Cataclysm boasts MASSIVELY improved PVP. If your Guild can field 25 players, you’ll be able to have RANKED PVP Battlegrounds. Three NEW Battlegrounds are promised, including a city siege. And Wintergrasp, the most popular of the Battlegrouns, is getting a sequel, “Tol Barad”. Essentially a prison island battle—Alcatraz with Elves mixed with Team Fortress Classic. Because Wintergrasp has repeatedly crashed their Server from over-popularity, Tol Barad will be Instanced, both to limit players, and to improve framerates. Hopefully, it will also prevent overfilled Raid areas from crashing Servers!
In addition, they’ll have Quests in Tol Barad! Between battles, you’ll be able to earn cash and EXP, PLUS a “raffle”, of sorts, to join the Zone’s Prison Raid Quest. COMPETING to go on a Raid—Imagine that!
Guild Wars
Guilds have gotten a buff too—Pun intended! Guilds now can gain “Levels”, plus a Guild Talent Tree, including Guild Mass Resurrection!
At least 4 new Cataclysm Raid Dungeons will be added to the game, available from the start. The new Dungeons will be Elemental-themed, and appear to be based on the Elemental Planes in EverQuest, ROM/DIKU codesets, and NetHack before them: Frigid Air Elementals, squishy Water Elementals, tough Earth Elementals, and powerful Fire Elementals. (Although the latter have been arguably done to death in other games!)
Another major Raid is the return of the Dragon Ragnaros, this time setting fires at the Tree of Life. Extinguish the fires, and then try to slay the Dragon!
Blizzard is really PUSHING Guilds, this time around!
Self-Improvement
To further improve endgame content, and add a sense of “continued progress”, they’re adding in the new Tradeskill “Archaeology”, and the Path of the Titans. Basically, you dig up artifacts and trade them to various Cults in hopes of getting Glyphs, which add special abilities to YOUR character. Think of it as Socketing Runes into YOUR OWN BODY, or perhaps more aptly, the Tattoos in PlaneScape: Torment. One Glyph grants 5% damage reduction, another grants Stun Resistance, etc.
“You create a tool and double your capabilities, we improve ourselves and increase our capabilities a hundredfold!”—Quote, source unknown
That Quote is DEFINITELY true here!
Although it SOUNDS grind-heavy, they ASSURE us that they will “gate” the system to only allow progress down the Path of the Titans once per week, so that the casual players will be able to keep pace with the hardcore players.