Project Lore: Five dudes. Four cameras. One World of Warcraft.

Welcome to day 2 of Project Lore’s Blizzcon coverage! Unfortunately, the WoW panels this morning were not featured on the live stream, so we were unable to report on them live. However, here are some of the highlights from the panels:

WoW Q&A:

• There will be more class-related hubs like Moonglade in Cataclysm, and it will be “MEGA”.
• Phasing, especially with terrain phasing, will be somewhat backwards-sharable so you can help your friends or bring them into your phase.
• Probably still a limit of 10 characters per server in Cataclysm. The number of players with 10 characters on a server is still very small.
• Onyxia’s level 60 version will no longer be accessible in patch 3.2.2. However, in Cataclysm, they want a lot of old content to still be accessible.
• Night Elf mages were controversial, but they like the idea of bringing in “fringe groups”. It will be cool to be this Highbourne elf from 10,000 years ago.
• Thrall, as a shaman, is doing something new in Cataclysm.
• Hunters and Enhancement Shaman will share little gear in Cataclysm.
• Trolls and Worgen will get unique Druid forms.
• Although Armor Penetration will no longer be on gear, the concept will remain in the game to even out PvP for plate wearers, probably through talents.
• Guilds will be able to “craft heirlooms”, for the entire guild, any slot. They will scale with level.
• Old world factions will become more relevant.
• Assassination might get buffed in 3.2.2 (woo-hoo!)
• Same-faction race changes will happen in the future.
• “Frostmourne has a…. unique fate. The encounter is going to be mega. Keep your hats on.”
• Blood Elf/Draeni starting areas less affected by the Cataclysm.
• Battlegrounds experience will be tweaked. Alterac Valley XP is really high relatively and too easy to “leech”
• Racials will be revisited.
• New dances and dance studios are being developed actively.
• Northrend will be less impacted by the Cataclysm. Outland will be nigh unaffected, but it will have Archaeology implemented.

WoW Game Systems Panel:

Rated Battlegrounds:

• Rated Battlegrounds will award arena points.
• Every week will feature a battleground. It will align with the weekend holiday battleground.
• It works like arena; if you win a battleground, you gain rating and arena points. The number of arena points you can get from rated battlegrounds is related to your rating from the previous week so it doesn’t encourage grinding.
• If you lose a a battleground, you do not lose rating. This is to prevent the unlucky loss/group from affecting your rating.
• This system will reward ranks like the old honor system and will have seasons. Titles are awarded at the end of the season based on player ratings.
• Rated battlegrounds will have unique rewards like epic ground mounts and Guild Achievements and Guild Experience out of it.

Tol Barad:

• Tol Barad is an outdoor PvP zone like Wintergrasp and plays similar to Isle of Conquest.
• It will probably be south of Hillsbrad.
• There will be a limit on the number of players in the zone during battles, like Wintergrasp.
• There will be control points and whichever side captures them all first controls the zone for awhile.
• There is an instance that can only be entered when your faction controls Tol Barad
• The controlling faction will have access to additional daily quests. Regardless, both factions will use it as a major daily quest hub.
• There will be Tol Barad marks of honor.

Guild Advancement

• They want players to be in guilds to progress with their friends and other players.
• There will be guild experience that will be gained by doing different tasks and achievements.
• There will be 20 guild levels.
• Examples of ways to gain guild experience is killing a raid boss, fighting in rated battegrounds, arenas, leveling professions, and gaining reputation ranks.
• In order for a guild to get credit for a boss kill, you need 75% of the raid members to be in the guild.
• Every time your guild gains a level, the guild gains some talent points. There are guild talent trees that apply to everyone in the guild.
• Some example of talents include reduced repair costs, mass resurrections after wipes, removal of reagents for raid buffs, et cetera.
• One talent increases the gold drop from monsters, another summons the entire raid.
• Guilds can respec for a price.
• Guild experience is converted into some sort of guild currency. These can be used to buy things like guild battle standards and new “bind to guild” items like heirlooms, mounts, etc.
• If someone leaves the guild, the stuff they got from the guild’s achievements gets returned to the guild bank.
• Guild currency can be used to buy replacements for reagents. For example, instead of using standard herbs for flasks, you can buy replacement reagents with guild currency.
• Guild Achievements will be like player achievements. Examples include having a legendary weapon in the guild, having grand masters in every profession, et cetera.
• There will be a “guild news feed” and the Armory will get some RSS support!
• You will be able to browse your guildmate’s professions much easier. The guild UI will be completely redone, search-able, and filter-able.
• The extra gold from talents that players loot will go into the guild bank.

Mastery

• Talents will be less about “+x to stats” and more cool things you want to do, like abilities or effects.
• The more points you put into a tree, the more stats you get related to that spec. For example, Rogues will ge tMelee Damage, Hit Chance, and Armor Penetration in the combat tree, while Subtlety will see more Melee Damage, melee Haste, and Energy Regeneration .
• Mastery will be a new itemized stat that will increase the gains that you get from talents. Thus, gear will be useful for more specs and classes more easily.

Path of the Titans

• Path of the Titans will be how your character progresses when they are at max level.
• The main reward of the Path of the Titans will be the “Ancient Glyph”, unrelated to Inscription.
• These paths will have you align with a different Titan cult. These are not class specific.
• Rewards are glyphs, vanity pets, and other such things.

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