Well this is interesting. Blizzard held a Twitter chat yesterday, and it produced some major upsets and surprises. Here’s what I’ve gleaned.

• Paladins are getting a seriously major overhaul, so much so that at first I thought it was a joke. Apparently, from what I’ve read, we pallys will be using – in addition to mana – a new resource called Holy Power. Now, it’s not exactly clear how that will work, but from reading some of Blizzard’s responses on Paladin play, it seems to either work like a spoof on Death Knight runes (but in reverse, in that you accumulate runes in combat) or a rogue’s combo points. These will increase damage done on some attacks (like the intriguing but yet-to-be-revealed ret pally ability Templar’s Verdict), increase Holy Shield’s duration, and activatie an instant, mana-free heal called Word of Glory. Sounds like fun, but it also sounds complicated.
• Blizz seems to be going for a ‘harm to gain mana’  (my term) strategy for healers, meaning they intend for healers to gain mana from doing damage, forcing them to contribute to the combat at times. This is odd to me, but we’ll see how it works out. It mostly seems to be about getting healers out of their heal-spell-spam habits that are so prevalent in heroic pick-up groups these days.
• Still no player/guild residences. I feel this is a good decision, because unless they can incorporate them into the game world and not have to instance them off, they’ll splinter a realm’s community. How would they incorporate them organically and still accommodate the slew of players? I have no idea, and evidently Blizz doesn’t either.
• Blizzard wants all specs to be valid for leveling. I think adding a clearer definition, say just listing ‘great for leveling,’ or ‘slow leveling’  on the talent trees before you select one would help allot.  They could even expand those notes into how the trees effect other facets of gameplay, but that’s a rant for another time.

That’s all for now. Cataclysm is looking very intriguing right now. Stick around for more information.

For a more complete listing of updates, please visit WoW.com. They have compiled a great list of the all of questions and their answers, so I obviously have to defer to them. They’ve done a great job on this (as they always do).

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