World of Warcraft: Cataclysm announced at BlizzCon 2009
About the new Azeroth
One of the most noticeable changes of this new expansion is that this time we have only five new levels to raise (81-85) on our characters instead of the usual ten. Blizzard claims that it did it to have more time to focus on both the new leveling content and the high-end content.
Regarding to the leveling content, surely Blizzard made huge changes and additions.
The background story of this new expansion focus on Deathwing the Destroyer that on the last few Azerothian years has been living on Deephome, the elemental plane of earth, to regain his strength (after the defeat in Warcraft II) and to plan to bring vengeance and destruction to Azeroth.
His initial strike consists of elementals eruptions that effect almost all areas of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. For example on Kalimdor the (huge for lower levels characters) area of The Barrens has been split in two different zones by an enormous volcanic fissure and Darkshore (and Auberdine in particular) has been flooded.
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| From World of Warcraft: Cataclysm – Screenshots |
Other zones saw collateral changes, like Azshara (currently a level 45 – 55 zone) has been downgraded to a low level zone to become a post-starting area for the new playable race: the Goblins.
Other zones’ changes are probably related to the high-end content; for example Ragnaros the Firelord, frustrated by the defeat on the Vanilla WoW 40-men raid “Molten Core” has attacked the zone of Mount Hyjal (a currently existing, but not accessible zone) while Abyssal Maw, the elemental plane of water, will be present on Lost City of Vashj’ir (hometown of Lady Vashj).
Other than the above kind of changes, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will heavily use the phasing technology introduced with World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. Now the zones will gradually change as the players complete the quests.
Another big change (and “it’s hell about time”!!!!) is that, since they are re-designing all the areas, it will be possible to use the flight mounts on Azeroth.
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An excellent article about the new WoW Expansion! Keep up with the good work