Cataclysm Prologue - Elemental Invasions Started
The elemental invasions just started, new quests NPCs are available in capital cities and elementals will randomly spawn in zones!




Tripping the Rifts achievement
  • Rifts appears everywhere, including Northrend and Outland. You can get your achievement by destroying rifts anywhere but you won't be able to loot lower levels Mysterious Objects.
  • Rifts seems to spawn at the beginning of each hour (01:00AM, 02:00AM, etc) pretty much everywhere in the zone, however there are confusing reports about this and some people reported them spawning in the middle of the hour. If you arrive in a zone and can't find rifts, you probably just have to wait for a respawn.
  • Rifts are destroyed by killing elementals, each elemental death lowers the health of the rift.
  • The Mysterious Object looted from rifts gives a daily quest with gold/XP reward.

Rifts zones by Type (Source)

Fire
1. Westfall
2. The Barrens (Between Razorfen Downs and Razorfen Kraul)
3. Dustwallow Marsh (Inside Theramore near Armory; North of Witch Hill)
4. The Hinterlands
5. Searing Gorge
6. Blasted Lands
7. Winterspring
8. Hellfire Peninsula
9. Zul'Drak (South of Zeramas; East of the Reliquary of Pain; In the middle of Zeb'Hakkar)
Water
1. Silverpine Forest (East of Shadowfang Keep; South of the fork in the road east of Sepulcher; West of Dead Field towards the shore)
2. Ghostlands
3. Wetlands (On the shore near the Bluegill Murlocs and the two ruined ships; Between the Greenwarden and Dark Iron Dwarf Camps)
4. Thousand Needles (Darkcloud Pinnacle)
5. Stranglethorn Vale
6. Swamp of Sorrows (Stonard)
7. Un'goro Crater
8. Zangarmarsh
9. Shadowmoon Valley
10. Dragonblight (Agmar's Hammer; Wintergarde Keep)
11. Icecrown

Wind
1. Darkshore
2. Hillsbrad Foothills (Southshore; Tarren Mill)
3. Duskwood
4. Arathi Highlands (South of Circle of West Binding; Hammerfall)
5. Eastern Plaguelands
6. Terokkar Forest
7. Netherstorm
8. Borean Tundra (Magmoth)
9. Sholazar Basin
Earth
1. Loch Modan
2. Redridge Mountains
3. Desolace
4. Western Plaguelands
5. Burning Steppes
6. Silithus
7. Nagrand (Laughing Skull Ruins)
8. Blade's Edge Mountains
9. Howling Fjord (Wyrmskull Village near the hut Alliance players witness the visions of the past)
10. Grizzly Hills
11. Storm Peaks (Gnoll Camps west of K3; Maker's Library)













Cataclysm Direct Download and Game Cinematics
There, Blizzard still loves you, and you will have all the cinematics if you buy the digital version of the expansion!
Originally Posted by Bashiok (Blue Tracker)
We’d like to take a moment to clarify how we’ll be delivering World of Warcraft: Cataclysm cinematics to players who purchase the expansion digitally through Battle.net or download the installer from the web in the future.

Prior to the December 7 launch of Cataclysm, all current World of Warcraft players will receive the Cataclysm intro cinematic as part of an upcoming patch. In addition, all other in-game cinematics (including previous ones such as the Wrathgate movie) will be available for download to players who have not previously installed them. These cinematics will be automatically downloaded in the background while you play the game, after other critical game data has been received.

Cataclysm Realm Launch Time Information
Originally Posted by Bashiok (Blue Tracker)
Wondering exactly what time you’ll be able to begin playing your goblin or worgen or making your way to level 85? On all North American realms, World of Warcraft players who upgrade to Cataclysm will be able to begin experiencing the new content at 12 a.m. Pacific Standard Time (3 a.m. Eastern Standard Time) on December 7, whether they purchase the digital download through Battle.net or buy a physical retail boxed version in stores. Players will not be able to access Cataclysm expansion content prior to 12 a.m. PST, regardless of how they upgrade or what time zone they’re located in.

Cataclysm Raids available for testing!
Almost all bosses are now available for testing!
Originally Posted by Daelo (Blue Tracker)
All raids are currently available for testing, except for Magmaw in Blackwing Descent.

Note that to reach some of the final bosses you must currently kill the previous bosses in the zone. So be careful what you skip for now.

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Elemental Invasions
There are four stages of the event. We're on the first. This is only the beginning. (Source)

Hunting for Elementals to get the achievement
I know. And I'm saying the elementals are merely leaking out at this point. It's but a small sign of a larger, more malevolent presence threatening to tear apart the land.

If you don't want to camp elementals for one achievement, wait until they're camping you. (Source)

"Low" DPS specs in WotLK
When there are multiple specs that fill the same role, as is the case for Fire vs. Frost mage or Arms vs. Fury warrior, we have found that some players will play their favored spec because they like the theme or mechanics, as long as the damage difference isn't too significant. Sadly, those players also seem to be in the minority. Many others will respec, regem, etc. for even a slight *theoretical* (very important word there) gain in dps.

If you recall earlier in the LK patch cycle, we attempted to bring Marks and Survival hunters up to the Beastmaster level. We didn't get the numbers quite right though, so what happened is that many hunters felt like they had to switch out of BM and into Survival. (Let's please not turn the rest of this thread into a lecture about how if we had only listened to *your* idea for tweaking hunter damage, everything would have turned out fine.) We heard from many players how frustrating that was -- to wake up one day and have to learn to replay their class because the anointed highest dps spec was now a different tree completely. Players are much more tolerant of huge, sweeping changes between expansions than they are in between patches.

If you look at the patch history of the rest of LK, there were many tweaks to Subtlety, Arms, Frost and BM. We were cautious though, because we were trying to avoid driving everyone who played those classes to have to switch class to class. We were trying to get the dps elevated without going over, and that's just a very small target to hit.

We learned from this mistake though, and part of the overhaul of the talent trees was specifically to make tweaking a lot easier for us. The passive talent tree bonuses are just one example, but we also did things like break our old rules for how spell coefficients relate to things like cast times, and the budget of a talent point in general. We wanted to develop a system that gave us more knobs to adjust and more fine-tuning we could deploy in between expansions to adjust specs that are low without going over.

Here's hoping it works. (Source)
This article was originally published in forum thread: Cataclysm Prologue - Elemental Invasions Started started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 346 Comments
  1. heidar's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Phaelia View Post
    It ends rather abruptly, I feel like there should be more....
    I think this is most certainly not the end of it.
  1. Jin84's Avatar
    Dang, there isn't much yet. It ends at alerting Garrosh.
  1. Martinussen's Avatar
    AHA!!!!!!!!
    In barrens elementals make invasions randomly here and there! im uploading a vid about it right now. i will give you a link when it get up!!
  1. Kwelbo's Avatar
    http://img844.imageshack.us/gal.php?...0110191855.jpg

    Five pictures from the Cho'Gall in Elwynn Forest event. Including his chat.
  1. Fordtuff's Avatar
    can anyone talk to the guys out in the tents to complete that one quest, cuz i cant!
  1. Daeveren's Avatar








  1. Jindujun's Avatar
    so do the elementals drop anything interesting?
  1. bishikon's Avatar
    img535.imageshack.us/img535/8123/riftopen.jpg
    img809.imageshack.us/img809/5861/riftclosed.jpg
  1. Iplaymageftw's Avatar
    Look at snowy screenshot, the Winterfall Den Watcher there got 1.3k hp left, which is 37%. I thought it was pretty leet
  1. Kwelbo's Avatar
    http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/8775/wowscrnshot110110191855.th.jpg[/IMG]



  1. Cellery's Avatar
    This is definitely frustrating. I expected there to be something other than "k we let the people in charge know." Sounds very Blizz though, eh? ;D
  1. Jin84's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Fordtuff View Post
    can anyone talk to the guys out in the tents to complete that one quest, cuz i cant!
    You have to wear a cultist's robe -_-

    pls read the quests!
  1. Avenue's Avatar
    http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/8123/riftopen.jpg
  1. Liero's Avatar
    I want to join the cult. New faction?
  1. TheFlyingCorpse's Avatar
    THE END IS NEAR !!!

    This is awsome, Blizzard has done a great job on this and I cant wait to see more (Yes, I'm spoiled (-: )

    I wonder if blizz will revive this on 21.12.2012 :P
  1. Harith's Avatar


    water elementals in tanaris
  1. Vanhelsen's Avatar
    damn! gimme back my prepaid!! :<
  1. Kaneiac's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Cellery View Post
    This is definitely frustrating. I expected there to be something other than "k we let the people in charge know." Sounds very Blizz though, eh? ;D
    This is just the FIRST PART.

    It culminates into elite NPC's invading the cities, and 5 man bosses.
  1. Fenz's Avatar

  1. AwesomeSauceUK's Avatar
    The Gathering of the Alliance leaders in Stormwind Keep has been there ever since 4.0.1 launched AFAIK. They have an interesting conversation about the earthquakes and Magni mentions he's planning to use the Titan Discs to try to stop them.

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