Expansion III: Cataclysm

* Two New Playable Races: Adventure as one of two new races--the cursed worgen with the Alliance or the resourceful goblins with the Horde.

* Level Cap Increased to 85: Earn new abilities, tap into new talents, and progress through the path system, a new way for players to improve characters.

* Classic Zones Remade: Familiar zones across the original continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms have been altered forever and updated with new content, from the devastated Badlands to the broken Barrens, which has been
sundered in two.

* New High-Level Zones: Explore newly opened parts of the world, including Uldum, Grim Batol, and the great Sunken City of Vashj'ir beneath the sea.

* More Raid Content than Ever Before: Enjoy more high-level raid content than previous expansions, with optional more challenging versions of all encounters.

* New Race and Class Combinations: Explore Azeroth as a gnome priest, blood elf warrior, or one of the other never-before-available race and class combinations.

* Guild Advancement: Progress as a guild to earn guild levels and guild achievements.

* New PvP Zone & Rated Battlegrounds: Take on PvP objectives and daily quests on Tol Barad Island, a new Wintergrasp-like zone, and wage war in all-new rated Battlegrounds.

* Archaeology: Master a new secondary profession to unearth valuable artifacts and earn unique rewards.

* Flying Mounts in Azeroth: Explore Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms like never before.

The old zones of Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdom will disappear. And that will happen for everyone, whether he bought the expansion or not: "When the Cataclysm occurs, it will occur for all players, whether they have purchased the expansion or not--you will no longer be to play in the original version of Kalimdor or the Eastern Kingdoms."

In short, Deathwing is back (suspect he's just pawn to THE ANCIENT EVIL®), elementals squabble, fighting, etc, tearing apart the old continents and opening up Gilneas. So there's lava everywhere and some desolate zones now have trees, and we get to hear Chuck Norris jokes in Barrens all over again.

I heard when Chuck Norris couldn't find Mankirk's wife, he caused the catalcysm.

C/D?

Symitri wrote:

I heard when Chuck Norris couldn't find Mankirk's wife, he caused the catalcysm.

C/D?

THE ANCIENT EVIL®

Something I haven't seen mentioned that was part of a panel:

The New & Awesome Battle.Net
This was perhaps the coolest single panel I saw because it's such an enormous advancement in gaming. The bullet points:

* Think XBOX Live mixed with Steam mixed with Facebook, but only taking the best features of each of them;
* The panelists directly acknowledged and complimented non-Blizzard products (I thought this was pretty classy);
* Huge support for custom modding of Starcraft 2 -- far more than even Warcraft 3 had;
* Custom maps will have much better filtering on Battle.Net;
* Custom maps can be sold as premium addons and developers can earn money.

Achievements

* There will be an account-wide unified achievements system. This does not just include all your WoW characters, but instead all games you're playing. For instance, your total achievement score in WoW would be added to your achievement score in Starcraft 2 and Diablo III for a total;
* Achievements and accomplishments leads to some pretty neat things. For instance, custom decals that exist on all of your Starcraft units. This is very similar to Halo 3's customization for achievements.

Friends

* Friends on Battle.Net will be mutual. You can't simply add someone to your buddy list then track everything they're doing and posting;
* You can talk with your friends through all of your Blizzard games at the very least. For instance, you can be in Starcraft talking to a friend on Warcraft. You can also message friends on any realm in Warcraft now;
* Broadcasts to let people know what you're looking to do. For instance, you can be playing Starcraft 2 with a broadcast, "Anyone up for Heroics later?"


Good god, this would be a breakthrough in terms of marketing. And it'd mean I'd have no peace if I went "hey guys, I'm logging off to play D3" BECAUSE THEY COULD PESTER ME FOR HEROICS THERE TOO.

Symitri wrote:

* The panelists directly acknowledged and complimented non-Blizzard products (I thought this was pretty classy);

cos they ARE way behind the curve on this one

contrary to popular belief, Blizzard panelists aren't gods LOL.

Steam is a particularly good implementation of community gaming (see above features). I'm really not sure I need to maintain yet another profile, yet another friends list, yet another achievements list ...

but with Blizzard, I guess they have enough of a critical mass to pull this off.

Steam is pretty popular, and I guess you could say the Xbox Live idea is also ahead of them, but that whole article I posted was copy pasted from Tankspot (the comments in brackets aren't mine .)

I think it's interesting because Blizzard does have a lot of very highly anticipated games coming up, D3 and SC2 at the forefronts of our mind with Cataclysm not far behind. They may end up including any Activision game as well, we'll see how much their merger affects their business decisions

Hmmm, https://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=116426&id=507860918&l=d02c8cbf9a

SIDETRACKING THREAD WITH PICTURES OF COSPLAY?

http://www.acparadise.com/acp/series.php?n=1185

The one I posted was a lady called Jo-Jo who participated at the Blizzcon contest... fyi. It's not a sidetrack, it's major content, I tell ya!

Naushan wrote:

The one I posted was a lady called Jo-Jo who participated at the Blizzcon contest... fyi. It's not a sidetrack, it's major content, I tell ya!

I'm content. But want moar.

Quote :

But want moar.

http://www.laweekly.com/slideshow/view/28251432/1

Let's pretend I warned you.