WoW Cataclysm

[Turaylon Soulshadow]

New Races:
Horde- Goblins
Rocket Jump- Activate your Rocket Belt to jump 20 yards every 2 minutes
Rocket Barrage- Fire your belt rockets at an enemy within 30 yards every 2 minutes (Shared timer with Rocket Jump)
Time is Money- 1% increased attack and casting speed
Best Deals Anywhere- Best possible gold discount (-25%) regardless of reputation
Pack Hobgoblin- Allows bank access from anywhere every 30 minutes
Better Living Through Chemistry- Alchemy +15, potions grant more health and mana
Can be any class but Druid or Paladin

Alliance- Worgen
Viciousness- Increases damage dealt by 1%
Dark Flight- Increases movement by 70% for 6 seconds every 3 minutes
Aberration- Duration of Diseases and Curses is reduced by 15%
Flayer- +15 Skinning, no knife required
Can be any class but Paladin or Shaman

Seems like they were really grasping here to find a new race for the Alliance. Basically just using modified Humans (You urn into a Worgen as soon as you enter combat) doesn't sound all that great when there are far better choices they could have used.

Level Cap Increased to 85
Sure, EQ fucked itself REAL hard with the constant expansions, but it took nearly 10 years to get the level cap from 50 to 85, WoW did it in about half that.

Classic Zones Remade
Badlands and Barrens, two very popular zones, are being remade into something unrecognizable, much like our beloved Lavastorm Mounatains, Nektulos Forest, East and West Commonlands, North and South Ro and Oasis of Marr, Freeport, etc. All that did was make people upset and take away a few REALLY good leveling places that everyone was familiar with.

New High-Level Zones
As expected with a new expansion.

More Raid Content Than Ever Before
I'm assuming they are trying to go for something like Planes of Power with having several raid encounter options and one 'end game' area. The fact that WoW has everything instanced will just mean more tedious farming and grinding for raid guilds.

New PVP Zone & Battlegrounds
Team Rating for Battlegrounds...just arenas with a different objective.

Flying Mounts in Azeroth
Way to break the game. Good luck getting ANY experience if someone of the opposite faction happens to be flying overhead and feels like being a dick because they're bored.

New Race/Class Combinations
* Human Hunter
* Orc Mage
* Night Elf Mage
* Dwarf Mage
* Blood Elf Warrior
* Dwarf Shaman
* Undead Hunter
* Tauren Paladin
* Tauren Priest
* Gnome Priest
* Troll Druid
Half of those don't even make any fucking sense!

New Encounters: Deathwing and Queen Azshara
Deathwing died in Wacraft 2? Way to fuck up your own lore, Blizzard.

New Secondary Profession: Archaeology
The description looks like it will be basically an achievement profession with some minor useful rewards.

Profession Changes
Crafting higher level items will now give multiple skill-ups. Great, make an already way too easy crafting system even more retard-proof.

Itemization
No More MP5- All healing classes will have a Meditation-like Talent, allowing 50% of their mana regeneration to continue while casting. Spirit will also (continue to) affect mana regeneration. Warlocks and Mages are apparently boned.

No More Spellpower- Intellect will now convert into spellpower on an undetermined ratio.

No More Attack Power- Agility based classes will gain Attack Power on a scale of 2 AP per Agility point, as Strength classes get 2 AP per Strength point.

No More Armor Penetration- Ignoring armor will most likely now end up costing Talent points.

No More Defense- Tanks are now fucked, having to spend even more Talent points on things to make them survive.

No More Block Value- Block percentage is gone, and Block will now reduce a percentage of incoming damage instead of giving a chance to block a hit entirely.

Haste- Haste will now increase non-mana energy source recovery (Energy, Rage, Runes, and Focus, which is what Hunters now run off of, and what they SHOULD have been running off of since the game fucking launched!)

Class Changes
No Spell Ranks- Spells will now scale with your gear, making gear, not skill, that much more important to a game where decent gear is already too easy to attain.

Hunters will now get fewer abilities because their shots now cost more...because that makes sense

Hunter Ammo is no longer an item and grants passive bonuses, giving every Hunter Endless Quiver. GG Blizzard

Warlock- Soul Shards- Basically Warlock Runes (Like Death Knights have) that will increase the power of some spells, such as Fear being INSTANT CAST and Death Coil healing for more than the already unnecessary 300% of damage dealt.

All in all, I'm now glad I quit when I did. Wrath looked almost tempting enough to reactivate my account, but I'm so glad I didn't waste the money.

[Ddrak]

Looking through the list (prior to reading this post), it left me feeling a little like they'd run out of ideas. The previous expansions seemed pretty damn interesting lore-wise and in gameply but this one just seems empty.

To be fair about level caps, WoW started at 60 not 50 and the size of the jump doesn't really matter. EQ also got AAs in the meantime which counted as a decent level jump anyway. Any jump in level cap obsoletes all your gear and forces you to restart building it - nothing you can really do about that from a game designer's point of view. After all, let's face it, MMOs are very treadmill-ish in nature and forcing people to upgrade everything keeps that happy treadmill going. (Treadmill isn't bad, just the nature of the beast).

Dd

[Select]

Looking through the list (prior to reading this post), it left me feeling a little like they'd run out of ideas. The previous expansions seemed pretty damn interesting lore-wise and in gameply but this one just seems empty.

A big complaint with EQ was that the old world became stale and empty and couldn't exist cohesively with the new graphics/game play of later expansions. You don't think Blizzard is addressing this by returning to the old zones and completely revamping them? Or is that not your complaint? Are you fine with returning to old zones and you just want a better story?

[Bahd Zoolander]

You should read the panels here: http://www.mmo-champion.com/

The changes to talents, guilds, and glyphs alone are pretty cool.

[Turaylon Soulshadow]

Looking through the list (prior to reading this post), it left me feeling a little like they'd run out of ideas. The previous expansions seemed pretty damn interesting lore-wise and in gameply but this one just seems empty.

A big complaint with EQ was that the old world became stale and empty and couldn't exist cohesively with the new graphics/game play of later expansions. You don't think Blizzard is addressing this by returning to the old zones and completely revamping them? Or is that not your complaint? Are you fine with returning to old zones and you just want a better story?

WoW could have made old zones still usable by just making Heroic instances of more old dungeons. Heroic Blackrock Depths would take HOURS! The population on WoW is also increasing pretty much every day, meaning there will almost always be people in each level range to make use of the old content. The large population also means more people that are interested in doing progression content and still doing old raids. Hell, even when I was 70 and fully decked out in top end gear we would often get bored and grab a handful of people to do things like Zul'Gurub and Scholomance to try to get the rare mounts, or try to do Molten Core with a Prot Paladin, Feral Druid, and 2 Mages...we didn't get past the first fire elemental :-X

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Empty expansion, imo.

Nothing in there to pull me back and anything that could've possibly brought me back is so far overdue that I don't care anymore.

[Ocaevia]

Only thing that grabbed me was Onyxia, Rag and Nefarian. Loved those fights.

[Turaylon Soulshadow]

This is just Dragons of Norrath...only in WoW. All Dragon bosses, old zones changing...technically we've already been through this shit.

[Ddrak]

A big complaint with EQ was that the old world became stale and empty and couldn't exist cohesively with the new graphics/game play of later expansions. You don't think Blizzard is addressing this by returning to the old zones and completely revamping them? Or is that not your complaint? Are you fine with returning to old zones and you just want a better story?

It honestly just seems like "more of the same". Yeah, I know they have revamped a bunch of class stuff, but it's starting to feel like EQ did at the 5th or 6th expansion. Arthus returning - cool. OMG WORLD ASPLODE - cliche.

I've no doubt that plenty of people will enjoy it, and talking to some of the WoW raiders I hang out with at work they seem to be pretty intrigued by it, but my jaded MMO experience says that Blizz needs to start prepping something new sometime.

Dd

[Garrdor]

WoW, what a bunch of bullshit.

I was thinking about reactivating... SYKE BLIZZ.

WoW's success will dwindle with this one. Any guesses to what will be the "WoW killer" ?

[Fallakin Kuvari]

SWTOR, imo.

[Kulaf]

For the PvP folks I assume Aion would be the next big thing.

[Ddrak]

Nothing's going to kill WoW in the short term - MMO's live on their popularity and it will take a long time for anything to blast WoW hard enough that the servers start to feel empty.

SWTOR is looking promising for taking some casual marketshare from WoW, but could go very wrong (unlikely from Bioware, but who knows).
Aion is going to be interesting, but I really don't see it taking significant WoW mindshare.

Dd

[Taxious]

Horde- Goblins
Rocket Jump- Activate your Rocket Belt to jump 20 yards every 2 minutes
Rocket Barrage- Fire your belt rockets at an enemy within 30 yards every 2 minutes (Shared timer with Rocket Jump)
Time is Money- 1% increased attack and casting speed
Best Deals Anywhere- Best possible gold discount (-25%) regardless of reputation
Pack Hobgoblin- Allows bank access from anywhere every 30 minutes
Better Living Through Chemistry- Alchemy +15, potions grant more health and mana
Can be any class but Druid or Paladin

Wow, those seem like some really OP racial abilities?

[Fallakin Kuvari]

New Race/Class Combinations
* Human Hunter - FINALLY
* Orc Mage - Eh...
* Night Elf Mage - Eh... High Elves were high on Arcane, usually being mages... I guess I see it.
* Dwarf Mage - Uh...
* Blood Elf Warrior - Fuck you, Blizzard. I wanted to be one of these in TBC.
* Dwarf Shaman - Ok, Iron Dwarves are Shaman... its a reach, but I'll accept it.
* Undead Hunter - about fucking time
* Tauren Paladin - What?
* Tauren Priest - Seriously? Holy Cows?
* Gnome Priest - Long overdue
* Troll Druid - Makes more sense than anything except Blood Elf Warrior and Hunters.
Half of those don't even make any fucking sense!

[Alarik Zekaiden]

Ugh, this is really making me seriously consider retiring my poor Ret paladin after this current expansion (Wrath) is done. I've been messing around with other games like EQ2, AoC, CoH, Eve Online, and this one called RL at lot more lately anyway.

[Turaylon Soulshadow]

Horde- Goblins
Rocket Jump- Activate your Rocket Belt to jump 20 yards every 2 minutes
Rocket Barrage- Fire your belt rockets at an enemy within 30 yards every 2 minutes (Shared timer with Rocket Jump)
Time is Money- 1% increased attack and casting speed
Best Deals Anywhere- Best possible gold discount (-25%) regardless of reputation
Pack Hobgoblin- Allows bank access from anywhere every 30 minutes
Better Living Through Chemistry- Alchemy +15, potions grant more health and mana
Can be any class but Druid or Paladin

Wow, those seem like some really OP racial abilities?

Makes me wonder if Chemistry stacks with the 40% bonus from Alchemist stones.

[Turaylon Soulshadow]

New Race/Class Combinations
* Human Hunter - FINALLY
* Orc Mage - Eh...
* Night Elf Mage - Eh... High Elves were high on Arcane, usually being mages... I guess I see it.
* Dwarf Mage - Uh...
* Blood Elf Warrior - Fuck you, Blizzard. I wanted to be one of these in TBC.
* Dwarf Shaman - Ok, Iron Dwarves are Shaman... its a reach, but I'll accept it.
* Undead Hunter - about fucking time
* Tauren Paladin - What?
* Tauren Priest - Seriously? Holy Cows?
* Gnome Priest - Long overdue
* Troll Druid - Makes more sense than anything except Blood Elf Warrior and Hunters.
Half of those don't even make any fucking sense!

Human Hunter I can deal with. It makes enough sen se that it won't be stupid.
Orc Mage is just dumb. They can already get Warlock, and their abse intel is definitely not high enough to validate ANOTHER arcane type class.
Night Elf Mage is just silly. Night Elves learn through living, not through studying.
Dwarf Mage...enough said?
Blood Elves should have been able to start as a Warrior, seeing as how some of the storyline characters in WC3 were, uh, Blood Elf Warriors?
Dwarf Shaman makes my head hurt.
Undead Hunter is almost as retarded as Undead Druid. THEY'RE UNDEAD! Live animals should want nothing to do with them!
Tauren Priest and Paladin are going to be WAY overpowered in PvP. GG shields with War Stomp.
Troll Druid may just break the game with the attack speed increase in cat form, which can already get down to .25 with 10k Mangle crits.

[Falundir X`Viento]

Gnome monk?

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Undead Hunter is almost as retarded as Undead Druid. THEY'RE UNDEAD! Live animals should want nothing to do with them!

Blightcaller.

The precedence exists, let them have their huntards imo.