Info About Cataclysm Expansion

[XC4T4LY5TX]

Ok so were all excited for the beta coming out for Cataclysm, Blizz's Latest installment of the World of Warcraft series.


Heres a bit of info i found whilst reading on the web.



VASHJIR Info ( Found at wow-cataclysm.info )

Blizzard released information on the 78-82 zone that will be released in Cataclysm. Below is the post from the horse itself.

Once a great Highborne city housing some of the most revered night elves of Kalimdor, Vashj’ir was swallowed by the Great Sea in the Sundering and thought to be lost forever. Queen Azshara, formerly a beloved leader of the Highborne, escaped death in the depths of the sea when the Well of Eternity imploded. Such salvation came at a great cost, as the queen and many of her fellow Highborne were forever transformed into the monstrous naga, doomed to wander the seas for thousands of years. Their existence mostly remains a mystery to the peoples of modern Azeroth, though the Earthen Ring has learned of Azshara’s naga seizing Vashj’ir for an unknown purpose as the cries of the elements echo across Azeroth from the Abyss.

The Sunken City

Vashj’ir is a level 78-82 zone in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm where players will be called to explore the depths of the Great Sea and stop the naga from seizing immeasurable power from the realm of Neptulon the Tidehunter. This expansive underwater zone will feature an unprecedented fight for survival against the naga overwhelming the area, several new quest hubs — including Alliance and Horde naval ships and submarines — all-new underwater travel and combat mechanics, several pocketed undersea caves free from water’s grip, two new five-player dungeons (Throne of the Tides and Abyssal Maw), and the first-ever opportunity to explore the remains of the once-majestic city of Vashj’ir!

Bottled Distress Message Found Adrift at Sea

Need your help. Time is short. I’m held captive in what I hope to be a nightmare.

Enjoying the ocean air just days ago. We were determined to control key trade routes through victory at sea over the Horde. Their fleet came into our scopes. Our world became the deafening sound of battle, the smell of gunpowder, and the feeling of fear. Looking back now, though, that wasn’t real fear.

We weren’t alone in those waters. 
Our naval warfare attracted attention and rendered us prey. With our vessel already torn apart and taking on water, we saw a tremendous creature rise from the depths and shatter the hull, sucking us down to the sea floor. It all happened so fast. 
I was quick to tread the waters, hoping to regroup with any survivors I could find through a dense garden of kelp, constantly gasping for a chance breath. 

That’s when the onslaught began. From all directions swarms of brutal naga swept through and captured a great many of us. 
Beaten near to death, I awoke in agony, bound in chains.

And here I still sit. I can only describe our prison as very big and somehow very much alive. We’re in the hands of the naga now. 
Surviving crewmates in better condition than me are driven into slave labor.

One escaped. Thomas. 
He didn’t make it far before I saw him dragged back. Before being forced into labor, he spoke in a panic about some large shell protecting this living prison, expansive night elf ruins in the distance, strange naga rituals underway, and sea vrykul battling our captors. He made little sense. 
Could be mad. 
Or I could be mad to hope vrykul are fighting to free us.

Prison patrols out again. Send word to Stormwind. Sunken city far from extinct. Naga plotting something horrific. Please help.

PALADIN NEWS:

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm we’ll be making several changes to class talents and abilities across the board. While this list only outlines some of our plans for the paladin class, we want to give you a look at the new high-level abilities and an overview of how the new Mastery system will work with each talent spec.

New Paladin Spells

Blinding Shield (level 81): Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin’s shield, in a manner similar to Eadric the Pure’s ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion. The Holy tree will have a talent to increase the damage and critical strike chance, while the Protection tree will have a talent to make this spell instant cast. 2-second base cast time. Requires a shield.

Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.

Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).

Next you will find a list of some of the paladin spell and ability changes, followed by our intentions for improving each talent tree for the release of Cataclysm. There will be further changes, but those revealed below should offer some insight into our goals.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

• Crusader Strike will be a core ability for all paladins, gained at level 1. We think the paladin leveling experience is hurt by not having an instant attack. Retribution will be getting a new talent in its place that either modifies Crusader Strike or replaces it completely.

• Cleanse is being rebalanced to work with the new dispel system. It will dispel defensive magic (debuffs on friendly targets), diseases, and poisons.

• Blessing of Might will provide the benefit of Wisdom as well. If you have two paladins in your group, one will do Kings on everyone and the other will do Might on everyone. There should be much less need, and ideally no need, to provide specific buffs to specific classes.

• Holy Shock will be a core healing spell available to all paladins.
New Talents and Talent Changes

• We want to ease off the defensive capabilities of Retribution and Holy paladins slightly. We think the powerful paladin defenses have been one of the things holding Retribution paladins back, especially in Arenas. One change we’re considering is lowering Divine Shield’s duration by a couple of seconds. Having said that, Retribution does pretty well in Battlegrounds, and Battlegrounds will be a much bigger focus in Cataclysm since they can provide the best PvP rewards. Furthermore, the healing environment of Cataclysm is going to be different such that a paladin may not be able to fully heal themselves during the duration of Divine Shield to begin with, so this may not be a problem.

• We feel Retribution paladins need one more mechanic which involves some risk of the player pushing the wrong button, making the rotation a bit less forgiving. In addition, we want to add to this spec more PvP utility. Right now the successes of the Retribution paladin in PvP seem to be reduced to either doing decent burst damage, or just being good at staying alive.

• We want to increase the duration of Sacred Shield to 30 minutes and keep the limit to one target. The intention is that the paladin can use it on their main healing target. That said, we would like to improve the Holy paladin toolbox and niche so that they don’t feel quite like the obvious choice for tank healing while perceived as a weak group healer.

• We want to add to the Holy tree a nice big heal to correspond with Greater Heal. Flash of Light remains the expensive, fast heal and Holy Light is the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. Beacon of Light will be changed to work with Flash of Light. We like the ability, but want paladins to use it intelligently and not be constantly healing for twice as much.

• Holy paladins will use spirit as their mana regeneration stat.

• Protection paladins need a different rotation between single-target and multi-target tanking. Likewise, we’re looking to add the necessity to use an additional cooldown in each rotation.

• Holy Shield will no longer have charges. It will be designed to improve block chance while active, and will continue to provide a small amount of damage and threat.
Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Holy
Healing
Meditation
Critical Healing Effect

Protection
Damage Reduction
Vengeance
Block Amount

Retribution
Melee Damage
Melee Critical Damage
Holy Damage

Meditation: This is the spirit-to-mana conversion that the priest, druid, and shaman healers also share.
Vengeance: This is the damage-received-to-attack-power conversion that all tanks share.

Critical Healing Effect: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more.
Block Amount: We want to keep the kit of the paladin as a tank who blocks a lot. So by contrast, the warrior tank will sometimes get critical blocks, but the paladin will absorb more damage with normal blocks.
Holy Damage: Any attack that does Holy damage will have its damage increased.
This concludes this Cataclysm preview for the paladin class. The development of these changes will continue to evolve in the coming months. Please be sure to provide any feedback and thoughts you might have on what was covered here.




New Hyjal Raid:

In the past recent few, Blizzard updated there World of Warcraft Site with a juicy update the information on Mount Hyjal the new zone in World of Warcraft Cataclysm. Below is posted straight from the site.

For years, Mount Hyjal and the wounded World Tree, Nordrassil, have remained cut off from the rest of Azeroth. Sealed away within a protective field of dense foliage by Malfurion Stormrage, Nordrassil has been slowly recovering from the devastation of the Third War, when Malfurion called upon the tree’s power to destroy the archdemon Archimonde and repel the forces of the Burning Legion and Scourge. Now, with the impending cataclysm, the World Tree’s well-being is threatened once more. From the Firelands within the Elemental Plane, Ragnaros and his minions prepare to burst into Hyjal and set Nordrassil ablaze — and the conflagration would endanger all life on Azeroth.

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, players will have the opportunity to explore the newly reopened Mount Hyjal as Azeroth’s heroes, with the help of Ysera, Malfurion Stormrage and Hamuul Runetotem, are called upon to push back the armies of the Firelord, banish Ragnaros to the Elemental Plane and lay waste to the twilight dragon stronghold in nearby Darkwhisper Gorge. This all-new level 78-82 zone will feature multiple quest hubs, phased terrain and quest lines, portals to micro-zones within the Firelands, an all-new raid dungeon, and much more.

The World Tree
Players will be able to enter Hyjal by way of Moonglade, to take on a series of high-stakes quests in a historic location alongside some of Azeroth’s most renowned heroes. With a longstanding rivalry among the night elf leadership threatening to undermine the campaign against Deathwing, players will quickly discover the task of defending Nordrassil is more daunting than they had anticipated. In order to succeed, they must seek out the help of extremely powerful allies: the Ancients.

The Ancients
To protect Nordrassil and heal the devastation the invading fire elementals are causing across Mount Hyjal, players must first recapture the shrine of the wolf god Goldrinn. The ogres surrounding the shrine will not leave peacefully, but seizing the shrine will allow players their first opportunity to infiltrate the Firelands and shut down a key Twilight portal, slowing the advance of the nearby Twilight’s Hammer in Hyjal.
With the first portal dismantled, players will soon be sought by the wilderness spirit Aessina to assist in cleansing and healing the nearby forest, ultimately returning the land to its former splendor. This small victory, however, isn’t enough to deter the Twilight Remnants from attempting to scorch the forest once more. As you struggle to keep these foes at bay, you’ll also need to help the Guardians of Hyjal — a new neutral faction of druids and worshippers of the Ancients — repopulate the forest with animal life. It’s even rumored that Malorne has been spotted in the wilderness. Perhaps further investigation is necessary….
Amid the chaos, the Druids of the Talon will need players’ assistance to resurrect the goddess of winged creatures. Players begin the process by helping to slay a group of black dragons and closing a second Firelands portal from within. Just when you think things might be heating up, you’ll need to fight through a burning night elf town to shut down the third and final portal with the assistance of the turtle god Tortollus.

Darkwhisper Gorge
Your successes in Hyjal will ultimately lead you to the assembly of the Ancients, who have set a plan in motion to bring a powerful ally and demigod back into this realm. Before that can happen, however, you will need to infiltrate Darkwhisper Gorge disguised as a follower of the Twilight’s Hammer, acting quickly to sow discord within the entrenched faction, weakening it for the coming struggle. Only time will tell if the Ancients’ plan is a success — but you’ll need to do your part if there’s any hope of saving Mount Hyjal from the twilight dragons, Ragnaros, and his minions of the Elemental Plane.

Firelands
More information on this all-new level-85 raid dungeon is coming soon.


CATACLYSM DEVELOPER CHAT!


Q. What have you learned from this expansion’s emblem system?
A. Having that many different kind of emblems is overwhelming. In hindsight, we wish we had done maybe 2 emblems: the current tier and the previous tier (Frost and Triumph at the moment). They also felt a tad too grindy when 3.3 first came out before all of the sources of emblems were available.

Q. Is there any ETA on tree / moonkin form graphical update?
A. Moonkin is hard because Moonkin players are so in love with that form. It's tough to change it at all. We currently hope to do a new tree form for Cataclysm, but no promises.

Q. Is the Valithria Dreamwalker encounter a deliberate move towards making WoW more “fun & interesting” for healers? Will we see more encounters like this?
A. We want to make healing more fun, yes. Part of that is letting healers use their whole repetoire instead of just their best spells. Part of it is trying to get healers to look at the battlefield a little more and unit frames a little less, that of course means a little more time in between spamming heals so you can do stuff like that.

Q. Does Blizzard have any plans to give healers "fun" procs and on-use effects, like DPS have been getting lately?
A. Yes. Healer procs are trickier to design though to make sure they aren't wasted. Damage is rarely wasted so it's a bit easier to design.

Q. Will existing races have their starting areas reworked to provide a more "epic" experience similar to the Goblin/Worgen starts?
A. Not quite at the Goblin / Worgen level, but we are looking at all the original start zones, especially for two races who feel a little disenfranchised at the moment.

Q. There's no cap on Emblems, but there is on honor. Any plans to remove or raise the honor cap?
A. To be honest, we're more likely to cap emblems. We like the gameplay where you're motivated to periodically check in with WoW. We don't like feeling like you have to log in every single day without fail (cough Frost emblems) and we don't like the grind your face off in order to maximize return (old BG Honor).



Q. The 3.3.3 PTR included some unreleased 'event' details (no spoilers). Should we expect to see that event in the lifetime of 3.3.3?
A. Something leaked in the patch? That never happens! The plan is for these events to go live sometime before Cataclysm ships. We don’t have an exact time yet, but we would like players to have a good month or two to play through these events to help build the back story for what is going to happen in Cataclysm.

Q. Regarding Cataclysm, can you reveal any of the 'major changes' in Blasted Lands and how this will affect the lore?
A. I love the fact that one of our first questions is in regards to the Blasted Lands! We have big plans in store for this zone in Cataclysm. We will be revamping the entire flow of the zone so you can expect an entirely new experience here. Some of the big changes include an opening to the coastline for a new play area, as well as a large new worgen area in The Tainted Scar.

Q. In Cataclysm, do you plan on releasing two raid instances at a time (like Serpentshrine Cavern/Tempest Keep), or are we only getting one at a time (i.e. Naxxramas followed by Ulduar)?
A. We like the idea of having more smaller raids rather than one large one. In other words, we will have more than one at Cataclysm launch.


( THERE IS PLENTY MORE ON THESE SUBJECTS AND QUESTIONS OVER ON THE BLIZZARD FORUMS Here's a link to for your convenience )


World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> #BlizzChat Developer Chat on Twitter 2/26



( All this information was found on wow-cataclysm.info and the World of Warcraft Forums! )

So Credit to the original posters and revealer of this information.
But Credits to me for bringing to mmowned first

[MrsMe]

It needs more formatting if anything. Right now it looks like a very copy-pasted wall of text

[abhorsenjay]

Mmm Gnome Priests... novelty guide all ready <Vertically Retarded>