Blizzard Announces New WoW Expansion: Mists of Pandaria

Blizzcon 2011 kicked off today, and the biggest announcement from the opening ceremonies was the development of a new expansion for World of Warcraft. Titled Mists of Pandaria, the expansion will focus on the battle between the Horde and the Alliance instead of a traditional Big Bad Enemy. There will be both a new race — Pandaren — and a new class — Monk. The level cap will be raised to 90, there will be "challenge mode" dungeons, and they're introducing a pet battle system. Blizzard also mentioned that people who buy a 12-month subscription to WoW will get a copy of Diablo 3 for free.

Comments

Whole lot of meh

[Tridus]

WoW already jumped the shark in Cataclysm. This is just confirmation really. Nothing they've announced is all that interesting as a player from vanilla to 4.1 when I finally got bored.

They've been out of ideas for a while and focusing on how to better monetize their existing players. Now they're trying to get people to keep paying by throwing in Diablo 3 (and its auctions for cash shop). Pandarens as a race don't fit the world, they were originally put in as a joke...

Then again, at this point the lore has been so completely butchered that it really doesn't matter if it fits or not.

It was fun while it was in its prime, but that time has passed. Hopefully Activision hasn't screwed up Diablo 3 too much, because I still love Blizzard.

Re:Whole lot of meh

[Anonymous Coward]

WoW lore never mattered. It was always a hack job that stole shamelessly from everywhere, was more parody than story, and never met a cliche it didn't like.

But it was (and probably still is) a fun game if you didn't mind that and didn't take it too seriously.

Re:Still a grind

[SmurfButcher Bob]

> I didn't replace any of my 80 raid gear until actual better pieces dropped, and that didn't happen til heroics and rep gear,

Please don't tell me you used "maxdps.com" and no greens were suggested as upgrades. I'm pretty sure that every AEP calculator on the planet agrees that you're doing it wrong.

I ended LK with a full set of top tier, as did most in my guild. And almost all of mine was gone within two levels. If you actually believe that your hit, expertise, or any other caps were being maintained as you leveled up...