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

Still a grind

[jhoegl]

Zzzz..... WoW bores me to no end these days. A new expansion will not help.
PvP is gear based, which requires grinding, Dungeons are gear based which requires grinding, crafting requires grinding....

Same crap, different day.

Re:Still a grind

[Stradenko]

The beauty of 40-man raids was that you could have a half-dozen casuals and as long as they understood the mechanics of what was going on (i.e.: they didn't do stupid stuff) there's still a sizable group of folks to pick up the slack.

Re:Still a grind

[whereiswaldo]

Basically, you could scale your character to take a lesser percentage of damage, but in return you would get benefits like experience/honor points, and could affect drop rates, too.

Should say:

Basically, you could scale your character to take a lesser percentage of damage, but in return you would get lower than usual benefits like experience/honor points, and could affect drop rates, too.

Re:Still a grind

[Clsid]

My brother is a casual gamer and he enjoys Warcraft a lot. It all depends on what your goals are. If you are the kind of casual gamer who just wants to finish the game, have the top score and best gear of course you'll need to grind. But in the case of my brother he just enjoys doing quests, leveling whenever it may come and even just enjoying flying and trying crazy stuff to test out the virtual world.

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...

Re:Still a grind

[Straif]

Almost any basic level 82 green will beat 80 epics, except possibly where set bonuses come into play, and even then you'd only have to wait for a level 83 green.

I ran a LK raid for fun while leveling a toon not too long ago (was either 83 or 84 at the time), wearing almost all greens with an occasional quest blue, and was pulling dps that I only dreamed about when actually wearing full icc gear.

The changes in stats on even level 78+ cata greens compared to pre-cata everything else is like day and night.

Re:Still a grind

[Renraku]

Best PvP? Really?

90% of the time you were getting completely curb stomped by groups of 50-200 people in the frontier areas. Whoever got the area mez (basically it stopped everyone in a given area from acting for a good thirty seconds, until damaged, or they used a (purchasable through PvP points) skill to break out of it) off first. Also, hacking was rampant. As soon as you stepped into a frontier a group of people would come running at approximately the speed of sound with their weapons out.

The only fun I EVER had was in the battlegrounds, where it wasn't always 200 people with the absolute best of the best gear. I quit the game for good when a guy casted the same spell five times in about two seconds, and Mythic said it was impossible, but was widely reported on forums..also them nerfing my class (berserker) into doing slightly less damage over time than a caster using only their staff..

Pet Battle system?

[Anonymous Coward]

When did Michael Vick join Blizzard?

WOW gamers

[Synerg1y]

I wonder what priceless videos we can gain out of this expansion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YersIyzsOpc

I'll keep looking for an mmorpg I can get into, till then SC2 and it's 100% free somewhat crappy servers ftw!

Oblig.

[Mastadex]

Skadoosh!

Re:Nice.. more grinding

[Wyatt Earp]

Except you can do racial changes.

And if Death Knights, Goblins and Worgen were any indication, the starter zones are worth the time of trying out a new character.

Re:Straight to the top in an hour

[scubamage]

You mispelled lame.

Re:kung fu panda?

[Wyatt Earp]

Except Pandarens predate Kung Fu Panda.

Pandarens were in WC3 Frozen Throne expansion in 2003

http://www.wowwiki.com/Pandaren_Brewmaster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_III:_The_Frozen_Throne

Re:Nice.. more grinding

[ackthpt]

Except you can do racial changes.

And if Death Knights, Goblins and Worgen were any indication, the starter zones are worth the time of trying out a new character.

They really need to move on from this dungeon crawl stuff.

Maybe something like World of Banking - take your group down a dangerous trail of betting on derivatives and making high risk loans ...

Wow meets Kung Fu Panda?!

[rs1n]

I know that Blizzard is well known for little jokes and references to the real world... so I couldn't help but notice the connection between the new race and their semblances to a very well known kung-fu fighting panda of the big screen. Any idea if this was the "inspiration" for the expansion?

Re:Wow meets Kung Fu Panda?!

[gblackwo]

Nah, the Pandarens were sort of a joke starting back in 2002 (Warcraft 3), and the joke actually kinda became part of the blizzard universe.

Re:Wow meets Kung Fu Panda?!

[WillAffleckUW]

Actually, pandas as a playable race in RPGs predate the whole MMORPG experience by quite a few decades.

Most instances were, in fact, monks.

I'm surprised you don't remember your gaming history.

And that's just the US/Euro gaming market - you can see them in Asian gaming even further back than that.

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:Whole lot of meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Pandarens as a race don't fit the world

But space goats in transdimensional ships fit in perfectly.

blizzard ?

[unity100]

there is no 'blizzard' since 2005 april or something. after vivendi bought them they werent blizzard anymore, and when the big developer exodus happened circa that april, there was little trace of blizzard left.

Re:What's really going on here?

[BinarySolo]

What's going on is that SW:TOR and GW2 are going to be out within the next 6 months or so. Pandas are basically their "in case of fire, break glass" plan.

Re:ROFL

[flimflammer]

ROFL yeah man. It's so blatantly obvious. I mean back in 2002 when Pandarens were originally created, Sam Didier hopped in his time traveling DeLorean, got up to 88 miles per hour, went to 2008 and totally jacked the Kung Fu Panda idea.