Originally Posted by
Tom Chilton
So the plan for the way that would work is that well in advance of the Cataclysm there will be that, like, patch 3.9 (has been shown to be 4.0.1) or whatever it ends up actually being numerically designated where a lot of the game system changes will go into place, things like mastery, things like the revamped talent system, stuff like that. And then, a little bit of time before the actual Catalysm happens, or, sorry, before the Cataclysm box is on the shelves, like, say a week or two before, then the actual Cataclysm event will take place. By then, everybody will have downloaded the new content for Cataclysm, both with the background downloading and when the actual event takes place, everyone will have the data by that time. Or finish downloading it if they haven't already finished downloading it. So, the servers will come down, the Cataclysm will happen, and when players log in, they will get to see the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm cinematic. And the cinematic is very much oriented around showing you the destruction of the world, showing you what's happening. And so when that cataclysm happens, the servers go down and come back up, with the changed world, everybody will be able to see what happened, and they'll have seen the cinematic, so they'll kind of understand why it happened. And at that point the world will be changed.
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There may be a pre-release of the cinematic, although what we find is that while a lot of people see that, not everybody sees it. So we want to make sure that when the actual cataclysm happens, and you log in for the first time after that, that you see the cinematic.