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Okay, how did we miss this?

We’ve been wondering about the level of change in each old-world zone for Cataclysm for months now, and the answer has actually been under our noses since BlizzCon. During the Art Panel, the above planning map was shown, along with some information to either side of it. We can’t make out everything in it, but there’s a lot of information if you know what you’re looking at.

The zone colors, from what we can infer, indicate the level of overhaul each zone is receiving. Red is a heavy overhaul, yellow is moderate, green is light, and blue means a brand-new zone. The yellow stars indicate a dungeon, and the red stars indicate a raid. The white tabs each have a letter on them, indicating what in the zone was being changed at that particular point — L for level, Q for quests, etc.

Astute readers will see some things jump out at them immediately, like Thousand Needles having two stars on it.
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Castille World of Warcraft blizzcon, Cataclysm

So the convention is over, Blizzard has shown all (or at least most — there are still secrets, we’re sure) of their cards, and the next expansion will involve the return of Deathwing and a completely remade Azeroth. Goblins will be in there as the Horde race, but as for the original speculation of the Maelstrom and the Emerald Dream, well… It remains to be seen exactly how those will tie in to what we heard about at BlizzCon.

The biggest hint I saw at the Emerald Dream in the last year was the fact that Blizzard is going to release a “Stormrage” novel — that would hint that good old Malfurion Stormrage and his kin would be spotlighted in the near future. Richard Knaak says the novel is set in the present, so something is going on for sure. Even though Deathwing is going to be the big bad this time around, something’s still cooking with Stormrage.

Which actually makes sense. If we’re going to get looks at Deepholm (the elemental plane of Earth, where Deathwing has been lying dormant recently) and The Firelands, as well as Skywall and the Abyssal Maw (the Fire, Air, and Water planes, respectively), that could mean they’re going to open up Azeroth’s other planes as well, with the Emerald Dream among them. The return of Deathwing would undoubtedly bring the other Aspects to bear, and Ysera would definitely be among those. In the opening ceremony last weekend, Metzen dismissed the Emerald Dream as “rumors and speculation,” but the upcoming Stormrage novel still hints we still might see the Emerald Dream sometime soon.

Castres World of Warcraft Blizzard, blizzcon, Cataclysm, Odds and ends

This year’s World of Warcraft Arena Tournament Finals had an extremely good attendance despite some hiccups on the tournament stage, leaving the hosts cracking space-filling jokes until the teams were finally ready. Actually, this happened between every match, which was one of the few dampers in an otherwise decent tournament. The strong attendance at the Finals might also have something to do with the presence of a US/Canadian team, TSG, consisting of David Kovacs, Bennett Lynch, and Fabian Siffredi, otherwise known as Valrath, Veex, and Zilea, who ran a strong Death Knight, Warrior, Holy Paladin cleave comp all the way to a $75,000 purse. The last team to stand in their way was Shipit from Korea, consisting of Soonjae “Coilmaster” Cha, Jaemin “Tsukiyomi” Lee, and Janghwan “Kamiu” Bae with a Warrior, Hunter, Holy Paladin comp that never really posed a challenge for the new World Champions.

All throughout the Finals, TSG played extremely aggressively, bringing Shipit’s Hunter, Tsukiyomi, to dangerously low health within the opening moments of every match. The Koreans faced an uphill battle coming from the consolation bracket, needing to defeat TSG twice in a best of five, but it was clear that the North American team’s aggressive style and double melee comp were too much to handle.

The Korean contingent walked away with a respectable $30,000 and third place team x6tence from Europe took home $15,000. The awards were handed out by Blizzard’s Tom Chilton, who described this year’s Arena Tournament as “the best ever”. We also saw the defeat of RMP — as even Mage hero Orangemarmalade couldn’t advance within the consolation bracket. It reaffirmed the power of Holy Paladin heals and Death Knights, however, in an environment that saw zero Shamans. It’ll be exciting to see what 2010 holds as Cataclysm is likely to change the entire face of World of Warcraft PvP.

Castro World of Warcraft Arena, blizzcon

Well, BlizzCon is over and done with, and what a crazy two days it’s been! The official announcement of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, new races, stat changes, new raids and dungeons, new progression paths, guild leveling, the beautiful Tricia Helfer as Kerrigan in StarCraft II, the Diablo 3 Monk class … my brain is positively swimming in new stuff. There was something for everyone here, except maybe those hoping for new info about the next-gen MMO.

So, I asked you guys a few days ago what announcement you were waiting for at BlizzCon. Some of you got your wishes, looks like! What was your favorite announcement made at BlizzCon? Anything got your blood pumping? Some special phrase into a microphone that warmed the cockles of your heart? Don’t be shy. We all fell a little in love this year. Let the world know, and be at peace.

Castille World of Warcraft blizzcon, Cataclysm

In an interview over at Slashdot, J. Allen Brack, Lead Producer of WoW, spoke about the Battle.net conversion that’s going on and how it will apply to WoW. One of the more important things he said was:

We have optional Battle.net conversion right now, but that will be mandatory at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Many people have done the conversion already, and many speculated and inferred from past Blizzard comments that the conversion would eventually become mandatory. But now it looks like it’s going to be, and that date is in the “not-too-distant future.”

The conversion process is relatively straight forward, and can be started by visiting your account management page. There have been times when Battle.net enabled accounts were not able to get into the game due to authentication issues, but those seem to be diminishing.

We’ll be sure to keep you updated on any additional announcements concerning the upcoming mandatory conversion

Catelet World of Warcraft blizzcon, Realm Status

Cory Stockton and Scott Mercer gave an in-depth look into the dungeons and raids available at the launch of WoW: Cataclysm during the Raids and Dungeons panel today at BlizzCon. We’ll look at the dungeons first.

OVERVIEW:

At launch, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will ship with eight 5-man dungeons and two heroic versions of old-world dungeons.

Grim Batol: One level 85 5-man.
Skywall: One level 80-82 5-man.
Abyssal Maw: Two 5-mans; level 80-83 and level 82-84.
Deepholm: One level 80-83 5-man.
Uldum: Two 5-mans; level 83-84 and level 85.
Blackrock Caverns: One level 85 5-man.
Shadowfang Keep: One level 85 heroic 5-man.
The Deadmines: One level 85 heroic 5-man.

Koeningsmark World of Warcraft blizzcon, Cataclysm

Straight from the press disc comes the concept art from World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. We also have plenty of pictures we got off the floor. Check out those Goblin and Worgen drawings. Great stuff!

Catalans World of Warcraft blizzcon, Cataclysm

So, I’m sure at this point, the majority of you (the readers) are expecting the next WoW expansion to be announced during the BlizzCon opening ceremonies tomorrow. It’s a pretty safe bet! And we’re actually pretty sure it’s gonna be playable, too. Here’s why.

If you check out the BlizzCon map to which we linked earlier in the week, you’ll see that there’s a demo area set up on the right side of the convention center labeled “World of Warcraft”. Unless they’re having us play the Icecrown raid (probably not!) or open PvP, it’s likely that this area is for playing the tidbits they’ll have available of the new expansion. Playable starting zones for the new races, perhaps? A high-level zone or two? We’ll just have to wait and see.

We’ll have the WoW.com staff all up in that place, so we’ll get you up-to-the-minute info on what they see and hear at those stations!

MMOvalue MMOValue news blizzcon

This isn’t the biggest news in the world, but for those of you that really dig World of Warcraft’s extended universe, it might be pretty exciting. Medievaldragon over at BlizzPlanet has an incredibly hi-res picture of the artwork that will grace the cover of the upcoming novel Stormrage, courtesy of Pocket Books.

I can’t help but notice Malfurion’s rather feral appearance there. Despite how much Blizzard loves the whole “falling from grace” thing for their characters, I somewhat doubt they will take that road with Malfurion, even with everything going on in the Emerald Dream.* Is he stalking some prey? Is he running from whatever gave him those scars? Is he pissed that Tyrande went Shadow and made him respec Resto, hence the foliage? Who knows, but I’m curious to find out, even if my least favorite Warcraft novelist is tackling this one. Maybe we’ll get an excerpt to read in our swag bags at BlizzCon? We can hope, right?

*If they do, I assume it will be temporary. Chris Metzen seems awfully attached to Malfurion when he talks about him, so I don’t expect they’ll kill the poor guy off.

MMOvalue World of Warcraft blizzcon, Druid

Blizzard has announced that they’re streaming most of the tournaments at BlizzCon this year yet again — even if you don’t sign up to the DirecTV feed, you can still watch most of the Arena, Starcraft, and Warcraft III matchups online on the BlizzCon site. And this year, for the first time, you’ll be able to watch them in full HD quality (assuming that your connection can hold up). There will be one full stream dedicated to Arena matches, and one stream split between Warcraft III and Starcraft tournament coverage.

And what you see should be some of the best players in the world — all of the qualifiers from North America, Korea, Europe, and Taiwan will be in attendance to vy for the top spot and the $25,000 per-player prize. The stream will be running both days of BlizzCon, coming up in just a few weeks on August 21st and 22nd.

MMOvalue World of Warcraft Arena, blizzcon

The chances to head off to BlizzCon are coming fast nowadays — Nvidia is the latest company in on the race, as they’re offering up an all expenses paid trip to Anaheim in August for the winner and a guest to experience Blizzard’s big show. To enter, they say you have to buy a qualifying Nvidia card, and then use the promo code inside the package to enter. Which might make you think, as we did, that it’s a pretty lousy deal — you have to buy a new graphics card just for a chance to win? But their official rules say “no purchase necessary,” So we did the work for you: if you want to enter without buying a card, you have to send a letter or postcard to “NVIDIA “BlizzCon 2009″ Sweepstakes – Entries by Mail (USA & Canada), NVIDIA Corporation, 2701 San Tomas Expressway, Santa Clara, CA 95050, U.S.A,” and include your full name, your email address, mailing addresses, your telephone number, and “a short paragraph (100 to 250 words), written or typed in English, stating why you like or have an interest in the ‘World of Warcraft’ game or Nvidia or its products.”

Not exactly a lot of fun, but then again, it’s cheaper than buying a new graphics card, and their rules say that mail-in entries have the same chance at winning that the coupon codes do. We’re behind you, readers — we hope you win.

And if you do make it to BlizzCon, keep an eye out for WoW.com — we’re gonna have a nice big shindig on Thursday night (location still TBA, but soon!), and we’d love for you to be there.

MMOvalue World of Warcraft blizzcon, Contests, Tips

Yes, if you were around on Saturday, you know that the first round of BlizzCon tickets sold out, and sold out fast. Tickets went on sale right around 10am PST (which was 1pm EST), and sold out just about 28 minutes later. If the queue numbers are trustworthy, over 21,000 people (we’ve heard as high as 25,000 at a time) logged in to buy tickets that day, and from unconfirmed reports around the web, it seems like about 5,000 to 8,000 tickets were sold: most people who got in line around number 5,000 were able to pick a ticket up, and that was a few minutes in already. Some of those people are already selling tickets on eBay as well.

We believe (though aren’t sure) that they’ll be selling more than 15,000 tickets this year, since that’s what they sold last year and they’re using even more of the convention space. If that’s true, then Blizzard probably went through only about half of the tickets, and will sell the rest during the second session on the 30th. But that’s probably not much of a consolation — given the frenzy around this last Saturday, there’ll probably be more people trying for tickets, and given the prices on eBay, possibly more scalpers clogging up the queue. We’ll see.

Update: Lots of people point out, rightly so, that I missed something in my guesstimates of how many tickets were sold: you could purchase up to five. My personal guess is that the majority of people bought only one or two, but even if you go with three as the average, 5,000-8,000 people in the queue is actually 15,000-24,000 tickets. Blizzard probably did sell the majority of tickets on Saturday then, not just half. So the process on May 30th will presumably go even faster.

Mustapha World of Warcraft Blizzard, blizzcon

For those of you worried about the return of Failoc, or just interested in how the BlizzCon ticket process is going to work this time around, Blizzard has posted a FAQ on buying tickets on their BlizzCon site.

Interesting information includes:

You should make a Battle.net account ahead of time, and make sure the payment information on it is up-to-date.
If there are enough people on the site trying to buy tickets (and trust me, there will be), there will be a queue to join.
Once in the queue, you’ll get an ETA for how long until you can get your tickets. Do not close or refresh the window. If tickets sell out before you get to the front of the line, they’ll let you know.
When you get to the front of the queue, you have 15 minutes to buy your tickets before you get booted and have to join the queue again.
You don’t need to give attendee information until after finishing the ticket purchase.
They also note that this queue system will remain in place for future Blizzard items “whenever a certain number of people are making purchases simultaneously,” so get used to it – you’ll almost certainly be seeing it when StarCraft II and Diablo III come out.

Catalans World of Warcraft blizzcon, Events

Blizzard just announced that tickets for BlizzCon 2009, the third fourth installment of their phenomenally successful Blizzard-themed convention, will go on sale on Saturday, May 16, for $125 each. That’s a week from this Saturday, friends. Additional tickets will be sold on Saturday, May 30. Edit: You’ll be able to buy tickets at blizzcon.com at the appointed times.

BlizzCon 2009 will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center on August 21 and 22. For those unable to make it, DirecTV is once again selling a pay-per-view package of the event for $40, which seems a bit steep for a two-day video feed, but will include exclusive video and this year’s in-game item. This will also be available as an internet stream, presumably for those not subscribed to DirecTV.

Last year’s BlizzCon ticket sales were marked by a figure affectionately known as the Failoc, which was displayed when Blizzard servers utterly failed to respond to crushing demand. This year, they think they’re prepared: “the company has made upgrades to the Blizzard Store, including a first-come, first-served queue system and a fixed time limit for completing purchases,” according to their press release.

MMOvalue World of Warcraft blizzcon, news

Our sister site Joystiq pointed out last night to their readers that the BlizzCon 2008 beta codes were now being accepted, and we thought it prudent to pass the news along to you.

You can enter the code over at http://www.blizzcon.com/beta and enjoy the satisfaction that you’ll get knowing in a few months (or less?) you’ll be playing the beta of StarCraft II.

The code took me a few others on staff a couple tries to enter. ‘B’ looks like ’8′, and ‘S’ looks like ’8′. You’ll probably need to try a few different permutations of the code until you get it right. When you enter the right code, you’ll get an email ‘confirmation’ that really just tells you that you’ve entered the key successfully. You don’t have to do anything further. The email is a little oddly worded though, and doesn’t look like your typical Blizzard email. So we’ve posted a copy of it after the break for folks.

BlizzCon 2009 is coming up on August 21st and 22nd of this year. We’ll be there in force again. Should be a blast!
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Kanghi World of Warcraft beta-keys, blizzcon, blizzcon-2009, starcraft-2