Note that none of the below information has been announced by Blizzard, but Boubouille from MMO-Champion claims that it comes from "reliable sources" and he has a pretty good track record when it comes to being correct with his announcements. Also note, everything below is spoilers, so if you don't want to hear it, wait until Blizzcon next week.

Source: http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=92919.0

(click to show spoiler)World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is the next expansion for World of Warcraft. Dark and forgotten threats that have long stayed out of sight have finally arrived on our shores, unleashing a cataclysmic event upon Azeroth and now preparing more nefarius plans to take it back.

Level Cap
The level cap in the next expansion will be slightly lower than expected this time around; 85.

This suggests Blizzard wants more room for expansions before hitting the level 100 cap. With less leveling to do (along with the revamped leveling listed below likely to increase the speed and ease of leveling), leveling a new race remains appealing for new and existing players alike.

Leveling from 80-85 should be a much bigger deal, the idea is to make sure that gaining a level really means something and doesn't make you feel like you just have 4 more levels to go.

New Classes
Cataclysm doesn't introduce any new classes to the game. Instead, Blizzard have offered more race and classes combinations to players. The Some of these have alreadly been datamined from the 3.2.2 Test Realms. The An Injured Colleague quest and it's new Night Elf counter-part help to introduce the lore for these new race and class combinations, so we can probably expect to see more of these for some of the less traditional ones.

Human Hunter
Orc Mage
Night Elf Mage
Dwarf Mage
Blood Elf Warrior
Dwarf Shaman
Undead Hunter
Tauren Paladin
Tauren Priest
Gnome Priest
Troll Druid


New Races
The events of the cataclysm has caused two new races to seek new allies. The Goblins for the Horde and the Worgen for the Alliance.

Goblins
Deathwing once again sought the services of the goblins, as slaves. Unable to refuse such an offer, the goblins were enslaved by him. A large group have resisted however. With their previous homes devastated by the cataclysm, they escaping to an island off the coast of The Barrens. As they strive to recover, they come across an Orc captured on an Alliance ship and rescue him. The Orc turns out to be none other than Thrall himself, and in return offers the Goblins a place within the Horde. These events are carried out in a quest line, allowing players to experience first-hand the reasons behind the Goblins' shift from neutrality.

Worgen
The cataclysm has cracked open the Greymane Wall, finally revealing what has happened to the kingdom of Gilneas and its citizens. With the Worgen curse taken hold, they have found a partial cure, allowing thme to retain their Human minds even when transformed. Venturing forth from Gilneas and seeking help from the Alliance, they have decided to join them, to combat the new threats of Cataclysm.

Gilneas will make extensive use of the phasing system (much like the Death Knight starting area), to show what happened while the kingdom was cut off from the rest of the world and lead up to present day.

Worgens will have two forms, a Worgen form and a Human form. Players will be able to customise the look of both forms.

New Content
Cataclysm will be the first expansion not to introduce a new continent, instead making use of previously unreleased zones and revamping existing ones.

Classic Azeroth Revamp
A cataclysmic event caused by Deathwing and Azshara will change the face of Azeroth as we know it. Most of the new content for Cataclysm will take the form of a revamped Azeroth, taking advantage of newer additions to WoW such as phasing and daily quests. Most of the quests and mobs in the classic zones will also be redesigned to make leveling less painful. With the revamp, a greater narritive and sense progression will be offered to players. Some zones and dungeons will change drastically to fit this, e.g.,

The Barrens will be split into two separate zones of two different level bands.
Azshara will become a low level (~10-20) zone.
Some of the zones like the Thousand Needles will be flooded.
Durotar is wrecked and apparently Orgrimmar could be destroyed. A new Orc city is rebuilt over the course of the expansion.
Gnomeregan will be part of the expansion as well and gnomes might be able to reclaim their capital. (The last part is still unconfirmed)
Wailing Caverns will be become a lush tropical area as a result of the druid's magic.
The Blackrock Spire will erupt and a new version of Blackrock Mountains will be available, apparently Ragnaros will be back too.

In the aftermath of the cataclysm, and the new conflicts on the horizon relief efforts can be found in many zones and new open PvP areas similar to Lake Wintergrasp.

Flying in Azeroth
Part of the redesign of the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor is the introduction of flying to the two continents, allowing access to many new areas and quicker travelling across the large continents.

Classic Dungeon Revamp
Redesigning Onyxia's Lair in Patch 3.2.2 was just the first step. As most of the leveling will take place in revamped areas of Azeroth, so too will the dungeons, allowing players to use them to level from 80 to 85.

Unreleased Zones & Dungeons
With the addition of flying mounts to Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms and the redesign of many zones, most of the previously unreachable or incomplete zones will now be made available to players. This is where most of the new content from 80 to 85 will take place. Some of these are,

Hyjal (present)
Gilneas - The Worgen starting Zone.
Uldum

It is unclear if the old Goblin locations such as Kezan and Undermine will be included in Cataclyms with the revelation of the goblins' plight, but several new islands have also been risen from the seas by the events of Cataclysm, some on the backs of giant sea turtles and whales, with the addition of several underwater zones.

Characters and Events

Deathwing
Deathwing the Destroyer / Neltharion the Earth-Warder will play a major role in Cataclysm. Having been driven mad by Old God whisperings and turning against his own kind only to be fail in his attempts, Deathwing has sunk into the shadows. While the Horde and the Alliance were busy fighting back the Burning Legion only to then be beset with the Scourge, he has been lurking and moving things into place. After Lady Sinestra's failed attempts to create a Twilight Dragonflight, he again retreated to Grim Batol and succeeded where she failed. With his results seen in the Obsidian Sanctum, he has finally created the supreme Dragonflight he sought and plans to unleash it upon the world. But what of the Old Gods' sway over him?

Azshara
Queen Azshara will also play a major part in Cataclysm. Unknown to many mortal races, long forgotten by others, and believe to be dead by her own kind, she has not been dormant in depths of the Maelstrom. Having those around her transformed by the Old Gods into Naga after her failure in the War of the Ancients, she has become far more powerful and a greater threat than she once was. Not content with just Nazjatar and the depths of the sea, Azshara seeks to reclaim power and reign once again. With the true plan behind Lady Vashj's support of Illidan remaining a mystery we do not know what hand Azshara has yet played. The big question remains, is she now serving her "saviors", the Old Gods?

The Cataclysm
I'm still not sure who is the true end boss of Cataclysm is, but the cataclysm appears to have been caused by attempts to incantation to summon extremely powerful beings using an ancient incantation by Deathwing and Azshara. They're both very powerful, but the cataclysm itself suggests something more powerful is behind it, perhaps their shared past of Old God influence?

The Guardian of Tirisfal
Malfurion Stormrage will be returning to Azeroth to aid in the creation of the new Guardian of Tirisfal - Thrall! Med'an's role in these events is currently unknown.

The New (New) Horde
Thrall will hand over the leadership of the Horde to Garrosh Hellscream, while he serves as a coordinator for both the Horde and Alliance forces in and effort to combat the new threat of the Naga and Black Dragonflight. Without Thrall to keep Garrosh in check, he declares open war on the Alliance. In the political upheaval Cairne Bloodhoof is implicated as a traitor to the Horde and murdered by Garrosh. Cairne's son Baine takes over as the new Tauren chieftan. This could explain why Baine was removed from the game in Patch 3.2.2, you can find more information about this in Ahmo Thunderhorn - replacement for Baine Bloodhoof?

EDIT: The above information has been CONFIRMED at Blizzcon!

so lame that alliance get werewolves. I WANT A WEREWOLF!!!

Forget Baine, Ruhe Bloodhoof for Tauren Chieftain. Druid leadership FTW.

Cataclysm confirmed at Blizzcon, all leaked information has been proven to be accurate.

yeah i ordered the ppv for the show and have been watching it all day

Wow, watchin a panel on itemiztion and skills and such right now for wow...big changes on the itemization part (note these are all things taken OFF of items)

-mp5 is gone...spirit does that properly now like it was always supposed to do

-spell power gone...int does that now as well as mana still...no more int for hunters or enchance sham (replaced with focus, similar to energy for rogues)

-atk pwr gone...1 agi=2ap for hunters, rogues, druids to be equal to str for plate classes

-defense gone...talents will give mitigation

-armor pen gone...they said people were too dumb to understand it haha. replaced with mastery which is some form of speciailziation in a certain area (they havent explained it really yet)

-haste changed...ehnaced rate of energy runes rage or focus back

-block changed...mitigates % of damage now

-due to all these changes stam is being equalized so all classes will have a comparable health pool, but talents would determine their mitigation lvl

-also a new prof called reforging exists where you can alter your gears stats by cutting one stat in half and putting those points into a different stat.

-and another big change...skill/spell ranks are GONE. you will earn a skill/spell at a lvl and it will scale as you lvl up from that point.

-also warlocks soul shards are gone as we know them. they now have an augmentation effect. a lock gets 3 per fight and they do something such as add more damage to a skill or add a dot to a skill or something like that.

It's about time they started consolidating stats. Love to hear that spells will scale with level. It's become a big pain in the ass (imo) to level casters due to having mana cost scaling up while the effects of your spells remain the same. Also nice to hear that they're changing soul shards.

Any word on Diablo III?

new class is MONK. they also had a cool panel on how they made some of the monsters. also revamped ome skills for the existing classes that they had released. i honestly didnt pay as much attention as i never really got into diablo.

Was there a targeted release date for the expansion?

nope. in typical blizzard fashion they said "when it is done."

also mmo champion has updated their website with all the blizzcon info.

They said they're shooting for 2010. I'd say we'll see the expansion next spring, maybe summer. My reasoning is that they've announced before that Icecrown (3.3) is the last planned major content patch of this expansion cycle. At the rate they're putting out the patches, I'd say we'll see Icecrown by the end of this year. WotLK came out about 6 months after the last major content patch in the Burning Crusade cycle (2.4 - Sunwell). So if the next expansion is 6 months from 3.3, that puts it in the middle of next year.

http://www.wow.com/2009/08/23/world-of-warcraft-cataclysm-targeted-for-a-2010-release-date/

You think they realize wotlk was a failure?

i think they realize, if nothing else, that they need to do something major to freshen up the game. it looks like that is their goal, so we will see what happens.

imo BC was a far bigger failure than WotLK...

Maybe it was the fact that I didn't really start playing until TBC, but I look back far more fondly on TBC than I did on WotLK. In TBC, raids like Kara were fun and actually had personality. Killing a boss for the first time actually meant something, but now a first boss kill is just sort of "meh, we just did it on the easy mode." Dailies were also far more fun in TBC, IMO.

Vanilla will always be my favorite. It seemed to always have something new and interesting to do.

They'll try to revive PvP in Blackrock Mt. with the new instance there, but I'm not sure it will ever reach the levels of fun that Vanilla BM did.

And wth is Armor Penetration?

Same with me, Vanilla was my favorite, TBC was decent, Wrath felt like a failure.

There were lots of improvements in Wrath, questing and achievements, but with raiding it took the wrong path.

TBC had its problems also. Attunements caused problems and were a headache, I think they should have made attunements Guild based and not individual player based, eventually they just got rid of them.

But there was still an epic feeling in downing some bosses in TBC, its a far cry from vanilla where almost every boss was epic, but TBC had its moments with Lady Vashj and Kael'thas Sunstrider, even Illidan to a lesser extent.

Wrath bosses lost the epic feeling, they were all too easy. Even when hardmode was introduced, they still didn't feel epic.

If vanilla bosses were like wrestling bears, Wrath bosses were like wrestling mice; but in wrath, you also have the option of stripping naked, laying on the ground and tying your hands and feet together so the mouse would be more of a challenge. But even if you give the mouse all those handicaps, it still doesn't change the fact that you are fighting a mouse, and a mouse is nowhere near as epic as a bear. Every now and then you'll find a rat mixed in with the mice, but blizzard will quickly remove the rat and replace it with an easy mode mouse.

In vanilla there were about 5 or 6 guilds that made it though Blackwing Lair, 2 or 3 finished AQ, and maybe 1 finished Naxx.
In TBC, 5 or 6 guilds made it through BT.

In Wrath, every single guild on the server is doing Ulduar, eventually most of those guilds will finish it. It doesn't feel epic completing something that most people are expected to be able to complete. Also with this many raiding guilds, people are spread too thin, with no pool to pick from when your guild experiences turnover, why would someone choose your guild specifically when there are 20+ other guilds just like you.

The new Guild leveling system introduced in Cataclysm will help guilds stand out if the leveling isn't too fast, but that comes too late for us.



Dailies in TBC were something that you did if you had spare time and needed extra cash and they were also a good place to PvP, Wrath dailies felt like a chore that you had to do every day. Have to do hodir dailies for the enchant, have to do tournament dailies or I'll never get my portiable bank, or my mount.

The biggest thing I miss from TBC was the variety in raids. One of the most frustrating things that I found leading up to my break from the game, was how hard it was to find a good 10-man group on off nights. Nobody wants to run the 10 mans because they're the same damn dungeons as the 25 mans. There's no variety in raiding...if you raid, you raid Ulduar, and that's it. Nothing else is worth it in terms of gear or progression. Also, in TBC, you had 2 dungeons at each tier. If you want a break from SSC, raid TK, or vice versa. If you're sick of Hyjal, go hit up BT. You don't really get that option here...Naxx is T7, Ulduar is T8, Argent Tournament is T9, Icecrown is T10. Raiding anything below the newest dungeon feels like a waste unless you're bringing along your alt.

I can't imagine things being any better with 2.2, with the same dungeon on 4 separate lockouts, and a 5 man taking place in the exact same location, only with different bosses. I want variety back. Karazhan was fun to run on an off-night, because it was different from BT, or Hyjal, or Sunwell. Same case for Zul'Aman.

Lady Vashj is still one of the greatest experiences I've had in this game. I don't think there has been any other fight that has required as much team play and 'out of the box' thinking on our part and it was an amazing feeling killing her that first time (and still felt badass everytime after).