Filed under: Cataclysm

I have primarily run in 25 man raiding for the entirety of Cataclysm, and I raided all through Wrath of the Lich King and even Burning Crusade in 25 man raids. 25 man raiding is where I have the most fun. I like it for a variety of reasons. I enjoy having a wider selection of classes and specs available, I generally feel like a larger raid makes a fight feel more dramatic, I dislike how empty some raids feel with a smaller group. To me, a 10 man feels like a UBRS run. These are all personal reasons, I accept that they're not universal. I also wasn't impressed the few times I went into 10 man raids this expansion - the fights always seemed much easier, we blew through bosses we struggled with on 25, clearing 10 with undergeared alts due to the extremely forgiving space mechanics of raids like Firelands and Dragon Soul on 10 man.

So please understand, I am not a partisan of 10 man raiding. I don't like 10 mans. I find that their elevation to the top form of raiding was destructive to the game, to guilds, and to raiding itself. But they are and have been for some time the primary way that people raid. I hate 10 man raids. But the time has come to accept that we have killed the 25 man raid in all but name. It's not a question of should they be removed. They effectively have been removed. You see a lot of debate on what can be done to save the 25 man raid, and the developers have addressed the issue repeatedly in the Reddit AMA and Best Buy Q&A. But you'll notice that they address the issue by acknowledging it and highlighting the issues facing 25 man raids (difficulty of logistics, higher churn rates, higher recruitment needs, difficulty of encounter movement) but that no solutions are forthcoming.

I read the forums. I do so because it's part of my job, because I like seeing what people are saying, and because sometimes a thread actually makes me think. This thread, asking people what they'd like to see in a sequel to World of Warcraft, did that and then some for me. First, the response from Vaneras that got me the most interested in talking about it.

Vaneras - WoWII?

I really hope they will do it some day, but if they do it, they won't do it sooner than 5 years, at least.

The idea is basically the same game, but with way better graphics, new features, new NPCs/Items etc etc. It would be cool, because the skeleton would be the same, but the rest would be new.

But that doesn't sound like something that would require an entirely new game though, but of course that is just my personal opinion. As I see it, these things could just as well be upgrades to the current game through patches and expansions, much like what we have seen already in the game's evolution from its release until today.

I think something more would be required in order to rationalise the end of WoW in favour of WoW II :-)

source

When EverQuest II came out in 2004, its predecessor was the largest MMO in the world. One of the charges leveled at EQII was that it looked and felt so different from EverQuest itself that it split the player base and, since this happened just around the time that World of Warcraft was launching, left the door open for the upstart game to get a serious footing. It's possible that if it weren't for EQII, we'd have ended up with a smaller MMO scene where a game with a million subscribers was considered a rousing success.

Now, I'm not arguing that it's always a bad thing to have a sequel to an MMO. There are MMO's out right now which run concurrently with a sequel and seem to be doing fine. The question becomes, does World of Warcraft need one?

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill, Savior of Azeroth, revisits some old patch 4.3 raid fight that everyone might have forgotten about and reflects on the insights into DPS it gave her.

Heroic Spine of Deathwing, 25man: I hated this fight with a passion.

At first I hated it because I could not possibly contribute as my favorite spec affliction and call it even with the rest of my guild's raid. I could pass by on normal, blaming my lack of burst for my low-metered results, but that wasn't going to cut it on heroic.

Then I started to hate the fight as I struggled to squeeze out every last drop of damage I had in me, even min-maxing my offspec demonology to progress with. Warlock hell, they called it. What a lockblock! My anger started to extend to things outside of WoW, emotionally and physically, because I was so frustrated with my apparent failure to kick some Destroyer derriere.

But the fight really opened up a lot of the finer points of DPSing an encounter. Heroic Spine reminded me that the fight isn't all about the end DPS number when the combat logs stop flowing.

It's hard for me to write about protection right now, because it still doesn't feel finalized to me. I've been tanking on the side lately, since raiding is on hiatus until Mists, and I have mixed feelings about it. The thing is, I don't think it's because the current state of protection is bad, so much as I'm spoiled a bit.

See, here's part of my problem in terms of being fair to patch 5.0.4 for protection. The protection warrior talent specialization was the best designed talent specialization in Wrath of the Lich King, and it was the best designed talent specialization in Cataclysm as well. And it was better in Cataclysm than it was in Wrath. In short, not only was protection the best spec in the game for four years (2008 to 2012) but it managed to be the best spec in the game without being overpowered, in fact being a better spec than specs that were overpowered. You can keep your paladins, your druids and your DK's, all of whom had their moments of being blatantly too good for this fight or that fight. Warriors were never that. The tanking warrior was the best designed spec because it managed to have tools for every single possible potential tanking situation you could imagine without ever once being considered the only possible option for the job.

I have kind of a vested interest in the lore of World of Warcraft, so it was with great surprise and not a little excitement that I heard via the twitter grapevine that Ask Creative Development Round III had finally answered all those questions.

There's a lot of answers here to questions I've seen posed quite often. A few highlights are as follows:

• Wrathion thinks he's the last black dragon, but Sabellian is still in Outland leading the black dragons there, and there could even be black drgaons in Azeroth Wrathion doesn't know about yet.
• Ever wonder who Garithos was, exactly? Now you can find out.
• It's not an Old God under Tirisfal Glades. What is it? No one knows, but it's bad, and it's not an Old God. You should probably leave it alone anyway.
• The New Council of Tirisfal done broke up, like most supergroups, and no one knows where Med'an went.
• The secrets of Gilnean harvest magic, priest mental magic, and blood elf green eyes are all revealed.

So head on over to the forums and take a gander at Ask Creative Development III's answers.

---

It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

---

You read that right. Not Warchief of the Horde, no, not even on a drunken dare would I suggest that because Shandris is frankly too cool an underused character to be saddled with something that ridiculous. No, what I want is for the Alliance to create a Dux Bellorum, and I want the job to go to Shandris.

There are other candidates, to be sure. But most of them are rulers of nations, and what we need is someone who can lead the combined military of the entire Alliance. Varian is a King, and needs to start ruling like one, frankly. Tyrande, as High Priestess of Elune, is similarly saddled with responsibilities to her people. The Council of Three Hammers is as yet too disjoined and contentious to even lead the dwarves fully, and so while Muradin could fill the position (as could Varian) he's busy. The gnomes are too focused on Gnomeregan and Gelbin Mekkatorque is not a warrior by nature.

At this stage, with the losses of the Cataclysm and the looming war, I think it's fair to say that it's time for Shandris to step forward. She's been (in my opinion) criminally underused and kept for far too long in Tyrande's shadow. This is a woman with over ten thousand years of military experience, and it is long past time for someone with that kind of acumen to step forward and lead armies in the coming conflict.

Look up in the sky! Is it a bird-form druid? An engineer in a flying machine? No, it's a wild Josh Myers, returned from summer adventures and bursting with knowledge about DPS shaman in his weekly Totem Talk. This week's article will focus on how to play elemental after 5.0.4.

My fellow elemental shaman: Our class is no longer complete. And no, I'm not talking about the recent changes to totems that seems to have everyone up in arms despite being a really good change for the class. I'm referring to the fact that we our class is no longer balanced around level 85. The level 85 game is effectively over. Think of this game as election, and the post 5.0.4 period is the period of time between November 5th January 20th: We're a lame duck class. We're nerfed. And that's fine, because Cataclysm content no longer matters, and exists only to help you relearn your spec before Mists of Pandaria drops.

Our beloved spec has been retooled to be balanced at level 90, where we'll have access to the incredibly powerful Ascendance and the level 90 tier of DPS talents. These will be potent additions to our arsenal, and our current spells have been balanced around the idea that we will have access to them. That doesn't mean everything at 85 is all bad -- we did receive a few nice quality of life changes that you'll notice when you log-in.

• Lava Surge makes Lava Burst instant, which makes it a mobile DPS ability.
• Elemental Fury makes us the only class/spec to crit for more than 200% damage.
• Lava Burst's damage was nerfed, but Lightning Bolt's was slightly buffed to compensate.
• Fire Elemental now lasts one minute, but also only has a five minute cooldown. (Meaning it will be up every attempt!)
• Lightning Shield starts at one stack and stacks to seven, rather than starting at three and going to nine. You no longer lose charges from taking damage.
• Glyphed Flame Shock now lasts 30 seconds, up from 27.
• Stormlash Totem. Hello again, four guaranteed raid spots for shaman. We've missed you so much.

OK, we all know I'm all for raiding accessibility. I've posted multiple times about how progressively making raids easier doesn't invalidate the accomplishments of those who went before, and about how it's all about letting people get to see content as time progresses. And I still intellectually believe that. Intellectually.

I hate to admit it, however, but my heart doesn't always fall in line with my head, and the recent change to Glory of the Dragon Soul Raider is one of those. You'll notice that the screenshot of the achievement above has removed the requirements of having to have killed heroic Spine and Madness of Deathwing, two fights I had to push my face through in order to get the mount.

This is where I turn into a hypocrite, I guess, because I don't like this at all. Not even a little bit. Especially with recent news that Blizzard is going to make the mounts off of heroic Ragnaros and Deathwing harder to attain in Mists of Pandaria. So you're making the drop mounts harder to get but the achievement mounts easier? And frankly, taking heroic Spine off of this achievement doesn't just make it kind of easier, either; it makes it massively easier.

At this point, my heart and my head are in full-out war over this. Like I said, intellectually I support the progressive reduction in difficulty as a good compromise that lets people see more content while it keeps progression moving forward.

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

It's hard for it to be reflected in the lore, and sometimes it's not even applicable (for instance, Wrath of the Lich King moved right into Cataclysm in terms of lore, since Arthas wasn't even officially dead yet when Halion made his attack on the Ruby Sanctum), but right now, we're in a fascinating period for game lore. Deathwing is dead, the world is saved, and the brewing conflict hasn't erupted yet. In essence, while we're used to the interexpansion periods as players in terms of patches and gameplay, this is for some purposes the first real period of peace (relatively speaking) in years.

Yes, the Alliance/Horde conflict endures, and it is about to escalate. But that event is still in the future. When patch 5.0.4 drops today, we are officially in the post-Deathwing world, with that all-too-brief feeling of accomplishment, as the elemental forces that have threatened us for the past year calm themselves and life turns its face away from its potential destruction.

Being that this is the World of Warcraft, of course that's not going to last. Personally, I'm ecstatic at the chance to go over all the new lore coming to us in the expansion, both in terms of that aforementioned escalating conflict and the brand new world we'll all swarm across like locusts, the formerly mist-shrouded land of Pandaria. We've talked before about how the real end boss of the new expansion is us, how we bring our conflict to a peaceful shore, but what I find most interesting about the lore of the game is how, in its cyclical nature, it plays variations on a theme.

Love him or hate him, Deathwing had presence.

Deathwing's gaping metal maw really personified Cataclysm as an expansion. His flying over zones and burning everything in his path to ash made him part of the world in a way that Illidan, Arthas, Kil'jaeden never managed. He combined the arrogance and sneering sense of superiority of a more human antagonist with the unfathomable menace and raw power of a destructive force of nature. He's the only raid boss to actually require two fights to finally defeat him.

I've always had a soft spot for ye olde Deathwing. I feel like we didn't get to see enough of his diabolical planning side, the schemer who manipulated the kings and princes of the Eastern Kingdoms into almost letting him take over Alterac and marry Calia Menethil. This was a plan with long-term aspirations and goals. We got to see a little more of his personality in the story Charge of the Aspects, but I would have liked to have seen more. Still, he's dead, the day has been saved, and we're moving on to those misty shores of Pandaria. But his legacy will live on.

Goodbye, Neltharion. Hopefully you rest quiet. You really were the Cataclysm.

---

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.

---

If you've been worrying about patch 5.0.4 (and I hope you haven't) then take comfort, for Bashiok has brought us Blizzard's patch 5.0.4 survival guide. This very long and thorough post rounds up every single bit of information Blizzard has put online about what's coming in patch 5.0.4, including the following:

• BattleTag support -- now you can friend people cross-realm without using your account name, just like in Diablo III.
• Quality of life improvements such as AoE looting, account wide-mounts and pets and achievements, streamlining of cooking rewards, and the removal of the daily quest cap.
• Class changes.
• The new talent system.
• Glyphs.
• Currency conversions, stat changes, and the removal of head enchants.
• The Battle of Theramore and when it will begin on live servers.

So head on over to Blizzard's official site and read all about how patch 5.0.4 is going to change your World of Warcraft. Trust me, AoE looting is going to be sweet.

---

It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

---

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today.

It's a whole different game without Shepard. People like Garrus and Liara have lost someone they relied on. There's no one with the force of personality to force the Krogan and Turians to get along or get the Salarians to give back the female survivor of Maelon's research, no one to stop Cerebus from hijacking the Mars archive. I've been thinking about running a pen-and-paper RPG based around the idea that Shepard gives his/her life to blow up the relay, and now someone (or someones) else has to step up and fill that gap.

Would a group of new eyes have seen a different solution to the Reapers? Was Shepard a little too good at things, and as a result people just kept throwing stuff into Shep's lap instead of trying to fix it themselves? I really think it could be interesting to play around with.

And now, your questions.

evoxpisces asks:

Q1: Are the redesigned SM, Scholo, and RFC debuting with 5.0.4 or with Mists?

Q2: Whatever happened to tier 3 gear? I wasn't doing high-end content back then so I never got a chance to get any of it. Why is there a tier 2.5 but not a tier 3 anymore?

Answer 1: I do not know for sure. I know the level 90 heroic versions of SM and Scholo are not likely to show up, but as to whether or not RFC, SM and Scholo get their upgrades before Mists launches, that I cannot say. The patch notes do not mention them.

Answer 2: Tier 3 gear was attainable using tokens that dropped in the original, level 60 40-man version of Naxxramas. Once Naxx was removed from the game with the patch 3.0 update to the world in preparation for Wrath of the Lich King, it was gone, too. With the further update of Light's Hope Chapel in Cataclysm, even if you were holding on to a token, you won't be able to turn it in to most of the people, since many of them were Scarlet Crusade figures who are since dead.

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

Don't panic, I promise we'll get back to the naaru fairly soon. But this week, with patch 5.0.4 a mere week away and the Mists of Pandaria a month after that, I wanted to cover two figures who rose to prominence in Cataclysm and who you'll be seeing more of soon. There will be few spoilers for the upcoming expansion -- just a discussion of Captain Taylor and Legionnaire Nazgrim, who in many ways exemplified their respective factions in the expansive questing of Vashj'ir.

I don't want to give too many spoilers for Mists of Pandaria in this post, but some are unavoidable. Be warned now that the video linked in this article and some of the discussion at the end will touch upon Taylor and Nazgrim's roles in the Jade Forest and beyond.