Cataclysm Concept Arts and Tier 11, Druid Forms, Blue Posts

We've applied some finishing touches to the new cat and bear forms available to troll and worgen druids in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. We’re excited to share them with you today. Have a look here. http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...id-forms.shtml

It's great to see that so many of you are excited about these events! The battles for Gnomeregan and Echo Isles are important turning points for both the Gnomeregan Exiles and Darkspear trolls, and we're glad that players across all races and realms have answered the call to arms issued by your esteemed faction leaders, Geblin Mekkatorque and Vol'jin.

Now, onto your questions:

Q. What are the minimum level requirements for the Operation: Gnomeregan and Zalazane's Fall quest lines?
A. Your character will need to be at least level 75 to participate in the final battle. All previous quests in each faction's chain, though, should be open to character's level 5 and up.

Q. What would happen if a player were to complete one faction's quest line (say, Operation: Gnomeregan) on a character, receive the Feat of Strength, and then purchase a faction change? Would that character be able to complete the other faction's quest line and receive double the rewards?
A. Yes and no. To continue with the example provided above, if a character were to complete all the quests associated with Operation: Gnomeregan on an Alliance character, receive the corresponding quest reward and Feat of Strength, and then purchase a faction change, the quest reward and Feat of Strength would translate to their Horde equivalents, but the quests would not. This means that the character would have the opportunity to play through all the quests associated with Zalazane's Fall, if he or she wishes, but would not receive an additional Feat of Strength or be able to own both faction’s costume quest rewards * for doing so.

Faction changes affect characters in multiple ways, though, so be sure to review the full FAQ before getting started: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/28825

* Due to the fact that the costume quest reward will translate during a faction change, it’s currently possible for a player to earn two of them. They’d both be same version of the item, though, and would share the same cooldown.

Q. Will these events be available forever?
A. Like other holiday events, Operation: Gnomeregan and Zalazane's Fall will only be available for a limited time, so it's best to complete the quest lines as soon as possible!

Q. Players are standing on top of key quest NPCs and I'm unable to reach them. What can I do?
A. If you're finding it difficult to click on a specific NPC, the best course of action is to enable name plates by pressing Ctrl-V or zoom in your character's camera all the way. This will give you a different in-game perspective and should allow you to click on the NPC's name plate or its model without other characters or their mounts completely blocking access: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/24589

If you feel that any players are intentionally attempting to detract from the experience of others, then you may wish to contact in-game support.

Q. Why are these events so short in duration?
A. Both Operation: Gnomeregan and Zalazane's Fall are intended to be fun in-game events that allow players to experience the continuation of the Gnomeregan Exile and Darkspear troll storylines, and we think each quest line achieves just that. As several gnomes would argue, just because something is "short" doesn't mean it's not worthwhile!

[...] Alright, I've got a few more answers to your questions:

Q. Are Operation: Gnomeregan and Zalazane's Fall the only events that lead into the Cataclysm?
A. Not at all. It's only a taste of what's to come.

Q. I've encountered a few issues when completing these events. Are they being looked into?
A. Definitely. Our Quality Assurance department is aware of the reported issues and looking into them currently. In the meantime, our in-game support staff has created a post in the Customer Service forum about the matter (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...25724862&sid=1) and will be providing updates on the @BlizzardCS Twitter page.

Racial changes in Cataclysm
We're not going to overhaul the racials to the degree that we overhauled the talent trees. We are going to make a pass at them, so if you have specific concerns for Cataclysm now is a fine time to bring them up. In this case, specific feedback is more useful than "I think the way racials should work is a totally different way" designs. (Source)

Zalazane's Fall / Operation Gnomeregan Overcloaks not implemented on live (See Cataclysm Prologue Preview)
It is true that the cloak rewards had overcloak functionality when these events were up on the public test realms some months back. In the end we decided that implementing the cloaks in such a way that players could aesthetically change the cloak they're wearing could set a bad precedent. We like customization and flavor items, but we don't want to start implementing aesthetic items in the game which allow players to look however they want while keeping all the stats they want. We felt the overcloaks were breaking that barrier a little too much.

Can I ask why not? People have been clamoring for this sort of thing for ages, and many thought that this was the first step to allowing that. Now you're telling us it was a first step that you don't want to take?
We've been tossing around some other ideas with regard to gear customization, but we still want to make sure there are appropriate limitations on a system like this. The limited buff timer on the overcloak just wasn't enough considering it would mask any cloak of any level. We'll continue to explore ideas for fun aesthetic gear customization, but we didn't feel this was the proper introduction of this kind of system. (Source)

Dungeons too easy in WotLK
This is fairly accurate. Spell costs were more expensive when LK was in beta but we later backed off of it. That isn't the entire reason that the heroic dungeons and raids ended up a little easier than we intended. It was a combination of a lot of things: we got better at designing talents (fewer wasted points), glyphs offered a lot of additional player power, little things like the gathering skill buffs, most raid buffs going raid wide, every spec had access to mana-efficient AE, more survivability tools, specs that historically didn't raid much suddenly out there contributing their unique abilities, etc. etc. (Source)

Avoidance penalty in Icecrown
We added an avoidance penalty to Icecrown so that we could lower boss spike damage. It was still quite spikey. Now imagine would it would have been without those avoidance penalties. Bosses would have had to hit that much harder in order to compensate for missing so often. I even said at the time that a better long-term solution would be to boost health pools across the board (even for PvP), but that was such a big change that we worried it would take too many patches to get right. (Source)

Blizzcon Soundalike contest
The Soundalike Contest will not be held this year, and potentially in no future years. We have some things planned for the stage show that take up some additional time, and just due to the lukewarm reception of this particular contest, it was removed from this year's lineup. (Source)

Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Lack of AE Healing in WotLK
On the paladin issue, our LK model was that healers were still pretty specialized. You want a paladin for tank healing and you want a Holy priest or Resto druid for AE healing. We thought that paladins had enough tools to heal when they were the only healer (i.e. in 5 player dungeons), and that was generally true, though paladin players did have trouble with heroic Loken early on. Since paladins didn't need to solo heal raids and since we didn't want to encourage raids to bring 2 paladins for their 2 healers, we thought that was sufficient. In Cataclysm we are backing off of that even more and trying to make all the healers more well rounded. (Source)