The Paladin class hasn't gotten much love from Blizzard from what we've seen so far in the development of the Wrath of the Lich King. Of all the class updates delivered during the recently concluded Worldwide Invitational in Paris, France, the Paladin was one of two classes (the other was the Mage) that didn't receive much by way of news. On the other hand, leaked information from the Alpha revealed some new whopper spells for Mages, including cool and explosive (literally) 51-point talents. Hunters don't have new talents yet, either, but the exciting news is that in WotLK, their pets will.
From out of the blue. But good things come to those who wait. Tipster Delsin helped shed some Light on the slow development pace by linking to what is purportedly a forum discussion with Ghostcrawler, a developer of the new expansion. The responses from the blue were supposedly sprinkled over a couple of weeks, with the first and oldest post revealing little we didn't already know. It detailed the design directive the developers were taking, noting four important points:
Retribution Paladins need to have better utility in raids
Holy Paladins shouldn't feel so punished during encounters which require lots of movement
Protection Paladins need to be great tanks not only for 5-person content but also for raids; at the same time, all four tanking classes should maintain their niche
Paladins, more than any other class, need diverse sets of gear depending on their spec and role. Itemization is being fixed across the board to make it easier for healers and tanks to do damage without needing a whole new set of gear
These key points illustrate that Blizzard has a good grasp of what plagues the class, and is moving in the right direction. In two more responses in the same thread, the developers explain why the Paladin developments are taking so long and the issues they're looking at. Read more after the break.
This week I headed off to Bleeding Hollow's Horde side to talk with players about the biggest story of the past week: the opening up of the opt-in for the Wrath of the Lich King beta. The server was really busy, and in fact, someone's been busy in Orgrimmar there -- there are quite a few bits of corpse graffiti around, with names like "Pvpfails" and "Blizzsucks."
But nevertheless, I did find two willing victims interviewees for the column this week. See what we talked about after the jump.
We've known for a little while now that our existing flying mounts will not be usable straight off the bat in Northrend. The reason for this is that they don't want us little level 70s hopping onto the frozen plains, mounting up, and zipping right off to Dalaran or Arthas or wherever; in short, they don't want us to skip content. After all, imagine if you had a flying mount at the beginning of Outland – you would've gone to Shattrath even sooner. We also know from the WWI Q&A live blog that there will be some kind of "attunement" process for getting our fliers working up there, which has jokingly been referred to as "mount mittens" (it's cold in Northrend, you know).
What we haven't known is precisely when the mounts will be usable (though Ulduar's Halls of Stone, a level 77-79 dungeon, was said to require flying mounts), and whether the "mount mittens" (or whatever they actually implement) will be a tremendous gold sink. Today Bornakk puts as all at ease, by saying that flying mounts are currently set to be usable in Northrend at level 77, you will use the same mounts currently used in Outland, and it is not expected that "a large sum of gold" will be required (for another tier of mount skill or something). As always, this could change before the expansion goes live, but for now, it seems that we can look forward to not spending several thousand gold on griffin defrosting equipment.
We've talked before about using Wrath of the Lich King as an opportune time to switch mains. As Daniel mentioned in that post, I'm planning on switching from my human warrior to my draenei warrior once WotLK comes out. Now, one of the things I've noticed from reading forums, talking about it with my guild mates, and of course from you commenters here at WoW Insider is that there seems to be two or three camps of opinion on how to go about switching mains at the expansion.
Camp one we'll call the laissez faire approach. These people, although they intend to switch mains, aren't really doing much about it. They expect that the gear reset from Wrath will take care of any gearing inadequacies and that we're all going to be running around in clown clothes anyway for a while.
Each week or so, Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player who has 2 hours or less to play at a time.
Last weekend, the World Wide Invitational rocked our world with tantalizing news about the next expansion... and of course Diablo III, but this column isn't called "Diablo, Casually" or "Blizzard Fangirl" so we'll just talk about Wrath of the Lich King. The amount of information we gleaned from the WWI is pretty overwhelming, so let's just go over the items that I think affect those of us with limited playtime.
First of all, I think the biggest news was for the individual classes, so check out the news from the Dev panel. As a Druid, my 5-man instance viability will improve with indoor Entangling Roots and the possibility of an out of combat res. Many of the changes will make it easier for us all to find groups faster which means we can get more done in the blocks of time we have to play.
Tipster Nigel sent in these curious-looking photos of what appears to be the packaging for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. We've already gotten wind of the possible packaging for a Collector's Edition, so why not the basic box? Apparently, the person who leaked the Collector's Edition photo is still working at the printing press and puts his cell phone camera back to work with these photos of the regular edition.
Could it be the real thing? I'm not so sure myself, but if they're fake, they're pretty good ones. The box design includes clever elements that I didn't consider were I to make a mock-up myself... such as a small disclaimer stating that the game requires The Burning Crusade. The layout of the box closely resembles that of the previous expansion, too, with the exact same font used for the words 'expansion set' and identical placement of logos. One of the most telling signs that point to its authenticity, however, was a printer's mark usually found on print material before they're cut (and made into a box). Nigel smartly states that he didn't take the pictures himself. Check out the pic of the inside flap with the telling printer's mark after the jump.
One of the complaints I see from time to time on the WoW forums and even here on WoW Insider is, to paraphrase is, "there are all these level 70 warriors and yet I can't find a tank." I have a variety of responses to this statement as a protection warrior at level 70. It might be how you ask, for one thing: a polite tell from someone asking me if I'll tank heroic Ramparts once saw me taking an entire group of relatively new 70's through both heroic Hellfire instances. It's also possible that, while I am a tank, I don't feel like tanking for you with an hour to go before raid time, since I'll be tanking that entire time. But I'm curious about this mindset that assumes that with all these level 70 warriors, you should be able to find a tank.
I don't see "all these level 70 paladins and druids and I can't find a tank" nearly as often. Now, I understand that paladins and druids can heal, and the general populace finds that to be just as valuable. But I know there are a host of DPS druids and paladins out there. While they're derided to some degree (and unfairly so, but this column isn't named Matthew Rossi defends every one of the tanking classes if they choose to DPS - we know it's unfair, we'll let it go at that) there doesn't seem to be this absolute assumption that the first and best role of any class that can tank is to tank the way it seems to be there for warriors.
Now, I love tanking. I'm good at it, I enjoy the challenge, I stay up all night working on threat sets, avoidance/mitigation sets, stamina sets, I go to sites like Wowhead and look at shields all day. Tanking is my idea of a good time. So I'm certainly not arguing that warriors cannot, or should not, tank.
I'm arguing that they should not tank just because you want them to.
The Part Time Druid posted a bit of an existential question -- "Why do we WoW?" It was followed up over on the Altoholic. And while their musings on the motivations for gaming are notable, I'm happy they avoided questions around that horrible WoW-addiction issue. I'm not much of the navel-gazing type, so I wasn't concerned about why I play WoW, in and of itself. (Presumably, I get something out of it, so fair enough.)
But, with pre-expansion blues (and excitement) crashing down on our heads -- why are we playing right now? Our gear's about to go obsolete (and we're about to put on our green-quality clown-suits), our level cap's about to go up 10 levels, and the whole world as we know it is going to be radically different! Oh, yeah, and those guys are going to be around, stealing our tanking spots and doing Elune knows what else! (Anyone else notice they're the first class to have two words as part of their name?)
For me? Nothing special about the pre-expansion time period. I play the same reason I always do. I play with my girlfriend, I play with my friends. I play in the Arena. In a year, what I've done now might not matter to what I'm doing then. But what I'm doing now matters now -- and for now, I'm having fun.
Lone of Bleeding Hollow asks when we'll see architecture, and immediately, a few other players pop up to shout out my answer: we already saw some Egyptian creatures and styles appear around Ahn'Qiraj. But his request for a specific type of architectural style is an interesting one: is there a kind of architecture you haven't seen in game yet that you'd like to?
A few people say they want to see Asian architecture, and as we pointed out a little while back, Darnassus actually borrows a lot from Eastern architecture. I'd like to see a city or village in World of Warcraft with a Northeastern United States, Cape Cod kind of fishing town feel -- Booty Bay is a nice fishing town, but it's a little too far south for my personal tastes. We are heading north for Wrath, however, and since there are not one but two coastal areas open up there, I might just get my wish. Fans of Viking and Norse architecture will also get their fill in Wrath, I'll bet, and consdering the Forsaken, as Neth says in the thread, are getting their own architecture, Gothic style will also be a highlight.
Are there any styles or cultures that you'd like to see represented in Azeroth that haven't been?
More beta news for everyone to enjoy tonight. Bornakk has posted what Nethaera promised earlier in the day, a Wrath of the Lich Kingbeta opt-in F.A.Q. The complete F.A.Q. is republished here for your convenience, and is definitely something everyone should read and re-read. Some of the key things to come out of the F.A.Q.:
You are not guaranteed to get into the WotLK beta if you have a BlizzCon or WWI beta keys. These keys might go to another beta (like Diablo III).
You can opt-in on multiple accounts, but each account can only opt-in once.
If you get a key with one account, you can use it on another account of your choosing. However the key can only be used once.
Opting in early does not necessarily mean you will get a beta slot early. Everything is random (as we previous reported).
If you get a beta key from another source and are selected via the opt-in process, you can give your key to a friend or family member.
Totem Talk, the column for shamans, was hit right between the eyes with news from the Worldwide this weekend. Matthew Rossi, our intrepid columnist, tries to make sense of it all this week.
Okay, I know we're behind on the Kara gear articles, but this weekend's news from the Worldwide Invitational was too much for me to ignore. Both for all the awesome news for shamans and for what it all doesn't mean. (And yes, I had to steal Mike's image from the roundup post... I even went out and bought that statue I like it so much.) Since we know the Beta Opt-In is live and the Wrath beta can't be far away, I thought we should spend some time discussing what we just found out.
I admit that part of the reason for wanting to discuss this in detail is that I am stoked about it. Some of you readers are, in fact, very good for providing a bucket of cold water in the form of reality checking, and I expect you to do me that service now. But maybe we're all excited, which would be awesome, for shamans to once all be excited.
I know Hex is the greatness, but what it isn't is real CC for five man instances. It's a panic button, like so many other shaman abilities can be, not a long-term solution. To use hex as CC in an instance in the manner of Polymorph, you'd have to renew it every ten seconds. You're taking yourself out of DPSing entirely if you intend to use it that way, basically. Make no mistake, it's a great ability and great utility for the class, but it's more akin to Cyclone than Sap or Poly.
What, you may well be turning to me to ask, is it good for then if it's not going to be good for CCing in instances?
Scattered Shots is a bit short today, on account of its author currently visiting the Holy Land. Still on time though, and still specially for hunters!
We don't really know for sure what these pet talent trees will look like, but there are a number of implications and speculations we can imagine at this point, which can help give some shape to this new element of the hunter experience, including some mysterious pet abilities lurking in the murky bowels of the Wrath alpha client.
There comes a point where you move past content. There's no reason to go back to it other than nostalgia, or for the off chance on a slow night that the one really awesome drop that particular boss has might finally drop. It's a fact of the endgame... you work, you put in the wipes, you stock up on food, buff pots, elixirs, flasks, and other consumables, you go in over and over again and struggle and finally get the boss down... and then in a month or two it's trivial and you're sick to death of the sight of him or her. Another month and you're saying "Does anyone really need any Vashj drops anymore?" and a month after that, you're done with the instance.
This is fine, and it's part of the moving on process with content: if you're regularly farming M'uru you probably don't need anything off of Mother Shahraz anymore except for maybe bad luck on shoulders. Some guilds were fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to be completely done with Black Temple and Hyjal well in advance of Sunwell Plateau. Others are just now finishing up with Gruul and Magtheridon and preparing to move into SSC and Tempest Keep, while still others are just now done with those.
Remember that when you opt in, you are not guaranteed a spot, and you will likely not get an email inviting you to the beta right away. Instead your name will go into a pool of players who will then be chosen for the beta. That's why they call it opting in.
This is a good time to remain vigilant about email scams and other malicious programs that might try to get your user name, password, and other account information. Never share these with anyone other than official worldofwarcraft.com websites.
If the beta invites do start going out soon, expect us at WoW Insider to let our friends and families know what's really important this holiday weekend: bringing everyone late breaking WotLK news, all while enjoying their finely cooked BBQ food. I'll take two burgers to go with jalapeno cheese and a Corona.
MMO Champion (and a few of our tipsters -- thanks!) is reporting that the European WoW site has opened up registration for the Wrath of the Lich King beta. I wasn't able to sign in with my trial account (created for the Dingstravaganza a while back), but there's no question that the page is up (inside EU players' Account Management menu) and accepting signups. Of course, this still doesn't mean that anyone is playing the beta, only that signups are taking place. We're also being told that it's an open sign-up, so it could be a long time before these signups are actually allowed to play, especially if one of the beta keys from BlizzCon or WWI are used to run a closed beta first.
As for why this isn't happening on the main North American site yet, remember that one of the EU CMs was the one to break the news -- perhaps because WWI was local, they're starting things up early there (or maybe it's just a timezone thing, and the EU site has had more time today to get the signups going). No matter what, the wait is almost over -- there's no question now that we're closer to the Wrath of the Lich King beta than ever.
Update: Eyonix confirms the registration on US side is coming soon.
One of the complaints I see from time to time on the WoW forums and even here on WoW Insider is, to paraphrase is, "there are all these level 70 warriors and yet I can't find a tank." I have a variety of responses to this statement as a protection warrior at level 70. It might be how you ask, for one thing: a polite tell from someone asking me if I'll tank heroic Ramparts once saw me taking an entire group of relatively new 70's through both heroic Hellfire instances. It's also possible that, while I am a tank, I don't feel like tanking for you with an hour to go before raid time, since I'll be tanking that entire time. But I'm curious about this mindset that assumes that with all these level 70 warriors, you should be able to find a tank.
The Part Time Druid posted a bit of an existential question -- "
Lone of Bleeding Hollow asks when we'll see architecture, and immediately, a few other players pop up to shout out my answer: we already saw some Egyptian creatures and styles appear 
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There comes a point where you move past content. There's no reason to go back to it other than nostalgia, or for the off chance on a slow night that the 
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