[1.Local]: The lore according to James Cameron

Reader comments -- ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.

When it comes to the chatter in [1.Local], sometimes it's the sidetracks and the tangents that pull up the most interesting results. By now, we've all heard comparisons between James Cameron's "Avatar" and Disney's "Pocahontas." ("Pocahontas in Space," anyone?) Leave it to our readers to take things a step farther.

sherekhan88: Actually, maybe because of too much WoW, I was able to piece together Avatar as "The World of Warcraft movie, as envisioned by James Cameron." It goes like this:

Guy log ins on his new Night Elf Hunter WoW character. He tries to cast Tame Beast on a panther that's too high level and almost dies. He gets Apprentice Riding and Exalted with Stormwind and gets a pony mount. He skips Journeyman Riding, but later gets Expert Riding in Outland. After much grinding, gets Netherdrake mount.

Meanwhile, humans want to mine giant Titanium node under Teldressil. They use vehicles to raid Darnussus. The World Tree crashes, lots of Nelfs ragequit.

Meanwhile, Sigourney Weaver tries to do a server transfer, but fails. Stuck with Blizzard's customer service for a week.

Main guy finally gets Artisan riding and bags a Time-Lost Proto-Drake mount. He then epeens it in Shattrath. Nelves follow him. Gathers more people with Netherdrake mounts and Stormwind horses. Later they forgot Blizzard never gave them mounted combat.

Main guy and Nelves defeat Humans using greens; midway through the battle main guy's game time card almost runs out. Humans ragequit after losing, Nelves call them noobs. Main guy Feigns Death for lulz, does server transfer, but comes back when he found out Paragon AND Ensidia are both on the same server.

Coming up after the break: More (unique? lovable? twisted? overenthusiastic?) nuggets of wisdom, plus the World of Warcraft week in review from WoW.com's commenters.

Submit to our evil overlords (domestically only, please)

Have you submitted your take on Cataclysm's upcoming class changes to WoW.com's guest post program yet? If you haven't, do let us hear from you -- unless, of course, you live outside the United States. Unfortunately, Aol's Seed guest post program is currently only available to U.S. residents.

Docp: It's an AOL thing. The evil overlords who cruelly whip our beloved writers so they may fill their banks with tasty add revenues decreed that no inferior state be allowed to write on their blogs.

Or they haven't gotten around to it or it's a trial scheme, if you want a less crazy answer.

Adam Holisky: We whip each other for fun, too. Not just a corporate thing.

Fletcher: Let me guess ... it was a staff party, everybody was drunk, Dominic Hobbs summoned his Succubus, Dawn Moore specced Discipline, and it all went downhill from there.

Adam Holisky: That's what started it. This is where it ended.

Speaking of where things end, the current call for submissions ends April 19; more details are available here.

The first combat rogue

Is it just us, or do combat rogues not feel very rogue-ish sometimes? Readers must've been thinking the same thing -- and we've already seen above that they've been dreaming up some unusual stories this week. (Must be the infusion of new information and ideas about Cataclysm.) We found one reader who clarifies the entire combat rogue situation.

Lemons: The young lad always wanted to be a fury warrior. Finally, when he came of age, he said goodbye to his mother and father and left the family farm for the human capital of Stormwind. There he took the rigorous trials and despite his passion, he failed every one. He wasn't angry enough, he could barely heft a greatsword, and platemail proved to be too cumbersome on his meager frame.

His original dream shattered, he tried the next best thing and applied to the rogue academy. He could fight decently enough without the burden of the heavy armor, but he failed horribly on the stealth exams. HORRIBLY.

They were about to deem him unworthy when one of the masters got an idea. Drawing the other masters about him he whispered "even though this boy is obviously unworthy to be a rogue of any sort we still need warm bodies to fight against the Horde...lets give him some a couple weapons from the armory and ship him out to the front lines." Another master gasped "The daggers!?" The first master retorted "of course not THE DAGGERS...we need those for real rogues...he can have an axe or something, whatever." The other masters nodded in approval.

So, to the lad's surprise, he was excepted into the rogue order. He was much relieved because otherwise he would of had to work at Coldstone. Anyways...that is the story of the first combat rogue.

Will you be starting a goblin rogue in Cataclysm? Don't miss Chase Christian's brand new guide to Combat 101.

How 'bout them Scourge Strikes?

It's official: Come Cataclysm, blood spec will become the only tanking tree for death knights.

Karsehani: Good bye 12k death strikes.

BritishBulldog: Hello 18k scourge strikes!

What do you think about the new structure for DK specs? Did you feel as if you were forced to pull tanking talents from "a sea of DPS talents"? Are you bloody excited about blood tanking?

Warlocks take flight

Do you want a warlock-specific flying mount in Cataclysm? Reader Finnicks does -- and he's been putting more than a little bit of thought into how to get one.

Finnicks: A quest to gather 5,000g worth of materials to create a portal to the castle Hel'Nurath on planet Xorath, where you and 4 companions will battle the demonic hordes of the Burning Legion to obtain "Hel'Nurath's Orb," a powerful artifact that can transform the Dreadsteed into the winged Doomsteed. But in order to use the Orb you must barter with the Black Dragonflight (read: 5,000g more in mats) to gain access to the Elemental Plane of Fire, and there suck out the essence of a Firelord, the only thing powerful enough to fuel the Orb of Hel'Nurath. Of course, once you use the Empowered Orb of Hel'Nurath to transform your Dreadsteed into the mighty Doomsteed, its increased power allows it to break free of your control, and you must subdue it once more...

Bonus: Availible only to warlocks who have completed the original Dreadsteed questline.

Don't miss our analysis of Blizzard's previewed changes for warlocks in Cataclysm.

CC days are here again?

The news for rogues in Cataclysm reflects a pattern that's becoming blatantly apparent: less AoE, more CC. How much do you miss crowd control from the Burning Crusade days (or beyond)?

Troglodyte: You know.... nothing prevents you from CC'ing and single targeting rather than AOE'ing NOW.... you don't have to wait for Cataclysm to start CC'ing again if you don't want to.

agnoster: While technically true, there are two problems: one, as the previous commenter pointed out, is that your CC is just going to be broken because it is no longer *customary* to CC, so the rest of the group (unless you're running with friends and you all have a CC fetish) is likely to still be AoEing away, breaking any CC.

The second problem - and the reason CC is no longer customary - is that it's stupid. Yes, theoretically you could CC and LoS each pull. You could take one pull at a time. But unless you are hideously undergeared, it's simply not going to make any kind of sense, and people (and in fact most systems in general) gravitate towards the path of least resistance. It's easier and faster to just AoE several pulls at a time. Just because you *can* doesn't mean you *will*. You might do something harder if the payoff is better: for instance, if CC+single target was going to reduce a fairly high risk of wiping, you might do it because, overall, it's the most efficient method.

There are unfortunately two problems with re-introducing CC and single target. One, it makes CC mandatory - and stupid easy CC preferable - for getting spots in raids/groups. To some extent, the random dungeon finder might fix this, but anyone else remember "LF1M DPS/CC" from BC? (And, in the case of MrT, often more than 1?) Getting stuck in a group with lacking or finicky CC will be considered annoying. People will kick rogues for taking so long to sap, or yelling at shamans when hex breaks and can't be re-applied. Either Blizz has to normalize CC, or spend as much time balancing it as they do DPS, or some classes will just get the shaft there.

The second problem is that needing CC is almost impossible to reinforce without risk. Once you outgear content, you no longer need to CC, because the risk of a wipe (the only reason to CC) drops precipitously. Imagine if, when you first ran H-UK in dungeon blues and quest greens, you had to CC. Would you still need to now? The only way to fix this is to make 5-mans relevant several tiers after introduction - and I don't just mean upping the badges. Imagine a reverse Strength of Wrynn: you go into the instance, and the gatekeeper gives you an option: you can do the heroic as designed, and get badges of heroism, give all the mobs and bosses a 5% buff for valour, 10% for conquest, 15% for triumph, or 20% for frost. (Exact percentages might need to vary, and there are other issues with queueing everyone together and then having to choose a difficulty level post-hoc, but I won't even get into that now.)

So there are issues. But Blizz is good people, I'll bet they've got some thoughts on how to solve this :-)

Read up on what Cataclysm holds in store specifically for rogues in Cataclysm Class Changes: Rogue analysis.

The high price of gaming

Hey, is it your imagination or have games gotten more expensive lately?

RogueJedi86: And I know I'll be downvoted for it, but I think $60 for the base game is expensive. *puts on old man glasses and takes out walking stick* In my days, SC1 came out in 1998 for just $40! What happened to those old reasonable prices? EA sold the PC version of Mass Effect 2 for $10 less than consoles at a $50 price tag. Activision-Blizzard knows everyone will buy SC2 for $60 and like it though, so we have that price. I miss the $40 days though.

Nick Vance: Factoring for inflation, $40 in '98 is the equivalent of about $54 in 2009. The game costs about the same, it is the dollar bills in your pocket that are worth less. In fact, if you include the higher operating costs for Blizzard between now and then, I would not be surprised if they are actually making a slightly smaller profit per unit sold.

All that aside, here's a sweet deal: WoW players will receive a Thor mini-pet when they purchase a Starcraft II: Wings of Victory collector's edition. Now that's added value!

Ha, caughtcha looking! Hey, don't scroll away ... Come join the conversation on these and other posts around the WoW.com community. We'll see you around in [1.Local]!