A roundup of World of Warcraft's major class changes

by Eliot Lefebvre on Apr 10th 2010 1:00PM

World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Classes, Game mechanics, Previews

Love it or hate it, World of Warcraft is the 900-pound gorilla of the MMO market at the moment. Nearly everyone who games online has at least tried it, and even those of us who play other games very possibly still play it as an old standby. So it's hard to miss the news about the newest expansion, Cataclysm, which is poised to remake the world in many ways. It's also home to an ambitious series of overhauls to classes and their talent structure, with far-reaching changes for every class in the game.

Our sister site, WoW.com, has been keeping abreast of the development team's slow roll of new information about each class, with every class but Paladins having their upcoming changes previewed. (Paladins are due out on the 16th, due to being "deep in development.") They've also gone through an in-depth analysis of each different set of changes, from the good to the bad. So if you've played the game at all -- and the odds are you have -- take a look past the break for a quick version of everything coming when World of Warcraft brings down the end of the world.
Shaman

Warrior

Death Knight

Rogue

Hunter

Warlock

Priest

Mage

The changes

Druid

Tags: activision, activision-blizzard, blizzard-entertainment, cataclysm, class-changes, classes, death-knight, druid, expansions, hunter, mage, priest, rogue, shaman, warlock, warrior, world-of-warcraft, wow, wow-cataclysm

Reader Comments (28)

Tags: fatgorilla, everyonehastriedit, loveitorhateit, canyoubelieveitssopopular, wowarticle

It's funny how every article about WoW has to start with that explanation. As if you needed to apologize and justify for publishing an article about WoW on a MMO site.
It's ok, why don't you guys just skip that preamble, we can take the news straight up and you don't have to tell us about how big WoW is - this is a MMO site after all.

Too bad my main is a Paladin, so this post is actually very light with on-topic content.

I don't play WoW anymore, and "only" did for 4 months (for me that's a super long time to play a game, for others that's just starting to get into it). I only played a few hours a day. I liked it okay but I get bored fast. Still, I'm super into story, and sort of took it for granted that I could always go back one day and catch up on the stories and things in the game.

But with the major lowbie areas even changing, I wonder if the whole story series will be changing too? Will all the old NPCs and stories still be there? Or will people instead be talking about the sundering of the world and such?

It makes me want to go back again before it all changes. To see the world as it always has been once more before it changes forever.

I looked closely at the priest changes in hope they would entice me to resub and bring him out of retirement once Cataclysm comes out.. Looks like he's going to stay exactly where he is, I see nothing I like.

To be honest, I don't find the premise of this upcoming expansion to be very exciting to begin with, slapping a new coat of paint on existing content feels very meh to me.

Dont you guys have a site for info just like this? I think its called WOW.com. For real you have an ENTIRE site dedicated to one stupid games news so use it... I think we all use this site for the other games.

Sure we all played wow and we all left wow. People playing now are the people who, for the most part, are fresh and new to the scene. The game is just dumbed down more each and everymonth, to the point now where you can level with a buddy to 80 in the time it use to take to get to 40. easily pass through every end raid and you dont have to try for sheet. Not to mention every stupid expansion nerfs all your hard work for the last year and a half. I missed the old days of 40 man raids and spending a month just to figure out the first fight of BWL. WOW is just a "console" mmo for the average person with who doesnt want to raid, have to try to get anything and only wants to see that nifty level bar and the infamous "ding"....

So, by your logic, Massively is a site dedicated to MMOs...however they're not allowed to discuss or even mention the genre's most popular game?

this is an MMO site, holy crap.

get over it, you are no cooler or no less cooler for playing other MMOs, but god damn man, this site is for MMOs, popular or not.

So many angry ex wow players, usually these are the same people who cant hang and have to go play a more simple game such as EVE. So sad. if you guys Miss Vanilla so much then a group of you should get together and just buy the BC expantion and hang out in Outlands all day. I am sorry we all did not leave WOW to become honorary space cadets

I love the fact that the first comment says "Why do you have to make excuses for talking about WoW" and then a few posts down is the typical "DON'T TALK ABOUT WOW!" comment.

Get over yourself. We know it's "cool" to hate on WoW but this is MMO news.

Has Massively considered opening up an Adult comment section?

I love it! Thanks for the luv!

But, my point is with a game like wow which has a lot of news everyday and a LOT of interested people(its not popular to hate wow, its popular to play it you idiot) why dont we see WOW news every day on this MMO news site? Im mean if its all about MMO news, why do they RARELY post on it? You think im wrong? Go to games at the top of the page and click world of warcrat. you might notice in the last 3 months they have about 3 posts that arent one shots. now go to wow.com and see just how many post they have. Damn flamers..

Oh WAIT, I KNOW! Its that other site where they have like 20 posts a day on WOW news, maybe they dont want to feel redundant? Thats right douche canoe, so before you start jumping up and down try to label me a wow hater , I am really not. infact i believe wow is the best MMORPG out there currently. And its not that I hate it, its that im sick of hearing about that game and if I wanna read about it, ill go to wow.com

Frankly, looking at the warrior changes nearly got me to consider picking up cataclysm and playing again. Then I realized that ultimately, nothing will change. The parts I loved about warcraft are dead, gone or never really there, and they'll continue doing what makes them successful.

Its great they're adding in some stuff that's long overdue, but I'm tired of the game, and tired of the idea that daily quests are content, tired of the idea that releveling a new race counts as a brandy-new experience. Frankly, I think I'm tired of most MMO's. SWTOR gives me a bit of hope, but overall, I think the only MMO out there worth watching is EVE, and EVE is kinda miserable to actually play.

Oh well. At least Global Agenda doesn't charge subscriptions to play and makes my artsy side tingle.

Also, you guys really need to shut up with the "OMG GTFO WARCRAFT!" Its one freaking post about Warcraft on a MMO news website. Scroll down and move on with your lives.

/this

Agreed on all counts.

I also concur.

The warrior and feral druid changes do look kinda interesting.

I might actually consider checking out Cataclysm once it's out. :D

i really liked wow... it got boring after playing a few _months_ but hooked me again and again... then battle.net became blizzard/activion's drm and i'm refusing to use that shit. no matter, how much i liked the game.

I'm confused by your battle.net comment and it's very misleading.

Battle.net FAQ - http://us.battle.net/faq/index.html

I'd liken it more to a Blizzard only Steam (but not an extra program), it's an evolution of their account system; and is their first step to some very fun future features. Cross server communication with friends on WoW or even cross game like talking to a buddy on StarCraft while their play Diablo.

so you are confused... what do you think STEAM is? it's drm, plain and simple. they make it very hard, if not impossible, to resell games. you can't play multiplayer without battle.net any more? ouch... soon they will jump on the ea / ubisoft bandwagon, where you can't play without an active internet connection any more, but they'll provide fun features like:
- logging all your chat (and probably scanning it for terrorism messages), now even cross-server!
- saving everything on their servers, so that you don't "own" anything any more. if they don't like your face, you're fucked. but hey, you had your fun time!
- play your games from anywhere! provided the servers are up and you got a stable internet connection ofc.

seriously, how important is it to you, that you can chat from within wow with anyone playing starcraft? ffs get irc, xmpp, mumble, or whatever you like. you don't need any in game tool and you can use that across EVERY game. why depend on something that's being controlled by activition/blizzard?

you don't realize, that you're taken away your freedom and being robbed of your ownership, because it slowly transfigures into rental for some extra, because they got all the servers to maintain.

battle.net was a revelation back in the days... battle.net 2.0 is sophisticated crap, to drain you of your money. if you don't realize that, you do not deserve any better.

@nt: paranoid much?

oh and im bored at work and nothing better to do but argue with the wow fairies..

Yes, every MMO has a right to be on this site. That said, it baffles me to this day so many simple minds exist in the world today that play WOW and call it "the" MMO and find it worthy of a sub. I guess Forrest said it best.

If the original blizzard north team had been allowed to stay with the title they created, instead of getting fekked by their french masters..............how different would it be?

I guess when you have no standards, and you like simple, colorful things, and like to do things over and over and over and over and over and over and over.........
......and over.

Myself, i hate the french and what they did to this title, so i dont give them my cash. (grin)

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A roundup of World of Warcraft's major class changes

Reader Comments (28)

Posted: Apr 10th 2010 1:54PM SgtBaker said

Posted: Apr 10th 2010 1:56PM MewmewGrrl said

Posted: Apr 10th 2010 2:45PM Crsh said

Posted: Apr 10th 2010 3:13PM TacosWLove said

Posted: Apr 10th 2010 3:24PM AlamoeJones said

Posted: Apr 10th 2010 3:25PM BrianH said

Posted: Apr 10th 2010 3:37PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Apr 10th 2010 3:31PM Pingles said

Posted: Apr 10th 2010 4:12PM TacosWLove said

Posted: Apr 10th 2010 3:35PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Apr 10th 2010 4:08PM eNTi said

Posted: Apr 10th 2010 6:03PM phobic99 said

Posted: Apr 11th 2010 2:56AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Apr 10th 2010 3:40PM DarthCheese said

Posted: Apr 10th 2010 4:07PM eNTi said

Posted: Apr 10th 2010 4:33PM GryphonStalker said

Posted: Apr 10th 2010 6:15PM eNTi said

Posted: Apr 11th 2010 8:31AM Equillian said

Posted: Apr 10th 2010 4:16PM TacosWLove said

Posted: Apr 10th 2010 6:25PM Graill440 said

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