The World of Cataclysm has been forever changed, Death Wing has returned! With his arrival has come a shattering of the world into something new.
Places have been burned by lava, shattered into a thousand pieces and torn asunder.
Other areas have seen new life such as Desolace and Tanaris.
The entire 'old world' has been changed into a new land which now encompasses several new zones as well as two new races: goblin and worgen.
Cities have been completely redesigned so that players can fly over them, including the famous Orgrimmar and Stormwind.
Stormwind's park was destroyed by Death Wing as he decided to pay a visit to the city (as you'll see in the game's loading screen).
With all these newly designed areas, the world of Cataclysm has also been expanded to include thousands of new quests and story lines.
Besides changes to questing and the world, there will also be changes to game mechanics.
All new talent trees are now available for all classes and specs.
Players now have to choose from the get go what tree they wish to enter into and then must continue putting points into that talent tree until 31 points have been put into it.
At this point the 15 final points can be distributed to other trees or to the main one.
Low level characters are also receiving far more skills and abilities at the earliest possible level to making leveling up easier and more unique for each class.
Besides talents, stats are also being changed completely.
Strength, intellect, spirit and agility are now the primary stats for various classes and provide much of the functionality several other stats used to provide before world of cataclysm.
Armor pen, spell power and attack power have been removed! Now you get those stats passively from other sources, such as the primary stats themselves.
Reforging is the new process of changing select stats on gear (non primary stats like strength or intellect) into other stats for the vendor cost of the item.
This will allow players to get the necessary hit, spirit, crit or haste levels they desire after gaining a new piece of gear.
Raids are also being changed.
Now you will be only be able to do one 10 or 25 man raid per instance, so no more running two sets of raids per character in order to get gear faster.
What's more, rewards for 10 and 25 man content will be identical in value, just that 25 man rewards will drop more frequently to compensate for the larger group of players in the instance.
What hasn't changed and can you make gold from these non-changes? Northrend and Outland.
These two zones will remain the exact same, meaning that many of the items found within them will increase in value due to inflation in Cataclysm.
Stockpiling these before the expansion will make you very rich.