Blizzard announced during their annual Blizzcon convention this year, the release of their third expansion for their popular MMORPG, World of Warcraft. The expansion will be called WoW Cataclysm, named after the theme that will take central stage across the new campaign, a cataclysm that will wreak havoc across the World of Warcraft as we know it.
The Cataclysm of WoW will completely reshape Azeroth – the original continent that original players of Warcraft grew up in. Much of the areas and scenery that you were accustomed to will be no more. The redesigning of the entire Warcraft original zones will also pave way for the ability to, for the first time, travel across Azeroth with flying mounts.
The other major news from this upcoming expansion, is the introduction of two completely new races to the World of Warcraft. Goblins will join the Horde, and Worgens will be playable for the Alliance. These two new races will each have a wide selection of very powerful racials that will make even the most established of players want to leave their max level characters and start afresh.
WoW Cataclysm wouldn’t be a true expansion if it didn’t see the level cap being raised, and while this time around the max level has only been raised by 5 levels (to level 85), it still will allow players to learn new and more powerful ranks of their favorite spells.
One point of disappointment in terms of WoW Cataclysm features is that the talent trees won’t be expanded as usual, and will remain fixed at the maximum amount of 51 points for each tree. To make up for this though, Blizzard will introduce a new end game talent improving system called The Hall of Champions. This will be a weekly progression method that will unlock more powerful abilities as you progress upon one of the 8 Halls that are up for mastering.
The Hall of Champions feature goes hand in hand with WoW’s newest profession: Archaeology. Archaeology will be a brand new primary profession where players can discover ancient relics and use them to strengthen their character.
World of Warcraft Cataclysm has many other very exciting new features that should excite both the casual and hardcore fans alike. One that has been anticipated for a long time is rated battlegrounds. While Arenas have been a large part of WoW for quite some time now, many felt that WoW Battlegrounds should also see a ladder system for proper competition.
So next time you head into a battleground, be ready to face against a mighty pre-made Guild group that will have no mercy. This ties in with another new feature called Guild Talent trees. It will not be too unlike regular character talent trees except for the fact that each guild will have one and individual player actions throughout the day will determine how much ‘experience’ the Guild will get. Guilds will be allowed to invest their points on improvements in either increased bank space, more gold per mobs killed, reduced repair costs, and a myriad of other interesting power ups.
While WoW Cataclysm doesn’t have a completely new zone as in previous expansions, it more than makes up for it with the sheer amount of new goodies that will be on hand for both new and long term players to try. WoW Cataclysm is expected to be released towards the end of 2010, so it will be a while still until the eager 11 million fan base can experience all this new gameplay.
