Wrath of the Lich King: June 2008 Archives

Ok, so mere minutes after I finished writing my opening ceremonies lament, I surfed to some of the news sites, and lo and behold, we have a smattering of class info from the Developer Panel. We also have a mixed bag of humorous and disappointing answers from the Q&A Panel that followed the Developers Panel. Let us now go into the highlights and low lights of these two panels.

Developers Panel - Mostly a class based presentation with questions
Death Knight
 -They don't want the Death Knight's to be pigeon-hole like other classes have been
 -runes have a 10 second cooldown currently
 -The spell Armies of Undead are meant to call masses of undead, like how Arthas can as king
Hunter
 -Steady will not clip Auto
 -Pets will get their own talent trees, losing the point system they have now
 -Cornered - Your pet does an additional 20% damage when they are at 20% health
Mage
 -Frostfire Bolt will make elementalists more viable
 -they will compensate for the loss of CC exclusivity by ramping up Mage damage output
Priest
 -Divine Hymn - cast on party members, if anyone strikes a person with this spell on, they enter a trance
 -Dispersion - Reduces damage 90%, regens 6% of mana per second, 51 point shadow for turtling.
 -Guardian Spirit - castable pet that will follow the target and absorb the next killing blow the target would have died to.
Druid
 -indoor roots confirmed, druid was left out of too many instances for lack of CC, but...
 -no removal of Cyclone diminishing returns due cast length and duration
 -HoT dependent buff call Flourish
Shaman
 -have too many totems
 -totems will become raid effect, not just party
 -Strength of Earth and Grace of Air will be combined
 -new spell Hex, short duration emergency cc. half second cast, 8-10 second duration
Rogue
 -Fan of Knives, a WC3 retro ability, will be a short AoE damage burst
 -Sap will be usable on "Pretty much anything with a skull and brain inside of it."
 -Sap can be used on Humanoids, beasts, dragonkin, demons.
Paladin
 -Hand of Purity - reactive healing spell, a PoM style 'healbomb'
 -more blessings like Freedom and Protection
Warrior
 -want to make it more like WC3
 -added Bladestorm Shockwave which will help prot with damage
 -Titan's Grip confirmed, duel wielding of 2h weapons
Warlock
 -Demonic Circle - mark a spot on the ground to teleport back to
 -51 point demonology is an Illidan like Demon Form with AoE shadow bolts
General Q&A
 -We have to work on the specs that haven't worked well enough
 -windfury is no longer going to be WEAPON and going to be BUFF for your PC. Windfury is a buff, not a weapon enchant. It works with forms and poisons and weapon buffs
 -Totems and Unleashed Rage from Shaman, and Battle Shout for Warriors will br raid wide


Q&A Panel
-no gnome paladins
-gnomes are too short to have been in cinematic
-Sunwell confirmed as final pre Wrath content patch
-Inscription is intended for melee or casters and there will be major and minor inscriptions. Herbalism will be the primary gathering skill.
-the new class will change the format of a 25 man raid, but they want to make it in a good way
-DKs should be the best at tanking against casters. Shouldn't be far behind on other encounters.
-flying mounts will have an attunement, hints at defrosting, and possible level 80 mount with passengers.
-Ret Paladins will share itemization with DPS warriors and DK
-new dire bear model, and dire cat coming
-Stormwind Harbor will connect to Northwind
-DK will have a newly cleared area of north PL for their starter
-LOS in PvP in wrath will be more dynamic, with moving and shifting objects
-no plans to nerf Sunwell KJ fight, as he is the Naxx of TBC and hard to beat.
-character order and display settings is interesting, but not implemented yet
-dagger spec for rogues will be very powerful in wrath
-no epic ground form for druids
-clown look to amour may return in wrath, but slightly improved looks
-We are working on a plan to give players access to two Talent specs.
-soul shard farming is not expected to go away, but may get a little easier
-Kara animal boss was meant as an easy sub 10 man group method to get rep


Quotable
-Even though there will be a new tank class, all tank classes tank differently.

You may have noticed, perhaps, that there was a small gathering of gamers, 8,000 or so in number, in Paris, France this morning. There has been speculation and coverage leading up to this Invitational for days now, so much so that any reasonable player would be sick of hearing about it by now. Of course, I am not reasonable, sane, or anything of the sort, because I was one of many who were up at the ungodly hour of 4:30 AM central time to tune into the stream.

Diablo 3? Wrath Beta? Release dates for either Wrath or Starcraft 2? Both maybe? The splash screen on the Blizzard.com web site has been hinting at something, and even before the opening ceremonies began the word had leaked about the biggest announcement of the event, but as I said earlier, I really did not feel that one big announcement would be all we would get from the ceremony. If Apple can do several products in one keynote, Mike Morhaim can!

The Big News
As I was downing Coke Zero by the can to wake up enough to actually report on what we heard, what we were all excited about, when BA chat saw a pointer to MMO Champion, who had a leak from the big screen at the Invitational that showed the new title would be Diablo 3. Being that this was not overly surprising news, I hunkered down and waited for the announcements to start. Once the high res stream began working, missing little of importance, the stream stuttered and buffered it's way to the end.

Mike Morhaim proudly announced Diablo 3, an amazing teaser for the upcoming title showing a totally awesome cinematic with voice over. While I only caught part of it, I am sure that Blizzard's web site will have a copy of that video later today. Mike then introduced the Diablo 3 Lead Developer, who went into a couple of the classes, showed some of the improvements since Diablo 2, and showed a few fights.

Expecting that Mike would come back and begin the process of announcing the Wrath stuff, I was cursing when my stream kept stopping for minutes at a time. isheepthings, who was in BA chat at the time, was kind enough to give a description of the stuff, since apparently the stream wasn't crappy for all of the users, just most. I was saddened, though, to hear they went back to thanking folks in the audience and then moved onto some fire dancers to close out the opening ceremony.

While we will undoubtedly see a nice amount of information out of the unlabeled discussion panels, at least some of which will have WoW content as wrath draws near, it is not the level of information I was hoping for. Discussion panels will not have release dates, cinematic, or other Wrath information that many of us want so bad. I will report again when we have more information on whatever they decide to tell us about the Wrath expansion and current game. 

'Tis the season for predictions, and boy are there some good ones. We sit at day 5 of the progressive splash screen on Blizzard's site, which has many interesting possibilities and ideas that could be hidden within, and of course breeding much speculation. Having read several of the varied perspectives online, I can tell you I have seen all kinds of theories and ideas for what might be coming when the Invitational starts at 11:45 AM in Paris on Saturday.

A few of the more thoughtful and educated predictions I have read made me think back. The 'Jobs' section of the Blizzard web site has had a lot of interesting entries over the last few years. The employment section of the Blizzard site has long been the fuel to launch rumors, and I think that what we hear from Mike Morhaim and company on Saturday will have at least something to do with those numerous and widely varying job postings.

The job postings I recall at the time of this writing are for a mobile game developer and a next gen MMO developer/designer. While it is possible that the next gen MMO spot(s) were for Wrath or the following expansion, I think they have at least some small thing to do with the bigger announcement we will see in the Worldwide Invitational, the one hinted by Rob Pardo, though by far not the only big announcement.

The mobile developer, I think, will be the mentioned-as-possible Mobile version of WoW, allowing us to chat, check mail, and other low resource functions. What platforms and devices this will work on, I do not know, but I would say that WoW Mobile for the iPhone is an obvious choice with the App Store coming to iTunes. I sadly do not know the other devices and platforms well enough to actually speak to what else might be possible, though feel free to comment your opinions and possible devices.

The second position could be a fit for the more common predictions. These seem to take one of two lies of thought. Thought number one is 'no brainer, it's Diablo 3'. This is the only major property of Blizzards without something in the production or release phase right now, so this is a decent guess. I do not recall much ice in the Diablo universe, but I am told Diablo 2 had an ice zone. This means that it could be Diablo or a Diablo universe title in the splash screen, which is now progressed to the point of five runes and a pair of glowing eyes.

Add onto this theory that the 8th anniversary of Diablo 2 is on the Sunday of the Invitational and it gets to be an interesting theory, gaining a bit more credibility. At least one of the runes in the ice is also said to be from the earlier Diablo games, though there is also a theory that compares other runes to the 2 other known Blizzard titles.

The other line of thought is the 'D3 would be too obvious!'. These people have a few reasons, such as the one I mention above about Diablo 3 being the only franchise not in the works or released at this point. With Rob Pardo pretty much telling the press that there will be a game announced, it is only a logical conclusion that Diablo would be the title, which is a conclusion Blizzard could expect and prey upon.

Blizzard knows their customers and their fans quite well, so it is not hard for them to lead them down the path of thinking that they want them to. This could be an entirely new title, or as one person put it, the eyes could just by the Lich King Arthas, perhaps heralding the much anticipated teaser or even the cinematic being released at the invitational. What do you think is coming? What juicy Wrath news, smoking Starcraft 2 tidbits, and Diablo 3 revelations will we see?

Stay tuned to my twitter and this blog for the news from the Invitational, which I will be paying great attention to for you all. 

[Note: As this was being written, it was revealed that a secure authentication tool will be made available. A pseudo random code generator, the authenticator will be associated with your account and the code it generates will be connected to the account once registered. Priced at roughly $7, it is a small pittance to pay to prevent the loss of years of work. I know I will be finding some way to buy one of these. Good though this is, it is unlikely to be the big news of the Invitational.]

I was reading this WoW Insider piece talking about 2.4.3 being the author's savior, as it gives them something fun to do while they wait, currently bored, for the expansion to hit. Zach Yonzon suggests that it is quite possible this will not be the last patch of this kind, and this got me thinking. Is it realistic to think we can go for the oft predicted 5-6 months with no change to the 'no 2.5' stance that Blizzard is still sticking to?

I think that, like the author, we just might see some filler patches if the next expansion does take longer than my current prediction of late September. As I had previously explained my now horribly wrong summer prediction for Wrath, let me take a moment or twenty to explain my current thinking behind that guess, cause I tell ya, it's a doozy!

Fist point: Blizzcon in early October. Second point: No Blizzcon has been held without the announcement of an expansion for the game. Third: There is no bigger sign that your next expansion will be a flop than announcing it's predecessor before it even hits store shelves. I had a fourth point until recently, the Brewfest/Hallow's End factor, but both now seem somehow less pertinent now that 2.4.3 has much of that content from the alpha test.

If we look at the lead up to Burning Crusade, we never really had the precursor stuff to that expansion that we are seeing beginning in 2.4.3, which has at least the Stormwind Harbor under construction. While it is entirely possible this could be the only lead up bit, I somehow doubt it since no construction project goes from blasting supplies to a fully completed section overnight.

In the end, what we will see likely depends a great deal on how long the expansion takes to be completed in Alpha and possibly Beta. I don't think it will last more than another 3 months, but I may be wrong. We might see a Blizzcon without a new expansion announcement. We might see WoW 4.0 announced. Such an announcement may also include a release date for Wrath, which would take some of the surprise out of the occasion. We also should see some new info that could hint as to what we might expect from the expansion at the Worldwide Invitational in a few days.

As I have said before, I think we just might have a clearer picture of what we can expect in Wrath and it's release at the worldwide invitational. I think that with around 10 million players in the game, it would be surprising to not see something about the expansion mentioned at the Invitational in Paris. I suspect the amount of content that is playable at the Invitational will also be a telling note for how far into the development they are.

As for my thoughts on the prospect of truly progressive content, I would simply say "YES!!!!!!!". As a long time leveler in Westfall and other human lands, I would love to see something like the Westfall inn repaired fully, the bridge in Lakeshire rebuilt, and all of the 'work in progress' in the game actually get finished. Now, I am told this has changed, but I am fully against the way content progression worked in LOTRO when I beta tested it, cause once you completed an instance you could not return, and the entire world, including who you could talk to and play alongside, had changed. Progressive, not exclusionary content, rocks!

As we are beginning to see the news and blog posts of people making preparations for the upcoming expansion, I felt it time to begin working on this planned series of articles. When you look down the path and see change coming, it is natural for us to look back on what has been, and to look forward to what will come. That is the plan for this series of articles of indeterminate length.

Let me take you back, friends, to January 15th, 2007. About 10 pm server time on Argent Dawn people started congregating around the dark portal which was now clear of the demons that flooded from the portal in the weeks leading up to the opening of the big black wormhole to the heroes of Azeroth. If you recall the events, you will know that Kazzak, a troublesome relic of the Burning Legion on Azeroth, found an artifact that allowed him to open the portal again, flooding Azeroth with demons. You may also recall his reward was a promotion to Doom Lord Kazzak, and he was made larger and more powerful. his worldly possesions also gained a few levels.

As the heroes of Azeroth began to collect by the portal, we eagerly waited and talked about what we would do first. I had to wait until the following morning to pass through the Dark Portal, but the first thing I did was look around and admire the sheer awesomeness of the zone in front of me, and even more so when I looked at the world map and found I had only discovered a small fragment of the entirety of Outlands, and there was more to do and alts to do it on as well as my main, Medros.

Some of the things people talked about was that they were going to check out the new Battle ground, some were going to start Draenei or Blood Elves, just to admire these new playable races and admire the look of them. Others just spent the first few weeks of the expansion leveling lower level alts, knowing that the opening zones of Outlands would be swamped with players. There were also the few, the insane, who were looking to race to be their realms first 70, first Horde Paladin/Alliance Shaman to 70, and so on. Then there were the ironic ones, who just wanted to go back to Ironforge and enjoy the lack of lag in the city.

We have a lot of stuff we can do first thing after upgrading to the Wrath of the Lich King. We could hurry to the opening zones of Northrend, Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord. We can rush to the barbershop and get our first haircut in up to 4 years. We could create our very own Death Knight. We could go learn some new dances. Or we could just enjoy the pleasure of not having to compete for mobs, for gathering, or anything else that annoys. What will you do first when Wrath of the Lich King hits? 

As we are beginning to see the news and blog posts of people making preparations for the upcoming expansion, I felt it time to begin working on this planned series of articles. When you look down the path and see change coming, it is natural for us to look back on what has been, and to look forward to what will come. That is the plan for this series of articles of indeterminate length.

Wrath of the Lich King is being lauded as having a lot of new features, from the mundane to the long overdue. This post will look at some of the more popular ones and we will talk about a few of the leaked features that may or may not be coming in 3.0. Overall this expansion is aiming to be more feature rich and view changing than the Burning Crusade was, but in the end the launch day will tell us if Blizzard can hit the mark that their customers expect.

The first feature coming is something that is an idea a couple of years old. Originally the Alterac Valley was planned to be an open air PvP zone that players would be flagged for PvP with objectives that could be fought over. Lake Wintergrasp will be that and more, with not only an entire open PvP zone, but destructible buildings and siege weapon warfare. For the PvP set this is no doubt one of the coolest features coming in the expansion.

The next features I will sum up as instance changes. From the 5 man regular and heroic dungeons having different loot tables, to the sheer idea of raid dungeons having both 10 and 25 person versions, there is a lot more changes coming to this next expansion than we had come in Burning Crusade. I am sure the coming boss fights and raid mechanics that we do not know about will be huge as well and will only add to the excitement many of us feel as wrath approaches.

On the game play side of things we have a lot of changes and new stuff coming. We have 10 more levels and the accompanying addition to all of our 27 talent trees for the classes in the game now. We will have new gear and a whole new look to weapons and gear, moving from a sci fi look on to a raw and rough look to the new items. We know now that there will be new changes to current zones, no longer in the realm of leak and now more fully in the realm of changes, like the Stormwind Harbor addition to the human city.

As for the new stuff, the big news is that druids will now get a out of combat resurrection spell. Ok, all kidding aside, the really big stuff is the upcoming Death Knight hero class, which will be a massive change to the game. Add to that the forthcoming Inscription profession and all the new gathered materials in Skinning, Mining, and Herbalism, and you quickly see there is a lot of game play stuff that doesn't lie inside of an instance.

Beyond the changes coming to Stormwind, we of course have the expansive continent of Northrend, with almost a dozen zones and quests galore. The floating city of Dalaran on the newly accessible content in Wrath will also be a really cool addition, and the two chosen factions in that city are really intriguing to anyone used to the current Scryer and Aldor faction disputes.

Then we have the fluff features coming in the expansion. New hair styles will allow players to customize their characters in ways they haven't been able to before, even though the dreaded ugly faces will not be changing. We have new dances, so that your character will not /dance like every other character of the same race and gender combination. No doubt that will be a boon to the mailbox dancers everywhere. The last of the big fluff features is dozens of new emotes coming in the expansion including /facepalm and .


With all of these and more features coming in the expansion, I wonder what feature are you the most excited about? What feature are you just bright eyed and eagerly anticipating from Wrath? Are you a hardcore raider looking forward to standing over the corpse of the Lich King? Will you do it as a Death Knight? Or are you looking forward to progression of lore and the stories that are the foundation of World of Warcraft? 

As we are beginning to see the news and blog posts of people making preparations for the upcoming expansion, I felt it time to begin working on this planned series of articles. When you look down the path and see change coming, it is natural for us to look back on what has been, and to look forward to what will come. That is the plan for this series of articles of indeterminate length.

In our next aspect of looking ahead, I wanted to take a bit of time to look to what is coming in the end game for Wrath of the Lich King. So far what we know is both significant but lacking details. There are a few general bits of information we know, but as of the last time we heard anything we had nothing about specific dungeon bosses.

The first part of the End Game we have is Lake Wintergrasp, a full PvP enabled zone that will cause anyone on any realm who enters the zone to be PvP flagged. Undoubtedly there will be a new Battleground, likely revolving around the Wintergrasp zone, and a slew of Arena seasons including seasonal gear and other rewards.

The second part is 5 mans and heroics. While we do not know what the majority of the 5 mans will be, we do know that they will be itemized completely separately from the normal mode 5 man dungeons, so it should be a little easier to find a group for a dungeon to fill the needs of those who want gear from the regular version of the dungeons. The big question will be whether the daily drops will also be kept to only the specific level they are meant to be in.

The final part of the End game by most standards is the raiding end game. Again, we do not have much information regarding raid bosses, other than the previously mentioned basics like Malygos in the Nexus and Arthas in the Ice Crown, but we do have a fair bit of info to mull over at this point. First, the split between 10 and 25 mans of the same dungeon. Like the 5 man and their Heroic counterparts, the 10 and 25 man dungeons will have separate loot tables, so the 25 man will have an additional tier of gear higher than the 10 man dungeons.

For the other possible end games I have another piece coming in a few days, but I do wonder what part of the end game we know about are you most looking forward to? Will you be making use of the 10 and 25 man raids being on separate lock outs? Will your guild even bother with the 10 man versions of the dungeons? Will you look forward to or dread hearing of the first 10 person kill of Arthas? Or are you one of the many who feels that someone like Arthas needs 25 people to be a decent fight? Think they will make his 10 person defeat be a token defeat instead of a full kill? Let me know in the comments!

As we are beginning to see the news and blog posts of people making preparations for the upcoming expansion, I felt it time to begin working on this planned series of articles. When you look down the path and see change coming, it is natural for us to look back on what has been, and to look forward to what will come. That is the plan for this series of articles of indeterminate length.

The next part in this series I wanted to look at was the zones of the upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. So far we have seen official video and screen shots of Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, Zul'Drak, and Sholazar Basin. We are missing the zones for Lake Wintergrasp, Icecrown, Azol'Nerub, Grizzly Hills, and Storm Peaks. From what we have seen, what is the one world zone you are most excited about? For me it's Dragonblight, with the place that virtually created the dragons we know in lore and history of Azeroth.

How about dungeons? Are there any dungeons or raids that have piqued your interest? I know we don't have any raid boss info yet, other than general stuff like Malygos being the end boss of the Nexus raid dungeon and Arthas being the big bad of Ice Crown Glacier. Even with that, I wonder what dungeons or raids you are most excited about? Utgarde? The new level 80 Naxxramas? Ulduar? Maybe Old Stratholme is giving you the push to travel back into the history of the world once again?

Or are you itching to take on our old friend Arthas and see if you and 24 friends will be able to best him for whatever Legendary or Artifact he might offer up, maybe even a newly reforged Ashbringer? For me, I still don't like the idea of Old Stratholme, though I suppose the Death Knight I am making the back story for could go there. For Medros I think Utgarde looks cool, but the Blue Dragon instance hub at the Nexus is the most alluring for me.

Medros has always been a friend of the dragonflights, other than black of course, but being a magic user, he will undoubtedly see the importance of stopping Malygos' attacks upon the magic users. He will set out to do his best to kindly bring the blue dragonflight back in line with the order of the world with the help of the Red Dragon Queen, Alexstrasza.


I look forward to your answers as to what zones and instances you look forward to in the next expansion, and also I would love to know what you think and want to hear or see next, maybe at the upcoming Worldwide Invitational in Paris. Look for the next installment of this series, covering the end game specifically in the next day or two. 

As we are beginning to see the news and blog posts of people making preparations for the upcoming expansion, I felt it time to begin working on this planned series of articles. When you look down the path and see change coming, it is natural for us to look back on what has been, and to look forward to what will come. That is the plan for this series of articles of indeterminate length.

The first part I want to look at is looking back. First thing I would like to know is what your favorite part of Burning Crusade was. Was it flying mounts? Daily quests? The Isle of Quel'Danas? Becoming Ogre royalty? Or was it the end game? Did Karazhan give you the thrill of your raiding career or was it pushing into Black Temple and Sunwell? The improved leveling and Dustwallow Marsh revamp?

For me, it is a hard thing to answer. I have enjoyed making money at my professions. I always enjoy the feeling of flying from the most northern tip of Netherstorm to the Netherwing Ledge in under 5 minutes. I love the collection of flying mounts I have, and the soon to be 4 level 70s I have. I love the dailies, though to be honest after a month or so of doing each of the new ones, they can get boring unless combined with something I do already like the Nether Residue one.

The second part of this is what you liked least about the Burning Crusade expansion. Was it welfare epics? The constant first kills? Lackluster patching? Did Blizzard not take the game in the direction you wanted? Did you find a disparity between casual end game like the 10 person dungeons and the higher end 25 person raids like Magtheridon and Gruul's Lair? Do yuo not like how hard it is to get through the end game? Is your class not useful in raiding or PvP?

For me, I guess the one biggest annoyance is the duration of TBC. I have never denied that I thought we would have Wrath go gold by now with a July or August release date, not just at about the halfway point in development at this point. Another thing I didn't like about TBC was the utterly useless and wasted time spent on the in game Voice Chat feature.

With Blizzard's need to make their games available to as many people as possible this feature was doomed from the start, because accessible and high quality audio are not possible. Blizzard spent months on that patch when they could have put time and effort into other things like housing and more stable servers.


Overall, I give the first expansion to the game a 4/5 rating, or a B+ grade. The expansion brought a lot of content to the game and really changed a number of aspects of the game. From PvP to raiding, Low level to end level, the World of Warcraft changed drastically in the 2.x version, and I think overall it was a positive change to the game that has only increased it's popularity.

Next up, we will look ahead to a variety of aspects of Wrath of the Lich King that we know about before the big Worldwide Invitational. 

We have received a lot of cool info and screenshots from Blizzard and other sources since the Death knight was announced at Blizzcon 2007. Part leaks, part official, but the information is pretty cool, from spells to history and the mechanics for creating them. Even after all of this, I am sure I am not the only one who has more questions to replace the few we have had answered. If you want to read over some of my other thoughts on the upcoming death knight, I direct you to my thoughts on race, name, and back story of my eventual Death Knight.

Now, that aside, here are just a few of the questions I still have and look forward to hearing about from Blizzard:

• How will they be welcomed by their home faction/cities?
• How will their reputations be worked?
• How will their professions work?
• Will they have special words from the scourge, like the rogue's do with the defias?
• Will they get the same racials as the race you choose?
• Would factions like the Naaru or Forsaken take back their connected races of Death Knight upon their regaining self control?
• Will the Knights of the Ebon Blade be in control of the necropolis? Did they commandeer it? Will it replace Naxx in the sky of Eastern Plaguelands?
• Will the Death Knight have a full 61 talent points to choose, or will it be limited?
• How long will the Death Knight spend int he Necropolis? Will it be measured in a planned amount of XP or time?
• How will the epic Death Charger quest compare in complexity and cost to the Paladin and Warlock ones?
• How will the cost of spells be worked for the Death Knight, as Eastern Plaguelands is not the most profitable place
• Will Death Knight DPS be spell or melee based?

Like I said, these are but a few of my questions surrounding the Death Knight hero class in Wrath of the Lich King.

So as I was preparing for work this morning, I noticed WoW Insider had an interesting post about a change in the descriptions of the three different Death Knight talent trees, Blood, Frost, and Unholy. The changes are interesting, moving away from stereotyped roles of a spec(tank, DPS, PvP, etc) to a more tagged type of description, as well as removing the description about what the presence does from that tree.

WoW Insider suggested a pretty decent guess from my perspective of why this might have been done. One of the reasons that we have the current tank shortage in the game is perspective. We have Warriors not wanting to lose the loot priority value of being the main tank in raids, and thus have complained at any improvements that could potentially see them replaced in that role, such as buff to Paladins or Druids as tanks.

Blizzard being attentive to warriors has led to a deep tank shortage, because no one wants to spec their character in a way that will make them less effective or desirable to the overall gaming population. WoW Insider points out that the change to the trees could be a lead up to a change in thinking from Blizzard. If the company stops referring to trees by the stereotypical terms, DPS, Heal, Tank, PvP, Raid, etc, we just might see players change their thinking.

I have to agree with the writer of the piece in that we could just as easily see the terms to describe something, for example Tank, change to be the new terms, control, counters, and combos. We could see 'LFC(control) DK for Naxx' instead of 'LF Tank for Naxx'. Of course, there is something to be said for the stereotypes. Which is nicer to see: 1) 'LF AoE Pal, Threat War, Swipe Druid, Control DK for <instance>' or 2) 'LF Tank for <instance>'? I think 2 will be it.

In the end, this still has the ring of a move away from the age old stereotypes and to a new way of thinking about how characters are designed and planned, as well I would think in how they are evolved as the future expansions hit. As Blizzard brings more Hero classes into the game in those expansions to be named, this will undoubtedly help them broaden the classes beyond the narrow stereotypes that have plagued them since the game was in beta.

Will changing the descriptions of the classes in the game and in the future change how you think about them? Or will it just be a matter of same crap, different pile? Do you think this will even have any effect on the game and it's instance and raid aspects? Let me know what you think in the comments!