Birdies !!!

[Danielfboone]

There are going to be at least two more patches before Cataclysm. They still have to patch Arthas into the game and there will certainly be a big 4.0 patch before the xpac just like there were 2.0 and 3.0 patches before the last two expansions. So there is room to add another Spirit Beast somewhere in there. I'm expecting the class changes and the sundering of the old world to come before the release of Cataclysm. The world has to change for everyone, not just those who get the xpac.

I strongly suspect that the next Spirit Beast will be one of the flying ones. A bird, bat, wind serpent, dragonhawk, one of those.

[Saturo]

Arthas is in the game, just not fightabpe yet. They add more bosses each week, and Arthas is last. Blizzard themselves have stated that there shall be no more patches, but that we will get 4.0.0 sometime at around spring.

[Karathyriel]

4.0 would mean Cataclysm, right? *sigh* I don't believe it to come that early. It's mid january and spring is knocking on our doors already...

And I still would take a bet that Arthas will NOT BE KILLED in the end. He will stay as a villain, ruling over northrend for ever and ever with his cold iron fist.

[Danielfboone]

Arthas is in the game, just not fightabpe yet. They add more bosses each week, and Arthas is last. Blizzard themselves have stated that there shall be no more patches, but that we will get 4.0.0 sometime at around spring.

You're wrong, Blizzard has clearly said that there will be a 3.4 patch and No, Arthas is not in the game yet. There is going to be a patch this coming Tuesday but it's only a "minor content patch" and Arthas will probably be patched in then along with the ICC cinematic. The 4.0 patch will be the prelude to Cataclysm in the same way that the 3.0 patch that came out well before LK went live was. It's anybody's guess as to when it will happen though. We were at 3.0.3 when LK went live and reset it to 3.0 again requiring a couple of patches to be reapplied to catch back up. There was also a 2.0 patch that preceded BC and the same thing happened back then.

Also, it is a certainty, confirmed by Blizzard, that Arthas will die. He will be replaced by a new Lich King so that the remaining Scourge do not run rampant and destroy everything. The smart money is on Bolvar to become the new Lich King since he is proving even after death to be incorruptible.

[Karathyriel]

I take it you are wrong here.

WoW vanilla was 1.0, TBC was 2.0, WotLK was 3.0 and Cataclysm will be 4.0.
The patches you mean were put out, so that people who didn't buy the expansion yet could still see the items, models and all the other good stuff added to the game.

And Arthas is in the game! Didn't you go through all the instances and heroics? He's showing his big, ugly metal backside all over northrend, doesn't he? And he is in the modelviewer as well. He just seems to lack an animation for dying! Since I don't take drugs of any kind, I'm pretty sure I saw that bastard everywhere on my way to level 80 and in the heroics.

Replacing Arthas would make the whole WotLK expansion pointless, wouldn't it? But then, for those people who start the game, Varimathras is still with Sylvanas and those players who did the wrathgate quests to the very end will not see him in Undercity any more. Maybe this will be the solution.

What else can we do but wait and see?

[Danielfboone]

I take it you are wrong here.

WoW vanilla was 1.0, TBC was 2.0, WotLK was 3.0 and Cataclysm will be 4.0.
The patches you mean were put out, so that people who didn't buy the expansion yet could still see the items, models and all the other good stuff added to the game.

And Arthas is in the game! Didn't you go through all the instances and heroics? He's showing his big, ugly metal backside all over northrend, doesn't he? And he is in the modelviewer as well. He just seems to lack an animation for dying! Since I don't take drugs of any kind, I'm pretty sure I saw that bastard everywhere on my way to level 80 and in the heroics.

Replacing Arthas would make the whole WotLK expansion pointless, wouldn't it? But then, for those people who start the game, Varimathras is still with Sylvanas and those players who did the wrathgate quests to the very end will not see him in Undercity any more. Maybe this will be the solution.

What else can we do but wait and see?

No I am right. Of course Arthas is in the game in those instances. What I meant was that the Arthas encounter in ICC where you actually get to fight him was not yet in the game. It isn't just not unlocked yet, it doesn't exist yet.

My timeline of all the patches is completely accurate and the same pattern will be followed for Cataclysm. Just wait and see. TBC was not 2.0, we were past 2.0 and it reset the game back to 2.0 and you had to redownload several patches to get back up to speed. The same thing happened with WotLK and 3.0. we were past 3.0 when LK was released and installing it set you back to 3.0 and you again had to repatch. There will definitely be a 4.0 patch before the Cataclysm release. Blizzard has confirmed this.

The upcoming patch this Tuesday will probably patch the Arthas encounter in as well as the cinematic and a lot of bug fixes. It is also a certainty that Arthas is going to be killed and replaced. Haven't you done the Halls of Reflection Heroic? Uther says as much to Jaina and they both wonder who would make such a noble sacrifice. I think people need to read some other forums than just the ones here and visit other sites that give the latest news like Mmo-champion and worldofraids.com. Not to mention the Blizzard forums themselves. There are all kinds of speculation as to who the next Lich King will be. The whole point of this expansion has always been to defeat Arthas in his home base and put an end to him as a threat. Since he is beyond redemption, the only way to do that is to kill him.

Just because Arthas gets killed does not mean other people won't still get to do it over and over again. These kinds of things never have made sense in WoW. There will be a lot more phasing of the worlds and what you see and are able to do will depend more and more on what you have already done.

[Epicfail]

Back to the OP.

I'd say Spectral Owls pretty much a given for flyer. I would say spectral croc or raptor could be cool too.

No exotic spectrals though. Exotics are special enough on their own.