For some reason I’ve been awfully busy lately, so I haven’t had much time to write here, much less play World of Warcraft (and unfortunately, this probably won’t change — next week I’ll be out of town for a conference, and then the week after I’m hosting a panel, and then in May I have another big project to work on). But I did want to do this week’s Warcraft Wednesday for you, so here it is. Probably smaller than usual, but maybe something’s better than nothing.

• I can confirm that the Cataclysm beta is about to start. I don’t know if I’ll get an invite (or if I even want one — I usually like to avoid PTR/beta realms and actually experience things on the live realms), but either way, I’d say we’re about four or five months out from the release. That puts Cataclysm out sometime in August/September, which seems about right. It’s possible that they could go a little earlier, as we already know that lots and lots of work has been done on the expansion, not to mention that Blizzard has gotten better and better, I think, at testing and releasing content. Plus, I was just thinking about this the other day: with the exception of a few people and a few Blizzard higher-ups, this is a very different team from the people that actually launched the game and even that first expansion. The workflow has probably changed quite a bit since the days of Burning Crusade and even Wrath. Still, we’re at least closer than ever, and from what I’ve seen, there will be zero NDA, so we’ll likely see a flood of screenshots and movies and information come right out of the beta as soon as it opens.
• I’ll tell you something else that’s probably close: An Armory iPad app. I’m a little surprised that there’s not one already, but then again, Blizzard would want to test the app before they release it, and they’re probably not grossing enough in the store for Apple to justify giving them a test unit early. But I’ll bet you money that there are plenty of iPads sitting around the Blizzard offices during the day, and that very soon, we’ll see a release from them in the store. An authenticator doesn’t really seem right — more likely it’ll be an updated Armory app.
• There’s a lot of class information dropping this week, but honestly, that doesn’t bring much more than a yawn from me. Not sure why — it could be because I haven’t seen Hunter changes yet, or maybe it’s because I’m most looking forward to content, not class changes. New class abilities won’t surprise me any more — I don’t care if Hunters can spawn copies of their pets or Shaman have a more steady mana output, yadda yadda yadda. What matters most to me is what Deathwing does to the Old World, and if Blizzard can make a five-year-old game feel new again. When they plan to release that information on the forums, let me know.
• Hey, happy birthday Warcraft Pets! Notable for being probably the most visible member of the community that’s actually acknowledged by Blizzard, so kudos for that (oh yeah, and for having a great site of course :) ). Slightly related to vanity pets: I am a little ashamed to say that I got taken in by El’s April Fool’s joke about the Aquarium for in-game fishing. At first, I was like, “Oh man Blizzard is going way too Farmville,” and then I was like, “Whoah, actually this is pretty cool,” and then (about 3/4ths of the way down the page) I realized it was April 1st and El was having a go. But still, I have to admit that I was kind of sold on it. Not into the microtransactions, mind you (never into the microtransactions), but the idea of a serious system behind vanity pets? That’s intriguing.
• Cool wallpaper. Cool icons.
• Great post by Larisa about BlizzCon. It is an excellent event — at this point, even if Blizzard wasn’t announcing games or showing off new titles, everyone would want to just get together anyway and have a good time for a weekend. Too bad Larisa can’t go, but yes, I agree, it is a pain to come all the way across the country (or in her case, the world), pay for hotel and food, and try to nab a ticket to get into a limited show. On the other hand, if it was easier or cheaper to come, I don’t think it’d be the same event. Same deal with PAX — the fact that it is such a targeted and focused group is kind of what makes it so special. A tightly knit virtual community brought to life.
• I twittered about this, but I’ll say it again: goodbye and thanks, Eyonix. For some reason, the CMs never seemed to like my corner of the community (actually, I think I know why, but it’s a misunderstanding that never got corrected), but I appreciate their work, both as a writer and a fan. Hope we get to see him somewhere else (and when we do, hope we realize that he’s Eyonix — kind of weird that CMs of his stature are still going by aliases).

That’s it for this week! Thanks for reading!