Posts with tag new-expansion

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

The first few days of an expansion are a little like the wild west. This week, Gold Capped received an email about these first days:

I love your column on WoW Insider. It's been an eye opener for me on just how easy it can be to make some serious gold. That said, I didn't discover it until well after Cataclysm had launched, and so my question to you is; what were the first few days of the Cataclysm launch like economically, and what do you think I can expect from Mists of Pandaria? I had a blacksmith at the time of the Cata launch, and I remember spending exorbitant amounts of gold on ore/bars (he wasn't a miner). Is it a situation where, for the first few days, farming actually is worth doing, or are goods still worth making then? I have a bunch of 85s, all with worthwhile trade skills, and I'm just wondering what the best way will be to capitalize on the newness of the expansion.

The first few days of every new expansion, including Cataclysm, were a little crazy. The first thing you need to prepare for is the hyperinflation. Everyone will have more money, and they will all be spending it. Nothing gets people spending their savings like a new expansion. Pets will be battleable, new glyphs will be available, and everyone will be leveling professions. All this new demand is going to overwhelm the farmers, and for a while at least, the only cheap way to get materials will be to farm them yourself.

Patch 4.0.1 is live on the public test realm. The data is being downloaded onto your computer as you read this, if it isn't there already. The prologue for Cataclysm is about to begin.

Here at WoW Insider, we've put an incredible amount of cumulative effort into reporting what's going on both in the Cataclysm beta and on the PTR. We've already got that new-instruction-book smell flooding our nostrils. And quite frankly, we're a little exhausted. So instead of spending this morning reflecting on Cataclysm yet again, let's do something different. It's time to look to the future.

The future, Fox?

That's right, friends for life, it's time we all look into the future. All the way to the year 2000 ... and, um, 12. 2012. Cataclysm will be two years old. A new expansion -- or perhaps even a brand new World of Warcraft MMO -- will be upon us. We first started speculating on what would happen in patch 4.0.2 4.0.1 all the way back in 2008, so there's no reason why we can't start speculating about World of Warcraft 5.0.1 now.

So, what do you think we're in for? What's going to be the theme of the next major expansion? Are we in for new races? (Come on, Ethereals!) Are we in for new classes? And most importantly, what horrifying quest will involve the two-year-old remains of Old Blanchy?

Creative Labs posted a teaser flash video on their Sound Blaster site today; though to what they're announcing or counting down is currently unknown, we can definitely see that it's WoW-related, given the Horde crest in the center of the screen, and the Lament of the Highborne playing in the background.

Now, normally this wouldn't be very interesting, but when brightness and contrast are adjusted on the image's background, two distinct maps appear. The first is what is clearly Azshara on the left side of the image, and the second is the peninsula of Gilneas on the right side.

So why is this interesting? Well, those are the starting zones that the leaked Cataclysm information states are for the new races coming with the expansion.

It seems that the zones are in the spotlight a bit too much for it to be a coincidence. It very well could be an announcement meant to be timed with BlizzCon, or it could just be that the maps typically surround the Maelstrom and thus their positioning makes sense with the swirling Maelstrom graphic in the center.

We'll see what Creative has to say when the teaser ticks down some more!

Reader Dale from Grim Batol-EU (I don't think that's his character name) sent in a screenshot of the war map the leaders of the Horde stand around while debating their assault on Northrend in the latest (and probably final) stage of the Scourge Invasion. He sent it to us wondering if it holds any hints of future expansions, because the map includes a number of land masses we haven't seen in-game and have only appeared on a few maps of the world we've seen. I think there is something much more dire in the image.

There is no next expansion. Why? Because Northrend isn't even on that map. The Horde is using a map that lacks Northrend to discuss an assault on Northrend. I think I have some idea of how their conversation really went down at their war council. Check it out behind the cut below.

As we announced earlier, BlizzCon tickets are on sale. Sort of. Kind of. If you can fight past the store servers. I know I've been getting nothing but the fail murloc pretty much all day. Still, I and the rest of WoW Insider's crack live team will be there come hell or high water, and we'll bring you the news you need to know. In the meantime, we're stuck here refreshing the Blizzard Store. To pass the time, we did a bit of speculation about what we might see in Anaheim on October 10th and 11th. Here's what we decided:

What we're sure to see

The Wrath of the Lich King Cinematic: Though we still have no solid announcement, Blizzard's already stated that they want to get Wrath out before 2008 is up. Considering that, they must have the opening cinematic pretty close to done. I would be surprised if we don't see it open the opening ceremony, to be completely honest. I'm expecting Arthas and/or a "rebel" Human Death Knight to feature prominently, as well as our first cinematic Gnome shot.