Project Lore

This is it folks, my last remaining coverage from this year's BlizzCon.  May I present to you the show in picture form - with captions!  Enjoy. The opening madness & SWAG. New and retuned leveling territories. Upcoming changes to The Barrens. Raid map, Uldum concept layout and art. Extended universe cases for Blizzard's titles. New racials and secondary profession's UI screen. New Rated BG queuing system & UI screen. Path of the Titan system and applicable changes to Glyph and talent trees. More raid layouts and planning. The first mocks up before they begin adding environmental art. Scripting, placement, pathing & spell tools.  Notice the Deep Breath possibility. Icecrown Citadel layout! Cataclysm raid layout, including The Firelands (Ragnaros) concept art. I beat Blizzard to announcing the secret guest - the company was not happy about that.  Apparently I type faster than whoever was manning the keyboard for them. Statues (Queen of Blades ftw) and a lot of computers! BlizzCon 2009's retro arcade.  Rock n' Roll Racing! Art, art and more art.  Sheep is dedicated to Treznor. So Long Anaheim!

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The info just keeps on rolling in today. A week out from the rockstar event that is Blizzcon and we might have our first major leaks. Heartbourne has already clued us in on potential new class combinations, but our friends over at MMO-Champion seem to have found a whole lot more. Boubouille absolutely insists that none of this is speculation, and while I remain skeptical about his sources, his track record is proven. This is as close to gospel as we're going to get until we hear something officially official. So keep on reading to find out what we know (or think we know) so far. Be warned, though, spoilers are abound if you want to keep your sense of surprise. SPOILER WARNING Herein is a rough list of major content changes that we can expect to see in the next expansion:

• New Class Combinations - No new classes will be added to the game. Instead, existing races will be given access to classes that they never had before. It is currently unknown what classes will be available to the new races, however.
• New Level Cap - Surprisingly, it's only 85. This may fit in with a new philosophy of improving characters through gear instead of pure XP. Likewise, if the end-goal for WoW is 100, it leaves a little more space for successive expansions to grow.
• Azshara, Queen of the Naga The Cataclysm - This titular event, set in motion by Deathwing and Queen Azshara, will bring many changes to the existing content in the game, as well as open up several new ones.  Their motivations for unleashing such destruction upon the world may be in part due to those pesky insanity-inducing Old Gods.
• New Horde Race: Goblins - The Goblins have found their island home virtually destroyed by the events of the Cataclysm. Washing up on the shores of The Barrens, a quest line involving Thrall's capture (and subsequent rescue by the Goblin race) will explain how they ended up as the new consorts of the Horde. With their homeland gone, it's unclear whether or not we will get to visit Kezan, the island where the Goblin capital of Undermine exists.
• New Alliance Race: Worgen - The Greymane Wall, which separates Gilneas from Silverpine Forest, has been shattered by the Cataclysm. Bewildered from their self-imposed exile, the Worgen venture forth and find friends in the Alliance. It is unclear what the Goblin starting area may entail, but the Worgen will be receiving the Death Knight treatment. Gilneas will be a heavily-phased zone that will shuttle your character through the nation's history before unleashing them on the rest of Azeroth. Did I mention that Worgen do get to transform? That's right, you'll be able to shift from Human to Worgen at the click of a button, though we don't know if it will afford you any special abilities to do so.
• Azeroth Remade - Goblins and Worgen aren't the only ones who have felt the impact of this catastrophic event. Existing zones will be remade or phased in order to accommodate the current state of the world. The examples given include remaking Azshara into a 10-20 level area and splitting the Barrens into two distinct zones for players of different levels.
• New Areas - There will be no new continents introduced in the expansion, but instead, unreleased content in Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms will finally be filled in. In addition to the aforementioned opening of Gilneas, you can also expect to see modern-day Hyjal and Uldum. These are only examples and do not represent the entire breadth of fresh content that will no doubt be introduced.
• Mainland Flight - Restructuring the two core continents has allowed Blizzard to add flight to those zones that never had it. Now you can ride all the way from the Plaguelands to Booty Bay on you very own flying mount. Presumably, you will still need to take a boat or zeppelin to go from one continent to the other.
• Dungeons Remade - Onyxia was only the beginning. This does not preclude the addition of new 5-man dungeons or raid content, but many of the old instances will be retrofitted for players progressing from Level 80-85. Reportedly, we'll also be seeing Ragnaros again. It is not known how extensive the changes will end up being (new bosses/new graphics or merely upgraded stats on mobs and items).

That's a lot to digest and I'm honestly eager to see how everything fits together. There are some controversial ideas in there, as well as changes that players have been clamoring for year after year. In fact, a lot of it sounds like the kind of stuff that Blizzard employees have wanted to implement themselves, but have repeatedly insisted they haven't been working on. Phasing, as I previously proposed, will play a large role in the recreation of mainland Azeroth (self high-five!). By treading this path, however, I'm afraid there is also the chance of alienating a certain portion of the  player base who see this as merely reusing old content. That may or may not be the case, and we may have to wait another week to find out. I think it really depends on how fresh the revamped content ends up feeling. Will the graphics of many areas be significantly improved or changed? Will the new quest lines make it worth adventuring through old zones? Is this the vanilla WoW that we always wanted? Or will the new Azeroth be a whole lot like the old Azeroth? A yet-to-be-confirmed post on the Something Awful forums indicated huge, sweeping changes for the landscape, though. Thousand Needles flooded, many zones in absolute ruins, Orgrimmar sundered in two (with the introduction of a new Orc main city). The forums are private, but the summary has be re-posted on MMO-Champion. I'm sure you all have a lot to say about these revelations, so feel free to strike up a conversation in our comments section. I know I'll be watching it closely!

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