On Things to Come

[Jeremiah]

Cataclysm approaches fast. Speculations on the release date have been scattered, with the popular dates either being November 18th or November 2nd, depending on your sources. One thing that we know for sure is that Cataclysm offers a vast array of opportunities.

1. ) Opportunities for Profit:
You'll find that there are many opportunities to make a killing before Cataclysm releases. With a whole new host of low-level players, they'll need low-level materials to make what they need and want. There are all sorts of guides on MMOwned about how to make a good profit off of the expansion hype. Browse the Guides section on the forums to find out more about making money with Cataclysm.

2.) Opportunities for Reminiscence:
Cataclysm fundamentally changes Azeroth as we know it, and this has been Blizzard's number one marketing tagline throughout the entire Cataclysm campaign. Cataclysm has both positive and negative reactions from throughout the player community. Most of the negative attitude plays on the human fear of change and love of consistency. Humans desire for their lives and situations to be unaltered by outside forces. Since Blizzard and their developers are the only true theological force in World of Warcraft, our situations on our characters are being altered by an exterior force. Many humans are comfortable with making a drastic change in their own life, but this is on their own accord.

In a book by Tom Vanderbilt called Traffic, Vanderbilt examines how social situations and human nature can be examined on the road. Humans see cars as what sociologists refer to as the "unaltered comfort zone". A car is a facade of safety and security from outside forces. The pedestrian becomes the pest, and other armored humans become our adversaries on the road. When outside forces come into play are only when we make a mistake and shatter our facade, exposing our vulnerability.

Cataclysm gives us an opportunity to reflect on our experiences and on the nature of human security and stability. While Blizzard has the best intentions for their players (and thus their pockets), they are creating new and fun content that will keep their customers entertained for months to come. We may have attachments to the old world and the way old things were, however. Blizzard plans to remove a lot of the explorer's gems within Cataclysm. Quel'thalas island will be inaccessible and removed from the map altogether, and no one knows the fate of the other areas until live launches.

In a previous post, I pondered on the effects of flying mounts on exploration. While I'm sure that bored terrain designers will find someway to integrate secret "zones" into the game, wasn't the whole point of exploring Azeroth the challenge to get from point A to point B? It was the challenge of scaling epic mountainsides, finding new ways to get to old places, discovering hidden gems, and the thrill of falling thousands of feet when you fail (and hopefully deploying a parachute!) Where's the fun in that now that we can fly anywhere in Azeroth to get to anywhere we want?

3.) Opportunity to Roll an Alt:

I've never been much of an altoholic. Short of leveling a few characters to high levels, I generally stick to my main character and work on gearing him up. Cataclysm will give me the opportunity to try out some class/race combos that I've been wanting for ages (Thank you, Highbourne Mage!). It also gives me some extra time to check out the new low-level content in the new Azeroth, and there's nothing that I love more than questing with my special someone.

4.) Opportunity to Develop

New addons and programs will be the focus here at MMOwned when the expansion deploys. There will be a ton of new programs (both ethical and unethical) and projects that will spring up. I'm looking forward to see what our innovative contributors are able to come up with. This is perhaps the most exciting area of Cataclysm for me.

What I want to know from our readers is: Which part of Cataclysm are you most excited for? Is it on this list, or is it something else? Leave your comment in the article on the frontpage or the original post in the forum section.

Have ideas for new articles? Email News Chief aphel at [email protected]

[Namor]

New addons and programs will be the focus here at MMOwned when the expansion deploys.

WTB an LUA web-browser addon.

[Jeremiah]

WTB an LUA web-browser addon.

I've been waiting for that for awhile, as well.

[Maccer]

I've been waiting for that for awhile, as well.

Answer:

Addons are sandboxed so they can't even see the world outside world of warcraft.

They can't access your files.

They can only save stuff into the saved variables folders at logout

They can't get on the internet.

Alt-tab FTW !

As I wanted one too, there wont be any (I think).

[Jeremiah]

Nope. It's a limitation, sadly.