Lately I’ve been doing a lot more tweeting. Especially about WoW. I’ve been working on gearing up to be most prepared for the Cataclysm release. My druid has already made the server transfer over to Eldre’Thalas, my original WoW home realm. So, reading all of the various blogs from those who are actually on the beta, I’ve come to realize a few things.

1. We’re all (and by all I mean each and every single person playing WoW right now) going to be relearning the game… all over again. All of us on equal footing.
2. Some quest reward gear from Cataclysm will be better than most T10 items from WotLK, much like WotLK quest rewards were better than BC end game items, and Vanilla before that.
3. The game will be wholly different than what we’ve all become accustomed to.

Lately Ive been reconnecting with old friends from EldreThalas on twitter (find me at a @hestiahdruid if youd like). Lots going on there. My friend Kurn is rebuilding her old guild. Were getting ready to hit the ground running at the very onset of Cataclysm, and Im getting excited over the possibilities! Getting to see the game before its been old news for months. Wowhead let me know, via twitter, that a Blizzard announced the currency conversions.

Previously it had been announced that Blizzard was taking WoW to a point system that was universal across the board. Something I believe should have been implemented a long time ago, but I digress. All of your old badges of Conquest, Valor, Heroism and Justice will be converted to a designated gold amount while Emblems of Frost and Triumph will convert directly over to the new Justice Point system. Equally a similar conversion will happen with the Honor system and all previously earned honor points, Arena points, Wintergrasp Marks, etc.  will convert over to the new Honor Point system.

There is a hard cap of 4000 points for either point system. At the beginning of Cataclysm there will be a soft cap allowing those players who have banked large quantities of Emblems or Marks to go over the hard cap. The difference being, players will not be able to earn more Justice Points or Honor Points until the previous points are spent to below the 4000 cap. All Justice points and Honor points earned over the cap will be converted to their designated monetary value and mailed to the character.

The biggest thing to pay attention to is the fact that both Frost and Triumph emblems have the same conversion value into the new system. Anyone without a raiding guild knows that obtaining Frost Emblems is much harder than getting Triumph Emblems. At level 80 you can earn 2 Frost Emblems for a random dungeon, and 5 Frost emblems once a week for the weekly. Anything above that requires the player to participate in ICC or VoA to get Frost Emblems.

A player needs roughly 1500 emblems of both types to even come close to hitting the hard cap once Cataclysm arrives. Those of us who want to have the ability to spend freely once the expansion hits know this means its time to run back-to-back random dungeons.

EDIT:  The new conversion rate of emblems has been changed to reflect an equivalent mathematical value to the current emblem system. This blue post explains that Frost and Triumph emblems now convert at a 11.58 Justice Point per emblem. Meaning that in order to max out at the start of 4.0.1, you’ll need roughly 345 Frost/Triumph emblems.