[1.Local]: Cataclysmic shock and awe

Cataclysm race/class combo matrix
New races and new race/class combos ... Can we get a "Hell, YEAH!"? There's really only one thing left to say ...

Tori: Grah!!! Need ... more ... character slots ... per realm!!!

Stats vastly simplified
The inflated world of character stats and theorycrafting will careen into a new era as Cataclysm ushers in a sweeping simplification of the system.

Steve: I fully welcome the simplification these changes will bring ... I mean, come on, think about it. Needing to use a spreadsheet to play a game is really just silly. Really.

Omegan01: My Rogue right now is carting around:
+Agi
+Hit
+Crit
+AP
+ArP
+Haste
+Expertise
This change cannot come soon enough.

Q&A with Cory Stockton
One detail of the sweeping changes Cataclysm will wreak upon Azeroth has already been made perfectly clear. Once the upcoming expansion revises original Azeroth, players will be unable to revisit the old versions of the game world.

danawhitaker: Yeah, it's cool ... unless you're a completionist who thrives on doing the Loremaster stuff and collecting all the recipes for your trade skills and grinding reputation for factions. Then you're left wondering what kind of strange limbo you're going to be in regards to attaining those things on all your alts. I'm excited about new races, the new secondary skill, the class changes and being able to get to level 85.

I'm *not* excited about wondering whether I'll be able to get certain mounts or pets or factions to exalted, or how completing all the recipes for my tradeskills will be affected. And yes, I'm sorry, those are things that are important to me as a player. It's not just about end game. I'm upset about losing complete zones that I enjoy questing in. I have guildmates who've spent a lot of time in particular zones who are *very* upset about them going Horde.

I'm excited for an expansion, but it's coming at the cost of losing the experience that I've had for almost three years for levels 1-60. I'm not sure how to feel about that, especially since I've just started working on my second character. For people who only care about the endgame as their goal, and not the process, these aspects probably aren't as big a deal. That's why I would love to see a way to get back to "old world" as it was. Traveling through Caverns of Time would be a logical step. But I also know that would be a tremendous undertaking, and is very, very unlikely to occur, and would be difficult to maintain.

Kylenne: @danawhitaker: I could understand being upset if you just started playing the game and hadn't really had enough time to get into it. But re-read that statement you just made. Three years. Three. Years. Get over it.

I'm thrilled for these changes, because the fundamental problem with WoW (and a lot of MMOs, in fairness) from a gameplay standpoint is the fact that, despite all this enormous change we've gone through in terms of the story, the old world has been in stasis.

To use the most egregious comic-relief example: we've been to another planet and back and are about to take on the Lich King, but that damned bridge has still not been fixed. Kael has been exposed as a treasonous madman and defeated (twice!), yet there's still statues of him everywhere in Silvermoon City. And on, and on.

And from a purely practical standpoint, Blizzard has learned so much from two expansions now. You speak of the joys of 1-60 leveling as if a good chunk of it wasn't badly designed and painful, like the corpse runs in Feralas, the 20 minutes running up and down the length of Darkshore over and over to complete a single quest, the drop rates on Dew Glands in Tanaris, etc. Compare that to the experience of questing in Northrend or even Outland.

Don't get me wrong, I love the old world, but don't pretend Blizzard hasn't improved upon the experience leaps and bounds. There's a reason every Horde player with half a brain cell runs their toons to Ghostlands ASAP instead of the Barrens.

People need to take off the rose-colored glasses, stop crying and go back to single player offline games if you want static worlds that never change, that you can re-live ad nauseum until the disc breaks.

Blizzard announces cross-server instances
The mention of rewards for leaders of five-man groups, which is part of the new cross-server instance capabilities, seems worrisome to quite a few readers.

CTD: The only thing I don't find awesome about this is the "reward for the leader" part. Why should only one person be rewarded when five people complete a successful run? "Leading" in a five-man is not actually something that requires much thought or skill. In the current environment of "AoE everything down," it doesn't require anything at all if everyone has been to the instance before. And getting the group together isn't a great feat either -- that's the entire point of LFG.

T: As for the reward, this will be interesting. LFG could turn into an enormous list of nothing but people LFM. Everyone wants to lead and no one will sign on unless they can be leader. Net result, PUGging is still difficult.

Next up, no more passing leadership to the tank so they can mark targets. Leader does that, and now rather than a quick and easy progression, we'll get to see debates, requests and questions between the leader and the tank for multiple groups throughout the instance.

I'll be very interested to see if this feature survives its beta testing.

austonst: Very nice, but I'm a little worried about potential drama over who gets to be group leader, if the group leader gets different/better rewards.

Neon Samurai: I admit I didn't read every single reply, but I noticed the major trends for and against. Bad players, leader spots vs. more instances, easier to find a group. But the one thing that I find disappointing by the cross-server instancing on PUGs is it is a recruitment tool for many guilds. A great number of my guild's best players came from excellent PUG players who we ran with a few more times and lured them away to us with a van and candy. Now if we get a PUG going and find a really excellent player, if they are not on our server (and) if they did enjoy our banter and style, then they would have to give Bliz more money to play with us -- and that is unlikely to happen.

Guild leveling and talents
How will the new system of guild leveling, designed to cement guild solidarity, trickle down into the player system?

dboobis: In my opinion, this is a very dangerous proposition. Firstly, if these guild talents give guild members even the slightest advantage in terms of items gained, money earned, etc., then I can see a lot of smaller guilds collapsing as their members run off to join the larger, more advanced guilds who will be more than willing to take them on in the hopes of boosting their own position.

Secondly, from a personal point of view, I raid as part of a collective (10-man) comprised of some guild members, some former guild members and some associated others (either friends of other raiders or people recruited to fill a role). Now, there are only seven of our guild in this raid group. From what I can tell, you need 75% of the raid to be of one guild to get credit for progression. Thus, even if we all happen to be in the raid one time, the guild will never get credit for it. It's going to be a bit stupid looking at the GuildOx rankings to see us as one of the top 25 strict 10-man raiding guilds in the world, and yet the Armory shows us as having no rewards for it.

I can see how larger guilds, especially the more "hardcore" raiding ones, will applaud this announcement, but I do fear for how it's going to affect the smaller, more casual guilds. If you're a casual player and you see that you can get leveling gear, mounts, free reagents, etc., from the server's more established guilds, you're going to have to be pretty strong to not have your head turned.