Cataclysm Testing Will Start in April
Many people wonder when will the beta of Cataclysm will start, it's time to (try to) answer that question!
As far as I know, the Beta is supposed to start in April. At this point it's not very clear if there will be a Friends & Family Alpha, if there is one it hasn't been widely advertised internally.
This is probably why Blizzard decided to spoil the Cataclysm Prologue in 3.9 a few weeks ago and waaaay before it's deployed on live servers. They're not huge fans of spoilers and the only reason to do it is to make sure people know what's going on when they eventually play on Beta servers.
From a technical point of view, I guess it also explains why most of the assets for both Patch 3.3.5 and Patch 3.9 have been deployed with Patch 3.3. It's probably much easier to maintain a Beta and a Live build at the same time when you don't have to deploy tons of files just because you had to add something on live servers.
Of course, this is a pretty risky news because Beta tests can be postponed if something funny happens but as far as I'm concerned, it should definitely happen in April. If the beta lasts as long as WotLK's you can expect a release of the expansion in September/October, most likely before the Blizzcon.
And before someone smart posts in comments, I do realize it's not hard to predict that. We all know that Cataclysm will be released in 2010, we all know how much time a beta test takes and we all know the beta will start in April/May/June. But I'll just pretend it was an April's Fool joke if I'm wrong, you can do that in May.
No matter what happens, you will NOT get any beta invitation before it's officially announced. Anything you receive is a huge scam to steal your account.
Introducing: the Story Forum
What is Creative Development?
Creative Development (CDev) is a "hub" within Blizzard, facilitating the development of ancillary products and services that tie into Blizzard's game universes. While there are several different divisions of CDev, this Warcraft Story forum focuses on the efforts of the Publishing division.
What does Creative Development's Publishing division have to do with Warcraft's stories and lore?
The Publishing division within Creative Development is the driving force behind every published story you've seen outside of the game: short stories, novels, comics, and manga.
Who comprises the Publishing division of Creative Development?
Publishing is made of two groups:
- Story Development: this group focuses on story idea creation, story outlining, and story development for licensed fiction, as well as for internally-written stories
- Historians: this group is the repository for all Blizzard lore, providing counsel for the game development teams and the CDev Story Development group
What is the Publishing division's usual process for developing a story?
- Idea Generation & Outline Creation: Working with Chris Metzen and the designers on the respective game's development team, the Story Development team generates an idea and an outline for a story. The writer on the project is typically invited to our offices at this point in the project, so that they can be in on the ground floor of the story's creation.
- Story Development & Lore Checking: Over the course of the project, the Story Development team talks constantly with the writer, as well as with Chris Metzen and the game developers, in order to help hone the story into a Blizzard-quality tale. At the same time, our Historian team combs through the iterations of the story in order ensure that the story adheres to the universe's established canon.
What does the Publishing division hope to accomplish with this Warcraft Story forum?
We'd like to give the community a chance to influence the development of our upcoming stories, so we're trying something new; this forum will serve as a direct line to our story developers. Please note that we're not looking for fully-formed stories – save those for the Global Writing Contest (which we operate and judge) – but rather we're looking for specific examples of what people like, don't like, and what they would like to see (story-wise) from us in the future.
Blue posts
I'm going to vote for not interesting gameplay.
At the very least, you should be able to reduce your chance to miss a Taunt to zero if you reduce your chance to miss with a weapon to zero. It's also possible we'll just let them always hit. (Source)
Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Starfall nerf?
At some point I posted some numbers for Starfall since there hadn't been a PTR build in some time and druids were chomping at the bit to figure out just how much damage it was going to do. The numbers we went with for 3.3.3 were slightly lower than that if I recall correctly, but we haven't made any changes to Starfall since the patch went live. The live Starfall numbers are still much higher than they were in 3.3.
We generally don't try to execute actual "stealth nerfs." The community will nearly always figure it out anyway so we don'y gain much by trying to hide anything. Sometimes "stealth nerfs" are just things we didn't manage to document, but many times they are misunderstandings.
(I'm talking about live anyway. On betas and PTRs numbers are going to change quite a bit — that's the whole idea.) (Source)
Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Can't Thunderclap while silenced
It is called "Thunder" and "Clap." That implies some noise. 
Seriously though, silence isn't a dispel. Dispels are tied to magical effects. Silences are just tied to things that (more or less) logically require an audio component (in the game fiction — I'm not talking about your sound card) to work. Most caster spells qualify but some other abilities do too.
As soon as I read that I thought, "Man, GC just opened up a can of worms". I understand where you are coming from but now we get to read 10 pages of "Wait, I don't have to make noise to do X, why does it obey silence!?"
That response is certainly possible, but I figure part of what I can do out here (in exchange for all the feedback we get) is offer the occasional intent behind a game decision. Sometimes players can get us to question those decisions, but in cases like this it's going to take more than "It doesn't seem to *me* like silence could stop a Thunder Clap." Trying to arbitrate how the physics of magic should work is a pretty futile exercise. (Source)
