Blizzcon Articles

As I mentioned in On Resource Systems, haste affects casters different from melee, in that it increases the regen rate of our resource (cast time) but only increases the rate of their autoattacks. This too is getting fixed in 4.0, haste will now affect melee autoattacks (and, oddly, the mana regen of enhancement shaman and retadins -- I don't even want to touch that one as far as speculation goes, I'm uncertain that design will last past the end of 4.0 alpha.)

The 4.0 design is to make haste more valuable for everyone and, in Ghostcrawlers words, to make it serve its original purpose: Haste lets you push buttons faster.

However, unless some changes are made, multiple classes will be left out of this brave new world: Shadow priests, Retribution Paladins, and Enhancement Shaman.

Note: this assumes there's an actual haste stat. We don't have the full and accurate list yet of what stats will still be around, but I love to speculate and think so I'm posting anyways. Nyah nyah.

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This is a much-needed change with some fascinating implications. To recap, hunters will no longer use mana, they will use "focus" instead, which is just another word for energy with slightly different regen mechanics. This was, of course, the original plan in WoW: Hunters used focus, which they only regenerated by standing perfectly still.

This has fascinating implications for hunter shot design (and perhaps pvp), and also helps highlight how movement impacts the different resource systems differently. This is the second time that they have explicitly limited hunter resource regeneration in a specific way, and it is certainly deliberate.

At the end of my post I actually look broadly at the different resources and how movement/interrupt affects them all.

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Apparently it's much the same as the original class panel.

Notes are below, however:

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Contents:

• How do they do it?
• Cataclysm 5-mans
• Icecrown
• Icecrown 5-man
• Cataclysm raids
• Onyxia
• Cross-Server LFG (planned for 3.3!)
• Q&A

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Thank you to the awesome bloggers at Blizzcon whose multiple updates are allowing me to condense them into one unified summary. Next year I may have time to go myself!

Contents

• Guilds
  • Leveling, talents, heirlooms
  • achievements
  • Other guild extras
  • Guild-wide information
• Mastery System
• Path of the Titans
• Q&A

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My notes are below, Blizzard's summary is here: [BlizzCon 09] Classes, Items, and Professions

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Contents

• Goblins, Worgens
• Guild advancement preview
• Archaeology preview

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Blizzard World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

Bibi was, as always, 100% right on what he posted for 4.0. But we got a whole bunch of other information as well. Random highlights:

• Deathwing making an appearance
• Horde: Goblin (mount is a go-kart with spikes)
• Alliance: Worgen
• New zones (Grim Batol, Udlam, etc.) and revamped old zones
• Barrens split in half by volcanos (I blame barrens chat)
• Desolace will be a bright green meadow
• Darkshire flooded
• Heroic Shadowfang Keep and Heroic Deadmines
  

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