14 DAY TRIAL // Developer Blizzard has announced at its official BlizzCon event that, for the first time in the long and successful history of its MMO World of Warcraft, gamers will be able to pre order the Cataclysm expansion, which is set to be delivered on December 7, directly online from the company, without the involvement of any retail chain.
Blizzard has not said exactly when the pre order process will be going live but those who use the official online store will be able to place an order and then immediately being the download process for the files that Cataclysm uses.
The idea is to make the offer attractive for those fans of World of Warcraft that dread the long download and update process that often makes the day when an expansion is launched less fun that it could be,
With the files already installed on user's system they will only need to decrypt them in order to start playing.
The company also profits as it has a more accurate measure of those who are interested in the Cataclysm expansion and as it gets to keep the fees that it would otherwise have to share with brick and mortar retail chains.
Blizzard's announcement about pre order for Cataclysm seems to be the next step in its strategy of making the newly revamped Battle.net the center of any experience linked to its games, maybe even evolving it into a content distribution platform that could rival Steam from Valve.
The Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcraft will significantly change the game world, totally remaking some of the areas in order to offer a new and better experience to both new comers and to old veterans who are starting new characters.
The narrative of Cataclysm will focus on Deathwing the Destroyer, the dragon which returns to Azeroth and aims to utterly destroy it.
The level cap is also increased and two new playable races are added.