What age should a child be able to play wow? This is up for debate, but, in my opinion, as soon as they hit middle school. By this time, they should be mature enough to manage their time, and should be savvy enough to be able to use the resources out there. Weather or not they are able to use those effectively, or if they are able to play the game well, is up to their raid leader. They can certainly play before that, but giving them their own account may end up being a waste of money, depending on weather or not they play a lot and play the game to its fullest extent. A better alternative would be to let them play on the parent’s account. This would allow the kid to experience the game, without the cost of another account. There have been stories of 10 year olds tanking Ulduar, but the average 4th grader wouldn’t be able to do that. All in all, I suppose it is up to the parent. Whenever they are willing to let their child play, or whenever they feel that that child is mature enough to play, is when that child will play wow.

The next topic is age restricted guilds. I can see what they are trying to do, but they don’t work. No matter how old someone must be to join, there will always be people who are immature and are bad at the game. A sophomore in High School who plays his class very well and was a well respected member of his old raid team should not be passed up for a 30 year old guy who barely pulls 2.5k and was carried through Ulduar 25 just because he is not yet 18 or 21 or what have you. I understand that guilds want someone mature enough to manage their time so as to be on time for raids, who can play well and doesn’t talk off topic in vent, but limiting age doesn’t do that. It is unfair to the people who put a lot of work into their character and play very well. The only reason I can think of is that some guilds are extremely heavy on mature language. I do not believe this is valid either. Right now, I am not old enough to get into some of these guilds, but honestly, I swear all the time. It doesn’t bother me. I don’t feel uncomfortable. I try to keep that kind of language out of the blog for the same reason I don’t abbreviate or say lol, wtf, ect. I think it is unprofesional, but I don’t fear it or anything. Frankly, I think that most people in the average High School are exposed to more mature language in a given day that the in the vent of the average raid. As you can see, I feel strongly on this topic.
Anyway, that’s all for today. On a side note, I may have finally fixed my PTR. If anyone wants to group up for something, or just wants to say hi, I will update the post with my character names. They will all be on the PvE realm.

That all changes in Cataclysm. Guilds are now getting talent trees. These will most likely be PvP, raiding and leveling. These include things like lower repair cost, mass summons and added cash from bosses. This not only gives a huge benefit to being in a guild in terms of game play, but also pretty much requires you to be in a guild to effectively play this game. Without a guild, the game would be much harder and less convenient.

There are also going to be guild achievements. This seems minor, but it will motivate people to actively try to advance the guild and give the guild new and fun challenges. The last point to note is that the guild will now have an RSS option through the armory. This might just go the way of voice chat, seeing as how this stuff has been around for years and blizz has been known to go bear bones when it comes to things like this.

Overall I think that guilds are going to be a big deal in Cataclysm. There are much better incentives to be in one, and will no doubt allow lots of fun and friendship, as well as being much more functional that the old way.

Raiding- We all know that Naxx just sucked. It was to easy and required no skill, which let scrubs get gear. That all changed with Ulduar. It was well designed, the hard modes were good, it looked pretty, it was of reasonable difficult and was just fun. People will look back in a year or 2 and look at Ulduar as the high point in Wrath. But then, Blizz got lazy, and made ToC. Simply put, it’s a boring instance and is to easy. It was artificially gated and even then the content was cleared way quicker that fight such as Yogg +0. Blizz has only one excuse, that they diverted their remaining Wrath team ( which is obviously quite small, seeing how they would have put most of their development to work on cataclysm) to making IC the insanely epic, which, by the looks of what was on Blizzcon, could just be whats happening.

Now, for what Cataclysm does better. There will be 5 raids from launch. Two six boss raids, two four boss raids and a one boss raid. This will hopefully give them more chances to make raids that are fun and don’t suck. There is the possibility that with so many raids to do, their team will get stretched thin and will half ass these raids. I don’t think this will be a problem, though, based on what we saw at Blizzcon and also hoping that Blizz has gone through this enough to have learned their lesson and make raids not suck. Now Blizz did release 4 raids with Wrath, but three of them were one boss raids. Then you had Naxx. Six boss raids require at least some progression, and I’m really hoping that Blizz really makes these raids challenging. That will make the raids fun again, but keeping them challenging and not to easy. Overall I’m very pleased with what I saw at Blizzcon and I think Cataclysm raiding will be better than Naxx.

New Races- This is great for those of you looking to roll more characters. These new races have unique and really cool starting zones, and their racails are really overpowered compared to other races. Pluss you can make them at least one of them in every class except Paladin. The spate of new characters will give you more people with which to group as well.

Re-Done Zones- This is Great for leveling too. Every zone is getting at least somewhat redone and getting its questing overhauled. This will provide plenty of new content to level through and will make leveling fun and interesting agian. This will surely mean many people (even the lore babys and Goblin haters) will roll alts.

Guild Leveling and Talents- This has the possibility to make leveling guilds really good for, well, leveling. There are sure to be a bunch of talents that are made to help you level in the guild tree. Things like added xp per kill or reduced repail will be useful to anyone who is in the process of leveling up a new character

Rated Battlegrounds- It will allow players without the time to do arenas will still be able to do current level content and get current level rewards. Blizz has said that they want to do more with Battlegrounds, and there are 3 comming in cataclysm. This will give everyone an enjoyable way to do pvp without the hassle of the arenas and still get rewarded. It’s also a good way to get in to pvp if you havent done it before

With all of this content, I can’t see why you wouldn’t want to roll a shiny new alt. I personaly am going to roll a Goblin Shaman on imediatly on release of the expansion. And for the first time since I started the game, I am actualy looking forward to loading up a character that is sub 80.

Malfurion comes back and helps activate the new Guardian of Tirisfal – Thrall. Thrall hands over leadership of Horde to Garrosh Hellscream while Thrall serves as a coordinator for both Horde and Alliance forces and players to combat the Naga and Black Dragonflight. Garrosh declares open war on the Alliance, and you can expect more Wintergrasp like areas on the old map. Due to some political manipulations, Cairne Bloodhoof gets painted as a betrayer and is murdered by Garrosh. Cairne’s son takes over as Tauren chief.

For Worgen, the Cataclysm brings the Greymane wall down, revealing their secret — that the worgen curse has ravaged the kingdom. They’ve managed to find a cure that keeps their human mind permanently but also keeps them in their worgen form. Seeing that they can no longer survive alone, the worgen residents of Gilneas rejoin the Alliance.

As for Goblins, Deathwing calls on the goblins as slaves like he has in the past. Their leader decides to go with Deathwing and enslaves his people because there’s no crossing Deathwing and surviving. Fortunately, a large group manages to escape and join the Horde, knowing that they can’t go it alone. See the pattern here?

The level cap is 85. New landmasses include islands that are raised as a result of the cataclysm, underwater zones, and the newly-redone old-world zones. Flying mounts will be useable in Azeroth. Many old-world dungeons are changed completely.

Half the point of Cataclysm is to remake the old quest lines, eliminate redundancy and give an overall narrative to all players, whether level 1 or 80. At any particular vanilla area, you can expect to see reconstruction/relief efforts, or all out war between Horde and Alliance NPC’s. Wailing Caverns is going to be completely redone into a lush green tropical area, as a result of the druids working their magic to prevent it from falling into lava.

Leveling from 80-85 will be a MUCH bigger deal. Initially in 2008, they considered not raising the level cap at all, as making those quests takes a lot of manpower away from raiding content. But they are trying to make the story so grand and sweeping that ding’ing will actually MEAN something and not just be something you do. An idea that was kicked around was making the tier gear go along with levels.

Expect a couple of underwater cities to be on the backs of giant sea turtles and whales.

Make no mistake, the Old God content is not done. Since Netharion and Azshara both have ties to Old Gods, it is now clear that the SERIES wide antagonists of WoW are the Old Gods.”

More at this link http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=92919.0

She has lurked in her lair and done battle with the many brave adventurers who travelled to that familiar location over the years. Now, in honor of the World of Warcraft 5-year anniversary, the dreaded brood mother Onyxia is being revamped to make a return to the forefront of Azeroth, as part of our big plans for the upcoming 3.2.2 content patch.This permanent update to Onyxia will convert the dungeon into 10- and 25-player modes. We will be adding new items to Onyxia’s loot table that have the same model as some of the classic loot from this dungeon, like Tier 2 helms, with stats updated to match the current level of content. There will be a special new item too: a normal drake-sized 310% speed flying mount modeled after Onyxia herself called an Onyxia Broodling. We will also be updating the encounter mechanics to be more fitting for modern raiding, but we can guarantee players will get to experience the frightening horror of deep breaths once again.Then for a limited time, after the 5-year anniversary event officially begins in November, anybody who logs in will receive an Onyxia Brood Whelpling pet.We’re very excited to bring this classic encounter back to provide a fun new experience for both new and veteran players. Further details will be available in the near future, and we will be setting up the Public Test Realms soon to help test out this fight along with all the new content we have planned for the patch. Keep an eye on the forums for updates!

Now this is going to be in 3.2.2, which they say is a content patch. One other thing that comes to mind is what content. I’m guessing not a raid because its not a Major patch but a sub-patch. Maybe a 5 man in Icecrown or a hero class or the new races. Either way, you can rest assured that I will be hard at work to bring you all the news you need1

-If you want, shell out 40$ to direct tv. This is very expensive, but you will get the pet and the coverage will be pretty good because they are “officail”

-WoW Radio usualy does a big stream, but they had to cancle because direct tv is the only one that can stream

-This is the smartest one. The Rawrcast is doing a big Rawrcon Show. They are a very good podcast and if you want to know more that you can check out my WoW Podcasts FTW! I did on them a few weeks ago. They show is gonna be fun and there are going to be givaways. I recomend listening to this if you can, definaitley worth listening to. You can check them out here: http://rawrcast.forumotion.com/upcoming-f1/episode-34-rawrcon-live-from-blizzcon-t225.htm