Project Lore

As we head into Day 2 of BlizzCon, why don't we just take a moment and reflect upon everything we learned during Day 1?

Electricity filled the air during the Opening Ceremony, as Mike Morhaime and Christ Metzen danced around the announcement of Cataclysm until the very end, yanking the audience along like a wooden duck on wheels. But when it landed, oh boy, did it!

Deathwing's ugly mug.

Many of MMO-Champion's predictions came true, but sadly few of my own. Hey, I thought there were a lot of good ideas, but many of them were also heavily dependent on Queen Azshara being the main attraction, not Deathwing. As it turns out, he's the one that causes all of the mayhem and destruction, not the Maelstrom (though it is still featured prominently several times during the trailer). So there's still someone, or something, kicking around down there in Nazjatar, but Blizzard is holding those details close to their chest.

Moving into the World of Warcraft Preview Panel, we learned all sorts of new details about the features revealed in the trailer. We were given a look at how many current zones transformed, as well as shown previews of what the seven new ones might look like. Perhaps one of the most interesting things to come out of the Preview Panel was the fact that we would be visiting all four of the core Elemental Planes, with the Earthen one, Deepholme, being the primary hub area of the expansion.

New game systems such as Guild Leveling, Mastery, Path of the Titans, and the secondary profession of Archaeology were touched upon, but further details on those were left for future panels, such as the Items, Classes, and Professions Panel. And nothing, not even the reveal of the expansion, commanded as many pops and boos from the crowd as that panel did. The world you run around in is exciting and everything, but players really do feel like they own their characters, so when you mess with those, you're always going to get some extreme reactions.

The Archaeology Logbook

Sure, we learned a little bit more about the nature of the Goblins and Worgen, as well as what's going on with Path of the Titans (using Archaeology to find artifacts around the world, you can turn them in for character progression awards for further customization), but the real meat of the panel was the class changes. Warlocks, for instance, will no longer have to farm Soul Shards. They'll get three at the start of any given fight which can activate Soul Burn, a spell which modifies and boosts the rest of the Warlock's playbook.

Hunters are also receiving a major change: no more Mana! Instead, it will be replaced with Focus, a mechanic that functions much like a slower version of the Rogue's Energy (unless you use Steady Shot, which actually makes it regen faster).

Shockingly, Blizzard is planning to chuck a good number of existing stats in the game in order to make the core ones look more attractive. Mp5, attack power, spell power, armor penetration,  and defense are completely gone. Their impact will be integrated into other corresponding stats, while others like Block and Haste will be modified to compensate.

People might complain that this makes itemization less interesting, but like many aspects of the expansion, it really allows Blizzard to get back to basics and rebuild things from the ground up (hopefully better the second time around!).

The night ended with a series of contests intended to champion fan creations. Hosted by comedian Jay Mohr, the highlight was, of course, the Costume Contest. With what seemed like a hundred different Elves (of both the Blood and Night varieties) and at least five versions of Alexstrasza, WoW fans dominated the competition, but in the end, it was a fantastic Diablo III Mistress of Pain costume that took the grand prize.

Unfortunately for those of us at home, the live feed only covers a single WarCraft panel today, but it's an important one: Dungeons and Raids. We'll be live-blogging that one, just as we did those yesterday. Fellow blogger iTZKooPA, will be covering some of the others via Twitter, so keep an eye on him. We'll bring you summaries and all the essential news as quickly as we possibly can!