WoW Cataclysm tanking cooldown feedback wanted

Nethaera hit the forums this morning, asking for feedback from tanks around the globe. Ghostcrawler has been having a lively discussion with tanks (most specifically protection warriors) recently, and now they seem to be formalizing the discussion for the wider audience.

Nethaera

We're currently working on the tanking cooldowns for tanks in Cataclysm. We're interested in feedback from the community on what makes cooldowns fun and useful. For example, what is the sweet spot in cooldown duration between an ability with such a short cooldown that you must mash it constantly versus an ability with such a long cooldown? Which current abilities are fun? Putting aside any rose-colored glasses, were there cooldowns in Burning Crusade or classic WoW that you miss in Lich King? What, in your minds, should the role be for talents and glyphs. For example, if glyphs shouldn't reduce cooldowns, what can they do?

source

Nethaera goes on to remind people that this thread isn't the place for balance discussions necessarily, and certainly not a place to debate who's overpowered. This feedback also won't dictate exactly what the developers will do, it will simply help them make the right decisions. Do you have an opinion? Then head on over to the forums and make it known! Politely, of course.

Better pet scaling promised in Cataclysm

Hunters and warlocks were given something to look forward to during the Blizzard developer chat on twitter this evening. The question was asked: "You mentioned pet scaling being added for patch 3.3 but due to time constraints, was delayed. Will this be in the next patch?" This is something that has been mentioned throughout the course of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion and hasn't been implemented yet. The reason? It is a fairly complicated procedure.

We'll try to do what we can. Technically it's just more challenging than you might think. For Cataclysm, we have on our list that 100% of stats scale. If they don't then certain stats just won't be as valuable for pet classes. At the very least, we can do stuff like convert your X into damage for the pet so every stat is valuable. Getting everyone to scale with every stat better is a major goal for the class team for Cataclysm.

With hunters, warlocks, and unholy death knights, there are a lot of talents and glyphs that affect the scaling of stats to your pet. If you allow certain stats to scale too well, you suddenly unbalance the class. If the stat scales poorly, then the class falls in the other direction. Every talent and ability that taps into these has to be checked to make sure it doesn't throw things out of whack. Considerations on diminishing returns on certain stats scaling would also need to be checked. Overall, there is a lot of number crunching and statistical analysis involved in trying to find the right balance between all of the knobs that they need to adjust. However, the frustration of out-gearing your pet will hopefully be behind us either in an upcoming patch or (more realistically) when Cataclysm hits.

WoW Race changes Coming Soon

They said WoW Race change wasn't going to happen, but it wouldn't be the first time Blizzard did a 180º on previous announcements. Of course, if we had really bothered to read between the lines, Blizzard wasn't actually saying 'no' to wow race changes -- only that it wouldn't be part of the paid Character Faction Change service. It was in their Faction Change Q&A that Nethaera squashed the idea like an ugly bug. It turns out the folks at Blizzard are shrewder businessmen than we thought, and what Neth's 'no' actually meant was that race change would be a completely different service (which they conveniently didn't mention at the time).

Although wow race changes were confirmed some time back, we received a couple of messages from readers tipping us off to the actual Race Change button being up on the Account Management page, falling under the Paid Services tab. How soon 'Coming Soon!' actually is, we can only guess. It's Blizzard, after all. Besides, WoW Cataclysm promised us new wow races, and it should be interesting to see if Blizzard will allow changing to either a Goblin or a Worgen. It's possible that it won't be allowed at first to encourage players to try out the new starting areas, but Blizzard has been rather surprising as of late. Personally, I can't wait to trade up from Blood Elf pale to Orc green.

Thanks to Ryan and Tuttutt for the heads up!

Armor penetration being nerfed in 3.2.2

Ghostcrawler has announced that armor penetration (ArP) is being nerfed in the upcoming Patch 3.2.2. It's an early notice to players who plan on investing in armor penetration gems. Many raiding melee players (along with Marksman hunters apparently) have begun focusing exclusively on armor penetration without caring about other stats. While the mechanics of ArP can be complicated to understand, the basic understanding is the more ArP you have the more damage you deal. Heck, a Feral Druid in my guild has been known to pass on upgrades here and there primarily because it lacked ArP.

Again, this is mainly a nerf to PvE raiding but it could end up affecting PvP slightly as well. It's not expected to completely rock the arena world or anything. The worst thing that could happen is Priests (or other soft targets) like myself will survive a few seconds longer against melee heavy teams, or people like Rogues have it worse against Plate. I guess from my perspective it could be viewed as a buff!

Note that in Cataclysm, armor penetration will be removed as a stat as it has been deemed confusing in regards to its use.

WoW Cataclysm's new race/class combinations

As you know, the new race and class combinations coming up in the Cataclysm will open a whole new set of doors to people who want an alternative character choice that goes against the grain of their typical racial customs, to one degree or another. With the exception of a couple combinations that feel as though they should have been there from the beginning (such as blood elf warriors, which need no discussion here), each new possibility presents roleplayers with an opportunity to play an outcast of sorts, a character who has made a significant break from the traditions his or her race usually represent.

The lore behind each combination is not yet fully clear. We know tauren paladins will probably worship the sun and call themselves "Sunwalkers" for instance, but not much more than that. Some things are clear, though, and there's a lot to get the imagination going for those roleplayers who yearn to play something a little different.

Tauren paladins and priests

Here we have the most obvious departure from the traditions and culture of a race in WoW. Blood elves already had a somewhat convoluted path toward becoming paladins at first, but their story really played out throughout the unfolding of The Burning Crusade expansion, and eventually ended in a redemption that helped make their status as paladins seem much more reasonable. Still, even if you discounted all that, you could argue that the blood elves had once worshiped the light, so it made sense that they could come to do so again.

But the idea of tauren becoming followers of the Light seems absurd at first glance. The good thing is that we're pretty much certain that the tauren paladins will not be Light-worshippers as such, not in the same way that humans and draenei are. Rather, somehow a new perspective on their ancestral connection to nature will open for them a new sort of path that just happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to the paladins of the Light over on the Alliance side, much like priests of different races have different beliefs, yet share similar powers. Whatever it is will probably make sense for tauren paladins and priests alike, but will probably still be a sort of fringe culture for tauren, much like shamanism has been for draenei.

This option seems to be the craziest of the bunch at first glance, but when all is said and done, I suspect that tauren paladins and priests will be more connected and unified with the rest of tauren culture than we would expect by just looking at the WoW lore as it is today, before the Cataclysm strikes. Taking up sun-worship may be more like the dwarves discovering their ancient roots as special creations of the Titans than a true revolution in beliefs or values.

Dwarven shamans (and mages)

Speaking of dwarves, mages are one of those classes that they probably should have had from the beginning -- but shamans, on the other hand, may prove to be something more interesting. Shamans may not have all that much connection to the Titans as such, but they are very connected to the earth element, which the dwarves now know themselves to be born of. Some dwarves of the Wildhammer clan are already shamanistic to a large extent.

Nonetheless, shamanism is something new to the general population of dwarves. Whether or not dwarven culture as a whole embraces it, it will be something most dwarves are not very familiar with, and didn't experience much growing up. I imagine it would be like the relationship between city-dwellers and rural farmers, who may generally belong to the same nation and culture, but maintain very different lifestyles within it.

Troll druids

As Michael and Daniel have already noted, there is a precedent for trolls shapeshifting and taking on animal forms already there in WoW lore. What isn't there is any sort of relationship to the moon goddess Elune and her son Cenarius, which normally forms the foundation of druidic culture. The likely connection between the night elves and the worgen indicates that worgen will have some sort of relationship with Elune, but there's nothing hinting that trolls would have one in the game at this point.

I always thought that druidism came with its own set of beliefs related to Cenarius, as well as protective attitudes about nature that I haven't seen trolls express so far. Could it be that some of the darkspear trolls are turning away even more from their vicious and barbaric past, and following the tauren druids in more constructive efforts to heal the world?

On the other hand, Michael and Daniel were thinking that trolls own belief system related to the Loa spirits could give rise to the same basic set of abilities as Cenarius-based druids. If so, this would create a "two religions, one class" type of system we will probably see emerge with the tauren paladins and priests. If so, then troll druids wouldn't be so much of a departure from their culture at all.

Human and forsaken hunters

Human hunters are likely to enter the game without any extra introduction from the new lore of Cataclysm, except maybe a bit about how the great changes in the earth have forced them to use more hunter skills in order to survive in treacherous places. Still, human hunters have been around for a while now, and it only stands to reason that they should be available to players.

Forsaken hunters have likewise been around for a long time -- Sylvanas herself is a "dark ranger," but in this case there might be an extra focus on a new regimen of dark rangers in Sylvanas' army. Far from being outcasts in their culture, forsaken hunters could be seen as their people's most elite fighting force.

Night elf mages (and orcish ones too)

Night elf mages are probably the most like proper outcasts among all the new combinations, since they openly practice something their race has sworn to abandon. As Metzen mentioned at BlizzCon, they're also a good opportunity to play a really ancient character, if that's what you'd like to do, since young night elves probably wouldn't have had much opportunity to study arcane magic lately. So if you're going to be a night elf mage, keep in mind that your character has probably been very solitary for a very long time, unless he or she would have studied either in secret, or in exile.

Orcish mages are an odd option because there's really no lore for or against them -- how orcs could come to be mages isn't really clear, but nor is there any reason why they wouldn't. Until some sort of story appears around them, it's hard to know how to roleplay one, except possibly as a former warlock, who has turned away from his or her demonological ways.

Gnomish priests

And last but not least, thinking of gnomes as priests brings to mind some exciting possibilities. I am thoroughly intrigued by the ideas Michael and Daniel had about a possible "Church of Innovation and Discovery" -- that a gnome could cast divine healing magic out of his or her faith in the constant exploration of new ideas seems perfect for their race.

Gnome priests wouldn't exactly be "rebels" as such -- gnomes don't have anything against religion as such, but up till now, the structured beliefs of other religions haven't really made sense to gnomes. Gnomes do have a lot of faith, however, especially faith in possibilities -- if you ask a gnome whether a problem can be solved or not, undoubtedly they would say yes, as long as they have enough time to figure out some sort of answer.

Still, gnomish priests clearly represent something new for their people, and an ambitious roleplayer could play one of those gnomes who thinks he knows what religion is all about but doesn't, constantly praying for the next boss to drop good loot or whatever, winking at his Light-worshipping friends as if they share a secret together.

Does Cataclysm Kill WoW’s Lore?

Alongside the elation and cheers of millions of WoW players, a selection of players weren't happy with the proposed changes in WoW's upcoming expanion, Cataclysm. The main issue these players have is the addition of several class/race combinations.

In Cataclysm, players will be able to play characters of the following class/race in addition to the existing choices:

Horde

Orc Mage, Undead Hunter, Tauren Paladin, Tauren Priest, Troll Druid, Blood Elf Warrior

Alliance

Human Hunter, Dwarf Mage, Dwarf Shaman, Night Elf Mage, Gnome Priest

Fans have accused Blizzard of butchering Lore, making these changes purely to make people re-roll characters once they get bored wit their current ones, or maybe enticing them to use the upcoming paid race change feature. However, as Wryxian explains below, the new combos DO actually fit in with Lore.

But again I feel what is really grating for some people is that there are so many new combinations at once. Because as we've stated already, these new combinations are based on storyline progression and not the other way around. We've had these evolutions in our playable race options planned for quite some time, so I think it is just that they're coming all at once that is making people raise an eye in suspicion -- because it is so clearly linked to opening up new possibilities for game play in our upcoming expansion.

And sure, it's quite obvious we are definitely wanting to open up some new combinations, and we don't see this as a bad thing. But the changes in terms of game play are indeed well rooted in lore and will be further explained through quests and other in-game text and events to highlight this even more.

Let's see how night elf society treats and adapts to having a few of their arcane wielding kind playable instead of quietly hidden away in Dire Maul, before we jump to conclusions on how wrong or right we feel it is from our perspective. The humans also do not like warlocks, but yet we didn't decide to not include the human warlocks just because some people might feel they don't fit with the human lore. Like Night Elf mages, human warlocks do exist and opening them up to being playable was, in my opinion at least, a cool idea and I feel pretty much the same about the new combinations coming in Cataclysm including the Night Elf mages.

Though personally I have my gleaming crocolisk eyes on those dwarven shaman... and I don't mean just for a tasty elemental flavoured snack...

Cataclysm: PvP Contested Eastern Plaguelands?

I finally met Wryxian (our cute croc) at Blizzcon, it was fun talking about his signatures which I probably mistook as conspiracy theories, but hey I swear he knows about some stuff in Area 51. With the Cataclysm forums now open, he’s answered a lot of fans. One of these makes you go Hmm. So we are going to nail Arthas in Icecrown Citadel, and later the Cataclysm happens. Are the Undead going to die automatically without his will to control them? Are the Undead Scourge going to become chaotic and attack anyone on sight with no one controlling them? Will the Undead Scourge become Forsaken? Or even worse ... will Ner’zhul return to lay claim over his former minions? (Read spoiler after the break about Ner’zhul)

Those are pretty good questions. However, there is yet another important question to tackle. Since Eastern Plaguelands is no longer Scourge territory, will it become a PvP zone with the Horde and the Alliance attempting to claim the land for themselves? Or will we see some kind of progression of the story there?

Wryxian: It’s really intriguing wondering what exactly will happen to places like the Plaguelands. Will they be kept much as they are, even despite the nailing we all expect Arthas will receive, or will they be liberated and thus potentially becoming hotly contested by all the various races that may be interested in re-claiming the area for their own?

Cataclysm: No plans to extend current heirlooms to 85

There's been quite a burst of blue posts on the official forums post-BlizzCon; some by World Event Designer Kisirani talking about lore and the post-Cataclysm world, some by Lead Systems Designer Ghostcrawler talking about new game systems coming with 4.0, and some by the Community Managers, providing slightly less meaty morsels of information. It's not all chaff from the CMs, though -- there's some wheat in there.

Bornakk, for example, stopped by a thread asking about how heirloom items will work post-80 in Cataclysm. He said that there are no plans to extend the experience bonus they give past level 80, though there may eventually be new heirlooms available to help bridge that gap. That's not surprising, really -- if they were extended, heirlooms would essentially be mandatory for the people racing to get to 85 first, and that's a situation Blizzard would like to avoid.

Interestingly, he also noted that it's "unlikely" that heirlooms won't work on Worgen or Goblin characters, which is admittedly a relief, seeing how I just bought a set of them for my Worgen Warrior. Battle Howl, anyone?

Official WoW Cataclysm forum Opens

The official WoW forums got another section today, one dedicated to the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion Cataclysm. There's nothing useful in the at the moment, like a roundup of everything Blizzard has posted about the third expansion, or short bullet pointed lists of major features (although we have such information in our Guide to Cataclysm).

These forums are open to the general WoW population, and are NOT the alpha / beta forums. The alpha has NOT begun yet. But things are at least moving in the direction of more Cataclysm presence in WoW's official community.



With WoW Cataclysm expected to be released in 2010 (remember, according to Mike Morhaime, not us), we should start seeing greater details about what was announced at BlizzCon in the next couple months. Lots of good stuff to know, and hopefully this forum will be a conduit for Blizzard's old top hats like Ghostcrawler to begin some more detailed information dissemination.

WoW Cataclysm might mean for Death Knights

We've now had about a week and a half to digest all the new information from BlizzCon about the Cataclysm, and while it's not a complete picture of what we can expect from the expansion, there's enough information now that we can make some pretty good educated guesses about the direction of the game and the new theorycraft of being a Death Knight. Let's take a look at we can learn from the latest information.

New Races

The new races definitely have some pretty awesome racials. The Worgen's plus damage racial will make them a very solid choice for a DPS Death Knight, and the sprint will be excellent for closing distance in PvP, especially when paired with Lichborne or Icebound Fortitude to avoid CC. Even the skinning racial will be nice for a leveling Death Knight who decides to take some time out to level the money making gathering tradeskills.

Goblins are definitely going to be a nice little convenient race, with low buy and sell prices and a free bit of banking. Combat-wise, the Rocket Boots should be nice for closing distances or running away.

As far as whether these races will end up being the "best" races for Death Knights, I don't think I can say. Part of this is because I think the idea of a "best race" is, to at least some degree, rather subjective, but also, the devs strongly hinted they'll take a look at everyone's racial abilities as they move into Cataclysm, so its certainly possible that other races will get some new or upgraded racials that will keep pace with the awesomeness that are the new races' racials.

Stat Changes and New Systems

We'll be seeing quite a few stats either disappear off gear or vastly change in their mechanics come the expansion. While some of the stats changes, like loss of Spell Power, won't really affect us, others promise to bring up new questions and answers for our gearing and combat conundrums. Let's look at those one by one.

Armor Penetration

As you likely know if you've been following the column, my favorite DPS spec is Unholy. Unholy DPS has been having some troubles lately, specifically with Armor Penetration. Armor Penetration is now so ubiquitous on gear that our signature strike, Scourge Strike, can easily be outpaced by Obliterate with a minimum of Armor Penetration gear at level 80. Luckily, it looks like this will be a thing of the past in Cataclysm, as Armor Penetration will be gone from gear.

With this change, it seems likely they'll simply provide Armor Penetration to Blood through the new Mastery system (and possibly to Frost as well, if only for the Obliterate heavy rotations), while hopefully Unholy will get things slightly more useful to us. If they balance it out right, we should definitely be able to pick up Scourge Strike again full time in Cataclysm.

Of course this does bring up the question of Patch 3.3. Will we see Scourge Strike back on the scene before then? The devs have posted that they want Scourge Strike to be the king of Unholy DPS rotations again, but they don't yet have an elegant way to make that happen. It could be they'll hold off until Cataclysm, and we'll be obliterating our way through the raids and 5 man dungeons of Icecrown Citadel, but frankly, I'm hoping it doesn't come to that.

Regardless, this whole discussion underlines one fact: The devs definitely made the right choice in taking Armor Penetration off gear, where it can no longer trip up those classes and specs who do not need it.

Attack Power

Strength has pretty much always been superior for us for both DPS and Tanks, so the fact that we won't have to settle for attack power is definitely welcome. There's not much of a downside to this one, as long as there's enough good plate DPS gear and strength jewelry to go around.

Haste

In Cataclysm, Haste will, in addition to its current uses, cause resources to regenerate or generate faster. In our case, it will be runes. Faster regenerating runes, in theory, equals quicker damage, although it will have to be quick enough to keep up with the global cooldown, of course. If it is, a faster rotation is only a good thing. If not, we just have runes that regenerate faster then sit there as we wait for cooldowns. This is probably a case where we need to see exact values before we can judge how good it is for the class overall, but it certainly has potential, possibly paired with a switch to Unholy Presence.

Defense and Stamina

Defense is completely gone from gear, meaning that every tank class or tree will be getting a talent similar to the Druid's Survival of the Fittest to gain immunity to critical strikes. This isn't so bad a deal now that you can dual spec DPS and Tanking, and therefore offtanks can still be effective tanks and effective DPSers both as needed, but there's still some questions to clear up. Matthew Rossi covered quite a few of those questions in an article on the future of tanking, but I have a few more things to discuss from a Death Knight point of view.

Traditionally, we are able to tank in all 3 trees given that we choose the right talents. However, if we need to grab talented defense, how does that work? Unless they simply add it to the first level tanking talent of all three trees, we may find ourselves incredibly limited in our tank specs as we are forced to work down that specific tree. Of course, they could add it to Masteries, but that means that Death Knight PvE DPS may pick up a relatively useless mastery for them as they work down the tree.

In fact, that brings up a whole different point altogether: How will Death Knight Masteries work? Traditionally, we're meant to be able to tank or DPS in all 3 trees. If Masteries in one tree are tank focused, everyone will flock there for tanking and flock away from it for DPS. That said, it may be that what will happen is that we'll see more tank focused talents instead, which, when taken, will unlock tank focused masteries.

Still, let's assume they have a decent idea for how they'll implement tanking vs. DPS masteries and crit immunity that will work well enough to give us the same tank spec flexibility we have now. That still leaves us with the question of itemization.

It sounds like the developers mean to finish what they started with Burning Crusade and essentially make Stamina so ubiquitous that pretty much every character has tank-level HP. If so, at least that clears up one itemization issue. We'll, in theory, have the Stamina to tank regardless. However, high stamina alone does not a complete tank make.

Bear Druids can attest to it. Sharing your itemization with DPS classes is not fun. You're scrounging for hit and expertise, trying to find gear that still has a decent amount of stamina on it. And good luck finding dodge rating on pieces. They don't exist. That's my biggest fear: Will we run short on defensive stats as everything is itemized to be modular? It's possible this could be sidestepped if Reforging allows conversions to dodge and parry rating, but it'd be way too easy to make reforging far too restrictive for that be effective. Masteries could possibly pick up some of the slack here, but again: With the way masteries are set up, how do we assure adequate tank masteries without rewiring Death Knights so that only one tree is the tank tree?

I'm not ready to completely condemn the idea, but I get the feeling itemization is going to be a sticky subject as Cataclysm begins. Here's hoping the dev team can figure it out, but part of me thinks there may be a limit to how far you can take the "one size fits all specs" gear philosophy.

Then again, I'm still all for getting rid of some stats and firming up others. It really shouldn't take a spreadsheet and a custom made calculator to figure out if an individual piece of gear is really an upgrade for you or not, to be honest.

And the Rest

Of course, this column is hardly going to be the final word on Death Knights in the Cataclysm. We'll be discussing the Path of the Titans and which paths seem best for Death Knights, and talents are probably going to change so drastically as to completely alter how we look at certain talent builds and rotations.

The misgivings outlined above aside, I can say with confidence that I am incredibly pumped for the expansion, and very interested to see what direction the Death Knight class takes with all the redesigns and rebuilds of so many key systems in the expansion. Stay tuned to Lichborne and Wow.com. We'll let you know how this keeps shaking down.

WoW: new character experience in Cataclysm

As you know, the Cataclysm is going to bring major changes to the whole world of Azeroth. There will only be 5 new zones for leveling above 80 and one new zone for each new race -- the rest of the work they're doing involves changing the old zones, bringing them up to the standards of zones in The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, adding new quests that are more appropriate to the current timeline, and completely rebuilding the areas that just didn't work so well.

You are also probably aware that this is a much-needed improvement. The 1 - 60 leveling process (except for the draenei or blood elf starting areas) has long been fraught with serious flaws. Going through it the first time wasn't so bad, since exploring everything felt so new, but doing it the third and fourth times meant sheer boredom. I remember many times going to a zone, completing many or all of the quests there, and leaving without ever feeling as though I had really "been" there. Except for a few real gems, quests mostly involved spending a lot of time running long distances in order to kill more nameless bad guys -- they felt more like pest control than adventure. Just being there seemed to remove me from the story of Azeroth, and dump me in some other world where there was nothing important happening. Vast stretches of land on the Azeroth map meant absolutely nothing to me as a roleplayer: no character, no story, no meaning.

Gaining experience

Getting to Outland, however, opened a new chapter, even if you had done the quests there before and new there was nothing new to see, they still felt like an actual "experience" of some kind. They flowed more in the manner of an actual story, and by the time you finished a zone, Hellfire Peninsula for example, you felt as though you had "been to Hellfire" and done what people do there. You didn't just deliver messages, kill a few monsters that happened to be lurking in and around nearby caves, and pick up random objects from the ground lying near yet another set of nondescript ruins -- you could exorcise a possessed comrade, make first contact with a lost orcish clan, or uncover the horrifying story behind the Path of Glory. Most of the quests involved you in the area so much that it began to feel like a real environment where things actually happened.

And of course, ever since Wrath was released, players keep coming back to the death knight starting area over and over again, partly because the phasing and storytelling were so nice, but also because it was structured so nicely -- every advancement in the quest line was a natural part of an overarching experience that had a beginning, middle and end, and nothing left you feeling as though you were doing a whole lot of running around for no real purpose. Even if you now the story by heart, you know you're progressing through something that defines your character, not just running errands.

And that is exactly what we have always hoped the rest of the world could be like. If the Cataclysm expansion lives up to our expectations, then perhaps all of Azeroth will be as engaging as Outland and Northrend have been.

Return of the Alt

Of course the whole point of making the old Azeroth new again is so that we can create new characters to enjoy it with. Many roleplayers are already altoholics -- not all of them of course, but lots of them have way too many character ideas. Often we don't like sitting in one skin for too long, and we may even have a whole troupe of characters with all manner of interconnections who interact with our guild members and friends in different ways. Often each of our guildmates has such characters too, and... well, it all gets very complicated.

I, too, started down this path some time ago, but I have since restrained myself to just a few of my favorite characters, usually spread out on multiple servers so that I can have more diverse experiences with each one of them. Until news broke of the Cataclysm, I had completely given up leveling any new character from scratch, no matter how much I wanted to roleplay them. I tried restricting my new characters to death knights, since they can skip most of the old world, but that has also limited my creativity somewhat.

But now that is about to change. Not only will I be eager to try out new goblin and worgen characters, but I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up trying some other combination as well. Undoubtedly that is one of Blizzard's main motivations behind the new races, the new class combinations, and the revamp of Azeroth as a whole -- they want the process of going from 1 to the level cap to be one we can enjoy many times over.

Alt epidemic threat level: Orange

However, some might argue that roleplayers generally have too many characters already, and adding more is only going to make the roleplaying environment worse. The main problem with having lots of alts is that it can be so hard to keep track of them all. It's easy to get confused about which alt belongs to which of your friends unless you are in a dedicated RP guild and keep current with all the latest stories going on in your group. If, like me, you've been forced to take breaks for a while, it can be very disorienting to come back to your old guild and not recognize many of the new names there, because old friends have gone and made new characters while you were away. With all the new characters people will be making when Cataclysm comes around, roleplayers will have to pay close attention to avoid getting confused.

Another downside to having so many characters is that it's hard to find time to give them all the time they may deserve. I know from experience how starting even just one new character makes it easy to neglect the old ones, and for roleplayers that can mean neglecting all the relationships those characters have developed as well. Once a character is gone for too long, it's not easy to bring him or her back into the roleplayers' milieu once again -- you get a feeling that everyone around you has moved on, while this character has remained stagnant. You may try to think of reasons to explain their long absence, but often these feel rather flat, more like excuses than actual stories.

On the other hand, maybe this tendency to drift from character to character rather than try to maintain many alts is a good one; in fiction, after all, character's stories have beginnings, middles, and ends. Perhaps the characters we roleplay should go through these stages as well, so that we keep things fresh for ourselves.

Whatever we do, the question of new characters, whether they are alts or new mains, is one that will affect roleplayers now more than ever. Cataclysm will surely shake up the roleplaying world as much as it does everything else. We must choose which new characters to conjure up, which ones to kill off in a blaze of glory, and which ones to simply ignore as they fade away from memory, lost to the clouds of time.

WoW: What Cataclysm will mean to Mages

When I was growing up, way back at the dawn of time, in the late eighties, I didn't have access to a lot of games. It wasn't like it is now, where I have an unplayed backlog of quality electronic entertainment so deep my house reeks of shrinkwrap and unfulfilled potential. No, back then, I remember saving my pennies for an entire summer with an eye on getting a new game, then going to the game store and having a choice between Lufia and 7th Saga . I chose 7th Saga (mostly because you could be a robot in that one), and even though time hasn't been particularly kind to that game, it still holds a special place in my heart. You know why? Because I played it. I played the crap out of it, and when I finished it, I started over and played it again . And the next time I saved up enough money for another game, or tricked a relative into buying one for me, I snagged Lufia, and repeated the process.

With the really great games--the Chrono Triggers, the Secrets of Mana, the Shining Forces--I played them so many times I came to the point where my fondest wish was that I could discover a way to excise them from my brain...to selectively forget I'd ever played them so I could plug them back in and experience their unique joys afresh. Yes, back in the late eighties and early nineties, we were pretty starved for games. But the ones we had, we loved .

What does this have to do with anything? Nothing really, just thought I'd share. Ok fine. Read on, I promise I'll find a flimsy way to tie it in to the actual subject of this week's column.

Here goes:
In many ways, this is precisely what Cataclysm seems poised to do with World of Warcraft . It has the potential to hit that reset button in our brains--the one that manages the part of our minds devoted to WoW --and allow those of us who wish to do so the opportunity to experience it from the beginning, anew. Many of us have already spent so much time with this game that we know it inside and out. Barring new content in a patch or an expansion, almost nothing seems new, and the game has very nearly run out of surprises for us. Cataclysm offers us the chance to time travel a bit, to start up a level one character and see mostly fresh, new things as we level (well, at least until Outland. Sigh.). It'll be just like it was with our very first character...you know, except for the part where we have a billion gold and heirloom items and can get mounts at level 2 and whatnot. Still.

Last week we talked about how disgustingly excited I am about all the new race options for Mages, and how awesome Worgen and Goblins are going to look wearing robes and pointy hats. This week we'll look at some of the other ways this new expansion will alter the landscape of Mageland.

Five more levels

This is about five less levels than I think most of us would have expected, but I don't feel slighted in the least. Five levels is plenty of new content for our already well-traveled Mages to blast through on their way to a new end-game that already promises to be more robust than any we've yet encountered. We've already been told that those five levels won't be extending our talent trees at all, but will give us five new talent points, and will provide new spells for us to learn. And those spells will be actual new spells, as spell ranks are going to be done away with. Once we learn Frostbolt , it will simply scale with level, meaning that the various Mage trainers around Azeroth owe me a lot of money.

The main advantage to only getting five new levels, of course, is that I will have five fewer levels through which to drag the approximately fourty-seven new alts I plan on making. This is a wise design decision on Blizzard's part. The more incentive we have to create new characters, the more time (and thus money) we will invest. As a professed altoholic, I wholeheartedly back this idea.

Path of the Titans/Archaeology

Of course, that sense of continued progress has to come from somewhere, and this new system looks to be the solution to that particular problem. Amanda Miller's got a great writeup of everything we know so far about how this will work, so if you're still sketchy on the details, go check her post out and then come back.

I don't know about you, but the idea of an archaeologist Mage, traversing the broken world in search of ancient artifacts, Blinking across booby-trapped floors, conjuring a mana pie to replace the weight of said ancient artifact on its trapped pedestal, then turning the boulder that tries to crush us into a sheep ...I'm stoked, guys.

The way it sounds to me, the idea Blizzard's going for with this new system, and the changes to the talent system that we'll get to in just a moment, is something I've wanted for a very long time: true character customization. Sure, the game allows us the illusion of character customization as it currently exists, but that illusion is shattered the moment you try something unorthodox, like taking a Frost Mage into high-level raiding content. It doesn't matter how much you love playing a Frost Mage or how skilled you are; there is only one truly optimal spec out there at any given point in the game's lifespan, and you simply didn't pick it. Now summon us a table, buff everybody, and get out.

If Blizzard accomplishes what they've set out to do here...if they can truly make passive, DPS increasing progression available to every Mage spec, I will applaud them until my arms fall, still clapping, from their sockets. The possibilities here are mind-boggling.

Mastery system/revamped talent trees

Which brings us to this next bit of craziness. The idea behind the Mastery system seems to be to eliminate the need for an ideal spec, instead providing the passive bonuses--the one we're all currently forced to take a specific path through the talent trees to obtain--something you get simply by moving deeper in the tree, however you choose to do it. The actual talents you'll be selecting on the way there are supposedly becoming entirely optional. You can choose the ones that suit your playstyle instead of the ones that up your crit damage.

I really can't wait to see how Blizzard implements this. It will require a full and total reworking of the talent system. Few, if any, of the talents we have now will make it through intact. Of all of the announced changes, I have to admit that this is the one about which I am the most skeptical. Call me small-minded, but I simply cannot envision a talent system that the hardcore theorycrafters won't be able to spend five minutes with and come up with a so-called "optimal" path. In a game where your worth as a Mage is determined by how much damage you can put out per second of a fight, is true customization even possible? I'm interested to see Blizzard try.

If it works, though, at least none of us will be able to complain about the bloated Arcane tree anymore. Post-expansion, it won't be "bloated" anymore; it'll just have more "options" than the other two trees.

Stat simplification

Perhaps the most mind-blowing change announced at BlizzCon, at least for me, was this one. Here's what we know at this point:

• Spellpower will be gone.

Extra damage from our spells will now come from Intellect. I love this change. From a purely traditionalist point of view, I'm glad Intellect, the most Magey statistic going back to Dungeons & Dragons (and none of this 16th edition nonsense...I mean D&D back when my parents still thought it was satan's game), will finally come back into prominence. I was tired of skipping over it for spellpower, and crit, and haste, and whatever else elitist jerks said was a better stat that week.

• No more Mp5 (at all), and no more spirit (on DPS gear).

Now let us all join hands and sing the song of joy. According to the powers that be, healers will use spirit as their mana regen stat, and DPS casters won't need to worry about it at all. I'll believe that when I see it. If it happens, though, yippee? Yes, yippee. Yippee's what I'm going to go with here.

• Haste is going to be very confusing.

I think it's still going to be increasing casting speed. But for other classes, it'll increase resource regen. I'm not sure, but as far as Mages are concerned, it'll still work similarly to how it works now. Maybe? This wasn't made very clear at BlizzCon, and I'm easily confused, so if you guys have it all figured out, let me know.

• Crit is being left alone.

Or at least, they never said it would be going away, so this is the assumption.

So as it stands now, come expansion time, Mages will want the following stats: intellect, haste, and crit. No more fighting off healers for our gear. Their stuff will have spirit on it.

I'm all in favor of this whole stat-consolidation thing. I hated the redundant stats, and I hated the fact that sometimes a robe would drop called something like "Healer Dress of Holy Healerificness," and it would be an upgrade for my Mage.

Now...I have a million questions. Here are just a few:

1. No mention of hit rating. Please...can it go away?
   
2. Ditto for spell penetration. Kill it, please?
   
3. How exactly are DPS casters going to no longer need mana regen? This sounds like a lot of running out of mana all the time to me.
   
4. Is crit going to be left alone?
   
5. Can I wear plate in the expansion? Also...I want a pony.

So that's about the size of it, at least so far. The expansion, so far, looks to be all kinds of pretty much everything I ever wanted. I'm excited beyond reason, and we still have what will probably be at least 6-10 months of information leaks to get all frothy about. No single event, in the history of WoW , has ever changed the game in as significant a way as this expansion promises to. What do you think, fellow Mages?