Okay, how did we miss this?

We've been wondering about the level of change in each old-world zone for Cataclysm for months now, and the answer has actually been under our noses since BlizzCon. During the Art Panel, the above planning map was shown, along with some information to either side of it. We can't make out everything in it, but there's a lot of information if you know what you're looking at.

The zone colors, from what we can infer, indicate the level of overhaul each zone is receiving. Red is a heavy overhaul, yellow is moderate, green is light, and blue means a brand-new zone. The yellow stars indicate a dungeon, and the red stars indicate a raid. The white tabs each have a letter on them, indicating what in the zone was being changed at that particular point -- L for level, Q for quests, etc.

Astute readers will see some things jump out at them immediately, like Thousand Needles having two stars on it.

The full list of visible zone changes after the break, along with other pertinent info.

Disclaimer: While this image was captured during the BlizzCon 2009 Art Panel, the capture displays a photo taken by Blizzard staff, which is undated. We don't know if it was a day before BlizzCon 2009 or six months before. Things could have changed between when this picture was taken and when this article was published.

Memories of BlizzCon have started to fade over the last month, but today another reminder of the event pops up. If you watched it via DirectTV you should shortly be receiving an email letting you know that soon you too can have a Murloc Marine shadowing your character's every step. The email comes with a code and a URL to visit in order to redeem the little guy. Be careful of any phishing scams, the correct URL is http://www.blizzcon.com/pet. You must also have a Battle.net account in order to receive him.

Once you have entered you code and gone through the simple redemption process the next time you log on you will have an in-game mail from Master Handler Sylvester. This will contain your special delivery of a Heavy Murloc Egg and a thank you.

Grunty the Murloc Marine, we salute you. When it comes to murlocs, you are the best of the best of the best. Sir! With Honors.

Reader Encifer sent us a link to this excellent fan-directed documentary short about BlizzCon. Just a few days ago, I kind of panned the LA Times for treating BlizzCon as such an alien thing, but this video kind of takes a different look at the same event -- instead of coming at it from an outsider perspective and treating it as if it's something 20,000 crazy people do over a weekend, it's much more about how exciting it is to be a part of an event this big. I don't know, maybe the difference is just something I see, but this fan documentary, I think, does a really great job of showing just why BlizzCon is so great, while the LA Times piece, in my view, kind of dismissed its subjects even as it was portraying them.

At any rate, Chris Nguyen did a terrific job on this -- he says that he created the short film to prepare for a few doc film classes he's going to be taking, as well as challenge his doc-making skills, and it seems like he did just that. He interviewed two of his former guildies, as well as the winner of this year's costume contest, as you can see in the video. And he says the whole thing was shot over the two days at BlizzCon and then took about eight more days to edit. Definitely a fun little film to watch, and if you've never been to BlizzCon before, it'll give you a nice look at just what it's like to show up in a hall with thousands of people who play the same games that you do every day.

The LA Times has a story up that's about a month late -- it tells the story of a guild meeting up at BlizzCon last month (they were actually at the Lost Bar, a place we at WoW.com know well from past meetups) and doing everything players do at BlizzCon: meet each other face to face, talk Warcraft, and enjoy everything Blizzard has set up on the convention floor. Truth be told, the experience sounds pretty tame to us -- BlizzCon is BlizzCon, it's a ton of fun, but it's not that alien of an experience to go with your ingame friends to a gaming convention.

Then again, maybe we're just biased. Maybe having guildies as friends is really a fascinating thing to someone who's never done it before, and maybe the spectacle of BlizzCon really is so interesting that you can just report it in the paper. They do chat with Morgan Webb (why?) and they get one line from Blizzard COO Paul Sams, but otherwise, it's just basically the story of the Dread Pirates and their trip to BlizzCon (complete with veiled accusations of misogyny and a dictatorial guildleader -- thanks, LA Times!). To folks who don't play World of Warcraft, it might be interesting, but for most players, especially those who've been to BlizzCon already, it's mostly business as usual.

Ghostcrawler promised us a pony. He did. Or... did he? The statement became World of Warcraft-famous when Blizzard developer Greg Tiberius Street, otherwise known as Ghostcrawler, used the statement to end a thread that was guaranteed to become a whine and flame-fest. It also became one of WoW.com's favorite quotes -- so much of a favorite, in fact, that when BlizzCon rolled around, we fitted our WoW.com crew with custom-made Ghostcrawler Promised Me a Pony shirts.

It turns out we're not the only ones who like the phrase. Some of our readers who saw us walking around with the shirt asked where they could get one. People who saw the design on the site wrote in, even including some super secret Blizzard blues who presumably want to wear the shirt as an inside joke at the office. Since we love you guys, we're here to oblige. While we won't be able to give you actual shirts, we're making the high resolution file of the image we used available for download right here on the site.

Intrepid reporter and all-around cool guy Kevin Kelly over at Joystiq scored an interview with J. Allen Brack during the festivities at BlizzCon 2009. Just in case you're not aware, J. Allen Brack is the lead producer for our beloved World of Warcraft, having joined the team back in 2005. Kevin's a pretty smart cookie, and managed to get some great insight into the game from Brack. The interview's worth a full read, but there's a lot of insight that's worth spending some time talking about.

It's not any surprise that Brack told Kevin that there's no end in sight for WoW, and that he expects the game to survive at least another 10 years. But Brack immediately followed up by saying that Blizzard has changed the way they view the franchise novels recently. Back in the day, it seems, they just let authors go wild. "Go off and create a kind of story in the world," Brack told Kevin. Now, however, it seems like the creative team is spending more time trying to make sure the novels reflect what they plan in the game, as well as vice versa.

Brack confirmed that Blizzard still keeps an eye on what other games are doing, and will bring that into the World of Warcraft by giving it their own take. That comment reminded me of the discussion about upcoming Fishing changes in Cataclysm, and how the new fishing system was inspired by Animal Crossing.

It's been a couple weeks since Cataclysm was announced at BlizzCon. We've had plenty of time to ruminate and discuss, to fantasize and theorize. WoW's third expansion is ripe with promise and expansion, both for the Old World of the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor but also in terms of lore. We've got new races to look forward to, new zones and, most importantly, the obliteration ofwhat we know as Azeroth. Indeed this expansion heralds a brave new world with new dangers and a new foe, in the form of the former Dragon Aspect, Deathwing.

We've broken apart the trailer into individual scenes, and we'll going to take a look at the most important moments -- from the opening where we're fighting in Northrend to the big reveal of Deathwing at the end. We are also going to ask those all important questions like "Who exactly is narrating the trailer" and "Why are we still fighting Arthas, where's our end-of-expansion break?". Don't forget, if you need to refresh your memory or relive the experience, you can also check out the trailer for yourself.

---

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgen to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.

---

Every now and again, Zach takes you through musings of truth, justice, and the Azerothian way in The Light and How to Swing It before the new guy -- someone who'll actually write regularly -- steps in.

Holy cow. You'll be hearing that lame phrase a lot once the next expansion rolls around and Taurens start dispensing their own brand of divine -- or should I say, bovine -- justice. All jokes aside, Tauren Paladins are just one of the big changes for class once the Cataclysm hits, and it's a pretty cool one. Blizzard seems to have planted the seeds of lore to explain the rise of "Sunwalkers", the flavor name for Tauren Paladins. Character-wise, Taurens are the most sensible choice, as well, considering they are arguably the Horde's noblest race. Undead Paladins aren't in the cards, unfortunately, even though it's something some fans have toyed around with because of lore reasons.

But no, the whole "risen from the dead to wear plate" role has been filled up nicely by Death Knights. Instead, we've got the Sunwalkers, which is pretty cool for Horde players who've always wanted to try out the Paladin class but perhaps didn't want to play Blood Elves. Worgen and Goblins, Cataclysm's new races, aren't eligible to become Paladins, which rules out experiencing the new starting areas as champions of the Light. The good news is that Azeroth will be reshaped -- good news for us players, anyway... seems like a bad deal for Azeroth -- which means that we're likely to get new starting areas to experience the thrill of leveling once again.

Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player with limited playtime. Of course, you people with lots of playtime can read this too, but you may get annoyed by the fact that we are unashamed, even proud, of the fact that beating WoW isn't our highest priority. Take solace in the fact that your gear is better than ours, but if that doesn't work, remember that we outnumber you. Not that that's a threat, after all, we don't have time to do anything about it. But if WoW were a democracy, we'd win.

Usually, geeky conventions (sci fi, comic book, gaming, whatever) are considered for hardcore fans only and I guess that's pretty accurate. But while the fans at BlizzCon were certainly hardcore, their playstyles ranged everywhere from casual to leet. You don't have to raid every night to be silly about WoW and excited about the future of Azeroth.

Our podcast took to the airwaves yet again last Saturday, and it was what you might call a rollicking good time. Turpster and I were on, and we welcomed both Alex Ziebart and Michael Sacco back to the show, to talk about BlizzCon last weekend, our experiences with the expansion's new starter zones, and why Deathwing is actually a great choice for the Cataclysm's bad guy.

And we answered your emails, including information about PvP vs. questing XP, our meetup (and the trip after BlizzCon to Disneyland -- you can check out some pictures of the trip in the gallery below), and racial bonuses to tradeskills -- how they work and what they'll look like in the next expansion.

Was a great time, and you can hear all about it on the podcast below. If you have anything you'd like to tell us (either about something you heard on the show, or something you didn't hear us talk about yet), feel free to send an email to theshow@wow.com, and you might hear it on the show next week. Enjoy.



Get the podcast:
[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes.
[RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator.
[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.

Listen here on the page:

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Monday afternoon. I know I am! Well, actually, I don't know that. I'm writing this Sunday night, and I don't have a time machine powerful enough to show me what's happening tomorrow afternoon. Ideally, though? I'm having a wonderful time. Ask me tomorrow (which is today), and maybe I'll have a different answer.

Ryael asked...

"I was watching the BlizzCon feed online and there was a short interview with a man that was advertising how you could purchase a sizeable poster with one of our characters on it. Any idea what site that was from?"

The great thing about playable demos are the tidbits of info and sneaky souls with cameras snapping things they shouldn't be snapping. Such was the case in the press room at BlizzCon this year, where cameras were prohibited from pointing their lenses towards computer screnes. However, it appears that Spanish fansite WoW Todo got around the floating press room attendants somehow, and posted maps of the new starting zones for Goblins and Worgens.

Both of the maps have a couple of unique touches. For example, both have images of their inhabitants on it. The Lost Isles map has a particularly ugly female Goblin in a bikini while Gilneas features a human in Victorian garb. The latter also has a couple of shredded bits as if a Worgen adventurer had used his or her claws when trying to read the map. The Goblin map features a scattering of indented gold coins at the corners, as if to hold it open. Both are awesome little touches that add that special bit of pizazz to the new zones.

But the maps do give us a proper glance at what we can expect from the two zones. Gilneas is dominated by Greymane Manor and the town of Duskhaven. Looking at it, I was expecting something a bit larger, but then you remember it is a starter zone. The Lost Isles is smaller still with an Alliance encampment to the North and an Orc settlement to the south, which explains their presence in the trailer.

We should note that the Gilneas map is only part of the Worgen starting zone. The city and the Greymane wall are due East of what's presented.

Check out the Goblin map and Worgen map over on WoW Todo.

---

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.

---

So the convention is over, Blizzard has shown all (or at least most -- there are still secrets, we're sure) of their cards, and the next expansion will involve the return of Deathwing and a completely remade Azeroth. Goblins will be in there as the Horde race, but as for the original speculation of the Maelstrom and the Emerald Dream, well... It remains to be seen exactly how those will tie in to what we heard about at BlizzCon.

The biggest hint I saw at the Emerald Dream in the last year was the fact that Blizzard is going to release a "Stormrage" novel -- that would hint that good old Malfurion Stormrage and his kin would be spotlighted in the near future. Richard Knaak says the novel is set in the present, so something is going on for sure. Even though Deathwing is going to be the big bad this time around, something's still cooking with Stormrage.

Which actually makes sense. If we're going to get looks at Deepholm (the elemental plane of Earth, where Deathwing has been lying dormant recently) and The Firelands, as well as Skywall and the Abyssal Maw (the Fire, Air, and Water planes, respectively), that could mean they're going to open up Azeroth's other planes as well, with the Emerald Dream among them. The return of Deathwing would undoubtedly bring the other Aspects to bear, and Ysera would definitely be among those. In the opening ceremony last weekend, Metzen dismissed the Emerald Dream as "rumors and speculation," but the upcoming Stormrage novel still hints we still might see the Emerald Dream sometime soon.

Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a UI and addons blog for WoW. What will Cataclysm hold for Priests?

I'm back from Blizzcon! There's been a ton of big announcements which will mean future impacts for Priests whether you heal or dish out damage. Let's take a quick look at what we know.

Man it seems like ages since we've done our podcast at the usual time, but we're returning to the airwaves at the regular 3:30pm Eastern today (that's August 29, 2009 3:30 PM EDT), and it's going to be a good one. We'll have perspectives on BlizzCon both from people who were there (Turpster, Alex Ziebart, and I) as well as from someone who wasn't there (Michael "Belfaire" Sacco), and we'll talk about everything we saw in the new starter zones and all of the other new things we saw on the show floor. We'll also talk about this Deathwing guy and why he's a great choice for the next big bad, as well as how close we actually are to the expansion's release.

And of course, seeing as it's been a few weeks since we really dived into the inbox, we'll answer your emails -- you can send them along any time to "theshow AT wow dawt com." And I believe that during our livestream of the meetup, I promised some loot cards and wasn't able to deliver, so we'll do that as well. Should be a great show - we'll see you over on the Ustream page (or in the embedded feed after the break) this afternoon.