While it may or may not hint to the release date of the next expansion, a listing on Amazon has pegged the release of a hardcover novel by award-winning author Christie Golden entitled World of Warcraft: The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm. While that might seem like one colon too many (insert snickering here), the self-explanatory title actually sounds pretty cool. What sounds uncool, however, is that it’s a prelude. Meaning before.

If you’re reading into this as much as I am (generally not a good idea), that could mean that the Cataclysm expansion will ship after August 31. After all, you’d think that Blizzard’s marketing team would want a book that reveals what happens before the Cataclysm to actually launch before the expansion hits, right?

Eastern Kingdoms – Light overhaul:

• Tirisfal Glades
• Western Plaguelands
• Silverpine Forest
• Arathi Highlands
• Alterac Mountains
• The Hinterlands
• Hillsbrad Foothills
• Duskwood
• Elwynn Forest
• Dun Morogh

Loch Modan questing today, it stands apart. It’s a very long journey for a young character, and when you finally arrive at the Sepulcher and find the husband’s grave, you realize you’ve come all this way to deliver a worthless trinket to someone who threw his life away on a hopeless cause. You turn it in and…that’s it. There is no follow-up. There is no happy ending. There is, however, the feeling that there’s more to the savagery of the Forsaken than meets the eye.