from PvP/PvE balance to the pros and cons of forum posting.
- Our own Anne Stickney rounded up the various new pieces of the puzzle for the expansion's emergent lore.
- What happened with guild talents? Robin breaks it down for you.
- Yes, our current heirlooms will work for worgen or goblin up until level 80, Daniel Whitcomb reports. He also informs us that Path of the Titans will not be joining us in Cataclysm.
- Lots of new developments for raid lockouts and new raids announced as well.
- World of Raids and Wowhead bring you new looks at Cataclysm and the Blizzard offices.
- Have you heard about the War of the Ancients raid in the Caverns of Time?
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From goblins and worgens to mastery and guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
thomas_beukers3 Jun 14th 2010 11:23AM
It's a shame they took out the features Guild leveling, and path of the Titans. I was SOOO looking forward to them :
(cutaia) Jun 14th 2010 11:31AM
Technically, they still have guild leveling...just without the guild talents which would have been more drama than they were worth. I don't want someone /gquitting because we chose to go with a +gold talent when they wanted the +honor talent or something.
Path of the titans is a sad loss...but at least archeology will still be cool.
Scooter Jun 14th 2010 11:33AM
Guild Leveling still exists it just doesn't have the talent tree's or currency. The rewards are still there.
As far as Path of the Titans goes...lets face it. It was just inscription minus the scrolls. Having two systems doing roughly the same thing doesn't make much sense. It's probably a big reason why they scrapped guild talents.
N-train Jun 14th 2010 11:39AM
We all were, but if you read some of the interviews (one of the wowhead ones talks about exactly why Blizz scrapped these) and think about the logistics and reality of it, then you realize it simply wasn't meant to be.
If they put in path of the Titans, they would have to test the buhjeezus out of it, and then still pray to mercy it was balanced enough by launch. That meant making the rewards worth it enough to go through the work, but also not terribly good as to heavily disadvantage anyone who didn't push through all the way (this is a secondary, optional, profession after all). It also meant hours and hours of work to make it utility-based (the goal of the Wrath glyph system), only to have the thotbot and EJ people calculate your optimum path in two months.
At some point the feature is not worth the effort and gamble.
As for guild talents, it would have broken mixed-player and social guilds in a heartbeat, and it ran into the problem of who was allowed to call the shots.
In the end, the new glyph system is more-or-less what the barebones of the Path of the Titans was going to be, and the new guild reputation system gives you most of the rewards of the guild talent system but without all the drama.
Scott Jun 14th 2010 12:02PM
Personally, I think Path of the Titans was tied to Archaeology because of the appeal it provides to level a new secondary profession.
I may be a bit cynical, but think about it. Blizzard has not introduced a new secondary (meaning optional) profession since the launch of the game. It would probably be somewhat embarassing if nobody chose to level it, so what better way to make sure of it than to tie it into player damage/healing/survival?
I guess this now means that Archaeology has to be interesting enough to stand on it's own instead of being propped up by millions of players all going through Path of the Titans.
Valt Jun 14th 2010 1:11PM
Atleast this time they actually said they are gonna scrap em.
So guild talents wouldnt end up being "Dance studio 2.0" ...
And imagine at 4.1 after huge popular demand blizzard would introduce "dualspec for guilds!" Only 10k gold and your guild can switch between talents. By day your leader goes to "leveling/rep/honor mode and by evening it turns to mass ress/less repairs mode only for 10k gold!
anyways. after hearing the watered down version of guild leveling/achies I kinda hope they still bring up all those cool stuff like mass res/summon, less repairs and all this. Like I care about riding around in flagged horse or tabards?
Scooter Jun 14th 2010 11:23AM
I appreciate Blizzards attempts to add new elements to the game and as a programmer have to respect the decisions made. As much as will be changed, I'm more interested in the various things I can do or obtain. The quests, vanity items, and story elements are far more important to me than having six more ways to customize my stats.
I've spent several months in anticipation and to be honest at this point I just want to play the game.
On the thought of vanity items... wouldn't it be awesome and heartbreaking(to those who miss out) to get a mini-Naaru as the pet reward for Blizzcon? Again I ask, does anyone know if the loot is announced before the con? Scooter totally want a mini-Naaru....no more murlocs!
deweymaverick Jun 14th 2010 11:27AM
I can't lie - I'm still bummed about the drop of the Path the Titans, but I do understand it.
I get that, all things considered, it might not be the best idea, but I'll miss it. In retrospect, it really seems like upgraded version of the glyph system, where we simply get glyphs from a different source, and they might be right to just overhaul the basic glyph system, instead of having two competing things. Hey, after all's said and done, there really is no reason why we can't have glyphs that aren't tied to a particular class anyway.
However, beyond that, I do have a problem with the Path system. In theory, its supposed to THE way to advance a max level toon. Great. But what happens when in two years when the next expansion comes out, and we're going from 86-90? Does the Path go on hold? Is it frozen again until you hit level 90? Do you get what you had, but you can't get new stuff until you hit 90? Or is it simply a new set of talents/glyphs that we get that starts at level 85, and continues on from there?
I mean, if we get new path stuff every 5 levels.. then how's it not just a rehashed version of glyphs? (Seriously, isn't that when we get a new glyph slot at every 5 levels?)
Plus if its tied to archeology, then our new "secondary" skill isn't that secondary... Who in the world is really going to pass up on THE super cool mechanism for character advancement... it doesn't really fit the theme of fishing, first aid, cooking that you can pass on or not.
I'm sad that its gone, but I understand that they have good reasons for it.
(The guild talents, I don't care about - it sounds like they are doing the exact same thing with the guild leveling mechanism, and we still get buffs and what not for being in a guild, but instead of picking the talent, the guild gets together, does an "guild achievement" and unlocks its reward... either way, that's fine with me).
But Path of the Titans still sounds far more awesome than a new "style" of glyph.
varilhigh Jun 14th 2010 11:35AM
I'm really bummed about them getting rid of the guild talent trees. I was really looking forward to being able to have two toons in seperate guilds with one focused on a raiding and one focused on Rated BG's and being able to have the talents to benefit each separately. Some of us had even started making our plans and we were really excited about it. I really don't buy the excuse about Guild Drama, etc... The Guild Leader and Officers would set the talents just like they set the rules for the Guild Bank, what we are raiding, raiding schedule, etc... I don't see how this would be any different than that. The guild says what it is and you join based on that. The GL can change his mind at anytime just like he can now. A GL can decide that he wants to be a 10 man instead of a 25 man, etc... If you joined for a 25 man you are hosed just like if you joined for raiding and they switched to rated BG's.
The whole mechanic of leveling up your guild, picking talents, setting a goal each week to do enough to get the next talent. Figuring out how many matches you have to win, etc... All seemed very cool. This new thing of gaining rep with your guild sounds really boring in comparison to what they outlined previously. The scraping of this along with Path of the titans makes me think they ran out of time to do all that they announced and now have to cut back on this stuff. I would rather they just come out and say that rather than come up with lame stuff like "Guild Drama" as a reason something isn't getting done.
N-train Jun 14th 2010 11:50AM
That system may work great for your guild, but the guild I'm in is mostly social (with both raiding and pvping). As the GM of this small guild, I /don't/ want to be the one who makes those calls, because its a reward everyone is working for as a group, and yet if I put some points in pvp, then the contributions of the raiders were more-or-less worthless (and vice-versa).
Sure, I could balance pvp and pve, but there's a point when a raider pugs into another guild's run, one that's solely raiding and getting -25% repair bills when my guild only gets -10, and figures they're better off there, where they can reap the full rewards of their efforts. At some point it's only a matter of time before both sides get pissed off, seeing that the grass is greener somewhere else, and jump ship.
Also, if your GM is making huge changes like what the raiding schedule is or whether you do 10s or 25s on a dime without asking the input of his/her guild then you probably ought to leave the guild on principle. Some of us join guilds for social aspects, and I think it would be unfair to me, as a GM, to decide which of those members get benefits from everyone's work.
varilhigh Jun 14th 2010 12:07PM
@N-Train
GM's have that power now. The GM decides who has access to what in the Guild Bank what goes on the calendar, etc... Some Guilds are totally democratic while some are dictatorial, with many variations in between. Adding Guild Talents seems like it would just add another option into the mix. The more options the better in my view. I do somewhat understand your point about more social guilds having retention issues, but social guilds have that problem today. If someone wants to raid more hardcore they are going to move on. I've been in both Social and Semi-Hardcore raiding guilds. I usually get burnt out on raiding heavily after about a year and switch to a more laid back guild. I'm still friends with people in all four guilds I've been in over 4 years. I like the idea of choice. If I want to be in a rated BG guild that has all it's points in the PVP Tree I can or if I want to be in a raiding guild I can, or an additional choice is to put my 3 toons in different types of guilds.
Gilgamesh Jun 14th 2010 1:08PM
I doubt they ran out of time: the content is only +5 levels and some starting areas. Easy stuff.
Compare Cata to the features we got with BC and Wrath -- Cata's going to be disappointing.
N-train Jun 14th 2010 3:55PM
@varilhigh
I think we both agree guild talents would be a good addition, I just think it would be such a logistical mess, for /most/ guilds that it isn't worth the effort. Some guilds I'm sure would have no problems, but I can see it doing serious harm to social and mixed guilds. Right now, if someone in a social guild wants to raid hardcore, they can always stay in their current guild and tag along with another guild at no real consequence (I do it all the time). But with guild talents, doing the same thing would put you at a disadvantage, since you aren't getting all the cool perks that the full on raiding guild is getting.
The same applies to pvp. Why would anyone continue to pvp in a social/mixed guild when the people they're playing against are reaping double honor?
And on that note, with the group talent system you're also allowing people to seriously mooch of the efforts of others. Why should the new guys in the guild, who have been here a week, get -25% repair bills when it was the guys who have been here for 2 years who got the points to acquire it?
and @Gilgamesh
I'm not sure why you aren't counting 30+ revamped zones and 3,000 new quests (3x Wrath and 3.5x BC) in your count. I guess all that work just appeared out of nowhere, right?
Docatron Jun 14th 2010 11:46AM
No-one concerned about the MAJOR change to Inscription?
They are changing glyphs from being "consumables" to a "learn-once" skill.
Imagine if they made it so you only had to buy an enchant or gem once and then could re-equip it to your liking. IMO this change will break Inscription.
N-train Jun 14th 2010 11:57AM
Well don't forget, scribes are now getting a whole new tier of glyphs to sell (medium), as well as presumably more choices in all three categories.
Also, it didn't sound to me like you just bought as many glyphs as you could, equipped and instantly learned them all. It sounded to me like after a period of use or something you learned the skill, not instantly.
Plus scribes can also make off-hands, among other things, and who knows what new things will be available.
Also, it was Blizz's intent to fix and better Inscription in Cata, and just like the new raiding system won't doom 25 mans, I don't think the new glyph system will doom inscription.
Orkchop Jun 14th 2010 12:00PM
They are already planing different ways for Scribes to make money (crafted BoE Relic Slot items, for one). And there'll be new Darkmoon cards, too.
wdm+hall Jun 14th 2010 12:08PM
Um yeah, Inscription will be broken in Cataclysm!
Now everyone on my server drop Inscription!
Docatron Jun 14th 2010 12:14PM
I know it's a bit premature to declare Inscription broken. But until we get the profession previews the argument is still valid. The only way to make a profit off glyphs was by mass production because of the inherent continues need of glyph. That need is now gone and granted there will be more glyphs to produce now with added levels and a new category, this is like pissing yourself. It will be nice at first but will quickly turn.
I understand the reason why blizzard is trying to make mass production of glyphs less profitable, but in order for inscription not to turn into a completely dead or niche profession I hope the other areas that you mention will get a buff.
Certainly many of the professions other than the "consumable" producing ones (JC and enchanting) need some sort of serious revamp to make them viable in the economy.
Edge Jun 14th 2010 6:30PM
I think this change will just mean something along the lines of each inscription selling for ten-fold it's original cost. I could actually imagine being able to switch gems on the fly, and only buying them once. It would just be a matter of sellers adjusting their prices to the new paradigm. Instead of paying 150 for a good gem it now costs 1000g, and I never have to worry about it again. In the end I think scribes will make BETTER money in this regard, and not have to worry about dealing with the glyph market, of which I hear is one of the worst for reposting and undercutting. And they still have a lucrative velum market they can make money off of, not to mention a few new things they are getting for sale to others.
brian Jun 14th 2010 7:16PM
Well, usually people only buy the glyphs they need, and then occasionally switch them out. Now, they'll probably buy every glyph, which more than doubles the sellable glyphs.
They said they'd give other things for Inscription to craft that's sellable, which will probably be more offhands (at a wider range of levels), and other such things, possibly including librams or something.
Plus, they mentioned they might make an Inscription reagent that allows the switching of glyphs. So, glyphs will be permanent for easier switching, sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean you can just switch for free.