OK, guys, who left Deepholm unlocked and let the dragon out? Come on, someone fess up. It's OK, we're not going to ground you. We promise.

... I bet it was Sacco.

staffan.johansson asked:

Would you be able to install Cataclysm without The Burning Crusade and Wrath installed? Let's say you're a new player who really wants to play a goblin; would you be able to do that without the intermediate expansions?

Nope -- if you'd like to play a goblin, you need to purchase World of Warcraft and both The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. You can get a battle chest edition that includes both WoW and TBC, but you'll have to purchase Wrath separately. However, most stores carry the battle chest for a minimal amount of cash.

Rob asked:

Will the old starting zones change with the Shattering? For example, from a night elf's perspective, Darkshore is very different. Will Teldrassil change as well?

Yes! Some of the same quests are there in the starting zones, but most of them have changed. Teldrassil is a lot more streamlined -- so are the new Echo Isles, the Red Cloud Mesa quests, the Northshire quests ... Let's face it: Everyone has had a overhaul. I'm not 100 percent certain whether or not the blood elf and draenei starting areas that were introduced in The Burning Crusade have changed, but every vanilla starter race has a new set of quests when you roll from scratch.

Fataliaa asked:

Do you feel like Cataclysm is the last expansion? Assuming it's not, what epic portions of traditional Warcraft lore would be available to support an expansion?

Oh, goodness no, it's not the end! It's been stated before that WoW should keep us going until level 100, although I imagine if they keep throwing these kinds of groundbreaking revamps at us, it may go even longer than that. As far as future expansions go, there is still the unfinished business in the Emerald Dream -- the Emerald Nightmare was mostly taken care of in the Stormrage novel, but they did leave themselves open to possible future in-game antics. The Emerald Dream itself is huge -- it's basically Azeroth before the Sundering. So think of all the continents in the game smushed together into one giant Kalimdor. Plenty of potential space for leveling and exploring.

Then we've got the constant conflict between the Old Gods and the rest of the world. The little tentacled guys would very much like it back, and I expect we'll have to do something permanent about that at some point. Since it's been stated in Wrath that killing the Old Gods would destroy Azeroth, we may see the Titans come back some day and figure out a different, alternative solution to getting rid of the pests, one that doesn't involved miles of tentacled squishy madness imprisoned deep below the earth. I mean come on. I walk on that dirt.

We also have not seen the last of the Burning Legion by far. Sargeras is still out there and lurking. Kil'jaeden wasn't really killed in the Sunwell; he was just sort of shoved back into the Twisting Nether. So we've still got those guys to contend with. And of course, there are about a million other ideas out there that haven't even been considered yet.

Ghoti asked:

As a shadow priest, at this time, we are incredibly powerful ... even as far to say that we are OP. Has this ever happened before? I know warlocks and rogues have had time to shine, and that melee has been loved through both expansions. What about me and my shadowy kin? Even if we get the imminent nerf bat, will we still even be known as "an OP class then"?

Once upon a time back in vanilla, I leveled a Forsaken shadow priest. partially because the Forsaken are fun, but mostly because they were the most disgustingly overpowered class in the game. I had plenty of fun merrily murdering elites that were three or four levels above me with little difficulty. At that point in time, there were no diminishing returns, so you could Psychic Scream your little heart out and happily DoT things into oblivion. Between Cannibalize and the Forsaken-only Devouring Plague racial skill, there was very, very little downtime.

Truth is, every class has been overpowered at some point in time or another, and every class has been nerfed into the ground. It's a never-ending cycle.

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