WoW Cataclysm - more details incoming! The guys at Blizzard Entertainment unveiled the talent trees for four classes in World of Warcraft: Druids, Shamans, Priests and Rogues exclusively to its fansites! Yay! You can find images of the  talent trees further down below in the gallery and all talents and skills explained on the linked pages. Please keep in mind that everything is subject to change, and the files we got are just drafts of the the final talent trees.

Druids

Shamans

Priests

Rogues

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will introduce Worgen and Goblins as playable races. We’re all aware of that since BlizzCon 2009. However, the female Worgen models for WoW: Cataclysm were a big mystery. Until now. Today Blizzard Entertainment unveiled the female Worgen character models for WoW: Cataclysm. These are still work in progress and might change until the third WoW expansion actually is released. But this is the first time we're seeing official pictures of female Worgen.

The official beta start for the World of Warcraft expansion Cataclysm seems to be starting soon. As Blizzard is posting on the official WoW website the beta opt-in for Cataclysm is now active. This means that WoW-players can check the opt-in option in their battle.net account – if they haven’t already – and might get chosen to be a candidate for beta-testing the upcoming WoW expansion. So be sure you visit the battle.net account management and check the boxes in the beta profile settings. Good luck!

Read more at worldofwarcraft.com

The getbuffed wishlist for World of Warcraft Cataclysm: From a fresh user interface to actually challenging heroic dungeons - ten changes we want to see in the next WoW expansion

World of Warcraft is quite the allround talent – PvE, PvP, big raid instances, small raid dungeons, and more. But sometimes even Blizzard’s designers get bogged down in details: World of Warcraft is far from perfect. And WoW: Cataclysm could make some player wishes come true – let's take a look at the top ten wishes we have for the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion.

10. More updated Dungeons

There are going to be heroic versions of the Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep for those who have reached level 85. Great! But is this enough? We're going to spend a lot of time in the old world anyway, so why not update some more old dungeons and raid instances? More heroic classic dungeons – that's what we want!

9. Being able to change the look of tier-sets

Wearing a full Tier 2 set armor was really special back in classic WoW. Today tier sets seem to be off-the-shelf-articles for everyone. On one hand, that's ok – we don’t mind if more players are able to get their hands on shiny epics. But on the other hand it is pretty boring to see every character in Dalaran wearing the same armor. Blizzard devs already stated that they’re not going to introduce dyes. Alright, so what about more nice tabards or, as seen in other MMOs, a way to give an item the look of another – without changing its stats. And all of that without any form of micro transaction please.

8. Better rewards for hard work

Having five man instances and raid dungeons available in various difficulty settings is a good thing for many players. But the rewards could be better, especially when beating certain bosses in hardmode. We would like to see more special encounters like Algalon the Watcher for example, which are only available to hardcore raiders. More special rewards like the drakes for the meta achievements would be cool as well. Additional item levels or heroic items for hardmode kills are a nice bonus – but many players don't see them as actual rewards. In addition they add to the confusing item level inflation we’ve seen in Wrath of the Lich King – bringing us to our next wish for Cataclysm...

7. Stat jumble, be gone!

An MMO needs a large variety of items. But it’s pretty hard to keep track of WoW’s emblem and faction vendors, normal mode and heroic mode drops, 10 man and 25 man boss loot tables, ...? Wrath of the Lich King introduced so many new tiers of items that it’s easy to get lost especially for new players. Even veteran players often simply look at best-in-slot-lists rather than to research potential item upgrades themselves. Less is definitely more in this case!

6. Interface updates

World of Warcraft's standard interface has been revised and upgraded several times during the last five years but important features are still missing. For example: Why can't we move single interface elements? Where are the space-saving raid frames or some inventory for tabards? And what about a wardrobe for elder tier-sets and alternative armor?

5. Well-elaborated tool for finding raid companions

Yes, there is a tool where you can find new players for your raid, but it is not as popular as it should be – with good reason. There should be a new tool that shows you for example how often somebody has visited a dungeon and some achievement filter to make directly visible how successful this character has been in raids so far. And: You wouldn’t need gear score anymore.

4. Classes should be more unique

Players are criticizing WotLK since beta days: Classes became more and more alike.. With all the changes made in later patches, many people feel validated. So we wish more uniqueness for every single tank, heal and damage dealing character class. The official Cataclysm class previews give us a hope that this is going to change. We hope that good things are going to happen.

3. Enjoyable daily quests

Sure, daily quests will never be one of the highlights while playing World of Warcraft, and they do not have to. But the boring and recurring dailies of the Argent Tournament were a bit too much. More variety provided through a bigger pool of daily quests, where every day there's a random quest to do – that’s what we expect from having fun in doing our daily quests. We are looking forward to Tol Barad – if it isn't going to be a second Wintergrasp with all that went wrong there, that is.

2. A new old world

Luckily, this is something the Blizzard designers are definitely going to do: with the arrival of Cataclysm, Azeroth won't be the same. The old world is in desperate need for a complete make-over – meaning optical quality and gameplay. The starting areas need to be revised in order to make them more attractive for starters – even without the heirloom armor speeding up the time to level.

1. Really challenging heroic dungeons

Blizzard designers promised it – we hope they'll stay true to their words. controlled monster-pulls instead of mindless AE bombing. Heroic 5-man-dungeons in WotLK got too easy too soon.. As nice as it may be to rush through dungeons in eight minutes, we wish that the new dungeons in Cataclyms will be more challenging -- even the non-heroic versions.

WoW, Machinima: Rise of the Baby B

„…And so begins our story of a baby beholder, starving and lost in Dalaran. He might grow faster than we thought and maybe we should habe been more careful about this little... thing." The story of the little beholder starts as small and unimpressive as the Baby B appears to be but soon we have to learn about one way to true power. Olibith entered the Alienware-Blizzard contest „Rise to Power“ and ended up as one of the four winners.

Olibith - Beware of the Baby B

Getbuffed.com visited RPC 2010 today - Germany's biggest convention for RPG fanatics. Several MMO studios like Funcom and Frogster do panels and shows about MMOs, table top games and other RP-compatible stuff . Thousands of fans are in attention - and of course in costume! RPC 2010 takes place in Cologne - in the same building that is used for gamescom in August.

Pictures courtesy of buffed.de and Phillipp Schäffer, lifstylepix.de

+++UPDATE: The Celestiel Steed is now officially available in the Blizzard Store. It costs $25. The Lil'XT pet costs $10.

Blizzard Entertainment apparently plans to expand the pet store for World of Warcraft. This information was revealed when a teaser graphic for the Blizzard Store popped up this morning. According to the picture players will soon be able to purchase a robotic companion pet modeled after the Ulduar raid boss XT Deconstructor. Much more interesting however is the fact that Blizzard apparently plans to release an ingame mount for real money purchase: The Celestial Steed. Images of said mount already surfaced some time ago and got players excited, but nobody was sure how players would be able to obtain this flying mount. This is the first time Blizzard is offering an item for real money purchase that has a certain impact on gameplay – even though mounts are fairly easy to obtain ingame these days.

The folks over at mmo-champion.com found this info on the official Blizzard Store.

2K Games is already working on a MMO in the Bioshock universe - at least according to a "mysterious" source. Publisher 2K Games told gamer site Destructoid, that such an online game  is already in the works. A confirmation from the developer is to date still pending. In January 2009, Take 2 declared that they are interested in the continuation of the series.  It remains to be seen if an MMO was included in this planning - there were talks a few days ago that Take 2 is working on an MMO - could it be in the Bioshock Universe?

Source

Wednesday, April 14th -- Blizzard released the official preview of the paladin class changes for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. The preview probably surprises a lot of players. Not only will Paladins get a temporary guardian with different effects based on the Paladins talent choice. The holy knights also receive a new area of effect healing spell.

More information about the mastery skills, abilities and talent changes can be found below.

New Paladin Spells

Blinding Shield (level 81): Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin’s shield, in a manner similar to Eadric the Pure's ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion. The Holy tree will have a talent to increase the damage and critical strike chance, while the Protection tree will have a talent to make this spell instant cast. 2-second base cast time. Requires a shield.

Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.

Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).

Next you will find a list of some of the paladin spell and ability changes, followed by our intentions for improving each talent tree for the release of Cataclysm. There will be further changes, but those revealed below should offer some insight into our goals.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

• Crusader Strike will be a core ability for all paladins, gained at level 1. We think the paladin leveling experience is hurt by not having an instant attack. Retribution will be getting a new talent in its place that either modifies Crusader Strike or replaces it completely.
• Cleanse is being rebalanced to work with the new dispel system. It will dispel defensive magic (debuffs on friendly targets), diseases, and poisons.
• Blessing of Might will provide the benefit of Wisdom as well. If you have two paladins in your group, one will do Kings on everyone and the other will do Might on everyone. There should be much less need, and ideally no need, to provide specific buffs to specific classes.
• Holy Shock will be a core healing spell available to all paladins.

New Talents and Talent Changes

• We want to ease off the defensive capabilities of Retribution and Holy paladins slightly. We think the powerful paladin defenses have been one of the things holding Retribution paladins back, especially in Arenas. One change we’re considering is lowering Divine Shield’s duration by a couple of seconds. Having said that, Retribution does pretty well in Battlegrounds, and Battlegrounds will be a much bigger focus in Cataclysm since they can provide the best PvP rewards. Furthermore, the healing environment of Cataclysm is going to be different such that a paladin may not be able to fully heal themselves during the duration of Divine Shield to begin with, so this may not be a problem.
• We feel Retribution paladins need one more mechanic which involves some risk of the player pushing the wrong button, making the rotation a bit less forgiving. In addition, we want to add to this spec more PvP utility. Right now the successes of the Retribution paladin in PvP seem to be reduced to either doing decent burst damage, or just being good at staying alive.
• We want to increase the duration of Sacred Shield to 30 minutes and keep the limit to one target. The intention is that the paladin can use it on their main healing target. That said, we would like to improve the Holy paladin toolbox and niche so that they don’t feel quite like the obvious choice for tank healing while perceived as a weak group healer.
• We want to add to the Holy tree a nice big heal to correspond with Greater Heal. Flash of Light remains the expensive, fast heal and Holy Light is the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. Beacon of Light will be changed to work with Flash of Light. We like the ability, but want paladins to use it intelligently and not be constantly healing for twice as much.
• Holy paladins will use spirit as their mana regeneration stat.
• Protection paladins need a different rotation between single-target and multi-target tanking. Likewise, we're looking to add the necessity to use an additional cooldown in each rotation.
• Holy Shield will no longer have charges. It will be designed to improve block chance while active, and will continue to provide a small amount of damage and threat.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Holy

• Healing
• Meditation: This is the spirit-to-mana conversion that the priest, druid, and shaman healers also share.
• Critical Healing Effect: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more.

Protection

• Damage Reduction
• Vengeance: This is the damage-received-to-attack-power conversion that all tanks share.
• Block Amount: We want to keep the kit of the paladin as a tank who blocks a lot. So by contrast, the warrior tank will sometimes get critical blocks, but the paladin will absorb more damage with normal blocks.

Retribution

• Melee Damage
• Melee Critical Damage
• Holy Damage: Any attack that does Holy damage will have its damage increased.

On April 9th the WoW-developers of Blizzard reveal the next class previews for the World of Warcraft expansion Cataclysm starting with the Hunter. Beside a change in the resource management of the Hunters - they get to use the resource focus like their pets - they'll also receive new abilities. On of it called "Trap Launcher" allows the Hunter to place any trap within a range of 40 yards without having to move. A new shot deals nature damage and shall be the new signature shot of the beastmastery Hunter.

More informations about the mastery skills, abilities and talent changes can be found below.

New Hunter Abilities

Cobra Shot (level 81): A new shot that deals Nature damage instead of Physical damage. This ability will share a cooldown with Steady Shot. This will give hunters an alternative to Steady Shot on heavily-armored targets, and we will have talent incentives in the Beast Mastery tree to make this a signature shot.

Trap Launcher (level 83): When used, the next trap can be shot to a location within 40 yards. This provides the current Freezing Arrow treatment to all traps and, as a result, we will be removing the current ability Freezing Arrow. 1-minute cooldown. No global cooldown.

Camouflage (level 85): The hunter enters an obscured state that prevents him or her from taking ranged damage. The character would still be subject to melee or area-of-effect attacks, and dealing or taking damage will break the Camouflage effect. The hunter can move and set traps when under Camouflage, and will receive a damage bonus when attacking while under Camouflage (which will then break the effect).

Resource Mechanic Change

Here we come to the meat of the upcoming hunter changes.

• Hunters will no longer use mana; instead the class will use Focus. Focus generates much like Energy, by building up. It will not be affected by Intellect at all. Haste will improve its generation. Hunters will generate roughly 6 Focus per second, slightly less than rogues' Energy generation rate of around 10 Energy per second. Below, we have listed some examples of how we intend Focus costs to operate:
  • Steady Shot/Cobra Shot: No cost. Generates 9 Focus per shot (or 12 per second instead of 6).
  • Arcane Shot/Chimera Shot /Explosive Shot: 45 Focus.
  • Aimed Shot/Multi-Shot: 60 Focus.
  • Concussive Shot/Tranquilizing Shot: 35 Focus.
  • Rapid Fire/Master’s Call/Disengage: 30 Focus.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to the resource change and new abilities listed above, we intend to make adjustments to some of the other abilities and mechanics you already know well. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we’re going for with each spec.

• A major change coming for the hunter is the removal of ammunition. Guns, bows, and crossbows will now do damage without consuming ammunition at all. There will be no more ammo slot on the hunter’s character display. Any ammunition that a hunter has at the time of the change will become gray sellable items. Existing quivers will be converted into large bags -- though each hunter can only have one and non-hunters will not benefit from this change -- and we will not be making any additional quivers.
• Pet management will also change. Hunters will now have two types of attainable pets: active pets and stored pets. Hunters will be able to have up to three active pets (perhaps five for Beast Mastery specialized players) and will have the ability to switch among these pets any time they are out of combat, without going to town. They will also be able to have a large number of pets in storage at the stables. In order to swap a pet from active to passive, a hunter will still need to visit their local Stable Master. However, this should afford ample storage for the many Spirit Beasts wandering the lands of Azeroth.
• Additionally, hunters will now start with a race-appropriate pet at level 1 and will be able to tame a different pet at level 10. We are also changing many pet family abilities to provide important buffs and debuffs. The intention is to allow the hunter to be able to swap pets and fill a position if a certain role is missing from the group. The goal is to have all pets provide a damage increase that is very similar and no greater than any other pet. Some examples of the changes we are making to the pet families are listed below:
  • Wind Serpents: Will provide a debuff that increases the amount of spell damage taken by an enemy (similar to a weaker version of the warlock ability Curse of Elements).
  • Ravagers: Will provide a debuff that will increase an enemy's Physical damage vulnerability (similar to a weaker version of the warrior ability Rampage).
  • Hyenas: Will provide bleed damage (similar to a weaker version of the druid ability Mangle).
• Stings and other periodic effects will now benefit from haste and critical strike ratings. Hasted damage-over-time abilities do not lose duration, but instead add additional damage ticks.
• Viper Sting will now restore 9 Focus every 3 seconds.
• We are reinforcing hunters as a ranged class. To this end, the class will now start with ranged abilities at level 1, and we will be removing some melee abilities, such as Mongoose Bite.

New Talents and Talent Changes

• Beast Mastery hunters will have a new talent called Careful Aim, which increases the damage of the next Steady Shot or Cobra Shot, but also increases the cast time of these abilities. The intention is to make the combination of spells into a decent damage opener, especially in conjunction with the new ability Camouflage.
• Beast Mastery hunters will also have talents that make Cobra Shot superior to Steady Shot, such as Longevity reducing the cast time of Cobra Shot to 1.5 seconds.
• Rapid Recuperation will cause Rapid Fire to give 20/40/60 Focus immediately and will cause Rapid Killing to generate 3 Focus per second.
• Efficiency will reduce the Focus cost of Chimera Shot, Aimed Shot, and Arcane Shot.
• Thrill of the Hunt grants Focus when you land a critical strike.
• Hunter vs. Wild increases the hunter’s Focus generation when his or her pet is snared, stunned, or rooted.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Beast Mastery
Ranged Damage
Haste
Pet Damage

Marksmanship
Ranged Damage
Armor Penetration
Double Shot

Survival
Ranged Damage
Ranged Critical Damage
Elemental Damage

Pet Damage: Many of the passive benefits to pet damage will no longer be available in the Beast Mastery talent tree. However, these will be provided through the new Mastery mechanic.

Double Shot: The hunter will have a chance to launch a free attack off of the global cooldown for 50% damage.

Elemental Damage: Hunter abilities such as traps, Black Arrow, and Explosive Shot will do elemental damage of the following types: Arcane, Fire, Frost, Nature, and Shadow.