21.08
23:26 – Update: More info added after watching the Cataclysm Panel.
02:26 – Update: Received more info from the Classes and Tradeskills Panel.

22.08
20:30 – Update: A few updates from the Open Q&A panel that was just held.

24.08
08:25 – Update: The last of the information from the Cataclysm panels has been released.

Plot:

Deathwing, having become insanely powerful and equally crazy, broke through the Elemental Plane, and caused the Cataclysm on Azeroth, leaving Azeroth being forever changed. Several zones have been added, in adition to the old content in Azeroth that has been revamped.

The World.

Mount Hyjal.
Mount Hyjal will be one of the new leveling zones in the 78-82 area. Darkwhisper Gorge in Winterspring will now be a part of the Hyjal zone, and quite possibly be the entrance.
Ragnaros and his cronies are now assaulting the World Tree, and Ragnaros is bigger, badder and seriously pissed off. You will be able to quest your way through the zone, to find out what is going on, and eventually face the evil in the end.

Twilight Highlands.
When Deathwing broke out of the Elemental Plane, and caused the cataclysm on Azeroth, he headed straight for Grim Batol. As he entered, he kind of just ran straight through the city, causing it to be split in half. You will quest through the scar Deathwing left, eventually reaching the core city, and unlocking the lore behind Deathwing and his Twilight Dragonflight which he has ben working on for a while (read Night of the Dragon by Richard A. Knaak and see what I mean).

Deepholm.
Deepholm isn’t exactly a part of Azeroth, but a part of the Elemental Plane. This is where Deathwing were resting to be able to break through and wreck Azeroth completely. You will actually be able to enter through the rift Deathwing created, and see Deepholm in it’s glory. It’ll be a subterranean zone, with lots of cavern systems and underground quest hubs. You will still be able to fly here of course. Also, Deepholm will serve as a hub for all the other zones, with protals to Hyjal, Twilight Highlands etc, and back. Also, it will be the final zone for quest to hit level 85.

Uldum.
The zone we’ve all been waiting for. Uldum has been protected by a Titan device which locked the entrance to Uldum and hid it from the rest of the world. As Deathwing ruined Azeroth, so too did he ruin one of the devices, causing Uldum to be availible to everyone. This zone will be very much like Egypt, with lush oasis areas and huge deserts, with temples and Titan buildings. A race of Titans, the Tol’Vir, will also have their home here. It will also house a dungeon with a raid and a normal dungeon. The raid has been revealed to be the Halls of Origination. Be on the lookout for Brann  Bronzebeard!

Sunken City of Vashj’ir.
As the Cataclysm was happening, so did the Maelstrom churn, and life in the long-lost city of Ashara sprung to life on the bottom of the ocean. Now known as Vashj’ir, it will actually serve as an underwater area, with quest hubs located in domes. You will of course be given underwater mounts with speeds akin to that of flying mounts, and Metzen promised it would not be troublesome to work underwater. The zone will be very colorful and lush, but it will also hold a portal to the Abyssal Maw. Expect to find Azshara herself here.

Gilneas.
Ah, the kingdom of Gilneas. The humans of Gilneas have been protected for all these years behind their stout Greymane Wall. Well, they are protected no longer. The Cataclysm broke down the doors, and let the worgen in. The inhabitants of Gilneas have all been turned into Worgen, but will actually side with the Alliance in the battle against Deathwing. The lore here wasn’t very specific, but be sure to read more about it tomorrow. It will be a level 1 – 15 zone, and will be heavily phased. This zone will also host a battleground, where players will fight for the control of certain city districts, but they were very vague on this.

The Lost Islands.
When Deathwing (yes, him again) wrought his wrath on Azeroth, Kezan was hit hard, and a band of goblins were forced to flee. They landed on the shores of the Lost Isles, and had to battle the inhabitants currently there. In the process, they made friends with Thrall and the Horde, and will be introduced as the new playable race to the Horde. The lore here seems brilliant, but expect to learn more about this later on. Just like Gilneas, it will be a 1 – 15 zone. Geographically, the Isles will be a bit off the coast of Azshara, north of Durotar, so the location is perfect.

Old Azeroth.
Old Azeroth has also been very revamped. Deathwing apparently rampaged through most of the land, leaving huge scars here and there, resulting in major changes. Desolace has had its shorelines ruined, letting water pour into Desolace giving birth to plant life. Looks very sweet. The Barrens have been split in two, with a Northern and Southern barrens. Norlax apparently succeeded in making the Wailing Caverns more lush, and the Southern Barrens is flowing with life. Auberdeen in Darkshore was ravaged, and the Alliance were forced to set up camp further north in Darkshore. The Horde camp on the Zoram Strand has been seriously fortified, and been given a harbour. Of course, there are several other changes, but writing them all would require several pages. Most important though, is that all of Azeroth is now flying mount accessable. Yep, that’s right, you can fly anywhere. Nothing were announced about you needing to buy a new flying skill, but expect Tome of Cataclysmic Flying for 2500 gold from some demonic vendor.

Phasing.
After the Wrathgate event and the Death Knight start zone, it seems Blizzard really took their liking to the phasing technology. And who can blame them? Content can now be added and removed with phasing as you progress through the story of the Cataclysm, and will make the game seem more dynamic. Also, the Goblin and Worgen starting zones will be heavily phased, and apparently a lot cooler than the Death Knight start area (which was awesome enough already). I am looking forward to this feature.

PvP and PvE.

PvP.
Blizzard talked briefly about the PvP part of the Cataclysm, naming at least three new battlegrounds to be ready for launch. One of them will be the aforementioned Gilneas battleground. Also, they’re introducing rated Battleground play, so you can grab a Premade group and go ravage in Battlegrounds, getting rating and arena points so you can be able to get PvP rewards like normal Arena goers. They will be introducing several new arena maps, although no number was given. A new zone like Wintergrasp will be introduced aswell; Tol Barad. It holds a prison, and the Alliance and the Horde will battle for the prison. Once you capture it, your side will be given a huge daily quest hub with, apparently, “very profitable rewards”. Also, you will be granted access to a raid wing with a/several boss(es).

Raids and dungeons.
Several new dungeons and raids will be introduced, although only a few have been named. The Firelands is one of them, which will let you face off a bigger and badder and meaner version of Ragnaros, in his lair in Sulfuron’s Keep. In Uldum, you’ll find the Lost city of Tol’Vir, and a new Titan dungeoin a’la Ulduar, the Halls of Origination. Twilight Highlands will contain a leveling dungeon, and a raid dungeon (quite possibly Deathwing’s Lair or at least his Twilight Flight). The Skywall, which is the elemental plain of Air, will hold a leveling dungeon and a raid dungeon. Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep (yes, it’s true) will have level 85 heroic modes availible. And last, but not least, the Blackrock Caverns is a new dugeon found in the Blackrock Spire, with completely new content, bossfights, artwork and so forth.

A new instance has been announced; Blackwing Descent. You will actually fly back to Nefarian’s old room to access a teleporter, and Nefarian himself will be back to defend it! This raid is inspired by Blackwing Lair, and has new art, new loot, and new creatures.

Onyxia.
As most of you already know, Onyxia will be introduced as a level 80 raid encounter in a future patch. She will drop new gear, bags and even a mount modeled after herself. What this means though, is that you won’t be able to kill a level 60 version of her anymore. So no more easy gold, or farming your old tier sets.

Cross-server LFG.
This feature is supposedly coming already in patch 3.3, but we’ll see. In any case, this feature will let you search for people across servers, and create a group. Supposedly it’ll help a lot for PUG groups. Also, there’ll be a reward system aswell. If you’re a leader for a PUG, say a 10-man raid, and you complete it, you’ll be rewarded.

Game features.

Level cap.
The level cap has been raised to 85, and you’ll as usual get one talent point per level. There will be no new talents however, at least not like in the other two expansion. Instead, you will have Masteries, and the Path of the Titans.

Masteries.
Your talent trees will be re-done quite a bit. Talents that give you stuff like 5% more crit chance, or 25% more bonus damage will be gone. Instead these talents will be passive bonuses for your trees. So let’s say you have a hunter that you’ll spec beast mastery. As you put talents in that tree, you will for example be granted passive crit and bonus damage. Or if you spec marksmanship, you will get passive armor penetration. And the more talent points you put in one tree, the higher the bonuses will be. This way, you can focus on talents you find fun or interesting, instead of mandatory because they give you more damage. Expect some diminishing returns though, so putting 76 talent points in one tree won’t be as worth it as you first thought.

Path of the Titans.
Part of the problem with endgame in World of Warcraft since TBC, is that when you hit max level, character progression slows down a great deal. You’re not improving your character a lot concidering the time put into it. This is something they’re addressing with the Path of the Titan.

As you play the game, you’ll unlock different paths you can choose, and as you progress you’ll unlock special glyph sockets for your characters. These glyphs are unlocked via the Archeology secondary profession by finding and trading in artifacts, and are in no way related to inscription. So far, there’s 6 named paths you can choose.

• Path of Aman’Thul, the High Father
• Path of Eonar, the Lifebinder
• Path of Norgannon, the Dreamweaver
• Path of Khaz’Goroth, the Shaper
• Path of Aggramar, the Avenger
• Path of Golganneth, the Thunderer

Each path will have 2 or 3 choices per rank, and if you want to try a new path, you can respec later on.
You’ll unlock glyphs by doing the things you’ve been doing for the last few years, like raiding, Pvp’ing, leveling your trade skill and so on, and as you go you’ll unlock these ancient glyphs that will improve your character a lot. There’ll most likely be a weekly cap on how much you can progress in a week.

The Path of the Titans will be availible to all players who reach 85, and players will eventually be able to unlock new ranks for their glyphs. Also, it’s a possibility that Blizzard will patch in completely new paths in the future.

Profession – Archeology.
The new profession will actually be a secondary profession, making it the first profession ever since the release of Retail to be a secondary profession. This profession will have you gather information about ruins and artifacts that have surfaced after Deathwing sundered Azeroth.  As you progress in Archeology, you will unlock random fun stuff like pets, titles, tabards and so forth. Looks like a welcome addition. Also, this profession will be closely tied in with the Path of the Titans, allowing you more flexibility when selecting your path.

Profession changes.
Certain professions will be given the possibility to have mutli-gains. For example, a blacksmith will be given the option to make 5 uncommon quality bracers, or one rare quality breastplate. The bracers will give 1 skill points each, and the breastplate 5 skill points. This will let players decide if they want to level and maybe even earn some money from items, or go the standard route.

Fishing and engineering will both receive some changes. Engineering will most likely continue to receive fun and helpful stuff like it does now, like Jeeves or Wormhole Generators. No specific details were given on fishing, other than that it’s going to get some big changes and that it’s going to be more fun and exciting.

Gathering professions will also get a little revamp, and be more fun to level. And you might even be able to customize the bonus you get, like if you’re a miner you won’t have to be stuck with your health bonus.

Guild Leveling.
One of the new cool features to be introduced in Cataclysm, is guild leveling. You will earn experience to the guild by raiding, leveling your profession, doing PvP, doing daily quests and so on. Your guild will have 20 levels to go on, and each level grants a talent point. As you level up, you can spend these in several talents that benefit your guild. Some of these include:

• Decreased repair costs.
• Slower durability loss.
• Remove reagent cost from spells.
• Allow a percentage of gold drops from raid bosses and mobs to be transfered to the guild bank.
• Mass Resurrection.
• Mass Teleport.

When your guild reaches level 20, the experience you get will be converted to guild currency, which can be spent on stuff like profession patterns, potions, guild banners and mounts with your guild’s insignia on it, reagents and respecs for your guild talent tree.

As you buy recipes for patterns, people in the guild with the appropriate profession can learn it and create items for the guild. This includes heirloom items. If the do decide to leave the guild however, any pattern learned will be unlearned, and heirloom items will be returned to the guild bank.

Guild Interface.
Another thing to be introduced is guild achievements. Guilds will now have their own achievements, and will have a new tab in your Achievement window. Some achievements currently in-game might be converted to guild achievements, but several new ones will be introduced. Some of these achievements might include creating a legendary item, having max level of all the different professions, reaching exalted with all factions and more.

There will also be added a Guild News Feed. This will show you stuff like what bosses have been downed, items that dropped, and other useful information. It will also have a filter, so you can filter out what content you want.

You can also now browse through the professions of your guild members, to see if they can create a spesific item.

Another added feature is the possibility to invite other guilds to your guild calendar event. For example, you have two guilds wanting to raid the same instance, but both need more people. Now, you can actually invite the other guild via your calendar, and the event will show in both guilds, making it easier to make collaborative efforts.

Reforging.
Reforging will be a new way for you to customize your gear. This ability will be given to blacksmiths, leatherworkers, jewelcrafters, tailors and engineers. Each profession will be able to reforge different items, although no list has been confirmed yet. It will be quite cheap, and the way it works is that you can reduce one stat on the item and replace it with another. It won’t let you increase a stat already present though, but it can for example reduce your hit rating and replace it for more intellect or crit rating. A fine addition if you’re hit capped and receive a fantastic new item with hit, for example.

Classes and races.

New races.
Worgen:
Worgen is the new alliance race, will start in Gilneas, and can be any class except Paladins or Shamans. Worgen will be given Darkflight, which increases your movement speed for 70% for 6 seconds. They are given a 1% increase in damage, 15% reduced damage from curses and diseases, and +15 to skinning, and you won’t even need a skinning knife!

In combat, you will automatically turn in to a worgen, but out of combat you may choose to wolf out, or stay human. And don’t worry, the worgen form is purely cosmetical.

Goblin:
The Goblins (or a renegade faction of goblins) is the new Horde race. It will start on the Lost Islands, and can be any class except Paladins or Druids. The Goblins will be given a rocket belt, which lets them either jump 20 yards ahead, or fire a barrage of rockets at their target. This shares cooldown. Also, they get the highest faction discount regardless of reputation, a 1% increase in attack and casting speed, +15 to alchemy skill and increased potion effect and a pack hobgoblin that seves as a bank, with a 30 minute cooldown.. Also, the Goblin mounts will be crappy engineering vehicles, sweet.

Racials.
All current racials will be updated to match the ones Goblins and Worgen are being treated in Cataclysm. Expect them to be in the veins of the Goblin and Worgen ones. This desicion is quite understandable, as the new racials are quite good.

Warlock.
Complete revamp of the shard system for warlocks. No more physical soul shards! That’s right, they’re gone. They will only be showed as a part of the UI. You will be given three shards, which will replenish when out of combat, and is used for one spell and one spell only: Soul Burn.
The Soul Burn spell will empower your next spell(s) cast, and can affect the spells in very different ways:

• Empowered Searing Pain : Next 3 Searing Pains will critical strike.
• Empowered Summon Demon : Instant Cast, much like Fel Domination.
• Empowered Soulfire : Instant Cast. PoM Pyro power!
• Empowered Fear : Instant Cast, like a single target Psychic horror.
• Empowered Death Coil : Longer Horror effect, more healing received.

The Soul Burn spell will have a 30 second cooldown, and be off the global cooldown. Most spells will have an empowered effect, not all.

Hunters.
Hunters will find themselves quite manaless in Cataclysm. The mana system will be completely gone, replaced by Focus. Focus will work much like energy, with a small twist: It regens 6 focus a second with normal attacks, but with Steady Shot it will regen 12 focus a second. So intellect and mana regen are now out the window. Aspect of the Viper will either be redesigned or removed. The cooldown on their abilities will be lowered, in some cases removed, and shots may cost anything from 10 to 30 focus, maybe even more. Ammo will also become an item, and not a consumable.

Pets.
This is actually already coming in 3.3, but I’ll still post it here.
In patch 3.3, pets will now scale with every stat you have, and also they’ll be affected by buffs from specific raid encounters. In addition, pets will no longer take damage from AoE spells done in PvE, but can still be damaged and die from AoE spells in PvP.
Eventually, it seems pets might get a “go to location” kind of ability, and also have a long cooldown spell which will allow you to teleport them to you. Apparently, this is because the pet AI will never bee good enough. I second that.

Items and itemization.

Stat changes.
Attack power? Gone. Mana per 5? Gone. Armor Penetration? You guessed right. Gone! Blizzard decided to revamp a lot of the stats, removing armor penetration, spell power, attack power, and mana per 5 seconds. Instead, strength will give 2 AP to plate users, agility will give 2 AP to mail and leather users, spirit will be directly related with mana regeneration, and intellect will increase your spell power. Defense rating is also gone, and tanks can become defense capped via talents. Since all these stats have been removed, all classes will get a lot of stamina, to be on pair with plate wearers. Haste has also been changed, so it now increases the rate you gain energy, focus, runic power and rage instead of increasing attack speed.

Armor penetration will actually be removed from gear, but not completely from the game, according to Blizzard. You will still be able to get armor penetration via talents, and most likely other places aswell, to be able to take down those tanks.

New legendary item!
This seems to be concerning Icecrown Citadel, and not the Cataclysm expansion, but here it is! The next legendary item to be released is….. (drumroll) …. Shadowmourne. Sorry you Frostmourne and Ashbringer hopers. Also, it seems the Corrupted Ashbringer will stay corrupted for now. You will not be able to get Frostmourne, because the sword would control you.  Just think of what it did with Arthas, that’s what it would do to you. Also, the next legendary to be introduced to World of Warcraft is a caster item.

This is it for now. More will be added as more panels will be held later.

Stay tuned for more information about The Cataclysm. You can also head over to MMO-Champion to find more in-depth coverage of the expansion.

This is close to old news about now, but here it is. A guild from China has finally managed to kill Yogg-Saron with absolutely no assistance from any guardians!

After some drama earlier about a bugged first kill, Stars now managed to get a legit world first kill, which netted them a few achievements: Heroic: Alone in the Darkness and Realm First! Death’s Demise, the latter of which gives them a neat title. Yes, the title is “Death’s Demise”.

In addition to some bragging rights, they also get Mimiron’s Head, probably the coolest and rarest flying mount in-game.

Congratulations goes out to Stars for their remarkable feat!

The upcoming patch will feature a lot of new cool stuff: a new battleground, new instances, more Argent Tournament goodness, class updates and more. And amongst all of this, Blizzard is introducing an update to the mounts, and this might be the best update World of Warcraft has gotten in ages.

Here’s what Blizzard poster Zarhym has to say about this.

In the next major content patch, we intend to adjust mount requirements to further improve the leveling experience in World of Warcraft. In addition, cast times for summoning all mounts will be reduced to 1.5 seconds, down from 3 seconds. The following is a breakdown of the upcoming cost and level requirement changes we are making for each riding skill.

Apprentice Riding (Skill 75)

• 60% land mount speed
• Requires level 20
• Cost: 4 gold
• Mount cost: 1 gold
• Mail will be sent to players at level 20 guiding them to the riding trainer

Journeyman Riding (Skill 150)

• 100% land mount speed
• Requires level 40
• Cost: 50 gold
• Mount cost: 10 gold
• Mail will be sent to players at level 40 guiding them back to the riding trainer

Expert Riding (Skill 225)

• 150% flying mount speed; 60% land mount speed
• Requires level 60
• Cost: 600 gold (faction discounts now apply)
• Mount Cost: 50 gold
• Can now be learned in Honor Hold (Alliance) or Thrallmar (Horde)

Artisan Riding (Skill 300)

• 280% flying mount speed; 100% land mount speed
• Requires level 70
• Cost: 5,000 gold (faction discounts now apply)
• Mount Cost: 100 gold

As you can see, this is going to be a very welcome addition to World of Warcraft. I know I will make good use of this, with a ton of alts sitting at mid-20 levels due to no mount.

As usual, head over to MMO-Champion for the latest World of Warcraft updates.

Back when 3.1 was released, Blizzard had promised us an equipment manager to go with the nifty dual talent specialization. This, however, did not appear, as apparently it was harder to implement than first imagined.

Today though, it was released through the newest patch, and has roughly the same functionality as addons we’ve been using for years (ClosetGnome and ItemRack, for example). It will let you store profiles for item sets, and let you quickly switch between sets, granted you have the items in your backback (or in the bank as long as you have the bank window open).

Just having this possibility is nice without having to rely on more addons, but it’s kind of a shame that they keep making this easy game even easier.

If you want to read the full patch notes, head over to WoWhead and check it out.

I guess you’re about as surprised as I am, but Ensidia has earned another world first.
About a month or so after the launch of Ulduar, Ensidia has completed a sufficient amount of Ulduar achievements to earn Glory of the Ulduar Raider. This achievement rewards them with a nifty mount, the Rusted Proto-Drake, one of the better looking mounts in the game at the moment.

Note that this is the 10 man version of this achievement. Heroic: Glory of the Ulduar Raider has still not been beaten, and I suspect that it will take some time before anyone will earn that one. Though, do not be surprised if it’s unlocked within a couple of weeks, you never know with the kind of progress certain guilds have in Ulduar these days.

As usual, head over to MMO-Champion for the latest and greatest World of Warcraft news and updates.

It might have seemed impossible, but it has been done. Irae-AoD of Mug’thol EU has managed to down Yogg-Saron with only one keeper up, which means they’ve beaten Yogg-Saron on hard mode. For this, they got One Light in the Darkness, and a iLvl 239 item (hard mode loot).

The only thing left now would be to kill Yogg-Saron with no keepers up at all (Alone in the Darkness) which will be substantialy harder, but will grant you the title Death’s Demise if you’re getting the server first.

Deus Vox of Laughing Skull US managed to kill the Iron Council on Hard Mode (Kill Steelbreaker last), and grabbing another world first.
It seems a lot of these supposedly very hard Hard Modes are going down quite fast this week, rather than lasting several weeks as Blizzard had first intended. Hopefully, the new chances to some of the hard modes will keep most guilds busy for a few weeks longer.

One new item was discovered after killing the Iron Council aswell: Sapphire Amulet of Renewal.

As usual, be sure to check MMO-Champion for more updates on Ulduar progress and loot information.

Surprise, surprise. Just under 24 hours after the servers came back up, Ensidia of Magtheridon-EU got the world’s first Yogg-Saron kill, thus getting the first 25man normal clear of Ulduar. Fair enough, Ensidia is the best guild in the world, but it’s still a letdown to see new content be cleared so “easily”. Anyway congratulations to you guys, you’ve earned it.

Loot:

Garona’s Guise (Leather, melee DPS)
Chestguard of the Fallen God (Mail, spell)
Tier 8 Shoulder Tokens
Fragment of Val’anyr

With the new content patch released, Uduar is finally open. And with all pre-existing content being ridiculously easy, one would think that Ulduar would be rather difficult. And that’s the case, right?

Wrong.
Less than 24 hours later, there’s already a handful of guilds who’ve cleared Ulduar all the way up to Yogg-Saron, which is the last boss. Well, technically, there’s one after him, but he’s optional, so he does not count.
Anyway, it’s all just a little bit alarming to think that another content patch has been released, and things are still this easy. I’m not saying that my guild could clear it in a day, but with an increasing number of guilds getting to Yogg-Saron, there’s gonna be a flood of boss tactics floating around on the interwebs soon enough.

Want to keep track of firstkills, achievements and general progress in Ulduar? Be sure to check MMO-Champion once in a while. Updated regularily.

Finally, the day is here. The time for Ulduar has come.
After some weeks of waiting, the new World of Warcraft patch has come online, and it will introduce a handful of new stuff for the masses of vivid World of Warcraft players to enjoy. And to be honest, some of it is quite fantastic, just keep on reading:

• Ulduar is now open! This old Titan city will include 14 epic boss fights (some even with hard mode), 800 new items, the new Tier 8 armors, and over 100 new achievements.
• The Argent Tournament is up and running, and will introduce Horde/Alliance-faction specific mounts, tabards and items. Build up your reputation with the City factions in a completely new way. Also, it has mounted combat, which is awesome.
• The dual spec feature is finally here! Pay a one-time fee of 1000 gold, and you’ll be able to switch between specs, glyphs and pets like there is no tomorrow. Accessible by players level 40 and above.
• A whole new batch of mounts and vanity pets, for those who are interested. Some are easy to get, others will give you quite the challenge.
• The Vault of Archavon has gotten a new wing with a new raidboss, which will drop the new Season 6 PvP items, and the new Tier 8 set. Go farm those easy epics. On a related note: the VoA bosses will now banish themselves 10 minutes prior to a new fight, and will do a zone-wide yell to inform people of this. They will not, however, banish themselves if engaged in combat.

It also includes huge profession changes, new instance maps, a lot of class tweaks and changes (I strongly disagree with a few of them though, mostly warlock changes), instance changes, bugfixes and more.
Just make sure to step by either WoW-Europe or MMO-Champion to find out more about the patch. There’s a lot of things to read about.