Later on during day one of Blizzcon, there was an interesting panel held regarding the classes in WoW. I was very intrigued by this since two new races and new class combinations were announced. Ghostcrawler opened up this panel, and we got to hear some very interesting things, some of which may cause you to panic.

One of the first things that they talked about were the new races and going into some specifics regarding what their racials and their classes would be. Each of the new races will have some interesting racials, and I think that the Goblins have the better set. First off, Goblins will have Rocket Jump, which will alow them  jump 20 yards every two minutes and Rocket Barrage which launches your rockets from your belt at an enemy causing fire damage. They will also have Best Deals Anywhere, meaning that they will get the best prices and have the best gold discount anywhere, regardless of reputation. Goblins will also have a Pack Hobgoblin which will allow them to have access to their bank every 30 minutes, and Better Living Through Chemistry which increases your Alchemy proficiency by 15. And last but not least they will have Time is Money, which is a 1% increase on attack and casting speed. Goblins will be able to play all classes except for Paladins and Druids.

The Worgen will also have some interesting racials, although not as exciting as the Goblins. The first one is Darkflight which will give them access to their “trueform” and is a charge/sprint. They will also have Vicious that increases damage by 1% and Abberation which reduces the effects of disease and curses by 15%. Worgen will also have Flayer which will increase your proficiency in skinning, allow a faster skinning speed and will not require the use of a knife. As a worgen you will be able to choose whether you want to be a worgen or a human while not in combat, and while in combat you will be in wolf form. Worgen will be able to play all classes except for Paladins and Shamans.

After all of the discussion about the new races, the discussion moved to existing classes. There is an interesting revamp of Warlock soul shards in the works. Soul shards will no longer be contained in bags, instead warlocks will always have three shards to work with. There will also be a new spell called called Soul Burn that will cost one soul shard. Blizzard says that they will have something akin to Evocation that will restore shards to warlocks. Hunters will also be seeing some changes, as they will no longer use mana. Instead hunters will rely on Focus for their attacks. Hunters will all have 100 focus to work with for their shots. They also briefly talked about the fact that they are still working on bullets and arrows no longer being consumables, but not much more information was released.

Bizzard also talked about the new profession that will come in Cataclysm: Archaeology. This profession is very intriguing to me as it is a secondary profession, but on top of that is the fact that you will be working to find various artifacts from Azeroth’s past. Discovering these artifacts will help you level up your profession, and will also tie into the new Path of the Titans, which unfortunately right now Blizzard is very hush hush about. They have not said much other than that you will be able to choose a path and when you follow that path, it will affect your character. Depending on the path that you take, you will be given a new set of talents or abilities. Also on the profession front: Profession multi-gains and Reforging. Profession multi-gains are quite nice, as it will give you a chance to earn more then one skill point per item you are making. Instead of making five useless green items to get five points in that profession, you can make a blue item that might give you five points, and might actually be useful to you instead of filling up your bag slots with greens. Reforging will allow you to take points from one stat on your gear and put them into another. There will be restrictions to this, such as not being able to take all of the points out of a stat and only distributing them into stats not already on said item.

Some other major announcements were those that affect stats. These announcements elicited quite the reaction from the crowd, both positive and negative. Below are the changes:

• Spellpower will be gone. However don’t panic! Intellect will now provide mana and spellpower.
• Attack power will be gone. Agility will now provide 2 attack power for rogues, hunters, shamans and druids.
• Defense will be gone, so no more cap juggling! Also this will mean more HP for all players.
• Armor Penetration will be gone. It will be replaced by the new Mastery talents in the revamped talent trees

There were a few other interesting tidbits that came up in the Q&A that I found worth mentioning. The first is that Blizzard will be revamping the racials for other classes for Cataclysm. Another big tidbit is that they will also be revisiting the classes and levels at which you gain abilities so that they can change it so the abilities will scale as you level instead of you having to purchase the different ranks. Also briefly mentioned was the possibility of two-passenger flying mounts, and the reworking and re-introduction of chests back into WoW.

Can you say information overload? Blizzard has given us a lot to think about with all of this information. I’m interested to see the effects of all of these changes, and how they will effect the WoW we’ve become accustomed to. Stay tuned for part two where I will discuss more on what’s planned for Cataclysm.