2nd Class Panel Reveals Possible Fishing Changes

The classes, items and professions panel that was held today was exactly the same as yesterday's panel, but there were a few interesting extra tidbits announced. Upcoming fishing changes couldn't be discussed yesterday, but today Jon LeCraft revealed during the professions section that they want fishing to be "more fun," and may look to Animal Crossing for inspiration.

LeCraft said the team has been looking at different games that have fishing for ideas, and they liked Animal Crossing's style. He said they're posssibly going with a system where you'll see fish in the water and have to toss the bobber out and line it up to catch them. You'll see different sizes of fish swimming in th water, so you can pick what you want to catch.

The only other noticeable change to the panel was a brief mention that you'll be able to find artifacts through the new Archaeology gathering profession to help you customize your path in the Path of the Titans system, which was outlined during the systems panel. They couldn't discuss this in detail during yesterday's class panel because the Path of the Titans system hadn't been announced yet.

Keep reading after the jump for answers from the Q&A session.

  • Trolls and Worgen will get different art for their druid cat and bear forms, but new Tree of Life and Moonkin forms are last on the list. The artists really want to change the aquatic forms of all druids.
  • DPS stats can be added to tanking gear now that defense is gone. The team has toned back on how much players have to worry about threat during raiding.
  • In response to a question asking if they can bring back the hunter epic bow quest line, Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street said they were just talking about it the other day. They want to get quests integrated at lower levels that teach hunters how to deal with enemies hitting them before they get to the end-game.
  • Elemental shamans don't have AoE DPS because they don't want to give every type of spell to every class.
  • When asked if it may be possible for hunters to one day tame their own mounts, Ghostcrawler said it was a cool idea and would be a nice perk for hunters.
  • A player listed reasons why he thinks Death Knights have become poor tanks, and Ghostcrawler said he thinks they can tank stuff just fine, which drew loud applause from the audience. He did admit, however, that it's a legitimate concern and they'll keep an eye on it.
  • They've talked about epic travel form for druids, but are hesitant to make druids feel like they have to stay in forms at all times and never see their character and armor.
  • There's no timetable for the Vanish fix for mages.
  • Even with the upcoming streamlining of stats, the team admits there's still the problem of plate-wearers pillaging the gear of other classes.
  • You'll still be able to improve block, but you'll just have one stat to deal with instead of two. They don't want block to be strong in small fights and weak in big ones, which is why they think a percentage-based block would scale better.
  • As was announced during the open Q&A panel this morning, they will be implementing paid race changes after paid faction changes.
  • There has been talk of letting you keep all your recipes if you drop a profession, but there's no plans yet. They want people to stick with their professions, though.
  • The next patch will have scrolls for parties that have weaker versions of mandatory buffs. For example, there may be one for Bloodlust, but it's still secondary to actually having a shaman there. 
  • They want to make a lot more fun potions for Alchemists, such as silly ones and convenience ones. They also want to do more with transmutes.
  • You can expect to see a couple weapons with procs on them in Icecrown. The team loves procs, but it's hard to come up with ones that are interesting and not overpowered.
  • They'll have a chance to redo a lot of starting zone quests in Cataclysm. Below level 40 they plan to teach players how to use their classes in new ways.
  • The team doesn't want to make any glyph that hard to get through inscription since classes depend on them.
  • There's not enough possible items to make woodcrating a compelling profession. They don't want to add another pure production profession.
  • They're going to look at profession specializations and treat them differently. For example, instead of picking one blacksmithing specialization, you'd build up all of them. The team would rather differentiate your recipes through other ways, such as drops and reputation.

Darryl "Togikagi" Gangloff
News Reporter
ZAM.com

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# Aug 25 2009 at 10:05 AM Rating: Good
22 posts
i'm still stuck on the WTF of Alliance getting Worgen and Horde getting stuck with Goblins...

however its not just a revamp, its nice. Ive played FFXI for 8 years and in one of the main cities Bastok, its undergoing construction in certain areas and theres huge dirt piles and construction fence limits.. and uh... its been the same for 8 years.

It's really cool to see them changing the world with time.
convienent is not equal to idiocy
# Aug 23 2009 at 7:38 PM Rating: Good
It's a little early to start complaining about this isn't it? I like the mount changes. This isn't vanilla wow, the game has changed so much since then, it seems absurd to keep low level toons operating under old fashioned ideas. How is making things more convenient dumbing it down. If i can do what I like faster instead of walking all over the place admiring the dated scenery this is great. And why is a hero class the only reason to play wow? Deathknights have been out for less than a year and the game is still trying to balance them properly, you want to do it again in cataclysm? Wow is a great game and has had continued and growing subscriber support even in tough economic climates.
convienent is not equal to idiocy
# Aug 23 2009 at 10:23 PM Rating: Decent
Um, about that 'economic downturn' thing...despite popular believe the United States only counts for a small portion of the total subscriber base.

http://www.mmogchart.com/Subscriptions.xls -See Chart 11 *Sure you can Google up some other documents reflecting the numbers; but US makes up under 1/3 of the subs

The mount thing is agreeably fine since I got tired of running the same zones again and again for all 8 of the classes (pre-TBC, when paladin and shamans were faction-specific). Our issue is that they're taking away some of the very core mechanics they improved upon (look pre-TBC how much gear had defense on it) and removing it completely. And if they make a mistake and don't catch something we could literally still have mobs with a ~5% chance to crit (aka kill you in 1 shot; Raids) and no more defense.

I've heard-tell that warlocks will be using soul shards for their attacks (I'll assume only a majority and not 100% of all attacks). What if they ***** up and leave warlocks sitting and wanding a boss because the Shard-CD is screwed and leaves you 40+ seconds not being able to cast?

Plain and simple, if they try drastic changes they will inevitably mess something up and we, the players, will be forced to suffer; worse...they could say "working as intended" and we'll never get progression unless we Guild-up.
Dumbing it down
# Aug 23 2009 at 11:52 AM Rating: Decent
I have to agree with you on that one Dumbing things down for noobs just isnt the way to go. After all things like Yu-Gi-Oh the trading card game isnt fun because its a really dumbed down version of Magic the Gathering. Plus they make it to easy for some one new to the game to get really strong cards making it less fun for the people who looked for them the hard way.

sorry but WoW is starting to do the same thing now.

lvl 20 mounts
Druids are given epic fly form at lvl 71 if they have the riding skill
Locks no longer have to quest for the epic mount
hunting down linkens quest was so much fun when it didnt appear as a big ! mark on my map

Anyways point is the game is starting to lose all its fun points.
Aion couldn't come sooner
# Aug 23 2009 at 9:46 AM Rating: Default
Aion couldn't come sooner, I dunno if Blizz can last another year after Cataclysm if they make changes like these to the game. Things that are positive about the changes: Kalimdor and the Eastern kingdoms are finally some place players will want to be again. And new races, but we aren't going to see any new hero classes? What's the point then? Hero classes were something that was announced with WotLK and they mentioned it is possible to put the new hero classes in a major content patch with 3.3 on the way all we are seeing is a major revamp of the game itself. I'm probably going to stop paying for WoW and just play Aion until all these things are smoothed out because I am not paying for them to ruin a game, I am paying for them to better the game, and if dumbing it down for n00bs and the PvP players is how they call it improving, then I don't want to be a part of it.
-_-'
# Aug 23 2009 at 12:11 AM Rating: Decent
Fishing is fine...the last thing I want is to have to stare at the bloody screen 'looking' for the freakin fish...

And "lol" at getting rid of defense; so...basically I'll have to roll against DPS, Healing, AND the other Tanks [Plate] now just to get gear.
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