World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
Developer(s)	Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher(s)	Activision Blizzard
Series	Warcraft
Platform(s)	Mac OS X, Windows
Release	2010
Genre(s)	MMORPG
Mode(s)	Online

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is the upcoming third expansion set for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft, following the last expansion Wrath of the Lich King. It was officially announced at BlizzCon on August 21, 2009, although details were discovered earlier.

Much content is expected for release in the new expansion including two new races, Goblins for the Horde and Worgen for the Alliance, new and revamped zones, new quests and dungeons, new raids and game mechanics.

Announcement and development

In February of 2010, in an Activision Blizzard investor call, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime revealed that Cataclysm would be released in that same calendar year.

On May 3, 2010, it was officially confirmed that the Family & Friends Alpha phase of the testing process for Cataclysm had begun, fueling further speculation that the open alpha would commence within the coming months. Despite the non-disclosure agreement (NDA), much of the beginnings of the game were leaked onto various sources after the client was distributed across the internet within a few days of the alpha testing phase commencing. On May 11, 2010, it emerged that Blizzard had requested that at least one of these sites remove any alpha content until the NDA was lifted.

On June 30, 2010, Cataclysm entered closed beta testing, sending invitations to gamers who had signed up through their Battle.net account. Reporting their first quarter financial earnings in a webcast, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has all but confirmed that latest World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm, will be out on store shelves by the end of the year.

In August 2010, Blizzard announced the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Collector's Edition. Cataclysm was already said to be on track for release in the latter part of 2010 prior to this report; in addition, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime went on record saying, "Although an exact release date has not yet been announced, we are on track to launch the expansion by the end of the year. As with all Blizzard games though, we won't release until it's ready."

On September 7th (8th in Europe), the first pre-Cataclysm quest chains were released to live servers, and a few days later, Patch 4.0.1 was released to public test realms, indicating that a release date might be in the not too distant future. A few days later, news site MMO-Champion, whom also leaked the Cataclysm preview before the initial announcement, stated that the game has a target release date set to November 2, but this has yet to be confirmed by Blizzard themselves. Since announcing the first target release date, MMO-Champion has since posted that a new target release date toward the beginning of December, but again this has yet to be confirmed by Blizzard themselves. This is estimated based upon the patches released to the Public Test Realms, the pre-patch downloads beginning, and Blizzard's typical patch schedule leading up to past expansions. On September 21, patch 4.0.0 was released to North America, totaling 3.97 GB for 24 hours and then replaced with a patch with a total download size of 4.68GB.

Story

The central plot of the expansion is the return of the evil dragon aspect Deathwing the Destroyer. Last seen in Warcraft II, Deathwing has spent that time licking his wounds, so to speak, and plotting his fiery return from the elemental plane of Deepholm. His return tears through the dimensional barrier with Azeroth, causing a sweeping cataclysm that reshapes much of the world's surface.

Classic area redesign

The primary feature of the Cataclysm expansion is the redesign of the two continents of Azeroth—areas introduced with the launch of World of Warcraft in 2004. Major changes are being made to both the environment and quests of these zones.

New features

• Level cap raised from 80 to 85
• Ability to fly all over Azeroth with flying mounts
• Redesigned and updated zones within Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms
• New towns and quests (around 3500)
• Redesigned low and mid-level quests to accompany updated zones
• Players will be able to use flying mounts inside Azeroth zones (flying mounts were previously restricted to Northrend and Outland)
• Seven new dungeons: Blackrock Caverns, Throne of the Tides, the Stonecore, the Vortex Pinnacle, the Lost City of the Tol'vir, the Halls of Origination, and Grim Batol, all available in regular and heroic modes at level 85
• Three new raids: The Bastion of Twilight, Blackwing Descent and Throne of the Four Winds, plus the Tol Barad Prison raid dungeon after PvP zone completion (more raids planned to be released with later patches)
• Two previously released dungeons—Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep—will have an added Heroic Mode for level 85 players
• New battlegrounds and a new world-PvP zone, Tol-Barad (similar to the Wintergrasp world-PvP zone introduced in Wrath of the Lich King)
• A new secondary skill: Archaeology
• A new type of glyph: Prime
• A rated battleground system, along with associated new rewards
• Newly accessible zones including Uldum, Deepholm, the Sunken City of Vash'jir, the Twilight Highlands and Mount Hyjal (previously only featured as a time travel destination within the Caverns of Time)
• Two new playable races, Goblins and Worgen
• Introduction of new stats such as Mastery, which will enhance certain abilities (both active and passive) depending on the player's class and talent specialization
• Changes to class mechanics, including abolishing the use of ammunition and stand-alone warlock soul shards, consolidation of totems and buffs, and racial bonuses
• Revamp of the stat system, removing such stats as mana per 5 seconds (MP5), armor penetration and defense rating and integrating them in other ways such as talents or the new mastery stat.
• Major changes to the cities of Stormwind and Orgrimmar, with minor adjustments to others
• New starting areas for Trolls and Gnomes at levels 1-5
• Player talent trees have been reworked and players will have a total of 41 talent points at level 85. Consequently, the talent trees are being "trimmed", and will look (superficially) much like the talent trees players had available on WoW's launch.
• Unlike the current talent system where a player learns his or her first talent point at level 10 and is able to place that point and any subsequent point wherever he or she chooses, in Cataclysm, at level 10 a player must choose a talent specialization (spec) and only spend points in that "tree" until they have reached 31 points. Once 31 points have been spent, he or she is able to use the rest of his or her attained points in any of the 3 trees. When the player chooses a specialization at 10, they will gain one major active skill that sets that spec apart from the others, and 2-3 passive skills that support that particular tree. This was done in order to make players feel as though they are actually specialized in a specific talent tree as soon as they are able to choose one, rather than at higher levels where enough points have been placed into the tree of their choosing to make that feel like their specialization.
• Experimental support for DirectX 11 through the command line.

In addition, Cataclysm is planned to utilize the revamped community platform Battle.net which is being integrated with other Blizzard games such as StarCraft II and Diablo III.

External links

• Official website (US)
• Official website (Europe)
• Template:Wowwiki