Over at the World of Warcraft LiveJournal Community, eminent news source tchernobyl was kind enough to post the results of the latest Blizzard developer Q&A session, hosted over at the new official forums.

The whole post at LJ is here, but I’ve cut a few snippets I felt were particularly interesting:

Q: Are there any plans to update Outland and TBC zones to facilitate better level flow? – Atreydes (Latin America)

A: We think the flow of the zones works out well. It is true that you can finish the continents before hitting every zone because of the accelerated quest experience (further enhanced by mechanics such as heirlooms) but most players going back through the content on new characters seem perfectly happy to get through it faster than they did with their original character. What we don’t like is the strange way you go back in time when you go to Outland and Northrend and then back to the future (heh) when you go to the level 80-85 zones. That is definitely something we want to fix.

A similar but slightly different question was asked by one of our Russian players:

Q: Will the Outland and Northrend be “renewed”? Will there be new quests? – Мандрэйк (Europe [Russian])

A: Because we did those areas more recently than Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, we don’t feel the same urgency to go update them. They just don’t have the level design and quest flow problems to the same extent as the original content. We recognize though that some players are getting awfully tired of Hellfire Peninsula, and we’d like to come up with a good solution there.

This one is of particular interest to me. While I agree that the biggest issue with Outland and Northrend is that the player feels like they’re going back in time when they’ve leveled and then move into those zones to continue leveling but somehow the events of the Cataclysm haven’t happened there yet, I’m just as concerned with level tuning and story that players are missing when they push through all of those zones just for the sake of racking up dings.

I think the content of TBC and WoTLK deserve more than just a slight tweak to get the characters to give a nod to the fact that old world Azeroth isn’t the same as it used to be: I’m not saying they need to be directly affected by the Cataclysm, and I’m not saying that quests need to be reworked or zones completely changed, but I do think that when you go into outlands you should see the fruits of the past several years battle against the Burning Legion, and when you go into Northrend now you should see at least a little progress from the results at the end of Wrath of the Lich King, even if it’s only to note that the war is still open on that front and there’s still work to be done.

Q: What is your favorite escape/distraction when you arent working on WoW? – Danksz (North America/ANZ)

A: We polled the entire World of Warcraft development team and included the most interesting, unusual, and potentially terrifying responses. They included: roasting my own coffee; hiking all over SoCal; gardening with yuccas and bamboo; building my own 3D printer; attempting to turn my living room into a live action scene from Tron using blacklights, stencils and a helluva lot of paint; autocross racing my sweet ride; board games (I have over 450 of them); being spinal tapped to Tumblr, Reddit and 4chan; mastering cooking (duck confit, breads, pastas, more breads); building Star Wars Lego sets; trying to control my computer using brainwaves and an EEG reader; plein air/outdoor watercolor painting; geocaching; hockey; painting miniatures; swing dancing; crafting old-time cocktails; running 5 / 10 Ks / mud runs; motorcycling; go; blending smoothies; skydiving; work on my Jaina/Varian fanfic; baking bread; playing drums; reading sci-fi; comics; playing WoW.

Sounds like a fun place to work! Or at the very least fun people to work with.

Q: Will the devs consider giving us reason to interact in the new world of cataclysm? We sit in cities waiting on queues. Theres little reason to leave the city gates outside of farming and archeology. The *main* cities feel alive, the world however feels quite dead. – Odiem (North America/ANZ)

A: While you’re leveling up your character and gathering professions, you’re more than likely interacting with the world plenty. World of Warcraft’s endgame has centered on dungeons, raids, Battlegrounds and Arenas for some time, so it’s natural that you spend more time in cities organizing and preparing for those group-based events. We do think there is more that we can do to promote compelling solo gameplay for max level characters, though. The 4.2 patch has a pretty epic questing experience involving the Firelands and we’re really excited to see how players respond to it.

A similar but slightly different question was asked by one of our Korean players.

Q: PvP realms are getting indistinctive from the PvE realm as players are not engaging into PvP contents, since they are not finding it attractive. The only difference from the PvE realm is that it’s possible to attack opponent around zones in Conflict. Is there any plan to strengthen the difference between PvP and PvE realms? – Soulcube (Korea)

A: We don’t think it’s that world PvP is unattractive, we just think it’s just the cumulative effect of a lot of changes we made to the game to meet other goals. For example, flying mounts are really cool and convenient, but they mean you are much less likely to stumble upon someone from the opposite faction while travelling. We considered teleportation a mandatory feature for Dungeon Finder to succeed, but then you are less likely to bump into an enemy outside of a dungeon. To get world PvP back in some form, we’d have to develop something like the Isle of Quel’danas: a non-flight zone that is not a sanctuary where players congregate to finish quests or earn rewards. We’ll think about ways to do something like that again in the future.

I can’t say I’m satisfied with the devs’ answer on this one. While I agree that there’s plenty of world interaction when you’re out and about and questing and gathering and boosting your professions, I think that the concern of PVP players is probably more serious for them than the devs are really picking up.

Back in the vanilla days, when mounts were both expensive and far off, and when beginner mounts were slow enough that you could still be ambushed on one successfully, it was pretty hazardous playing on a PVP server during those early levels. I remember trying to just quest as a poor level 25 Tauren Druid and getting repeatedly ganked in Stonetalon by level 60 Night Elves coming through the pass.

Admittedly, I moved on to play on PvE servers after that, but I understand how global combat is a core component of playing on a PVP server, and between flying in old world and earlier/faster mounts, it’s become all but a moot point.

Q: I think a lot of people would like to see some more options for inventory storage are there plans for any of the following? Bank slots/Equipment manager storage/Upgrade backpack/storage for costume, cosmetic, toys/tabard storage. – Shinysparkle (North America/ANZ)

A: We do have some storage solutions in the works. We’d like to convert tabards in particular to something like the current UI to manage titles. We don’t want to just keep giving players larger and larger bags in which to lose items. We’re focusing more on better ways to organize items.

Finally! A fix is coming for my tabard addiction!

Q: During the expansions released since vanilla, the specialities of the different classes were watered down more and more. By now, many classes can do almost everything and almost none is still special. Are there any steps planned to give the classes more “charisma”, so that they are more distinguished from each other and regain their special flair? – Blades (Europe [German])

A: Sometimes when players say “special flair” what they really mean is “something so awesome that everyone will have to take me.” We really don’t want to go back to that model, which just isn’t tenable in a game with 10-player raids and 30 different talent trees. We have no problem spreading around buffs and utility that we consider more-or-less mandatory, such as the battle rezes and raid buffs. At the same time, we think there are enough unique abilities out there to make the various talent trees shine. Shaman have a great interrupt with Wind Shear. Warlocks can get out of danger with Demonic Portal. Discipline priests can mitigate a lot of damage with Power Word: Barrier, but Unholy death knights have their own version in Anti-Magic Zone. We struggle a lot with how much homogenization is good for the game, largely so that you can play with your friends, and how much is bad for the game, because then your character feels less special. It’s something we’ll continue to work on in an attempt to strike that perfect balance.

I really REALLY like the answer to this question. A lot of players who have been around for a long time miss the days when people formed their raid or dungeon groups because specific classes had “ubertalents” that were so good in the situations the raid would put you in that you absolutely wanted to have them – and it made the people who played that class feel uber as well.

In reality, that’s indicative of a lack of balance, and I’m glad that Blizzard is trying to strike a line between giving people talents that feel epic and important without being essential to specific – or every – encounters.

So what do you think? Blizzard developers took this one in stride, I think – and there were some great questions. I don’t think this will be the last dev Q&A that the developers do, so stay tuned for more in the future. What would you ask Blizzard developers if you had the chance? Sound off in the comments.

Throngs of people lined up outside of electronics stores and game retailers, people fidgeting with the digital download to try and make it go faster, people rushing into game to get world firsts – it’s on, folks, Cataclysm is here and officially launched!

Me? I’m still waiting for my copy of the collector’s edition to be delivered before I can crack it open and install it. If you’re curious what’s inside the collector’s edition, you can check out these awesome unboxing photos over at Gearlog that we posted about yesterday. Maybe you’re waiting eagerly for the UPS of FedEx truck to come by your home or business too? Maybe you took a few days off in anticipation of the event: over at the World of Warcraft Livejournal Community there are tons of people who didn’t sleep at all last night and are already in-game and have been since midnight PST last night!

So what will you do first? Head to Hyjal and start kicking butt under the shade of the world tree? Or perhaps you’re off to Vashj’ir to beat up on the Naga? Or better still, maybe you’re starting the game from the beginning with a shiny new Goblin or Worgen? Let us know what you’re up to in the comments!

Most of us are wringing our hands, waiting patiently for our copies of Cataclysm to be delivered, or for the new servers to go live and for those of us doing the digital upgrade to be able to play and access all of the new content – we still have at least 12 hours to go before the first of us get to play Cataclysm, but the folks over at Gearlog got their hands on a copy of the Cataclysm Collector’s Edition nice and early, and have tons of unboxing photos to share!

If you’re a fan of unboxing porn, and I don’t know who really isn’t, this is an article worth drooling over.

The collector’s edition has all of the goodies we’ve come to expect in a box like this, including the gorgeous stylized box that will fit right in with the collectors editions of the other expansions, a beautiful hardcover artbook, the behind the scenes DVD and the beautiful soundtrack (that we know we’ll love – the music for Cataclysm is already well loved,) guest passes, WoW TCG cards, and more, including the Lil’ Deathwing in-game pet.

Check out all of the photos over at Gearlog!

Well folks, that’s that – it’s all over. The Cataclysm beta is finished, all said and done. Sayeth the Zarhym on the official forums:

We’re just about two weeks out from the official global launch of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm! And with that, the time has come to conclude the beta test. We will be shutting down our beta realms momentarily. We want to sincerely thank all of you for your dedication to testing, providing feedback, reporting bugs, and everything else you’ve done to help us make this expansion the best World of Warcraft title to date.

Stay tuned to our new community site (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/) for the latest news and updates as we get closer to release. We’ll see you in Cataclysm!

Yeah, the down-side to this is that they aren’t doing anything fun like a wide open beta or any huge world-ending event in Cataclysm, but…well…it is the Cataclysm after all. That should be world-ending enough, shouldn’t it?

If you didn’t get into the beta, no worries – you only have a week or so left before the fun comes to you!

So the end is near, the elementals have started attacking, and the cultists are making their voices heard, and the authorities of the Azerothian factions and groups are busy making sure that the cultists don’t get enough of a voice to turn people to their side, or frighten the masses into panic. And in the middle of it all, you’re there to help.

Now that the world events are starting – the ones that you know already will inevitably lead to Cataclysm – what do you think? Are you ready for the expansion? Do you just want it all over with so the fun can begin? Maybe you’re not even looking at it until the expansion launches fully?

Sound off in the comments – let us know how the end times are working out for you!

The video above broke yesterday, featuring – finally – the animated dance that the female Worgen will get in Cataclysm. Who is it from? Yup – it’s Lady Gaga.

We’ve long been reporting that female Worgen animations simply haven’t been finished and are some of the last things that will likely be ready for the expansion, but here we are with the double-dose of the video above showing off their dance (which is pretty sharp, I might add) and the news that they’re available to play in the beta and the dance is in the beta as well, so if you don’t believe your eyes when watching the video above, you can roll one now and give it a try yourself!

So it might still be a little early to ask the question we always ask after every major content patch or series of changes, but we’re going to ask it anyway: How’s that patch 4.0.1 working out for you?

See that image up there? If you haven’t been paying attention, Druids lost the ability to permemently stay in the Tree of Life form, and to boot, they lost the familiar old stubble-legged tree that we’ve come to know and love. Now, when they turn into a tree, they become the model you see above (with different colors to match their character appearance) and can only stay in the form for 30 seconds. Makes staying in tree form during boss fights pretty difficult, don’t you think?

In 4.0.1 we essentially all got a brand new game. Add-ons are still largely broken for a large part, the UI and graphics have been updated remarkably, Archeology has been added to the game, and all in all the groundwork has been laid for Cataclysm to be released.

In the interim though, what do you think? How have your characters been adjusting to the changes? Any highs or lows to report? Are all of your add-ons still busted or did you make it through the changes unscathed? Sound off in the comments!

The folks over at WoW Insider took this fantastic video which shows some of the new Worgen emotes, gestures, and animations from the latest iteratio nof the Cataclysm beta. Things look to be shaping up really well, and the emotes for the Worgen – males anyway – seem to be either near complete or extremely close.

Sadly, Worgen females aren’t fully implemented yet, so no similar video for them, but with people bantering about a potential release date, it’s likely they’ll be coming soon. In the interim though, this is a fabulous look at what you can expect as far as the way the new race plays when you finish your install of the expansion and roll your first Worgen. Because I know you will.

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.

Back when Blizzard hosted the Cataclysm Press Tour, one of the unfortunate things we saw mentioned was the possibility that heroic versions of The Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep might not be ready in time for the launch of Cataclysm, and that they may have to wait for a future content patch update to give the team more time to work on them.

Well, word came down yesterday that those fears were nothing to worry about, because the two new dungeons will indeed be ready in time for the launch of Cataclysm, and players will be able to head in and see their favorite starting-game dungeons re-worked for the new world that we’ll get when the expansion comes out. Here’s the official word from Valnoth, when someone else in a thread stated that they wouldn’t be ready as fact and the reason why they weren’t available in beta:

Heroics are not ready for testing.

Heroic Shadowfang Keep and Heroic Deadmines WILL be released with Cataclysm. You will not have to wait for a later patch.

Strap on your pirate stompers kids, it’s back to Westfall for the Alliance and back to Silverpine Forest for the Horde!