Belated Blizzcon Info Post: Better Late Than Never.

In case the title didn't give it away, this is a post I had intended on doing before my revision for resits and my laptop dying and going back to Notts and finding no Tinternet at my Uni house and enjoying the fun of a break-up and saving orphans from burning buildings and anything else ya can think of. All it's going to do is give my opinions on what we know so far. Let's see what I've got to say then.

Level cap to 85: When I first read this in the "spoiler", I was hoping it was wrong because 5 levels just feels really small. I enjoy questing and levelling just as much as I enjoy the other parts of WOW. However, I can see why Blizz did it and they have that Path Of The Titans system to try and make characters seem different. It's still a bit of a shame that there will be no new talents or anything and we're only getting 5 extra points. Personally, I love the feeling of getting the bottom talent and Cataclysm won't provide me with that. No "Yay, I finally have Feral Spirit/Beastial Wrath!" moments for moi. Generally though, I'm fine with 85 and I'll see if they make the levelling better since it's only 5 levels instead of 10.

Goblin and Worgen: I'm happy with the two races that Blizz gave each side. Worgen finally give the Ally a beast-race which makes things interesting and the Horde get Goblins so now they have a midget race to rival the Gnomes. From what I've seen of the levelling zones, I favour Gilneas over Lost Isles but I'll just have to wait and see how fun the questing is there.

Deathwing as the Big Bad: Great move from Blizz to bring Deathwing back and to use him as the reason for the world being changed. I'm looking forward to seeing what the pre-event will be for Cataclysm and if it will involve Deathwing in some way. I have to admit that while the Lich King is a great bad guy to face, Deathwing looks much more intimidating based on the artwork I've seen of him.

Flying mounts in Azeroth: Well, this will make travelling around easier. We don't know if it will require "unlocking" or not yet...they might want you to explore the new zones on foot before you get to soar over them. Hopefully, they'll be used all over Azeroth and not only in certain areas/zones. However, this could lead to a lot of ganking issues since high levels could just fly over and make a low level person's life hell.

Underwater mounts: Erm, cool I guess? I can't say I've been dying to have an underwater mount but I'll see what mounts we get that will make our underwater travel better.

Old world being changed: We don't know how much is being changed but we can hope that every zone gets cleaned up in terms of questing. However, those that we do know about are getting pretty big changes. The one I'm most interested in is the Barrens change. I hated questing there after I'd done it twice with my Tauren Shaman and my Orc Warr. With the split, it will make it a much more bearable zone and hopefully, keep it interesting since I did enjoy Barrens questing the first time round. Also, it's interesting to see that it will change regardless of whether you buy the expansion or not. I guess it's time to start taking screenshots right?

New zones being added: On top of all the changes to current zones, we are lucky enough to still get new ones too! The place I most want to visit is Hyjal. I'm psyched to see Ragnaros make a return and to finally see Malfurion make his appearance. The only thing I'm unsure of is...how has he returned? I figured he was still stuck in the Emerald Dream. And if he has returned properly, does that mean he'll be leader of Darnassus one day? I hope there's some sort of interaction between him and Tyrande at some point while questing in Hyjal too. Otherwise, he's basically come back and not even bothered to contact her. That's just cold and Tyrande should dump him and find a better man. Girl power!

Archaeology: This profession sounds like an interesting secondary profession. Combine it with the Path Of The Titans concept and I'm really interested to see how this turns out. Hopefully, when we get more info on it and all that, I can make a blog post looking at this profession. Until then, I can't really say much else.

New forms for Troll and Worgen: Now, I had heard that the Troll/Worgen druids would be getting new forms and I had hoped that it would be new forms of everything. However, so far, it seems like they are only getting new Moonkin forms. There may also be an epic travel form for Druids to enjoy too but only time will tell. I still hope Trolls/Worgen get new forms to replace Bear and Cat but at least they get something.

Hunters use Focus now: Well, I'm happy they use something that makes more sense. Mana bugged me because Hunters are not magic users/casters. However, this raises a lot of questions too. Will it be exactly like a Rogue's energy bar? How will shot rotations work? Is this the pony that Ghostcrawler promised us? Also, ammo will be an equippable item. Bye bye, consumables.

Paladin mounts and Shaman totems: The Tauren and the Draenei are getting sexy Pala mounts! This is good because horses are not really a Tauren's ideal mount. Draenei look okay on a horse but I'm all for them getting something else. I'm glad to see that Shamans will be getting race-themed totems. Now, your Shaman will seem a little bit more unique to other Shaman when you plant those totems down.

Soul Shard revamp: Warlocks are finally getting a big revamp and this will really help to make Warlockies feel different to Mages. From what I can tell, Shards will feel much more useful and this will make the Warlock class feel more interesting in general.

Mastery stat: Blizz's way of trying to make the talent trees feel more unique. You put points in a tree, you get a passive bonus. Pretty simple really and it's a good way of getting rid of talents that already do that which will free points up to go into other talents. I'm quite interested in this because it should mean talent trees are better.

PvP: Battleground PvP'ers have rated Battlegrounds to look forward to which is great cause I quite enjoy BG's. There will also be a new Battle for Gilneas and a new Wintergrasp-like zone so things are looking pretty groovy for PvPer's. On a personal note, I'm happy that the old PvP ranks are making an apperance again.

Guilds: There's a lot to look forward to that is Guild related. There's Guild levelling to give talents to be of use like reduced repair costs or a mass ressurection. There's Guild profs which lets members share purchased plans with one another. Finally, there's even a Looking For Guild interface to make finding a guild easier. This should be handy for my alts that are guildless.

Garrosh becoming Warchief: This info comes from a "spoiler" we had ages ago that turned out to be right about everything else. Therefore, there's a good chance of this happening which could be supported by the fact that the Horde take a fair bit of land in the upcoming expansion which shows aggressiveness that resembles a Horde that would be leaded by Garrosh. Now, it could just be that Thrall has decided to take the fight to them and that's good for those who complain that "Thrall is too soft/slow to act" but personally, I think it's more likely to be Garrosh related. If it is and he is Warchief, I have mixed feelings about this and I'll see how Blizz handle it.

Cairne's death: Another "spoiler" related bit. If this is true, I'll be very very saddened. Cairne was one of my fav WC3 characters and Blizz haven't really bothered to use him so far. I don't want the first big Cairne related event to be his death. I'd rather see him doing something awesome. But if he does die...how the hell will the Tauren stay with the Horde? It's been suggested that Cairne will be made to look like a traitor but I can't see everyone going "Oh well, must be true. Let's kill him then." and that's that. I can't see Thrall accepting Cairne as a traitor and if it's true that Garrosh kills Cairne, I can't see how Thrall or Cairne's son will accept that either. I'm hopeful that this is untrue but we'll wait and see.

And there's everything, I believe. There's a lot of info that we got and most of it's positive. The only downsides are ones that came from the "spoiler" we got ages ago before Blizzcon. While that does mean there's a chance of them being wrong, the rest of that "spoiler" was correct and therefore, we can't totally rule it out.

Here's a couple of questions for anyone who reads this: What are you most excited about Cataclysm wise? What are you least excited about?