Time to clear up all the rumors people. The opening ceremony at Blizzcon just ended, and it ended with a bang. Thankfully, much of the speculation has been cleared up, and we finally have some answers about the new races, new areas, and some stuff that hadn’t been leaked.

So the official name is “World of Warcraft: Cataclysm”. That we pretty much knew already. We’ve got two new races, goblin for the Horde, and worgen for the Alliance. They are completely revamping the starting zones, and adding new race/class combinations. We’re seeing flying mounts in Azeroth, and the return of Deathwing. Deathwing appears to be coming out of the big swirly thing in the middle of the ocean. The level cap has also been raised to 85, which is surprising considering that previous expansions have had 10 level increases to the cap.

There’s some information that’s not clear, like the Guild leveling system, and the new “Path of the Titans” character development path, and the new profession, “archaeologist”.

No release date was announced for Cataclysm, however the CEO just confirmed in an interview that it’ll be out next year, I’m betting on Christmas time.

We’ll be covering Blizzcon to a limited extent all weekend, so keep coming back to check it out.