World of Warcraft

[DFF]

So, I have had Cataclysm a few days now and... I'm sold. Some of the new zones are really good, and the Worgen's are great fun to play as.

[apsham]

I decided that I would start playing again when I got a new laptop - and since I am getting one for Christmas, I have decided that it's about time.

[MalaCloudy Black]

So, I have had Cataclysm a few days now and... I'm sold. Some of the new zones are really good, and the Worgen's are great fun to play as.

I love both new starting zones. So great, easily the best starting zones Blizzard's done.

[hugobomb]

just installing the main game. Am I right in thinking I have a long time of dowloading patches ahead of me before I can start playing?

[DFF]

just installing the main game. Am I right in thinking I have a long time of dowloading patches ahead of me before I can start playing?

Possibly. Saying that, Blizzard have generally sped up the process over the years. It also depends on the speed on your connection too.

[Robsturgh]

Uldum is just absolutely fantastic. Favorite Zone in the whole game by a considerable distance.

[DFF]

I've found all the new zones to be impressive so far (only got Goblin-unique starting area to do, really). But yeah, Uldum is pretty amazing. Blizzard pretty much captured Egypt right there (with a hint on central/south American mythology too for good measure).

I've done all the new 'normal' instances now, bar Grim Batol, I think. They too seem quite well thought out with nice lore, fight mechanics or often both.

Anyone done any raiding yet?

[apsham]

So they messed up and bought me Cataclysm by itself - haha. So I am just going to download the trial version that I can get off the invite a friend sent to me, play it for now and then buy the expansions when stores open again. Since I don't want to play as one of the expansion races right off the bat - I should be fine to do that, eh?

[MalaCloudy Black]

Uldum is just absolutely fantastic. Favorite Zone in the whole game by a considerable distance.

I love Uldum, especially the Harrison Jones questline. Some of my favourite quests in the game. Commander Schnottz is awesome.

"ZE RITUAL CALLS FOR NINE IDOLS! NINE NINE NINE NINE!"

Twilight Highlands is pretty boss as well.

EDIT: And yeah, ApSham, you should be.

[Herr Matzat]

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/01/19/world_of_warcraft_divorce_open2011/index.html

[Herr Matzat]

http://www.break.com/index/world-of-warcraft-nerd-rage-1995666

[DFF]

So... Blizzard announced the new expansion pack: Mist of Pandaria. The Pandaren will be a playable race (starting neutrally and the player chooses whether to go horde or alliance at lvl 10), and a new Monk class.

Official website is here.

New features et al in spoiler tags below due to size.

What is Mists of Pandaria?

The goal is to combine new gameplay with most fun parts of the past.

The plan is to get people back into the world, instead of having players roam around Stormwind and Orgrimmar all the time once they reach max level.

Developers want you to do what you want to do to progress your character. They really want you to feel like you have a menu of content where you can pick whatever you want to do, and you shouldn't feel forced to do something to progress your character. For example, daily quests will reward you with valor points but it will still be faster if you raid of course.

Character builds are going to be entirely revamped. Talents were still too cookie cutter, so the developers want to give players more choices in their talents.

Pandaria

5 New leveling zones to explore

Single, unified continent

Influenced by Asian landscapes

AH, Bank, and Central Questing Hub

No flying until max level

There's 5 leveling zones but they are very large zones, and you won't have your flying mount.

Lore of Pandaria

A long, storied history.

Magically hidden since The Sundering

A new land to explore....

Pandaria was discovered during the cataclysm, a naval battle between horde and alliance was taking place close to it.

Pandaren starting zone

It's a turtle! It left Pandaria 10 000 years ago and never came back. Pandarens who wanted to discover the world left on that turtle.

Story focused with simple mechanics

Cross faction, choose Horde/Alliance at level 10.

Creatures of Pandaria

The Jinyu are fish-like creatures and will be in a wide number of zones.

The Hozu are a monkey-like race, they stand up on their legs and can walk around. They play tons of pranks on the local pandarens and are also in a lot of zones.

Verming are ... new kobolds, they kinda look like evil bunnies.

Mantid: Whole raids and dungeons around this race. Insect race that has been there since the beginning of ages. They have been seperated by a giant wall. They are starting to go crazy and are going through the wall

Mogu: Ancient race, original race on pandaria. The mogu want the island back from the pandaren, they are really mad. You will see them in dungeons.

Sha: Manifestation of the evil energies that flow through the earth. If there is any sort of battle these guys pop up.

The Jade Forest

This is where Alliance and Horde will be landing. The horde is washing up on the north side, the alliance on the south side. There will be one unified start zone and Alliance/Horde will end up meeting up in the middle.

Lush rainforests and stone spires

The Alliance will try to become friend with the Hozu, and the Horde with the Jinyu and will try to turn them against each other.

Temple of the Jade Serpent will be the dungeon of this zone. It will be your 85-86 Dungeon, it has been taken over by Sha

Valley of the Four Winds

Two zones for the price of one! This zone is huge, the whole north side of the zone is pandaren farmlands, the south is a coastal jungle.

You will get to choose between the north side and the south side when you arrive. You can go back and switch side if you want the other quests.

The dungeon of this zone is Stormstout Brewery.

This is where you will have your first interaction with the Mantids, they broke through the wall and are now attacking pandarens villages.

This is a level 86-87 zone

New Features

The pandarens are the new race.

The female model isn't done yet.

At level 10, you will get to choose between horde and alliance.

Pandaren Classes: Hunter, Mage, Monk, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warrior

Racial - Epicurean - Increase the stat benefits from food by 100%

Racial - Gourmand - Cooking skill increased by 15.

Racial - Inner Peace - Your rested experience bonus lasts twice as long.

Racial - Bouncy - You take 50% less falling damage.

Racial - Quaking Palm - You touch a secret pressure point on an enemy target, putting it to sleep for 3 sec.

Monk New Class

Brewmaster - Tank spec

Mistweaver - Healer, a healer who can stand up in melee and will let players experience a "new healing style"

Windwalker - Melee DPS

This is not a hero class, and it will start at level 1

The class is very martial-arts based

Lots of monk-only animations, the healer and tanks will have different stances they can stand in, etc ...

Monk Races - All of them except Goblin and Worgens

Monk Equipment

Leather Armor (Agility or Intellect)

They hit a lot with hands and feet

They will need weapons for some finishers: Staves, Fist Weapons

They will also be able to use 1H Axe and maces, swords

Healers will get off-hands, they don't want healers to use shields.

Monk Resources

Chi (energy) slowly regenerates and is only used for your Jab and Roll abilities.

Jab generates Light and Dark force, which are used for everything else. Some finishing move uses dark force, some use the light force.

No auto attack! Devs want you to have this street fighter feel where you punch a lot

Cataclysm Talents

Pro - The level 10 specs were really nice and gave you a role early in the game, definitely a keeper.

Pro - Removing junk from the talent trees was also a very good move.

Pro - Having some kind of choices for optional skills/subspecs worked out pretty well.

Con - You had a risk of "skipping" important talents

Con - There wasn't enough junk removed

Con - There wasn't enough choices, you might have a different final talent point than another combat rogue but it just wasn't enough. The cookie cutter build still persists.

Con - No enough customization, no true hybridization (Using a little bit of 2 different trees)

Con - Players got grumpy

Talent System 2.0

The talent system is gone! Ok, not really, but it's greatly changed.

You now have your class abilities, your spec abilities, and your talents.

You still choose your spec at level 10, and you get a spec ability at level 10. You will get additional spec abilities later. There are anything that you really need to function, they will just be given to you to make sure you have all the tools you need to have.

Example - Prot Paladin

LVL 10 - Avenger's Shield

LVL 20 - Hammer of the Righteous (Prot and Ret)

LVL 30 - Judgement of the Just (Passive)

Talents

There is not talent points or ranks.

There is one talent pree per class.

You earn talents every 15 levels.

You get to choose 1 out of 3 every time you get a new point, you can only pick one of them and can't go back to get the other ones.

There will be no mandatory talent. There won't be any cookie cutter build or anything, it will depend on what kind of optional ability you want.

You can now change talents as easily as you change glyphs.

More info in the Talent Tree Panel at 2:15

PvE Scenarios

PvE Scenarios are a way to give new interesting content that doesn't make sense in a dungeon content.

Scenarios are more about reusing parts of the world in interesting new ways, and introducing new types of PvE gameplay that we've never seen before like PvE battlegrounds.

They are short instances for a few players, the amount of players can vary depending on the scenario, some of them can be for 3 players.

You don't need the typical tank/heal/dps setup, you will just be able to enter and play your role no matter what it is.

It will be a staged experience where you will try to accomplish some greater goal

For example, a scenario might require you to kill 25 kobolds in stage 1, then find and return 4 goldshire children, and then kill the boss.

Developers would like to do PvE battlegrounds, where you will have to slay 50 alliance/horde soldiers, destroy 6 towers and the barracks, and then defeat the enemy General.

They could replace group quests.

It uses the same queue system as the dungeon finder

Since there is no role requirements, queues should be instant.

Challenge Mode Dungeons

Complete a dungeon in x minutes

To earn Bronze, Silver, Gold medals.

Gear levels are normalized, all your gear will be brought to the same level to make the competition even.

You can't just get better gear to overpower it.

It will reward sweet looking gear with no stats, and valor points!

Challenge Mode will reward you with very unique looking gear to show off how awesome you are to your friends

A new challenge dungeons UI will be added, you will be able to check your medals, your ranking, show what rewards you can unlock, etc ....

Pet Battle System

You will be able to collect, level, and battle with companion pets.

It will be accessible to all players.

Works with almost every pet

Pet Customization, you will be able to name your pet, give them visual abilities, etc ...

There will be "Wild pets", you can find them in the world and engage in battle with them. You will then be able to get that pet and add it to your Pet Journal.

Pets have random stats, some of them will be very good at tanking, some will have a CC ability, etc ...

Some pets will only be found during a specific season, while it's raining, or during the day or the night. Some of them will only spawn in the spring, when it's raining, in elwynn forest at night!

Most pets will become tradable, even after it's leveled, etc ...

Pets will be account wide

Your pet journal will display info on all your pets, including stats, skills, and also drop locations and lore info for the pets you don't have yet!

Winning battles earns you experience, and levels your pets.

You will learn new abilities. Every pet can use 3 abilities in a battle at one time.

Every time you level you will also increase the stats of your pet.

You will level multiple pets to build your team.

You have 3 battle slots, one for each pet in your team.

Pet Battle System - Battle

PvE and PvP Battles

It will be turn based.

A simple combat system.

Fight with a team of 3 pets

Queuing system, you will be able to find a fight pretty fast depending on the level of your pets.

Pet Battle System - Customization

You will finally be able to name your pets, and see that name in battle.

Items for your pets, you will have an item slot for your pet and might be able to socket gems in those items, etc ...

Individual builds of abilities and different teams.

Masters and Masters abilities, there will be different NPC pet masters in the world who will let you earn abilities when you beat them. For example, beating the master of mechanical pets will get you a new ability for your pet!

Dungeons

9 new dungeons in the new expansion

6 dungeons will be on Pandaria

Scholomance and Scarlet Monastery (Wings 1 and 2) will be back in Heroic Mode

Raids

3 new Epic raids!

They will feature two enemy races, the Mogu and the Mantid.

Raid Finder, Normal, and Heroic difficulties will be available for all raids from day 1.

World raid bosses will return!

More info will be available at the Raids & Dungeons Panel today.

Questing

Increased focus on max level content, it will reward you with Valor Points.

Incentives for dungeons/raiders to run quests and do outdoor/daily kind of stuff. For example finishing a quest might give you a buff for the day, and maybe that buff will let you roll on a loot that only appears to people with that buff.

More quest choices, and a lot less linear

No flying until max level, it's much easier to keep people on the ground and create interesting quests when you know people won't just fly away and drop on the boss.

Faction improvements, there will be group of factions and they will let you work for all factions from that group to get your rewards. This way you don't have to grind a single faction anymore.

PvP

New Battlegrounds (Not final yet)

Stranglethorn Diamond Mines - Payload style gameplay.

Valley of Power - Murderball

Azshara Crater - DOTA

New Arena - Tol'vir Proving Grounds

STV Diamond Mine

Goblin Mine below northern STV

Payload style gameplay

Escort mine cars to depot

Multiple tracks, you will get a lot of options and you will be able to decide which way you want the cart to go.

First to x resources wins

Valley of Power

Located in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms

Murderball style gameplay

Holding the object earns points

Multiple point zones, depending on where you're hiding you will earn more/less points

Object deals damage to holder

Damage increases over time.

Tol'vir Proving Grounds - Arena

Located in Uldum

Simple layout based on Nagrand arena

Sense of place in the world

Just a simple square with 4 pillars/statues, etc ...

Achievements

Allow achievements to be shared among all characters on the same Battle.net account, things such as the raid achievements and the ones which are difficult to get.

Allows to include new achievements such as "get all the professions to the maximum level"

Major Class Changes

Resilience

Devs like the way Resilience works in PvP, and how it gives a nice goal for players looking to progress/upgrade their gear in PvP

Resilience is a pretty huge barrier for people who want to start PvPing.

Resilience will become a base stat, and will increase a little every time you level.

Ranged Weapons

Hunter minimum range is gone!

Hunter melee weapon is gone!

Ranged slot for all other characters are gone.

Relics are gone.

Rogues and warriors can now throw their melee weapon

Wands become main hand weapons

Warlock

Unique resource for each spec.

Affliction will keep Soul Shards, they are currently not interesting enough but devs have cool ideas for them.

Demonology will get Demonic Fury, you build up Demonic Fury and you metamorphosize when you max your Demonic Fury. More skills will be added to Demon Form, etc ...

Destruction will get Infernal Embers. The destruction warlock who keeps getting casting fire spells get hotter and hotter and will eventually deal insane amount of damage, you can build it up pretty quickly and unleash your big spell.

Shaman

Buff totems are gone. It just wasn't very interesting to be the buff bitch of the group.

All totems are now utility

New totem examples:

Earthgrab totem - roots

Repulsion totem - repels

Bulwark Totem - absorbs

Druid

They always felt like they had 4 specs, so now they do.

Feral - Cat (melee dps)

Guardian - bear (tanking)

Some overlap between the two

All druids can still go cat or bear form.

All classes

Spell books cleaned up, got rid of more junk, the goal is to clean up action bars a little more without removing the fun things.

Rotations will be improved

Spells will be automatically learned, you won't have to go to your trainer anymore.

You will get a new spell at level 87, level 90 new talent point.

Talent trees should be fun, and you should have more choice than just a cookie cutter build.

from: http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2516-World-of-Warcraft-Mists-of-Pandaria-Preview-Panel

Thoughts?

[MalaCloudy Black]

It's rekindled my interest in the game, but I'm a sucker. Monks sound really cool, and I like the idea that they won't have any auto-attack and will play more like being in a fighting game. That's bound to keep people on their toes in dungeons and raids.

The entire talent overhaul is interesting too.

Patch 4.3 also has my interest right now as well, I'll probably re-up when it comes out. :/

[Mick]

I got back into it earlier this month. The thing that caught my eye was the "Annual Pass" feature. Basically, commit to paying for a year's worth of subscriptions, get free stuff, in this case being Diablo 3 (Free), Sparkle Pony Mark II, and the MoP beta. Since I was going to reupp in April anyway (currently doing a six month subscription), I figured what the hell.

Beta alone...

[MalaCloudy Black]

Wait, Annual Pass members get access to the MoP Beta? I didn't know that. I knew about D3 and the sparkle pony, had no idea they get access to MoP Beta.

[MalaCloudy Black]

NDA's been lifted, here's some MoP information!

http://www.wowheadnews.com/blog=201616/mists-of-pandaria-2012-press-event-full-monk-talents-revealed-and-more

I guess I kinda understand Garrosh being the final boss of the expansion.. A lot of this gives me the impression that they're going the whole "HORDE IS EEEEEEEEEVIL" route, some more. How.. blah.

[thatshortguy]

I guess I kinda understand Garrosh being the final boss of the expansion.. A lot of this gives me the impression that they're going the whole "HORDE IS EEEEEEEEEVIL" route, some more. How.. blah.

Oh, what the actual fuck? They spent Cata trying to make Garrosh a tolerable Warchief and prime Sylvanas as a potential boss, now apparently it's 'lol, Horde bad, Hellscream dun went evil agin'. Thrall will likely lead us on yet another siege of a city, beat down Garrosh, and we all pretend Cata never happened. Hell, I'm half-expecting some shamanistic/druidic insanity that causes the world to revert to how it was pre-Cata.

Siege of Org? Fine. Next expansion better feature the Horde shoving Wrynn's son right up Varian's own Stormwind Port. In fact, call it that. "World of Warcraft: Horde Shoving Anduin Wrynn Up Varian's Back Port". I'd buy eight.

Edit: And they're revamping Scholo. Damnit.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Of interest to basically only Mick and myself (maybe Midget?), a few days ago the "Warlords of Draenor" trademark was filed by Blizzard. Today, in the pre-show footage for Blizzcon, someone screwed up during editing and left in a huge "World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor" logo, all but confirming that it's going to be the next expansion. The first panel for Blizzcon today is about the future of WoW, so I'm expecting the official announcement then.

Here's a photo pulled from the livestream of the pre-show.

[MalaCloudy Black]

I am hype.

[thatshortguy]

Calling it now: Sargeras is returning.