Posts with tag goblins

The great thing about playable demos are the tidbits of info and sneaky souls with cameras snapping things they shouldn't be snapping. Such was the case in the press room at BlizzCon this year, where cameras were prohibited from pointing their lenses towards computer screnes. However, it appears that Spanish fansite WoW Todo got around the floating press room attendants somehow, and posted maps of the new starting zones for Goblins and Worgens.

Both of the maps have a couple of unique touches. For example, both have images of their inhabitants on it. The Lost Isles map has a particularly ugly female Goblin in a bikini while Gilneas features a human in Victorian garb. The latter also has a couple of shredded bits as if a Worgen adventurer had used his or her claws when trying to read the map. The Goblin map features a scattering of indented gold coins at the corners, as if to hold it open. Both are awesome little touches that add that special bit of pizazz to the new zones.

But the maps do give us a proper glance at what we can expect from the two zones. Gilneas is dominated by Greymane Manor and the town of Duskhaven. Looking at it, I was expecting something a bit larger, but then you remember it is a starter zone. The Lost Isles is smaller still with an Alliance encampment to the North and an Orc settlement to the south, which explains their presence in the trailer.

We should note that the Gilneas map is only part of the Worgen starting zone. The city and the Greymane wall are due East of what's presented.

Check out the Goblin map and Worgen map over on WoW Todo.

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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.

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All the World's a Stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players. They have their stories and their characters; and one player in his time plays many roles.

As you know, the Cataclysm is going to bring major changes to the whole world of Azeroth. There will only be 5 new zones for leveling above 80 and one new zone for each new race -- the rest of the work they're doing involves changing the old zones, bringing them up to the standards of zones in The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, adding new quests that are more appropriate to the current timeline, and completely rebuilding the areas that just didn't work so well.

You are also probably aware that this is a much-needed improvement. The 1 - 60 leveling process (except for the draenei or blood elf starting areas) has long been fraught with serious flaws. Going through it the first time wasn't so bad, since exploring everything felt so new, but doing it the third and fourth times meant sheer boredom. I remember many times going to a zone, completing many or all of the quests there, and leaving without ever feeling as though I had really "been" there. Except for a few real gems, quests mostly involved spending a lot of time running long distances in order to kill more nameless bad guys -- they felt more like pest control than adventure. Just being there seemed to remove me from the story of Azeroth, and dump me in some other world where there was nothing important happening. Vast stretches of land on the Azeroth map meant absolutely nothing to me as a roleplayer: no character, no story, no meaning.

Man it seems like ages since we've done our podcast at the usual time, but we're returning to the airwaves at the regular 3:30pm Eastern today (that's August 29, 2009 3:30 PM EDT), and it's going to be a good one. We'll have perspectives on BlizzCon both from people who were there (Turpster, Alex Ziebart, and I) as well as from someone who wasn't there (Michael "Belfaire" Sacco), and we'll talk about everything we saw in the new starter zones and all of the other new things we saw on the show floor. We'll also talk about this Deathwing guy and why he's a great choice for the next big bad, as well as how close we actually are to the expansion's release.

And of course, seeing as it's been a few weeks since we really dived into the inbox, we'll answer your emails -- you can send them along any time to "theshow AT wow dawt com." And I believe that during our livestream of the meetup, I promised some loot cards and wasn't able to deliver, so we'll do that as well. Should be a great show - we'll see you over on the Ustream page (or in the embedded feed after the break) this afternoon.

Every week, Zach brings you the World of War(craft), which talks about PvP in all its myriad shapes and forms. It will be humorless and dry and deathly boring because Christian Belt already has the monopoly on funny and because cracking jokes in a PvP column just doesn't work since PvP people are supposed to be asshats, anyway.

BlizzCon came and went and nothing is going to be the same again. At least not after Cataclysm, the third expansion for the World of Warcraft. Cataclysm is set to change the face of the game more than anything we've ever seen, it'll almost be like WoW 2.0. The classes are the same, but there'll be new races, new abilities, new mechanics, and a new, revamped world with a renewed faction conflict that will have deep implications for PvP.

Gameplay will change significantly, particularly for Warlocks and Hunters, and there will be changes to talents, talent tree passive benefits, racial abilities, as well as entire systems to rate Battleground play. There will likely be an overhaul to the Arena ratings system, as well, perhaps as soon as Arena Season 7 kicks in. Blizzard isn't content to sit idle on its success, but has in fact taken the opposite direction by overhauling the entire game. They're turning Azeroth on its ear, and it's going to be insane. After the jump, we'll take a look at how the Cataclysm is going to shape World of Warcraft PvP.

So Cataclysm is coming and Kisirani is already working on an in-game launch event. It's gotta mean something right? Now don't get me wrong, even with my self-confessed zombiephobia, I loved last November's zombie invasion (though, at times, it got really frustrating). So now Kisirani is officially hard at work planning a new event to herald the beginning of an Azerothian cataclysm, I can't help but wonder what she has up her sleeves for us.

Is anyone else excited? I certainly am and it gives us something to focus on during the inevitable wait. To be fair, at least Cataclysm's not scheduled for 2012! We don't have that long to wait, we could be rolling Worgen and Goblins in just under/over a year's time. That just about makes it bearable. But it also leaves us with time to think about what Blizzard will do to introduce players to this brave new world.

Hit the jump to find out what we think could well happen prior to the launch of Cataclysm.

When the online BlizzCon store first became available, Adam Holisky pointed out that while there was a lot of unique swag being sold at BlizzCon, none of it seemed really amazing. At the time, I had agreed with him. I mean, plush murlocs are always awesome, but nothing I saw in the gallery really blew me away.

And then I saw the stuff in person. Isn't that always the way? Something about standing there, with those beautiful items lit up in their glittering case, called to me like the dork that I am. But, it's something that's hard to explain -- you have to see it yourself.

Check out the gallery below to see the items on sale at BlizzCon 2009. If I were pressed to pick my favorite, I'd probably go with the "Time is money, friend!" T-Shirt. It seemed like a neighborly way of welcoming the Horde's new friends: the Goblins.

It was a hectic two days at this year's BlizzCon with lots of revelations, some good, others awesome. Destruction is coming to Azeroth with the return of Deathwing, changing the face of the planet forever. While we won't see the game until 2010, the world will change entirely and cities will be revamped in order to enable them to be made flyable. However, there are several very important locations currently in-game (for the most part) which are going to be very important to the coming Cataclysm.

Check out our gallery below as we take you on a guided tour of some of the important places you should probably visit right now before they are changed forever.

For all those of you out there who don't have the time to slog through the 100+ articles we published on BlizzCon 2009, we've condensed the events of the past few days into the most important things you need to know:

• THE END OF WRATH: Developers gave some pretty revealing information on what we can expect to see in patch 3.2.2 (the revamped Onyxia raid) and in patch 3.3, where we'll finally stare down Arthas himself.
  
• THE NEXT EXPANSION: Blizzard's own loremaster Chris Metzen debuted the first trailer for the next expansion, titled World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and that sound you hear is millions of players who can't believe Blizzard would ever pull a stunt this big. Cataclysm's basic storyline features the return of Deathwing and the re-sundering of the world in his wake, forever altering Azeroth's classic landscape and sending players to previously unseen parts of the world like the Lost Isles, Hyjal, Gilneas, Uldum, and Grim Batol.
  
• FEATURES OF CATACLYSM: The most important features of the next expansion include two new races (Goblins for the Horde and Worgen for the Alliance), new class possibilities for existing races, a new secondary skill, character stat simplification, cross-server instances, the ability to level and "talent" your guild, new means of character advancement through the Path of the Titans, Mastery, and the revamping of the talent system, and rated battlegrounds.
• LIVEBLOGS: We blogged and liveblogged the convention from start to finish: the Opening Ceremony, the WoW Preview panel, the WoW Art panel, The Guild's panel, the first and second WoW Class, Items, and Professions Panels, the general WoW Q&A, the Breaking Into the Industry panel, the Game Systems panel, and the Raids and Dungeons panel.
• FUN AND GAMES: Even in the middle of all the craziness, we still found time for our third annual Reader Meetup (we expected maybe 300 people and got 1200+) with the cast of The Guild present, Premonition's live raid, the Costume contest, and the Dance and Soundalike contests.

If you'd like a more thorough look at how BlizzCon 2009 went, visit our round-ups on Day One and Day Two of the con for a more complete guide to our articles, galleries, and videos.

All the World's a Stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players. They have their stories and their characters; and one player in his time plays many roles.

So the Cataclysm expansion has officially been announced at BlizzCon 2009 and while there are many things we knew before (such as the addition of Goblins and Worgen), there are many things we just learned (such as the beginnings of their proper lore), and many things we still don't know as well -- some things even Blizzard still seems undecided about.

But there are some indications of things to come which will surely affect roleplayers. The most obvious change involves the changes the whole world will be going through. Each of our existing characters' will have their own reaction to the cataclysm, of course, as well as the opportunity to go through the game from 1 to 60 with a new character, and maybe not be quite as bored as you were the last 6 times you did it. Your new tauren paladin's leveling experience will be very different from your tauren shaman's, and each one will have different things to talk about once they reach the level cap.

Another obvious addition is that you can start another character with whichever new race you like most. Many players have been wanting to play goblins and worgen for a long time, and appreciate the new parity that the two races bring to the two factions -- the Horde now has a diminutive race that is likely the closest the Horde could ever come to "cute," and the Alliance finally gets a race that is actually monstrous. This opens the doors for people to try out the opposite faction even more than before. We've already talked about these two races in a previous article, but now that the expansion's new races are confirmed with additional lore and information, there's quite a bit more to say.

Well, readers, BlizzCon 2009 is over and done, and our staff is slowly but surely beginning to make its way home in celebrated zombie-like fashion. In the meantime, we've outsourced article production to our household pets, so be gentle with your criticism of Toonces' efforts today (stupid cat can't even spell QQ correctly). Anyway, here's what happened on Day 2 of BlizzCon:

• SATURDAY'S PANELS: We liveblogged the panels on Breaking Into the Industry, the general World of Warcraft Q&A, WoW Game Systems, the Dungeons and Raids panel (which included information on both Icecrown Citadel and Cataclysm content) and the second WoW Class Discussion panel.
• NEW FEATURES ANNOUNCED: Blizzard announced a long-awaited feature in the form of cross-server instances, which should dramatically increase the pool of people available to run a 5-man at any given time. We won't have to wait for the expansion; they believe it should be ready to go live in patch 3.3. Another long-awaited feature will make its debut in the form of rated battlegrounds and arena points from wins. A beloved feature of the old honor system -- ranked (and faction-specific) PvP titles! -- will also return.
  
• WORLD OF WARCRAFT: WE'RE ALL &$#*%*^ED NOW: Cataclysm continued its storm through the con, and we've got in-depth looks at an array of the announced features. Read on for a look at the Cataclysm narrative, tanks and the removal of +defense, an explanation of the Mastery system and new talent functionality, what we know about the Path of the Titans, the introduction of guild leveling and talents, the known dungeons of Cataclysm, and what we can expect to see in patch 3.3's Icecrown Citadel raid and 5-mans.
  
• PATCH 3.2.2: On the subject of Wrath game patches, Matt Rossi takes a look at the most eagerly-anticipated part of patch 3.2.2, the return of Onyxia.
• LIVE RAID: The top-ranked U.S. guild, Premonition, did a live raid against a series of selected bosses, falling eventually to...Hogger? No one saw that coming.
• CLASS AND ROLE COMMENTARY: Zach Yonzon and Eddie Carrington respectively have you covered on Warlock and Hunter information from at the Class Q&A panels, Christian Belt's written his column on Cataclysm and Mages, and Matticus examines the information released on stat changes and their likely repercussions for healers.
• VIDEOS: We have additional video of the new Worgen and Goblin starting areas, the finalists and winner of the costume contest, and the Dance and Soundalike contest.
  

The Props team at BlizzCon showed a video on what they do, and also displayed a lot of the characterization and mood setting of the new Goblin and Worgen starting areas. The Lost Isles for the Goblins are just beautiful and quirky and funny, abounding in tropical drinks, a breakfast machine, and a "rocket-catapult-turtle-powered-machine" (and did they actually build a railroad out of bamboo?), although I have to say that the Dickensian/Victorian feel of Gilneas is just...words fail me. It's lovely. This is perhaps the loveliest, most haunting, spooky and creepy zone Blizzard's ever done, and...it's going to be an almighty lagfest when Cataclysm hits. Oh well. Truthfully, I had no idea just how much of what we think of as the "landscape" is in fact the Props team at work.

As an FYI for readers who have observed this on previous video, yes, there are gold-sellers' ads popping up on Viddler, and no, we're not happy about it, and we certainly didn't put them there.

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BlizzCon 2009 is here! WoW.com has continuing coverage, bringing you the latest in Cataclysm news, live blogs, galleries, and reports right from the convention floor. Check out WoW.com's Guide to BlizzCon for the latest!

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The shrewd and tenacious goblins are the Horde's newest playable race with the Cataclysm expansion. Though considered the go-to neutral race in World of Warcraft thus far, the goblins have an active history of working with the Horde -- as well as some shady deaings with many of Azeroth's other sentient races -- in previous Warcraft games. So strong is the goblins' reputation for driving a hard bargain that a dwarvish saying for doing the impossible is "cheating a goblin".

Interestingly, they weren't always the eccentric and self-destructive inventors, tradesmen, and arms dealers we know them to be today. The first reference to goblins in official lore, chronologically, is in the War of the Ancients trilogy of novels, which indicates that the goblins have been around for quite some time. Once a reclusive, barely sentient race native to the isle of Kezan, the race was in thrall to the jungle trolls, employed as miners in the island's tunnels and caves. It was while mining that goblins first discovered the mineral kaja'mite, the key to their meteoric rise in intelligence.

Welcome to another installment of Arcane Brilliance, the weekly Mage column that serves up piping hot Mage content, with a steaming side of inappropriate humor, a light sprinkling of random 80's pop culture references, and just a dash of incompetent attempts at math. Speaking of math, last week was awesome, guys. I was apparently so wrong it took 111 comments for you to decide exactly why and how stupid I am. The effort and the display of raw number-mastery you guys displayed made me proud to be one of you. You guys make me feel like the dumbest kid in class, being forced to do math problems at the chalkboard in front of everybody, and I couldn't be happier about it.

So, like many of you, I've been stuck here at home for the duration of BlizzCon. My day-job (what I like to refer to as my "what I do when I'm not being a Mage") has kept me here in sunny Las Vegas instead of in sunny Anaheim, and so I find myself at my computer, dividing my time between writing this column and furiously hitting the refresh button on my browser, hanging on every word my co-bloggers serve up from the convention floor. I wish I'd been able to make the reader meet-up this year, but that was not meant to be. I wanted to meet all of you, stammer like a dork while trying to say hello to Felica Day, and possibly get jumped by a gang of angry Warlocks while I screamed "Ice Block! Ice Block! Iiiiiice Bllloooccckkk!" at the top of my lungs. I will be there next year, with my level 85 Goblin Mage in tow, even if it kills me.

I'm really having difficulty processing all of the information out there, and the vast, universal, and sweeping impact it will have on everything about this virtual world we play in, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Guild leveling? Mastery system? Southshore... taken by the Horde? My mind is leaking from my ears. I'm not even kidding; it's gross. But the purposes of today's column will be to try and make some preliminary sense of this massive glut of newness, and apply it to the only class I care about: Mages. What will the new (old?) content mean for those of us who wander the current, relatively un-sundered Azeroth, conjuring portals and pastries? Read on for my initial impressions.

We have only experienced the first day of BlizzCon and my mind has already been blown. We have heard so many amazing details about Cataclysm and they're promising more for today.

The changes are not just to our old favorite instances or to the zones around Azeroth. Implementing terrain phasing is going to change everything we know about leveling and running around our favorite zones. Also, who doesn't love the idea of Gnomes finally get to be Priests and as Ghostcrawler put it, "Be self-sufficient." (Well, they still don't have Hunters but that's okay.)

We got confirmation from Chilton that it in fact Goblins and Worgens will be added to the game in Cataclysm. We also learned that Goblins and Worgens will both get to play Hunters. But they're not the only new races added to the Hunter ranks. We also got confirmation that Humans and Undead will both be able to play Hunters. So all in all we got some really good additions to the Hunter community.

What about those awesome changes to the Hunter class? Well, how about the removal of Armor Penetration for one? We aren't going to have to worry how Armor Penetration works or when should stack for it...

Well, folks, the first day of BlizzCon went by in a blur, and we're still bouncing about all the stuff that was announced yesterday. If you don't want to slog through a ton of entries to get the TL:DR version, we've prepped a recap for you that'll take you to the highlights:

• WORLD OF WARCRAFT: OH SNAP: A little expansion by the name of Cataclysm was officially announced, with a world of pain now on its way to classic Azeroth and two new races. The official FAQ can be read here (and also on the official site) and we blogged through a look at the new starting zones and quests. All haters, disbelievers, skeptics, muggers, druggers, post-modernists, and trolls, we are graciously willing to accept your apologies. Line forms to the left, people. No pushing! And mister, I hope you brought enough gum for everybody.
• NEW FEATURES: These include the new races, Goblins and Worgen (Horde and Alliance respectively), the reordering and rezoning of much of Azeroth, an array of new race/class possibilities, a brand-new secondary skill, and some shake-ups in class mechanics and character/guild advancement.
  
• BATTLE.NET: Battle.net will gain new features in the expansion, including an XBox-Livesque ability to see what your friends are playing and which servers they're on, in addition to sending messages to them.
  
• PICTURES: Here's a map of the reordered post-Cataclysm Azeroth, a gallery of the art display at BlizzCon (containing some Cataclysm art, employee-decorated noobz, and Starcraft and Diablo universe pieces), a dedicated gallery for Cataclysm concept art, and a gallery of the costumes at BlizzCon.
  
• VIDEOS: We have video for you of the Cataclysm trailer, what Azeroth zones will look like post-Cataclysm, and the animation for Human-to-Worgen transformation.
• THE GUILD: The entire cast showed up and brought the funny at their live panel and at our reader meet-up. Gallery here!

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BlizzCon 2009 is here! WoW.com has continuing coverage, bringing you the latest in Cataclysm news, live blogs, galleries, and reports right from the convention floor. Check out WoW.com's Guide to BlizzCon for the latest!

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