The Classic World Made New

Due to the cataclysm, the lands of the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor as we have come to know and love them are forever changed -- from devastated Darkshore to the broken Barrens, sundered in two -- bringing a very new feel to the classic world. Zones are transformed, featuring all-new quests, art, items, major updates to existing quests, improved zone-to-zone questing flow, phased terrain, and much more during the level 1-60 experience.

We’ve also opened up additional class/race options for existing playable races. New Horde options include troll druid, undead hunter, orc mage, tauren paladin, tauren priest, and blood elf warrior. New Alliance options include human hunter, dwarf mage, night elf mage, gnome priest, and dwarf shaman.

Level to 85 in Azeroth’s Most Ancient Territories

Unlock new levels, earn new abilities, and tap into new talents by exploring five breathtaking, dangerous new zones. Perhaps you’ll want to venture into the ocean depths to the forever-sunken city of Vashj’ir, resting in ruin by the Abyssal Maw Vortex. More experienced heroes will ultimately find themselves far below the stretches of daylight, immersed within the Elemental Plane of Earth, Deephome, before risking life and limb to explore the ancient mysteries long locked away in Uldum.

Warlocks

The soul shard system is receiving a massive revamp, and will now become a core feature of the warlock class. Soul shards will no longer act as an inventory item, but rather exist as a resource, and appear below the warlock's health and mana bar.

A new spell, Soul Burn, will be the only warlock ability to cost a soul shard, and will empower most of your other spells to behave differently.

For instance, when combined with Fear it causes the spell to become instant. Other examples include: guaranteeing your Searing Pain spell three critical hits, increased horror effect and additional healing from Death Coil, and instant summoning from your summon demon spell. Soul shards will regenerate quickly upon leaving combat, and you may also be able to use drain soul as a "soul shard evocation."

[b]Hunters[/b]

Also receiving a massive overall are hunters.The hunter’s need to rely upon mana is completely gone, and instead they will use focus. This means hunters will no longer care at all about Intellect, mana regen or Aspect of the Viper.

Focus will regenerate continually, similar to how rogues or feral druids regenerate energy. For comparison, rogues regenerate approximately 10 energy per second, whereas hunters will regenerate 6 focus per second.However, Steady Shot can also be used to improve focus regen, and bring the rate at which hunters regenerate focus to 12 per second.

The hunter will have a maximum of 100 focus, and shots might cost 30 or 60 focus, with fewer cooldowns on abilities. Another exciting and long-awaited change regards the ammunition system. Ammunition will become an equipable item, and will no longer be consumable. More details on that later!

Items

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, there are plans to streamline the statistics found on items. We want to remove all unnecessary stats, make all existing stats understandable, and make all "core" stats more appealing. Here are some examples of such plans.

• MP5: This will be removed from items and replaced with Spirit. All healers will be given a meditation-like ability.

• Spell Power: Spell Power is being removed from items as well. Don't panic, we'll be improving Intellect so that it provides mana and Spell Power.

• Attack Power: We're removing Attack Power from items as well. Instead, we're allowing Agility to provide the necessary Attack Power for leather and mail wearers. Strength will provide the appropriate amount of Attack Power for plate wearers. This means leather and mail items will no longer be desirable for plate wearers.

• Defense: The Defense statistic is also being removed from items so that players no longer have to worry about juggling around "the cap." Tanks will receive the necessary anti-crit from talents, like Survival of the Fittest.

• Armor Penetration: This ability is too confusing and "mathy." It is being replaced with Mastery, a stat that makes you better at what you do. More on that later!

• Haste: Will also increase the rate at which you gain energy, runes, and focus. Retribution paladins and Enhancement shaman will have a talent that allows them to take advantage of this benefit.

• Stamina: Players will notice more Stamina on gear as Defense, Spell Power, Attack Power and Armor Penetration are removed.

Archaeology

Archaeology is the new secondary profession that will be joining the ranks of cooking, fishing, and first aid in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Archaeology allows the player to unlock new abilities and rewards by discovering ancient treasures throughout the world.

Each archaeologist uses the profession to uncover clues hidden in the world around them, such as troll relics or map fragments, and decipher their meaning, enabling the clever archaeologist to manipulate pieces of the past, learning the location of a treasure cache or valuable artifact. Such artifacts are highly sought after by the Archaeology Society, and they pay in gold and items for their return.

Those who have mastered archaeology can find Titan artifacts, earning special currency used to unlock character paths and allowing the player to further customize their character.

Reforging

Reforging affords tailors, blacksmiths, leatherworkers, engineers, and jewelcrafters the opportunity to customize any player's gear, including their own. Specifically, they can reduce a single statistic on applicable items and convert the lost points into another stat not already on the item.

New Starting Zones

The Lost Isles, a level 1-15 zone, will be the starting zone for the Horde goblins, while Gilneas, also a level 1-15 zone, will be the starting zone for the Alliance worgen. Venture through a starting quest experience like never before with our zone phasing technology, allowing you to affect the environment around you.

Guild Advancement Feature

Many new features are coming for guilds, including a guild leveling system where guild experience and talent points can be accumulated.

New Race and Class Combinations

Honing skills like never before in Azeroth, existing Alliance and Horde races will have new access to existing classes, including gnome priests, tauren paladins, troll and worgen druids, and much more.

Mastery System

We plan to explore and re-examine the talent system for every class in order to provide players with more fun and flavorful choices without wasting points on all of the “must have” abilities. To do this we’re introducing the Mastery system, through which players will gain unique passive abilities and stat increases based on the talent choices made.

Azeroth: Flying the Unfriendly Skies

With the world of Azeroth undergoing so many changes, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will now allow players who have learned the ability to fly to explore the skies of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms on their own flying mounts. Go where you want when you want!

More Dungeon and Raid Content than Ever Before

Players will gain access to dungeons where new challenges await, including The Firelands, Abyssal Maw, Blackrock Caverns, Grim Batol, and Skywall. What’s more, we’ll give you the chance to journey through familiar places in a re-imagined way, beginning with Heroic versions of the Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep. You’ll find yourself confronting old foes like Archmage Arugal and Edwin VanCleef in very new ways.

Rated Battlegrounds and New PvP Feats

Test your skills in new Arenas, a new Battleground (the Battle for Gilneas), and our latest PvP zone, Tol Barad. Also included in the next expansion is our highly-anticipated rated Battleground system. Only the most seasoned champions of the Horde and Alliance will have access to top-end items by claiming victory in our Battlegrounds, old and new.

When i hear new ill post....

For the offical WoW:Cataclysm FAQ: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm/faq/

Following their comments during yesterday's Class/Items/Professions panel, the Game Systems team explained the mysterious "mastery" system in the Systems panel today.

Looking at talent trees for all classes, the Systems team felt that players were spending too many points on things like flat damage or healing boosts; talents like Cruelty or Fire and Brimstone are uninteresting but necessary for players due to the bonuses they provide. On top of that, talent trees are bloated with all kinds of talents that are trying to do three things at once, which makes for confusion among players who might not be at the top of the min-maxing game.

What the Systems team wanted to do was make it possible for players to only use their points on "fun" talents -- ones like Body and Soul, Lightning Overload, or Juggernaut -- and make the passive bonuses that used to be in talents your reward for investing points into a tree.

Examples were given for Rogues. A Combat Rogue might see his Mastery bonuses include passive increases to melee damage, hit chance, and armor penetration as he moves down the tree, whereas a Subtlety Rogue might see increases to melee damage, melee haste, and energy regen.

But how does the new Mastery stat tie into this? Ghostcrawler says that the Mastery stat on gear will increase the bonuses you receive from the tree into which you've invested the most talent points. It'll also have other passive bonuses depending on your class and spec -- for example, Mastery will lower the cooldowns on Ret paladin abilities.

This seems like a fantastic change for everyone, and it makes me incredibly excited to think about the fun and interesting talents that'll replace my myriad of spell damage boosting talents. Can't wait for the beta!

Borrowed From: http://www.wow.com/

One of the most interesting Cataclysm features they've alluded to is Path of the Titans, another character advancement system at max level. Before the Systems panel today, we didn't have a lot of solid information on it. There are still questions to be answered, but here's how it appears to work so far:

* At maximum level, you choose to align yourself with a given Titan cult - i.e., you choose a specific path.
* The paths are not class- or role-specific. Players will have to figure out for themselves what path they want to take.
* Turning in artifacts found with Archeology (the new secondary profession) will cause you to progress along your chosen path.
* The main rewards are Ancient Glyphs (not part of the Inscription profession). At each rank in your Path you have two to three choices of Glyphs.
* Some examples of Ancient Glyphs are:
o Bleed reduction
o Bandage improvement
o Increased damage following a crit
* More Glyphs will probably come after launch.
* Everyone is going to eventually be able to get all the glyphs for their path, and it will not be grindy (i.e. not like Sons of Hodir).

I'm looking forward to learning more about this as Cataclysm comes towards beta and release. I'm especially excited that they're focusing on making it not feel grindy, because that's a definite risk for a system like this.

In what will certainly be the be-all end-all solution to "additional instances cannot be launched", Blizzard announced cross-server instances and LFG at the Dungeons and Raids panel at BlizzCon 2009.

By taking advantage of brand-new hardware separate from your realm's instance servers, not only will you be able to find groups from pools of players in your entire battlegroup, your realm's specific instance servers will be free of the stress of mass heroic-running.

On top of the convenience factor, Blizzard says that rewards will be in place for players who lead groups through instances successfully. The nature of the rewards is currently unknown but Blizzard promises more information soon.

Blizzard says that the feature will be used for 5-mans only at this time. It'll be launched with 3.3, not with Cataclysm.

Fantastic news! No more "additional instances" errors, a larger pool of players to choose your groups from, and rewards for good party leaders. Great news for everyone.

Borrowed From: http://www.wow.com/

WOW!