WoW 5.0 - Mists of Pandaria

Talliarthe wrote:

Meanwhile the rogue design team (do they even have one for rogues?) has come up with a back stab ability (Dispatch) that doesn't require you to be behind a target... Great job guys...

Back stabbing is so played out anyway. I want face stabbage.

Man...

Kind of hate the Shammy tree.

The level 30 stuff is... not optimal. I guess Nature's Guardian is what you take for a raid?

And the level 90 stuff seems... interesting. I don't get a new spell but I guess I can summon healing stream, mana totem and mana tide at the same time? That actually might be pretty fun.

We'll see how this shakes out.

EDIT: holy crap. The warrior stuff sounds incredibly fun.

Yeah, "Underwhelming" doesn't even begin to describe the shammy tree. It's the first one I looked at, and then seeing what everyone else got made me a sad panda.

After a glance at the druid tree, doesn't it seem like there are a lot of cooldowns? Haven't played in awhile so maybe I'm just imagining things.

Today the floodgates start to open on Pandaria news.

WoW Insider's MoP coverage

A taste from mmo-champion.com:

The Mists of Pandaria Press Tour in 5 Minutes
If you only have a few minutes to read about the Mists of Pandaria press tour, we have summarized the major points below. If you have time later you should really go back and read the whole thing!

* The final patch of Mists of Pandaria will be the Siege of Orgrimmar! Both factions lay siege to the city to bring Garrosh down and end his reign of Warchief.

* The new LFR loot system will allow everyone to roll individually. The highest few rolls will win an item from the boss. Upon winning a roll, if the boss has an item that you can use, you will win it. If not, you will get some amount of gold. It will only be in LFR to begin with, but can be added to other parts of the game later.

* An 11th character slot has been added.

* AoE Looting has been added.

* There will not be an item squish in Mist of Pandaria.

* No new race models are ready to be added yet.

* There will be nine level 90 heroics for players as well as three raids with 14 raid bosses and three difficulties. There will be an additional two world bosses.

* Scenarios will take place at level 90, in an instance, and reward reputation and Valor points. They don't need a healer, tank, and DPS, just DPS is fine. Each will take 10 to 30 minutes to complete and five or more will be available for launch.

* In Challenge Modes, the vast majority of players will most likely earn a bronze medal even if they are a relatively unskilled player. After a player earns all the medals at the Bronze level, they will be rewarded with an achievement and title. Completing all of the Silver medals will earn a set of spectacular gear for transmogrification, and completing all of the gold will earn a unique epic flying mount. Challenge modes will be available for the six new dungeons at launch.

* Cloud Serpents are the Pandaren's mount of choice. You can raise your own by doing 20 days of daily quests.

* The Tillers faction will let you run your own farm! The farmer's market will provide daily quest to improve your farm every day, you will be able to clear plots of land and plant things like cooking ingredients, herbalism nodes, gifts for NPCs to build your reputation... etc.

* Warlocks got the most class changes in MoP, along with new pets.

* There will be more mounts and less color swaps for different rewards.

* They are adding armor to creatures to give them varied appearances, something other than just simple color changes.

* There are now seven zones, up from five. This was done to add more content to the game and give players a less linear progression path so that leveling for a second or third time isn’t the exact same.

* There will be one new arena and two new battlegrounds at launch.

* PvP pet battles are going to be fun and causal, only tracking the number of wins and not the number of losses. When fighting another player, you cannot see the other players name or communicate with them.

* Currently, every race except Goblin and Worgen can learn the ways of the monk.

* The Pre Mists of Pandaria Patch will be roughly two weeks before launch and bring simple rewards. It might involve a scenario with Theramore and the Alliance vs Horde theme. Chen Stormstout might also come to the local cities and get players excited about what is coming.

TL, DR (the 30-second version):

* Lots of new stuff, most of which you have seen in various forms in previous expansions

* Very much aimed at the non-leet raiders out there (which is most of us, truth be told)

* Pokemon and Farmville

* No release date that I've seen

I am very happy that they seem to be doing everything they possibly can NOT to entice me back to the game. I'm no purist, or elitist, or hardcore raider. I just see them saying, "The concepts that we introduced to the game with Wrath? Yeah, we're making more of that, except in new locations and such. Oh, and we added a few things that TOR did right."

The most intriguing thing about that (org siege) is something I'll probably watch on youtube. Even supposed massive changes to what I should consider my main class (warlock) doesn't get me going.

I guess it's time for me, personally, to draw the line under it.

I dunno, it sounds cool to me. I'm looking forward to it. That said, I said that about Cata too and it was kinda disappointing.

Eh. Pandas are awesome, and I really dig the Asian-theming for the expansion. Can't wait to hear the new main theme.

Michael Zenke wrote:

I dunno, it sounds cool to me. I'm looking forward to it. That said, I said that about Cata too and it was kinda disappointing.

Eh. Pandas are awesome, and I really dig the Asian-theming for the expansion. Can't wait to hear the new main theme.

In fairness to your position, what I'm asking for is a paradigm-shift in MMO philosophy. This isn't going to happen with WoW, so I'm not surprised that they're putting new paint on old mechanics. It just reassures me that I'm not interested in coming back to the game.

I'm like Zenke. I'll get it and play it. I'll probably really like it.

But sooner than later I'm going to have to pull the plug on it. I've been playing since Vanilla, and it's probably time to do something else for a while.

Enix wrote:

I'm like Zenke. I'll get it and play it. I'll probably really like it.

But sooner than later I'm going to have to pull the plug on it. I've been playing since Vanilla, and it's probably time to do something else for a while.

Here's a crazy thought. You could try raiding =)

(well, you could try rejiggering your schedule so you can show up. Just go ahead and upend your life. Attaboy)

The problem I see with saying "Titan will be the answer to everything and cure MMO cancer" is that no one outside Bliz knows what on earth it is.

Scratched wrote:

The problem I see with saying "Titan will be the answer to everything and cure MMO cancer" is that no one outside Bliz knows what on earth it is.

Facebook MMO.

Right. Here's my deal: WoW will always be what WoW will be. It's like a warm cup of cocoa and such, old home week. As long as folks are willing to get together for a bit after expansions launch to run some of the new stuff before we all go back to what we would be doing otherwise, I'll have a place in ma heart for teh WoWz.

Michael Zenke wrote:

WoW will always be what WoW will be.

I could easily contradict that to a certain extent.

Scratched wrote:
Michael Zenke wrote:

WoW will always be what WoW will be.

I could easily contradict that to a certain extent.

I'll go a step further then. WoW now is not the WoW that I played during beta or even at launch several years back. The game has gone through a series of rather large changes, whether you view them as good or bad, opened up the game in a lot of ways. The downside(IMO) is that it's also closed it off in a lot of ways.

That said, I get the feeling that Blizzard is comfortable with WoW taking back some of the shape it developed in Wrath, and adding in some touches that worked in Cata and rounding it out with new features that have done well elsewhere(TOR).

But ultimately, for good or for ill, I do agree with Zenke; WoW really has become like a comfortable pair of slippers--nice to slip on every now and again.

Maybe I just like Jade Empire more than the average person, but reading about what we'll be doing while leveling up in MoP actually has me really pumped. Also, I want a Jade Empire 2.

Also, I want a Jade Empire 2.

Me too!

We need to be careful, Zenke. Too much more of this kind of behavior and they are going to ship us both off to the Bioware fan leper colony or something.

zeroKFE wrote:
Also, I want a Jade Empire 2.

Me too!

We need to be careful, Zenke. Too much more of this kind of behavior and they are going to ship us both off to the Bioware fan leper colony or something.

I feel the eyes upon me, for having publicly confessed enjoyment of Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3

NSMike wrote:

In fairness to your position, what I'm asking for is a paradigm-shift in MMO philosophy. This isn't going to happen with WoW, so I'm not surprised that they're putting new paint on old mechanics. It just reassures me that I'm not interested in coming back to the game.

No, you're right. WoW is WoW, and it really isn't going to change much from the basic game play (kill stuff, loot stuff, get better gear, lather, rinse, repeat).

But the long-rumored Project Titan on the other hand ...

Prediction...

Titan will piss off angry Internet men

TheGameguru wrote:

Prediction...

will piss off Angry Internet Mans

FTFY.

Anyway, back to MoP. I'm fairly excited about it too, but probably for different reasons that some folks.

IMAGE(http://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2012/march/female_pandaren_concept.jpg)

This is exactly what I figured female pandaren would be, and I can't wait to see what the trade chat trolls have to say about it.

Welcome, (furry) perverts!

AnimeJ wrote:

female pandaren

Sadly, I need to prevent my wife and daughter from seeing this picture, or they will surely each demand an account.

Enix wrote:

* There will be nine level 90 heroics for players as well as three raids with 14 raid bosses and three difficulties. There will be an additional two world bosses.

Wow. That sounds like a crapload of tasty content -- even if the nine heroics are just remixes of existing lower-level dungeons (Strat & Scarlet? Oh yeah!). Honestly, I'm kinda digging everything they've shown so far about MoP. Except Pokemon and Farmville. That's just silly.

Spoiler:

I'll still play them though.

merphle wrote:

Wow. That sounds like a crapload of tasty content -- even if the nine heroics are just remixes of existing lower-level dungeons (Strat & Scarlet? Oh yeah!). Honestly, I'm kinda digging everything they've shown so far about MoP. Except Pokemon and Farmville. That's just silly.

They've already re-done Strat once, I can't imagine they'd go back to that well again. Then again, who knows.

Molten Core 2.0!

Dang. I read all the panda news yesterday and found myself getting jazzed about wow again. I'm thinking of using the new scroll of awesomesauce to insta-level up something since we get an 11th toon slot with MoP. /sigh

@ Jaedor: PM me your battle.net e-mail addy if you want a hit of some WoW crack. I can send you a scroll tonight.

I am not sure how I feel about them directly tying faction grinding to extra LFR loot. On the one hand, it allows you to tie solo play directly to raid progression (both in terms of encouraging LFR training wheels and ilvl increases) but on the other, it just seems so damn lazy and contrived.