3.3: Character Creation Changes May Hint At Expansion Beta

Hackers get a bad rap. Sure, some of them do it for dubious reasons, but others do it for the fun — to see if they can pull something off, explore a system, or get access to information that people otherwise wouldn’t have. Data-mining, as a form of hacking, is no exception. But it’s also a little bit like playing CSI. In order to make sense out of the things you find, to create a bigger picture of what it all means, you’ve got to study the small details and put the puzzle pieces together. The evidence I’m about to present to you may seem fruitless at first, but bear with me, they do add up to something.

And do note that some of the changes found earlier have since become publicly viewable on the PTR.

As part of the last few builds, some very significant tweaks have been made to the character creation interface.

The Old Creation Screen

The New Creation Screen

One of the first thing you’ll notice is that the panel on the left has been widened and the banner graphics have been changed. This allows Blizzard to do a couple of things by the time Cataclysm comes around, and one is already on display: class availability. The old way simply lined up the icons which were available to any given race, while the new panel allows room for all of them to be shown, instead highlighting those which are currently available to players.

The other thing it allows them to do is add in icons for Goblins and Worgen. The left-side panel has also been lengthened (with the Wrath, and soon to be Cataclysm, logo moved to the right). Space has been added between each individual choice, and the graphics have been made smaller. This suggests that they may eventually close those gaps by adding the sixth race to each column, but photos snuck out of the play booths at BlizzCon showed two columns of three races each for either faction.

No matter which way they eventually decide to display it, this part of the screen is now set up for the expansion. There is no other particular reason to make these changes for 3.3, implying that some initial code (even if it’s as insignificant as that which is applied to the character creation process) is already in the process of being tested. Could the rest, including beta testing, be all that far behind?

You might have noticed what’s happening on the right side of the screen, as well. Blizzard has gotten rid of the faction details and expanded information regarding racial properties, class skills, and the roles that they might fill in a group setting. This sort of change will have a more immediate impact when it goes live with 3.3, as it falls right in line with many of the other newbie-friendly tweaks that have been implemented on the test realm so far.

Once again, the evidence may seem sparse, but other significant figures in the community have come to a similar conclusion. It’s observing changes like this that leads to the reveal of future content (I’m sure everyone remembers MMO-Champion finding the Worgen and Goblin masks in patch files a couple of months before they were officially revealed, for instance). Now if only they’d get cracking on some new looks for your character…

Is there anything else you readers can make out of this?