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Cataclysm: Guild cap revised, now 1,000 members
After a very vocal community outpouring and harsh response to Blizzard's announcement that guilds would be hard-capped at 600 members, the policy has been re-evaluated and the cap has been raised to 1,000 members per guild in patch 4.0.1. While there are not a huge amount of guilds that go over the 1,000-player limit, those multitudes of players came out in anger over Blizzard's decision to set a hard cap. Now, with that cap raised, these guilds may potentially fall under the new rules, keeping their organizations intact. Hit the jump for the full announcement.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Comes the Cataclysm redux
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, old gods, and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. Last year, we talked about Cataclysm. Since then, we've learned an awful lot about how it's going to affect warriors, starting as soon as patch 4.0.1 drops and changing a whole host of systems we've grown accustomed to. We've learned that the release date is my birthday. I'm pretty sure it's just a coincidence, but I'm still going to ride that coincidence for all it is worth. What's interesting to me as we look at the coming expansion with another year's perspective is how much of what we heard about is going to be delivered. Yes, defense is gone, armor penetration is gone, reforging is coming, mastery is in. Rage normalization, a rebalancing of tanking to move away from AoE threat's being the expected norm, the transformation of on-next-swing abilities to become instant attacks. Three new warrior races, with the two expansion races and blood elves finally being able to be warriors. It was a heck of a laundry list and amazingly, Blizzard actually seems to be on track to deliver almost all of it.
Ol' Grumpy's guide to Cataclysm instance protocols
If, like me, you've been tanking for a while, Cataclysm will be a return to a slower, more deliberate form of instancing. There are pros and cons to this, of course. The positives are: After a few weeks, those jerks who constantly say "go go go" in runs will have died a lot and will either have stopped playing or learned to stop doing that. Same for people who feel the need to pull while the tank/rest of the group is regaining mana and so on. Abilities that haven't seen much use in Wrath of the Lich King will probably make a comeback. You're going to need to learn to Polymorph, Sap, Trap, Hex and use other forms of CC. For the first few months of Cataclysm, at least, there will have to be more of a focus on skill and execution than numbers. Switching targets properly, not breaking CC before it's called for, and using your abilities at the right time will be rewarded. You're going to get whole new dungeons you haven't seen hundreds of times already, with all-new mechanics. Glory in once again having no idea what this pull does. The downsides, however, are also worth mentioning.
Gold Capped: The bag market is not going away with Cataclysm
Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! One of the most commonly profitable markets is 16-slot bags for leveling characters. They're a hassle to make and sell, but they have largish margin on most realms, and they sell day and night. Cataclysm will be bringing a new competitor to your business, however: an NPC. That's right; just about when your clients start buying bags from players, they'll be rewarded with a dirt-cheap one, courtesy of their home faction -- one for each city faction they're exalted with, actually. There are six bags for each faction, and as characters quest their way through 85, they'll eventually collect a fair few of them. Of course, a starting character won't be able to get them all immediately; however, anyone patient will eventually get them all. How this will affect the bag market is unknown, obviously, but I suspect that it will spell a reduction in demand for player-made bags.
The Queue: BlizzCon or bust
I'm really excited about BlizzCon because this is my first. Every other year, I've been unable to attend for one reason or another, mostly because the 3,000-mile trek always fell during work or school. Well, now, I'm going to make it to BlizzCon 2010. It's BlizzCon or bust for me! Speaking of amazing things going on around the same time, are you going to the big WoW Insider meetup this year? You should. You totally should. I've got official confirmation from the people in charge that it's going to be awesome! Let's answer some questions.
Cataclysm: Justice and valor point drop rates revealed
Blizzard recently announced the justice and valor point amounts for all types of raid and heroic content for Cataclysm. Justice and valor points are replacing the current badge/emblem system, allowing players to purchase items and gear for points. When a new tier of raid content is launched, valor points become justice points, reducing the emblem clutter that had been so rampant in Wrath of the Lich King. Hit the jump for the official blue post.
The Queue: BlizzCon expectations
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Today's edition of The Queue is brought to you by our old friend Hawaiian pizza -- or at least, it would have been if I hadn't been half asleep while ordering my pizza and ended up accidentally clicking "add bacon" instead of the topping(s) I wanted. Now my pizza is just covered in poorly cooked bacon bits. Woe is me. Woe. adalon asked: Is it just my imagination or has the Cataclysm release date not had the same amount of buzz that previous expansions had?
Ability queue system issues
If you're a tank, you probably have some experience with the way abilities queue up in the live game. Tanks tend to keep their threat-generating abilities on cooldown, and certainly for warrior tanks (I only tank on a warrior or DK), there's a good deal of spam with abilities like Devastate or Heroic Strike. While Cataclysm promises to fix HS spam, the basic form of tanking remains, and reliable threat abilities will be spammed. The difficulty will be in the new way abilities are queued up when you hit the button for that ability. It seems that a few exploiters have caused a change that may affect you. Ghostcrawler - Re: New ability queue system needs work We had to change the ability queue system you are describing to fix an exploit that was threatening to become pretty widespread. It is unfortunately one of those cases where a few bad apples ruin things for everyone. :( We are working on an improvement where the most recent command will override the previous one. If for example you are spamming Hamstring, and then succeed in snaring someone, you can switch to Mortal Strike which will clear out the Hamstring queue instead of wasting more GCDs on Hamstring. source The issue here is not the queue system itself but rather being locked into a choice when you rely on proc abilities that you can't predict. In the absence of a Sword and Board proc, for instance, or Revenge lighting up, you're going to want to use an ability like Devastate or Heroic Strike to generate threat, since some threat is always better than no threat. But when a higher-priority attack like Shield Slam or Revenge lights up, the last thing you want is to be locked into Devastate, unable to use the greater threat ability not only until Devastate fires but until the global cooldown -- which could end up costing you over 2 seconds on a proc that has a limited duration, as well as costing you that threat. There's a similar issue for DPS or PvP players, of course. A high-damage proc ability like Bloodsurge could very well fall away entirely while you're waiting for your ability queue to clear. Hopefully that override will be in place soon. At any rate, this is something to be aware of for the immediate future.
Cataclysm Beta: Alexstrasza cutscene spoilers
SPOILER WARNING: The video below contains spoilers for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. If you do not want to be spoiled, do not watch the video.
The Queue: Launch day
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Today we tackle, among other things, a couple of questions about Cataclysm's upcoming release. Oh man, it's getting close, people! Get excited! ... Did you hear me? I said, "Get excited!" You. You. In the back. Yes, you. You're not excited, are you? If you don't leap for joy right now we are going to have problems, mister. Or ma'am. I can't tell from here. bdew asked: With the new Battle.net system and the ability to buy games from there directly, did Blizzard say anything official about being able to buy Cataclysm digitally on Day 0?
Cataclysm release date set for December 7
Blizzard has just issued an official press release setting Dec. 7, 2010, as the official release date of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion. Press Release IRVINE, Calif., Oct 04, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) - Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft(R): Cataclysm(TM), the highly anticipated third expansion for the world's most popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game*, will be released starting on December 7, 2010. The expansion will be available on DVD-ROM for Windows(R) XP/Windows Vista(R)/Windows(R) 7 and Macintosh(R) at a suggested retail price of $39.99 and will also be offered as a digital download from the Blizzard Store. A special Collector's Edition packed with bonus items will be available exclusively in retail stores for a suggested retail price of $79.99. "Cataclysm includes the best content we've ever created for World of Warcraft. It's not just an expansion, but a re-creation of much of the original Azeroth, complete with epic new high-level adventures for current players and a redesigned leveling experience for those just starting out," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "With the help of our beta testers, we're putting on the final polish, and we look forward to welcoming gamers around the world to enjoy it in just a couple of months." The first two World of Warcraft expansions, The Burning Crusade(R) and Wrath of the Lich King(R), each shattered PC game sales records upon their release.* In Cataclysm, the face of Azeroth will be forever altered by the return of the corrupted Dragon Aspect Deathwing. Players will explore once-familiar areas of the world that have now been reshaped by the devastation and filled with new adventures. In an effort to survive the planet-shattering cataclysm, two new playable races - worgen and goblins - will join the struggle between the Alliance and the Horde. As players journey to the new level cap of 85, they'll discover newly revealed locations, acquire new levels of power, and come face to face with Deathwing in a battle to determine the fate of the world. The beta test for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is currently underway. Visit the official Battle.net(R) website at http://www.battle.net to set up a Battle.net account and sign up for a chance to participate. To learn more about World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, visit http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm.
Arcane Brilliance: Catching up on mage Cataclysm changes
Each week, Arcane Brilliance steps out of a portal from parts unknown, bringing with it a knapsack full of delicious mage content conjured expressly for your consumption. Try not to overconsume, though. Nothing's worse than waking up one morning to discover your robes don't fit and your fingers are too chubby to waggle your wand properly. And after that culinary intro joke, it's time we got to the meat of the matter -- specifically, the Cataclysm beta and the constant mage changes going on therein. Each week (and sometimes more than once during each week), a new beta build hits that brings more new stuff for mages. Sometimes these changes are big, and sometimes they're not, but I feel like it's high time we spent a column talking about the more recent ones. I've let like five builds go by without dealing specifically with this stuff, so we'd better get going. I figure we'll start with the most important change and move forward from there.
Cataclysm rewards low-level faction loyalty with cloaks, bags
While stomping around your home city in Cataclysm, you might notice a new quartermaster NPC hanging around the travel area. He or she stocks a total of five items (at least so far), shown above: a high-resolution city tabard that requires friendly standing with that city; a reasonably-priced 16-slot bag (unique) requiring revered standing to purchase; and level 35 blue cloaks (also in gorgeous high resolution) in caster, agility and strength varieties, requiring exalted standing. What's interesting about the required reputation on these items is how they relate to the leveling process. If you choose to stay on your "main" continent -- Kalimdor for night elves, for example, or Eastern Kingdoms for Forsaken -- then your reputation will hit the proper level just as these items become useful. The tabard can be picked up at any time, since almost every race starts at friendly standing with its faction's cities. The bag, on the other hand, shows up at a point in the leveling process when a new player (or fresh reroll on a new server/faction) is going to start wishing he had another big bag like the backpack. And the cloaks are available at level 35 -- a level at which, on my worgen fire mage, I had just hit exalted with Darnassus and was very close to hitting exalted with Stormwind. So on top of a cloak tailored to my spec, I also had two 16-slot bags available -- which for a new player is like winning the lottery. This is a great way to educate new players on how WoW's reputation system works, and it provides some neat rewards to boot. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Mastery, threat decay and Cataclysm tanking
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, the very teeth of danger, armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we're not stupid -- we're just crazy. Last week we talked about tanking and Cataclysm beta patch 13033, which was superseded almost immediately by patch 13066. Hard upon the heels of that comes patch 13117. If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that there will be more beta patches that will bring with them more mechanical changes to the class. But I wanted to take this time to cover a couple of interesting recent posts about the way the class is shaping up. We'll cover the patch 13117 changes first, the move on. Arms Mortal Strike now costs 25 rage, down from 30 rage. Obviously a nice little quality of life change but not a major dealmaker, I would think. Fury Slam now costs 20 rage, up from 15 rage. Bloodthirst now restores 0.5% of max health, down from 1%. I'm honestly not sure why these changes were made. I guess Bloodsurge was too easy to use? Or it's aimed at arms warriors using Improved Slam in their builds. The Bloodthirst change must be aimed at Field Dressing making it too good. Protection Defensive Stance now increases threat by 125%, up from 100%. Not much to say, other than it's a welcome buff. More would be better, as initial threat is still somewhat wonky (once Vengeance stacks up, it's not a concern, but the initial seconds of a pull can be rough for a warrior without Bloodrage, shouts just aren't making up for the loss of that ability) especially if trying to hold more than one.
Arena Season 9 to begin on Dec. 14, Cataclysm launch Dec. 7?
If Wowhead is to be believed, arena Season 9 is set to begin on Dec. 14. The curious folks at our favorite WoW database (as well as Boubouille of MMO-Champion) found a little snippet of text while scrounging around the game files: Arena battles and Rated Battlegrounds are only available during an active player versus player combat season. Season nine will begin on December 14th, so be prepared at that time to take your shot at glory! This would coincide neatly with the recent announcement that arena Season 8 can end as soon as Oct. 12. What makes this finding interesting is that arena Season 9 actually corresponds to rated battlegrounds Season 1, which means Cataclysm should be live by then. This could mean sometime in November. We'll find out for sure at this year's BlizzCon, but for now, all clues point to Blizzard's being on track to release the game before the end of the year. This gives players about a month or even less time -- about a week, to be exact -- to hit max level. If the uncovered code holds true, we should expect to see Cataclysm on the shelves by Dec. 7, if not sooner. Zach delivers your weekly dose of battlegrounds and world PvP in one crazy column. Find out how the Cataclysm talent tree redesign affects PvP, how sub-speccing will work at higher levels in the expansion, and how the new Azeroth will affect world PvP. Visit Blood Sport for the inside line on arena PvP.
Cataclysm Beta: Patch notes, build 13117
We just received notification that a new patch is coming for the the Cataclysm beta. Build 13117 has just been datamined over at MMO-Champion. There are plenty of changes in store for almost every class. Among those changes are pretty nice buffs to combat rogues who get to look forward to the following changes Backstab now deals 200% weapon damage, up from 175%. Additional base damage increased by 33%. Revealing Strike now causes 125% of your normal weapon damage, up from 100%. Improved Sinister Strike now increases damage dealt by your Sinister Strike ability by 10/20/30%, up from 2/4/6%. Vitality (Passive) now also increases Attack Power by 15%. Protection warriors also get a nice buff to threat as Defensive Stance will now generate 125 percent threat, up from 100 percent. Pretty significant buff and one that will help keep up with the additional damage being dealt in the instances now. All of the hunter Masteries also saw some significant changes with what looks like a big decrease in bonuses across the board. Restoration shaman can look forward to Mana Tide Totem being changed to increase spirit by 350 percent, up from 200 percent. All around there are some big changes for just about everyone this time around. With all the class changes also comes some more news about professions. A slew of new enchants have been uncovered as well as a new recipe that I think every alchemist will be interested in. The recipe for Vial of the Sands has been uncovered, and if you're wondering what it is, this little potion will transform you into a Sandstone Drake! Not only do you get to become a really awesome looking dragon and fly very fast, but a friend can hop on your back and go for a ride. It is one of the more interesting concepts as far as mounts go, and I for one am looking forward to making and downing a Vial of the Sands as soon as I can. Keep in mind that all of these changes are based on the data uncovered from the Cataclysm beta, and can change at any time. Be sure to check back often for all the latest Cataclysm news. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.
Gold Capped: Making money in the time remaining before Cataclysm
Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! I got an email recently asking about something that's been on my mind lately: What ways of making gold are there when Cataclysm is just around the corner? Graham writes: I just recently had my first successful foray into the world of being an auctioneer. I am [now] sitting very happily with 28k gold earned [through selling crafted epics]. My goal is to purchase a Bane of the Fallen King title and ICC-10 full meta clear, which on Mal'ganis Horde sell for 50k and 75k respectively. At the time I am writing this, I have sold all of my inventory of epics and all of the materials that I was stockpiling to make more because my perception is the market has almost completely evaporated with the rumored release date of Nov. 2 for Cataclysm. What other methods of accumulating a sizeable sum of gold over the next six weeks are available that should continue to be profitable clear up until the expansion hits? I have access to max-level enchanting, blacksmithing, mining, alchemy and jewelcrafting. If the glyph market is your preferred answer, I could level a scribe. Unfortunately, my observation is that all crafted items (raid consumables, 264 epics, etc.) are selling at or below their material cost to create. I have looked into the Saronite shuffle and its various methods of earning income, and as near as I can determine, it's a zero-sum market as well (cost of ore = expected sale of any of the options).
Goblin cinematic: Escape from Kezan
Xfire user Zilas just uploaded what we believe to be the cinematic detailing the end of the goblin starting zone Kezan. Frankly, it's amazing. There are spoilers for the end of the first part of the goblin starting experience, so be warned. Blizzard has, once again, topped itself in terms of cinematic quality and expression outside of its general pre-rendered cinematics. Hopefully the worgen transformation movie is just as awesome.
Spiritual Guidance: Welcome to Cataclysm heroics, shadow priests
Welcome to the Wednesday edition of Spiritual Guidance, where your host Fox Van Allen takes on the darker, shadowy side of priesting. While your holy columnist Dawn Moore was busy trying to plant suggestions regarding the alleged superiority of healing, Fox was busy casting Mind Control to demonstrate the superiority of the shadows. Right now, on the live Wrath servers, shadow priesting seems to fit like a glove. That's not necessarily a result of our class and mechanics being perfect -- they're not. It's a result of their feeling familiar. We've been playing under the rules of patch 3.3 for nearly a year now and it feels natural; it feels right. We're blessed with strong damage and near unlimited mana -- provided we put in the effort to know how to make both of those a reality. It's hard to accept that 4.0.1 is bringing such major changes, especially in the realm of that once unlimited mana bar. It's gone, and it's not coming back any time soon. If you need any evidence, consider this: After slashing mana regen to the bone last week, Blizzard followed up by cutting regen even more this week in the latest beta build. (For something called a "nerf," these cuts sure hit like a Mack truck, don't they?) These changes to regen may make the 80-to-85 leveling process more tedious, but they don't necessarily make it more difficult. If the pinch is going to be felt anywhere, it's going to be in 5-man instances, heroics and raids. Since raids aren't quite available yet, I decided to queue up for some heroics instead to get as much Cataclysm endgame flavor as I could. Can our mana bars handle the stress? How weird and different are our new rotations? And how can shadow priests add much-needed value to a party above and beyond the standard DPS abilities in Cataclysm? The answers to those questions -- plus a stunning 47,306 damage crit -- are all after the break.
Cataclysm Beta: New videos of druid, rogue and warlock tier 11 armor
Blizzard puts an immense amount of time and thought into every piece of tier gear (at least, you'd hope it does). For those of us who raid (even casually), it's the armor set we'll see our characters in the most. You get a blue drop out of a heroic, and you might replace it in a few weeks. You get a piece of tier gear, and ... well, the only thing that's prying that out of your hands is an even better piece of tier gear. That said, our datamining friends over at MMO-Champion have released some terrific finds today -- the tier 11 sets for druids, rogues and warlocks that so many of you will be wearing just a few months after the Cataclysm release. The druid set, which seems to turn you into some manner of electrified bird-man, is absolutely gorgeous. Warlocks get a nice, evil-looking set that comes complete with skewed horns. As for rogues ... well, somewhere out there, there's a rogue who roleplays as an Arabian ghost -- and man, is he happy today! Though the full warrior set is not yet in the Cataclysm beta files, MMO Champion did dig up the warrior tier 11 helm, so the Matt Rossi posse gets a sneak peek at its gear as an added bonus. The video for the druid tier 11 is above; rogues, warlocks and warriors will have to follow me after the break.