World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Collector’s Edition is Oh So Shiny

Nothing says “I <3 WoW” more than getting the Collector’s Edition of the latest and greatest for the Blizzard MMO. Thankfully, Blizzard has you covered with this oh so shiny sneak peek at what’s going to be included in the Collector’s Edition. Art of the Cataclysm art book, featuring 176 pages of never-before-seen images from the archives of the Blizzard Entertainment cinematics department and the World of Warcraft development team, as well as progressive visuals from multiple stages of development. Exclusive in-game pet: he may not be a breaker of worlds just yet, but Lil’ Deathwing will still proudly accompany heroes on their struggle to save Azeroth from his much, much larger counterpart. Behind-the-scenes DVD with  over an hour of developer interviews and commentaries, as well as a special Warcraft® retrospective examining the rich gaming history of the Warcraft universe. Soundtrack featuring 10 epic new tracks from Cataclysm, including exclusive

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Cataclysm Beta Preview: The Goblins

This article will be full of spoilers both lore and gameplay wise. Read ahead at your own risk! Along with playing the Worgen at Blizzcon last year, I also played around with the Goblins. Where the Worgen have a bit more of a serious storyline, the Goblins are  fun. You start off on the island of Kezan which compared to the rest of Azeroth is like finding a major metropolitan city in the middle of the forest. You actually start as a high ranking Goblin who is working to try and get up to the Trade Prince’s level but things begin to go wrong once the volcano on the island begins to erupt (no thanks to you) and the Trade Prince realizes what you’ve been doing and sends Pirates to crash your party. Before leaving Kezan there are some fun quests in order to raise money to get yourself off

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Cataclym Beta Preview: The Worgen

This article will be full of spoilers both lore and gameplay wise. Read ahead at your own risk! So I had the chance last year at Blizzcon to play the new Worgen class and I must say it was a good look at what was to come with the next WoW expansion, it wasn’t a complete one. To keep part of the story a secret, players were only allowed to start at level 6 and play from there. Well my suspicions regarding levels 1-5 proved to be correct in that those first few levels it shows you trying to battle against the worgen attacking Gilneas and in turn becoming one. You fight along side King Greymane and Prince Liam, along with a convicted criminal named Darius Crowley (which made me think of this every time!). The storyline which goes from fighting off the worgen threat changes to the undead as

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Cataclysm beta begins!

Well the Warcraft universe is all a twitter (literally) since the Cataclysm closed beta has begun! If you’ve registered, you may have been lucky to get a beta invite and are happily exploring the new content. But for some who weren’t lucky (or forgot to change your system settings like myself /cough) you’re just reading and refreshing various web pages to see what’s new. Then again not all of the waves of invites have gone out yet, so some may still get lucky! This of course also means that the NDA has been lifted, so I highly recommend checking out MMO Champion as all of their information is now going live again and with some updates. So I’ve been going through images and info I missed the first time around. One thing I like so far is the new druid forms. The Worgen versions remind me of metal head kids

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Don’t forget Blizzcon 2010 tickets on sale tonight!

As previously announced, there will be two dates where Blizzcon 2010 tickets will be sold, and today is one of those special days! Tonight at 7pm Pacific, the first round of Blizzcon 2010 tickets are going on sale, so if you didn’t mark it on your calendars yet, here’s your reminder! Tickets for the event are $150 each, and there will be a limit of 5 tickets per mailing address. To go to the sales page, you can click here! The convention will be at the Anaheim Convention Center and Jay Mohr will return as the master of ceremonies for 2010. With the upcoming release of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, the (hopeful) release of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm later this year and maybe more news on Diablo 3 it should prove to be a good show. Not to mention Blizzard fans will have the great opportunity to connect with

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Female Worgen prototypes are out!

Well it’s official! The female worgen models are now out, but with a heavy reminder that these are still under revision. I talked about them briefly in the latest State of Azeroth and my opinions stand about the same. You can see the obvious Draenei similarities to it, but at the same time it has more of a bestial quality. They’ve done a good job at capturing the wolf-like qualities but it’s still nicely feminine. I do think that they’ll look better with some hair to them though. I still want to see what the animations are like as well, but I think my worgen druid is going to be of the female persuasion once the expansion hits. But enough of my talk, check out the images!

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The State of Azeroth: Holy class changes Batman!

Well it’s been another busy month with the class changes that were announced for Cataclysm! Not to mention some new items added to the Blizzard store that has some in a tizzy. I’ll have this news plus some sillies and my thoughts on two of the class changes below! In the News The big news in the past few days has been the release of the Celestial Steed and Lil XT in the Blizzard online store. And it’s a bit of an understatement to say that both were a hit. From what I’ve seen though I think the mounts may have sold more, and that only means that Blizzard will be happy about their profits for this month. Not to mention I think that they are for sure going to stick with having these micro transactions for the game. And with a mount as detailed as the Celestial Steed it

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm beta inching closer

According to numerous reports I’ve seen so far today, there have been emails circulating to members of the press regarding interest in the Cataclysm beta opt-in and asking for any interested to respond with battle.net accounts by April 15. So for all of those WoW fans who have been anxiously awaiting news about the beta, I think we finally have our confirmation that the beta will be starting soon! I haven’t been hands on with Cataclysm since Blizzcon 2009, so I’d be excited to see what they’re going to let us do in the beta. I’m super excited to hopefully check out the entire new Goblin and Worgen starting zones as well as check out what’s new for levels 80-85. And to rejoice in flying mounts in Azeroth! The other exciting thing that this means is the pre-expansion events may begin to hit soon, which I’ve always enjoyed (yes even

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Blizzard releases background info for pre-Cataclysm content

If you’ve been keeping your ear to the ground no doubt you’ve heard that there will be some big events pre-Cataclysm, as well as the audio files and info for the Gnomes and Trolls who will be fighting to regain their homelands. Well today Blizzard released info (via Nethaera) about the details of Vol’jin and High Tinker Gelbin Mekkatorque planning assaults to take back what they lost. The info pages really give some good background on how and why they lost Echo Isles and Gnomeregan. The story even goes so far as to explain the previous wins against Thermaplugg and Zalazane and how these were just ruses to make Mekkatorque and Vol’jin believe that they were able to defeat their enemies. I’m pretty excited for these events to take place and even more excited to know that the Gnomes and Trolls will have their own capitols again. It is a

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The State of Azeroth: Rawr

Well there has certainly been a lot of news this month regarding the upcoming patch 3.3.3 as well as what’s coming to us in Cataclysm. Not too surprising since the new expansion is set to drop later this year. However I will try to fit in some other news items, like new figures and a prediction that Farmville is threatening WoW. Patch 3.3.3 All kinds of news has been filtering out with the upcoming release of Patch 3.3.3 (the background downloaded has been enabled!) and there are some interesting things coming in the next patch. As always MMO Champion has dug up some interesting things from the test realms. And of course you can find the latest test realm patch notes here. I’ll start off with some of the more fun and frivolous additions with new mounts and pets that will be coming in the next patch. The more flashy

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