Today, Blizzard released their Q&A's regarding Warlocks and their futures in 3.2 and beyond.
Some major highlights of this Q&A session include:

Demonology's (using pets to greatly increase damage) damage is mediocre compared to Affliction (Using shadow DoTs (damage over time) to increase DPS greatly) and Destruction (using mainly caster spells to greatly increase damage (two types: Shadow Destro and Fire Destro)) and will try to fix it so demonology becomes a more viable spec.

Blizzard believes that the gameplay between Warlocks and Mages are too similar, and they are wanting to change gameplay to differ.

Warlocks need to be represented more in PvP

Basic idea for the new Soul Shard system: Soul Shards will provide a combat (damage) boost, but should not be something Locks need to farm. This change will be beyond Patch 3.2., with more information ideally at BlizzCon 2009.

The Cooldown for SoulShatter (Warlock's main aggro dump) will be reduced to three minutes

Blizzard is considering giving Warlocks different pet designs/models

Blizzard is looking into the possibility of Warlock-exclusive mounts

Blizzard wants to make pets scale with stats

All in all, it looks like Warlocks are going to get some buffs come 3.2, and then some. PvP may become much more viable for warlocks, and pets may play a major part in PvP and PvE. If all goes well, I may just start leveling my warlock again. :)

(((For the full transcript of the chat session, please go to
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=18031102314&sid=1 )))

Earlier this week (June 26th), Blizzard Entertainment filed for three trademarks for the word Cataclysm for "Paper-based products, online games, and computer games." The domain wowcataclysm.com expired this year on June 26th and the site that controls this domain is none other than GoDaddy.com, who actually handles Blizzard Entertainment's domains.

There are two assumptions on what this could be:

1) This could be the name of Blizzard's up-and-coming unannounced MMO, whose name will be announced (and more) at BlizzCon, which starts on August 4th in Anaheim, California.

2) This could be the name of World of Warcraft's next expansion, which is rumored to be about the Maelstrom, a word that is relative to Cataclysm

An exempt from WoWWiki, an expert site on WoW Lore, says this about cataclysm, which may shed some truth on the latter assumption:

The Great Sundering, also known as simply the Sundering or the Cataclysm, was a world event which reshaped Azeroth approximately 10,000 years ago at the end of the War of the Ancients. This event was triggered due to the Well of Eternity being destroyed.

Prior to the Sundering, there was only one continent on Azeroth, referred to as Kalimdor. In the catastrophic explosion, eighty percent of the land mass was destroyed, leaving behind the major continents and scattered islands that are known today: Northrend, Kezan, the Eastern Kingdoms, and the remnant still referred to as Kalimdor.

The site of the Well of Eternity became a swirling vortex of power known as the Maelstrom

I personally hope that this is WoW's next expansion, what with all the work I've done on my Blood Elf Rogue and Night Elf Druid, but only time will tell.

From Zarhym, Blizzard Moderator and Community Manager writes this about the upcoming 3.2 patch and what it has in stock for engineers, who have been shafted with many "nerfs" and "perks" that have never really benefited the Engineering community:

Added a new Mind Amplification Dish attachment for helmets, allowing engineers to control other humanoid targets. Some restrictions apply: does not work in Arenas, dish sometimes reverses targets, unable to stack with other stat-improving head enchantments and makes your helmet look... stylish?

Engineers can now learn to create a portable Wormhole Generator for Northrend. The Wormhole allows them to travel to different locations in Northrend, although the locations are sometimes in dangerous places.

A new repair bot has been added, and his name is Jeeves. He is the ultimate gentleman robot butler, able to perform all the mundane tasks of repairing, selling and buying junk for your entire raid. Additionally, he can open bank boxes for skilled engineers (350+). Jeeves is not destroyed when used, but due to pressing engagements, can only be summoned once an hour. The schematic for this handsome robot was said to be hidden within the parts of another robot – hoping to be found by an engineer one day.

Potion Injectors now increase the amount gained by 25% when used by engineers. Quantity produced by recipes for Runic Healing and Mana Injectors has been increased.

A Steam-Powered Auctioneer has been added to the Dalaran Like Clockwork engineering shop, allowing access to one's faction Auction House. The Steam-Powered Auctioneer was programmed with a superiority chip, and will only interact with Grand Master engineers.


These are major improvements to the profession, and some might say that they MIGHT compensate for the nerf of not being able to use the Epic Engineering Goggles' effects in WoW's PvP arena anymore (before this nerf, they were the best in slot for PvP, for it's use of stealth detection.)

Sources: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=18031199669&sid=1

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=18031079410&sid=1

Blizzard mentions that a Faction Change, a Change from Horde to Alliance, or vice versa, will be coming in the following months, with a fee of course. This has stirred a major controversy in the WoW community, considering one side will inevitably gain more twelve-year-olds, fanboys, and overall "noobs." Blizzard's official reason for this faction-change process is:

"Players who ended up creating and leveling up characters on the opposite factions from their friends have been asking for this type of functionality for some time, and we’re pleased to be getting closer to being able to deliver it. "

Many believe that this statement issued by Blizzard is for the better; others believe that this, along with Blizzard's unannounced MMO, is just a way for Blizzard to "squeeze every penny out of this MMO before it goes dead," like Blizzard's recent Gender-change and "Recruit-A-Friend", where the players invite their friends who are new to WoW with a feature where people get new mounts, gametime, and above all, an additional 300% monster kill and quest experience. Whether this is really Blizzard just milking this game for every penny it has, only time will tell.