spazzertech asked… “What’s going to happen to the world with Cataclysm drops and the expansion isn’t purchased? In Burning Crusade, you couldn’t enter Outland without the expansion. In Wrath, you couldn’t enter Northrend. So what about Azeroth in Cataclysm?” The old world changes will impact everyone, whether you have the expansion or not. Brand new players with nothing but vanilla WoW will still see the new level 30 quests in the Wetlands or whatever. They will not, however, have things like worgen and goblins. They also will not have the new zones like Hyjal. Cataclysm is meant to bring 2004 content up to the 2010 level, and breathe new life into the world. The old world is pretty dated, so it’s probably needed. David asked… “Anyone know of a good Enhancement Shaman blog/website out there? My searches have been coming up blank so far.” My favorite one is actually a general melee blog. Big Hit Box is great stuff, I highly recommend it. Cocles over at Loregy.com (who I actually got to meet the other day — good guy, and check out his license plate) has an interesting idea about something he spotted in the information about the Cataclysm zones the other

Personal banks act like guild banks across alts… Q. Would you be willing to make personal bank storage look more like guild storage and available to all characters on a realm? A. This is something we discuss a lot. It actually helps with keeping mail volume down as well as a player convenience. OMG, YES PLZ!… err… That would be nice as well. For those of us with a server full of alts (most of which leveled up to their mid-60s or higher just for professions) this would be an awesome change. I’ve got an alchemist, scribe, leatherworker, engineer, and enchanter who are constantly sending mails back and forth. It would be a lot easier to just toss the raw materials in the bank, hop on the alt, get them out of that character’s bank tab and then make whatever it is I wanted to make. No more mail lag or alt hopping to grab the needed items from each and every character. For those of you with personal guild banks already, I’m sure you can see further ways to expand on this. Increased backpack size… Q. Any plans to increase the size of the backpack? A. Yeah, it’s something we discuss a lot. On the other hand, the madness has to end somewhere. I’m not sure I want a 100 slot bag with

I did say at the start that there wasn’t anything outstanding. To be fair this did mean we no longer had to head out and find things to kill for our fragments of soul. Instead we find a load of locks lining up by the practice dummies before and after raids, presumably gathering wooden practice souls. Well, Ulduar was fun and destruction fairly interesting, the tiered items pretty nice (if a little weird); things were ok and moving along. Then the Argent guys finished their arena and… well, not much changed really. If you weren’t raiding but leveling then you could summon your mounts sooner and just by speaking to the trainer. Also Banish could be removed by yourself or some other warlock with a sense of humor. For those that were raiding, demonology (or more specifically Demonic Pact) was making a name for itself and felguards making a raiding return. Now we’re seeing Arthas’ homestead invaded and the pull between affliction and destruction hotting-up as they are both up to fighting weight — with demo looking on in amusement throwing spell power to them both. It certainly feels a different world that we woke up in 12 months ago and there sure seem to be less locks kicking about these days

Finally, Chilton sorta-kinda re-confirms that there will be a new content patch before the expansion — he says it probably won’t be a numbered patch like 3.4 or 3.5, but he says there may be some more class balances in there, new Battle.net features, and possibly even a new raid boss. But mostly it’ll just be the patch that brings us all of the world events previous to the Cataclysm shakedown that we’ll all go through. Sounds like fun. Our friends over at WorldofWar.de (who were listening live to the podcast this past weekend) recently got an interview done with Lead Designer Tom Chilton, and you can read it over on their site right now. There’s not a lot of news in there (though Chilton does gush over the Dungeon Finder, just as players have for the past week or so), but aside from the usual player housing deny and the old “we don’t know what the future holds” back and forth, but there is one fun thing he reminds us of in the second half of the interview: Blizzard is adding on to the old Blackwing Lair instance in Cataclysm. It sounds like kind of what they’ve done with VoA: Blackrock Caverns, which we heard about at BlizzCon, will be a new area (supposedly level 85 5-man,

I mean, I’ve been in some stinky zones before – the Blasted Lands are reminiscent of burning mechano-hog tires, while the Underbog has a fruity bouquet similar to a cantaloupe that’s been opened and left in the sun for a week. But seriously, this place takes the steamed mandu. It’s like…well, you’ve been here, you KNOW what it’s like. Eating becomes a Feat of Strength, my sinuses have built up their own Greymane Wall in a desparate act of self-preservation, and when I get back to the civilized lands the leftover odor pushes socializing with the opposite sex right off the hit table. So, any advice that doesn’t involve morrowgrain? (I’m allergic to it) Treadstone Human Warrior Arygos Staghelm responds: Some of us had to deal with Silithus back when it actually mattered, not when people ran around there collecting glowing sand, and certainly not now, when everyone’s traipsing around up north after some frosty ponce. If you think it smells bad now, you should’ve been there when they murdered your kid in front of you. Oh wait! That was me. Anyway. Best way to handle the smell of butt and bug is to take a handkerchief, tie it around your nose and mouth, and get the

Blue posters in the official forums have started leaving comments about the earthquakes happening in-game, which as we reported the other day, appear to be linked to in-game mobs that are potentially ushering in the beginning of the Cataclysm world event. The comments are somewhat cryptic, but that is par for the course with Blizzard. They like to tease — to hold the carrot in front of you and make you run for it. But the evidence we presented Monday was pretty solid, and it’s gained even more traction in the community and around the net; so this is an interesting follow up to it all. The comments thus far after the break. Wryxian says in response to “Did Any of you saw that? There was a shake in Dalaran…. Is this the beginning of the Cata Pre event?…Or was it just me?”: It was just you. Seriously, earthquakes leading up to some kind of cataclysm? I lol’d. The Kirin Tor want to ensure that even though their city is no longer actually in the ground anymore, it still receives the same treatment as the rest of Azeroth… or something. We try not to read into blue comments too much, since reading in-between the lines can be a crap shoot sometimes. But in this case we think it’s