WWI 2008

It's over, i joined the queues to the various shows and events at the World Wide Invitational 2008 in Paris together with a bunch of guildies.
The things i've seen made me quite enthousiastic about Wow once again and i'm eager to start the levelrace to 80. Wowinsider and various other sites have covered alot already of what i've seen so i won't go into much detail, however i'd like to share some things i experienced and the innovations that i think are great myself.

Meeting up with Guildies
This must have been the highlight of the event for me, eventhough i felt a big grin on my face quite often while watching the various presentations and game details. Quite funny to see people you've spoken to for a couple of years but never seen in real life.
Some people totaly match the picture you have created in your mind while others manage to surprise you quite a bit, mostly in a positive way luckily.
The most surprising thing must be that you hang out together throughout the weekend with people you've never met before but it just seems right, just as if you are on a raid but without the dkp. (Goodybag still contained Epix btw)
I wonder how this has changed our ingame relation, i'm expecting you get even more of a friends feeling while talking to them from now on.
Just hope everyone enjoyed the meet up as much as i did.


Class Changes
Now this was pretty vague and quite a bit of this was already known. One of the few things i didn't know yet was that the Hunter pets would get their own talent tree. This way you can spec a pet as dps or a tank or for utility, which could make a tankpet alot better for solo'ing or perhaps even offtanking in a regular instance.
I tried the new Enhancement shaman talents on one of the WotLK PC's (toons were at 70 still sadly enough) and the Spirit Wolves looked like fun altho i'm wondering if they work as they are supposed to... like the Moonkins Treants you get a circle to spawn them somewhere around you but these didn't return to you and follow you when there is no mob or the mob is dead, they just stood there.
The rest of the Enhancement Shaman talents looked pretty promissing aswell.
A m8 of mine who was sitting next to me tried the lock's new talents and demonform was pretty cool, still looked like the Leo demon at that point.
The affliction top tier talent seemed usefull aswell (slowing and silencing a target while still being vulnurable by spells) while Destruction got a non resistable attack. (think it was fire based)


New Stuff
I didn't have enough time to play the Deathknight but my GF did and she was quite enthousiastic about it eventho she plans to stay on her current toon.
Most people seemed to have problem with it though as i saw alot dead Deathknights running about :P

Stuff i also liked was the new PvP zone.. while i normally hate PvP this actually looked like brilliant fun, an actuall siege which was truelly as Warcraft.
Even on unbalanced servers the controll of the keep can change as the faction that keeps losing gains more and more reinforcements, shifting the balance after each loss.

The new Tabard system is great aswell; if you are running around in Ramparts with a Cenarion Expedition tabard for example... you will get CE rep aswell! If you wear the HH one in Ramparts, you get a bonus on your current rep gain. Likely will only work for heroics tho.
This change is for WotLK ofcourse and tabards will be obtainable at Friendly/Honored.


Instances
They showed some instances and i really liked what they showed. Wowinsider already told a bit about the Occultus in which you can grab a drake, each with different skills (healing, tank, dps) and you can then assume a different role. These drakes can fly in the instance and you can do bosses in different orders this way.
The other instance was based on the Titans story, resulting in a huge instance with enormous mobs.. it reminded me a bit of Mordor, think the instance was called Ulduar or something. (me and my bad memory)


I'm hoping to show you some more stuff later on once i've checked all the pictures that i've made, just wish i had a better camera. Anyway, i truely felt the vibe and enthousiasm of the other people there and i enjoyed myself very much. I'm kind of hoping a next invitational will be near to my place again, perhaps at our neighbours in Germany? I can recommend anyone who can afford it to go attend, if only for the feeling of being normal for a change amongst all those fellow addicts.