Late last week, we sat down with Blizzard’s lead encounter designer, Ion Hazzikostas. Aside from having an awesome superhero-style name, Ion also manages the raids, scenarios, and other encounters that make up Mists of Pandaria’s patch 5.3.  Read on for all the details of the new scenarios, why Blizzard are cutting the XP required for the final five levels, and how he feels about WoW’s recent drop in subscriber numbers.

GON: I spoke to Dave Kosak recently about 5.2, and he said that Blizzard were hoping to pull the camera out a little with 5.3 and show what’s going on with the rest of the world, rather than just Pandaria’s local problems. Can you talk about how you’ve achieved that and give us a quick summary of how the overall global storyline in 5.3?

Ion: There’s definitely a strong focus on Horde and Alliance storylines, much as we saw back in 5.1, where we had a focus on the developments there. What we’re seeing really is the Alliance coming together, and the Horde falling apart. There are a lot of tensions among the factions that comprise the Horde, after the events seen in the Dagger in the Dark scenario. Vol’jin is clearly not happy with Garrosh’s direction and the way that’s going, the trolls in the Echo Isles are in open rebellion, and so players are going to see this story unfold through new scenarios in 5.3 and the outdoor world.

We have scenarios that focus on what Garrosh has been up to, and some of the questionable things that he’s been doing, and we also also have some outdoor content, some quests for Alliance players to go behind the lines of the Horde as spies working with the Alliance spy groups, to see the fortifications that Garrosh has been building up and some of the sketchy activities he’s up to. There’s also a bunch of outdoor quest and event content in the Northern Barrens, which is quickly turning into a battleground with Garrosh’s Kor’kron in open conflict with the other forces that are there.

GON: Now you’ve got an impressive four new scenarios in 5.3, as well as the Heroic modes for existing scenarios. Out of all of the four new scenarios, which is your favourite and can you tell us a bit about how it was designed?

Ion: One notable feature in 5.3 is that back in Pandaria there is an excavation happening, in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. Garrosh and his forces have drained one of the lakes in the vale and been mining, deep beneath the surface. He’s hired a bunch of goblin mercenaries to dig in search of the secret rumoured to be kept down there. This scenario basically takes players alongside a goblin member of this expeditions, running into various horrors down there that make it very clear there’s some dark force that is being unearthed — coagulated dark oozes, things along those lines. And it turns out that at the depths of the mine this excavation has stumbled upon a sealed titan chamber that predates most of Pandaria’s history. And inside they find a box, and the not-necessarily-wise member of the goblin expedition that you’re with in this scenario opens the box.

GON: Of course.

Ion: Right, and so a very dark power is released, and players will see the events that unfold there. It’s doing a lot to set up what is going to be the continuing story arc of Mists of Pandaria going ahead into patch 5.4, and it’s cool to let players play through the story so that they really experience it, and understand what’s happening, and feel like a part of it.

GON: So that’s your favourite out of the four scenarios?

Ion: I think so, yes. I mean it’s hard to pick a favourite, they all have very strong story and gameplay elements, but that’s definitely a particularly interesting one.

GON: What’s the process for creating a heroic mode for existing scenarios, and what balance concerns do you have to address?

Ion: It’s not a huge deal, but it definitely involves a lot of playtesting. There are two main differences. First off is simply the gear level to which they’re tuned. Our regular scenarios which have been updated to heroic modes were originally designed for fresh level 90 players who may be wearing item level 430 or so gear. And they needed to complete it by groups in that gear so that they could gear up. Obviously players right now are literally twice as strong. So the old scenarios, the normal scenarios, really don’t offer any challenge, and that makes them potentially less interesting than they otherwise could be. The simple part of it is just cranking up the numbers accordingly.

But then, one of the big differences, and one of the things that is exciting about heroic scenarios, is that we know there’s going to be some environment of communication and cooperation among members of the group, whereas regular scenarios randomly assemble individually queuing players into a party of three, so you don’t really know the people that you’re playing with. You have to queue for a heroic scenario with a pre-formed group of three, so we can assume there’s going to be a bit more in the way of coordination, maybe some crowd control, pitching in to help each other out — which basically lets us have mechanics that call for those responses, and hopefully create more interesting gameplay. Since really, that sort of cooperative gameplay is the essence of MMOs, and what makes them fun.

GON: Have you had a good response to these new scenarios on the PTR?

Ion: So far yes — people seem really excited about them and to be enjoying them. We’re looking forward to people giving them a shot on live. They also give a very large amount of valor points, so players looking to get their valor points to upgrade their items using the new upgrade vendors that are returning in 5.3, will find that heroic scenarios are a really great way to do that.

GON: I was going to ask, because I’ve seen some players express concerns — well, players are always yelling about everything — some concerns about the amount of time it takes to get sufficient valor points to gear up with vendor epics. Now you’ve just said these heroic modes are a great way to get valor points, how do you feel about the current valor situation, and do you feel adding more heroic scenarios is going to soothe these concerns?

Ion: I think that we definitely look at the rate of valor, it’s something that we’ve increased since 5.0. We found that at the start of the expansion, where many players were doing dungeons to get gear, and daily quests to get their reputations on a regular basis, valor was just kind of coming in incidentally and it wasn’t something players really had to worry about actively, which kind of masked some issues with the ratios at which different activities were awarding valor. The intent was always that you should be able to pick the activities you enjoy most, you can play with your friends, and you can get valor playing solo, in a group, in a large raid, whatever you prefer.

So over the course of the last couple of patches, we’ve increased the amount of valor awarded by various activities and that’s going even further in 5.3. Valor from heroic scenarios, and then we’re actually DRASTICALLY increasing the amount of valor awarded from challenge modes, such that doing a challenge mode dungeon, even if you don’t get a stellar time, just bronze or even no medal at all, will still give you in excess of 100 valor for one dungeon clear. So players who are just looking to try out new types of content with their friends should have more options than ever before. We don’t want to make something that feels like a chore, but clearly if we get the numbers wrong it could veer into that territory, and that’s when we have to make an adjustment.

GON: I’ll come back to that in a second — for now can I ask about the 5.3 world event. What’s going on there?

Ion: It’s a lot of dynamic, outdoor quests and event-driven content. It’s a slightly different type of outdoor content than we’ve had before, it should have a more event-driven feel, where there are random things happening — there could be a caravan crossing the Barrens that comes under attack, and any players nearby could go and defend it, and if they successfully defend it, everyone nearby will share in the reward. So it’ll have a slightly different feel to regular WoW quests, where you go and talk to an NPC and they ask you to go and perform a specific task, and you go do it, and return, and the hope is that it’ll create a place for players to adventure and, on our PVP servers, to come into conflict with one another.

GON: It’s only available for a limited time this event, with the story set to continue in 5.4, is that correct?

Ion: Yes.

GON: So how long to players have to complete it?

Ion: Until 5.4. Obviously we haven’t announced the date for that, but there should be a fair amount of time for players who are interested.

GON: As an encounter designer, are there timed events like that where you’ve made, and you feel sad that they’re going away — you’ve spent time on them and now they have to be shelved and nobody will ever play them again?

Ion: A little bit! But I think on the flip side it’s actually one of the cooler parts of a massively multiplayer online game like this, it’s a reminder that the world can actually evolve and change, and we’re always a little bit sad as designers to lock our work away and not have people experience it in the future, but the flip side of that is that the world is actually going to be different tomorrow to how it is today. Which is a really good reason to check it out today, but also a reminder that there’s an evolving story, that the player’s role is actually changing the world around them.

GON: If we can jump again to pet battles — they’re being tweaked in 5.3. Can you explain why Blizzard is tweaking the stats behind pet battles, and how player responses have been in general to this feature since the introduction?

Ion: I think the pet battle feature is one that we view as a huge success. A lot of players from a broad spectrum of previous game playing styles, from casual solo questers to hardcore raiders to high-end arena players have had a lot of fun just doing pet battles, and collecting and using that to fill their time as they explore Pandaria. We’re not viewing it with as fine a balance as… we’re not trying to balance it the same way we do our PVP or our classes, but we are keeping an eye on the evolving metagame, pets that seem overpowered, some that are dominating the high-end matchups, and we will make adjustments accordingly to make sure that people feel their pets can be competitive. It’s something that a lot of players spend a good amount of time doing, and care a lot about.

GON: Do you have any plans to expand the pet battle system in any meaningful way — tournaments, something along those lines?

Ion: No concrete plans for any kind of massive expansion, I think we see ourselves continuing to incrementally add new content. All options are on the table for different directions we could take it in, we’re very happy to have a popular and exciting system like this, but there are a lot of cool places it could go for sure.

GON: Earlier you said you didn’t want to have any content that felt like a chore. Now I guess that ties in nicely to a big change in 5.3 where you’ve reduced the experience required on the final five levels by a fairly impressive 33%. What’s the rationale behind this?

Ion: Ultimately it’s to make it easier to level alts. There’s a certain pacing to the game as a whole, particularly when the expansion is new, there’s a lot of things to see, to do, to explore, and once you get to max level there’s a whole new process that begins there and a whole power curve, beginning back then with scenarios and dungeons, because things like Looking For Raid weren’t open at the time. So there was just a very different overall pacing to the content, whereas at this point many if not most of players playing Mists have at least one max level character, and they’d like to get multiple alts caught up so they can also experience that content, and we’d just like to make it easier to do that.

GON: In a broader MMO sense, comparing WoW now to how it used to be at vanilla launch for example, how do you feel the ‘value’ of experience points have changed? A lot of old, old-school WoW players who have complain the game is too easy now, but a lot of new players are definitely enjoying it and a lot of established players are enjoying, as you say, the ability to rapidly bring up an alt.

Ion: I think we’re continuing the direction that has been the case for years and years now. We initially began adjusting the levelling curves from one to 70 in the Wrath of the Lich King timetable. Originally in vanilla WoW I think it took me something like 13 or 14 days play to get my character up to 60, and that while effective at the time, also created a tremendous barrier to entry for players who are coming to the game anew or returning after time off and want to play with their friends that are max level. And one of the values that’s important to us is that there shouldn’t be too many barriers to getting back in and playing with their friends. Reducing the max experience required is just one of the steps we can take towards that end.

GON: Do you have any plans to address the people who are clamouring for new customisation options, hairstyles, etc? You don’t have to look far into a WoW patch notes thread to see somebody angry about the lack of new haircuts available… what’s Blizzard’s timeframe on this? I know you’ve been working on redesigned character models.

Ion: Nothing concrete to announce at this point, but we’re definitely aware that players love the ability to customise their character, as an expression of themselves and their aesthetics. The transmogrification feature is one that’s been extremely popular and we’re well aware this is something that players want, and it’s something we hope to be able to offer, but nothing solid to announce just yet.

GON: In terms of actual workload and resources, is developing new hairstyles and that sort of a thing a big deal, is it something you could work on but you just don’t have the manpower at the moment?

Ion: I think the reality is that it’s a question of prioritisation. We would like to do that, but there are players who also, for example, want new models for the dungeon bosses and raid bosses that they fight, and don’t want to see just a reskin of an old model. And it’s the same team of character artists that are doing all of these things, so it’s just a question of what’s more important. It doesn’t mean that we don’t care about it, or that we don’t want to do it, it’s just a question of what has to come first. And so the core features, such as new creatures and things along those lines have to take priority.

GON: We saw recently that WoW subscribers had dropped to 8.3 million. Now that’s obviously still the biggest subscription MMO by a long shot, but what I want to ask is — in your day-to-day job, do you have to consider subscription number fluctuations like this? Are you or the studio ever given direction to change the content in accordance with these numbers, in order to maybe recapture them or aggressively grow them?

Ion: It’s not about the numbers per se. I mean clearly we want to make content that as many players as possible will enjoy. And we pay far more attention to our forums, our fansites, to what our players are saying to us directly, and to what we ourselves are experiencing as we play the game, than we do to abstract numbers. Because that gives us more guidance to be gained from direct feedback. Ultimately we just want to make the best game possible and the game that is the most fun possible to play, and we’re confident that if we meet those objectives, subscriber numbers will follow.

GON: And you have no concerns about the majority of the loss being in the Asian market?

Ion: I think there are certainly business considerations. As an encounter designer, I have no reason to believe that players in Asia have a different definition of a fun dungeon or a raid boss than players in North America or Europe, and in fact the feedback comes back very similarly. So our focus is just on creating fun experiences, epic encounters, and that’s what we try to stay focused on.

GON: Thanks very much Ion for your time.

Ion: No worries, my pleasure!

Patch 5.3 releases tomorrow.

Blizzard is bringing a bunch of new content to World of Warcraft in upcoming Patch 5.3, with delicious new scenarios for Horde and Alliance alike.

Blood in the Snow is a story-driven scenario in which Alliance heroes assist Moira and the Dark Irons to pu down dwarven infighting. Dark Heart of Pandaria sends you to clean up after a crew of Goblin engineers who have uncovered a mysterious artifact. Both scenarios are part of the Battlefield Barrens storyline.

Secrets of Ragefire is another goblin-centric story, sending you to investigate the cause of missing scouts. Battle on the High Seas sens you onto the high seas in a factional battle.

Additionally, Blizzard has introduced a Heroic difficulty. It’s available for the four new scenarios listed above as well as for Crypt of Forgotten Kings and A Brewing Storm. To queue for Heroic mode, you’ll need an item level of 480 and two friends, but you’ll score Valor Points and a chance to obtain Raid Finder-quality items. A post on Battle.net has further details.

Source: Battle.net

If you’ve been playing World of Warcraft‘s surprisingly fun pet battles then you may have been annoyed at what seem to be entirely random inaccurate attacks, which can cause the entire combat to be a wash.

Well, worry no more: patch 5.3 is coming and Blizzard are working on clearing up the system. “Once patch 5.3 is live, you’ll see ‘hit chance’ listed for all abilities, and this value will update if the pet is affected by abilities that increase or reduce the chance to hit,” writes Crithto on Battle.net.

“In addition, we’ve removed the base 5% chance to dodge, and reduced the chance to miss opponents of higher levels from 5% per level to 2% per level. The end result should be that your attacks that should hit, will hit, and there’s greater incentive to get out there and fight higher-level pets for greater experience rewards.”

The same 5.3 patch will also bring big changes to the world of WoW PVP — read about those here.

Source: Battle.net

The Thunder King, patch 5.2 for World of Warcraft has just been released, and brings with it more raid content and more stuff to do than in any previous World of Warcraft patch. We sat down for a chat with Blizzard’s Dave Kosak, lead quest designer on the game, to talk about storytelling, solo scenarios that work for all classes, and how they can keep aggressively pushing out more content while making sure it doesn’t suck at the same time.

If you’re looking for 5.2 patch notes, find them here.

GON: As lead quest designer, can you give me a quick overview of what your job entails and what you’d do on a day-to-day basis?

Dave: So I lead the quest team — as you’d imagine, from the title — and the quest team is responsible for the outdoor content, so everything in the game world. We pretty much start with an empty map and then all the NPCs, all the monsters, all the quests, those all get spawned in, and put together.

As lead quest designer I’m also one of World of Warcraft’s principal story guys, so I try and figure out what the narrative is going to be for the expansion and the subsequent patches, and work with the rest of our story team like Chris Metzen and Tom Chilton and try and make sense of the narrative so that there’s a nice, continuing, satisfying story throughout the game experience.

GON: In terms of that overarching narrative, where does the Thunder King fit into that, and how do you see it advancing the metaplot f the whole game?

Dave: In concepting the Mists of Pandaria expansion, we wanted to roll out patches on a more frequent patch cycle. We wanted to have alternating patches with a whole lot of cool raid bosses. So patch 5.1 was a lot of daily content, a lot of story content, the focus shifted towards that whole Alliance-Horde conflict that established Mists of Pandaria, and with 5.2 now we have another raid patch.

We are kind of returning to Pandaria’s local problems and attempting to solve them. In the process we’re going to learn a lot about the history of Pandaria, where the Mogu came from, where the Sha come from, and that’s going to inform what’s happening going forward, and it’ll all come together in the climactic raid that will end the patch.

GON: When you have a really raid-heavy patch like this, do you find it harder to drop in more direction about where the story is going, than when you actually focus on story-drive, solo play stuff?

Dave: We are always looking at how best to tell stories. We know that generally when you’re engage in group content, like a dungeon or a raid, you don’t have a lot of mental space to absorb a lot of story there. If an NPC starts talking to you, you’re like “Shut up! Shut up you, I’m moving on to the next boss.” You don’t pay much attention. So obviously we can’t do a whole lot of story in the raid itself. But! If we’re doing our job right, we’ll be able to set all that up outside the raid.

Keen players in the original 5.0 expansion will already have seen the remains of the Thunder King, seen him resurrected by the Zandalari, heard about his deeds in the past — or fought his agents in Pandaria. So we set it up there. Then in patch 5.2, there’s a whole lot of content in the island that, just by the nature of the island itself, tells you a whole lot about the relationship between the Thunder King, the Mogu and the Zandalari. You’re learning a lot about the raid and who is in it, even before you set foot in the raid. It’s a challenge, like you say, but it’s no different than any of our other story challenges.

GON: Storytelling in MMOs has always traditionally been one of the weaker aspects of game design, and generally I think you guys have been doing an excellent job so far, but… would you say this is the payoff, then? For people who paid attention in 5.1?

Dave: Definitely. I think that there’s a lot of story threads that we’ve been continuing through the patches and building up, and so far the player response has been pretty good. I’m glad to hear you say we’ve been delivering on the story, because it’s always tricky. We want to deliver on gameplay first and then get as much story as we can in there.

Certainly in 5.1, we really built up Lor’themar which is really cool because Blood Elves never really knew who their faction leader was! (laughs) We really carried Jaina’s story forward, which players had really wanted to see happen after Theramore and then that story carries right into 5.2. The events of the story in 5.1 cause a lot of 5.2, the main factions on the island represent that split in Kirin Tor, that split in Dalaran between the Sunreavers and the Kirin Tor, so those are the main factions. And actually, players that play through all the way to unlock the entire island, there’s a very cool showdown that happens at the end between Lor’themar and Jaina. And of course that sets up the next event down the line, so all kinds of things are happening.

GON: So when you think about 5.3, are you going to move away from the raid content and back towards the sort of stuff we saw in 5.1, and alternate on this schedule?

Dave: Yeah, exactly. The alternating schedule allows us to have… I mean certainly our team is already hard at work on all the raids in 5.4, so we’re already building THAT content, while a second group of designers is working on 5.3. So 5.3 won’t have any raid content. But we will have some scenarios and some story things and a few events that’ll carry the story forwards, so we can see what’s been happening. Again, with the Isle of the Thunder King, we’re kind of focusing on Pandaria’s local problems, but then we’re going to pull the camera back out again for 5.3 and see what’s happening in the rest of the world.

GON: It’s pretty clear that Mists of Pandaria draws heavily on Asian mythology — are there any particular myths or legends that you drew on for the Thunder King?

Dave: I can’t name one specifically. The Thunder King… you know, we did have this idea, if you look at early Chinese history the first Emperors, who founded the first dynasties, they accomplished a lot. They unified China. They weren’t necessarily well-liked, because, well, they unified China, unified the language, the unit of measure, built this Imperial system which was very powerful but not necessarily well-liked. We liked that idea, we gravitated towards that idea. It was the Mogu that crushed everybody else, and I thought that was an interesting story angle, and then… what if he comes back? What is he going to do again? It gave us a lot of lore to tie into, like, if everybody was enslaved, who led the slave rebellion? It gave us a chance to really develop the monks.. if they’re slaves, they couldn’t have weapons, they’d have to learn to fight with their fists.

So going with that kind of early Mogu history informed a lot of other histories that tied into the game and into the game mechanics, which is a big win. That’s sort of the angle we came from. There’s bits and pieces of Asian folklore that you can see in the game. We always kind of scramble it up, we put the White Tiger to the north, and I think in folklore the White Tiger is always in the west. So we messed it up a bit, we made it uniquely World of Warcraft, which is important to us. We also have some cameos, like the Monkey King, a very important figure in mythology, and he plays a small role in patch 5.1, kind of has a cameo where you can see him briefly.

GON: I don’t think World of Warcraft would be quite the same without cameos from popular culture and mythology, no…

Dave: Right! Right.

GON: Let’s talk about the Legendary quest line in 5.2. You’re getting a bunch of new stuff in there, I assume the Legendary quest line is of particular importance to you as lead quest designer!

Dave: Yes! It’s one of the things I am personally implementing, a lot of that feature is mine.

GON: Well, let’s talk about your baby then! Can you tell us about the new solo scenario, what’s going on in there?

Dave: Yeah! That was tricky. The solo scenario is very much a skill test, we want to make sure that you are earning your Legendary. If you’ve been cruising along half-playing your class, and sleeping your way through, hoping you’ll get a legendary, this scenario is going to separate the men from the boys. But it was a challenge to build. Because we wanted to make sure that you could play as a healer, or a tank, or a DPS. It’s difficult to build that content. And I think the class team that helped us to build the actual mechanics for that fight, they did a great job of doing some really innovative things.

For instance, as a healer… there’s one part of the fight where you have to defend the celestial blacksmith while he creates the next artifact for the legendary quest, and he’s got a celestial protector with him, this enormous titan construct. Totally badass. So the defender starts at 50% health, and he has a slight damage buff, and if you heal him all the way to full health he has a 300% damage buff, and he starts wrecking things for you. So as a healer your strategy for that fight is to dance around, mostly you’re as much as possible healing up the celestial, and when things get too hectic you can click on an anvil to nuke the whole room. But that will also reset the celestial and you’ll have to heal him back up.

It’s quite a challenge for a healer but it’s kind of unique, so a healer will attack that scenario very differently to, say, a DPS, where the celestial will be helping you out but you’ll be focused on doing lots of damage yourself.

GON: Does that scenario change if you change class? Is it unique to each class, or is it just one scenario built to cater to each class?

Dave: It’s basically the same scenario, the encounters are the same. But your strategies are going to be very different.

GON: Alrighty. Can you tell me about Tortos, and why you decided to make an entirely turtle-themed raid?

Dave: Haha, yeah. We had these really cool looking turtle models, but of course it’s World of Warcraft! So you don’t just want to look at them, you want to fight them! So our encounter designers put that encounter together. That turtle is stuck in a wall, so you’re sort of fighting this enormous turtle head, and then they added some great sort of Super Mario mechanics where there are these mobs you can kill, and then you can kick their shell at the boss, it’s excellent. I… don’t actually know why we’re so brutal to turtles, we’re nice to the big turtle at the very beginning of Pandaria, of the wandering isle! We saved that turtle’s life, and he’s a big turtle, so I guess we got a lot of turtle karma out of that so we can beat up the little turtles.

GON: He’ll be back in the next patch as a new raid boss, turned evil?

Dave: That’d be an interesting raid boss! Fight a whole zone of turtles.

GON: I’d play it.

Dave: (laughs)

GON: Is it true that you’ve banned all mention of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in Blizzard’s offices, as a result of this new company crackdown on turtles?

Dave: (laughs) No! No. In fact, I think in the Dalaran sewer there are four baby turtles, and a rat called “Shredder”.

GON: Can you give us a bit more information about what new mounts you’ll be bringing in 5.2, that’s-

Dave: DINOSAURRRSSSSSS

GON: -still blanked out. Okay! Dinosaurs. I like dinosaurs. How many dinosaurs?

Dave: Awesome dinosaur mounts. You can get one dinosaur from… actually the easiest dinosaur mount to get, if you can get to Exalted with the Kirin Tor or Sunreaver factions on the island they’ll give you a pretty awesome dinosaur mount. There’s also some rare drops in the raid. We have — and I’m really excited to see how this plays out — we have the Isle of Giants, this whole zone off the coast of Kun Lai and it’s all group content, all elite dinosaurs in the wild, and there’s a quest to collect a lot of dinosaur bones, so if you can stockpile a lot of those there’s some great mounts that you can get that way.

GON: Just like in real life.

Dave: Yes! If you want tame dinosaurs you’re going to need a dinosaur taming manual and you can only get that on the Isle of Giants, so get a big group together and start farming some dinosaurs. It’s a pretty brutal zone, but it should be a lot of fun for big groups.

GON: Where does 5.2 sit in the overall WoW release schedule? Obviously you’ve got Titan in development, you can’t talk about that, but with that coming up are you approaching a sort of ‘endgame’ for WoW content? Or are you still planning for the next expansion(s) beyond Pandaria?

Dave: Oh we are definitely planning FAR ahead for WoW expansions going forward. In fact our goal is to come out with these expansions faster. We’ve been working on a two-year or longer development cycle for these expansions, and that really isn’t cool for players. You get a lot of, well, for instance fighting on Deathwing’s back for 8 months. It’s a cool encounter, but it’s not 8 months of cool. People really want more content.

So the aggressive patch release schedule is part of our plan, we are already thinking ahead to the next expansion and working on that, and there’s going to be an expansion after that and an expansion after THAT. World of Warcraft is a very strong product and has a lot of active players and I think if we have more frequent content, especially content of the quality we have in Pandaria, there’s absolutely no reason we’re not going to have players five year, ten years from now.

GON: Do you have any concerns that this aggressive, increased level of production will result in a decreased level of content per expansion?

Dave: Is that a concern? Hell yeah! We don’t want to come out with content only to have that content suck. There’s a real challenge in ensuring that we can grow the team, but also keep that culture that is working so well right now. It’s definitely a focus of ours. We’re not growing for the sake of growing, and we’re not shipping patches faster for the sake of shipping patches faster. The trick is to be able to maintain that quality bar and that’s definitely our highest priority. We’re aware of that and I think — and this is my personal opinion — we’ve shipped two patches on a two-month patch cycle, and I think they’re both extremely good patches with tons of great content.

(Blizzard’s PR points out in the background that 5.2 is “probably the biggest patch we’ve ever done.”)

Dave: Yeah. It’s a massive raid tier. I’m not sure of the exact quest number, I think it’s close to 100 quests on the island, there’s a LOT to do, not just quests but minibosses, and summonable bosses, and the Treasure Room scenario — have you seen the Treasure Room scenario yet?

GON: I haven’t!

Dave: Well there’s these rare keys that allow you to sneak into the Vault of the Thunder King and you have five minutes to loot as much treasure as you can. It’s a really crazy encounter where you have to really use your classes’ abilities to move around and cheat the fight so you can get as much treasure as possible and get out of there in five minutes. It’s huge, it’s awesome, and I think if 5.2 is the level of quality that we’re going for then everybody is going to be happy to see patches come out a lot faster.

GON: Thankyou very much Dave, and best of luck with everything!

Dave: Thankyou!

Blizzard have released a new trailer for the upcoming patch 5.2, The Thunder King. As well as showing off the key locations you’ll play in the upcoming patch, the video also shows clips from the new ‘Throne of Thunder’ raid, shots of the new world boss Nalak the Storm Lord, and of course, a whole pile of pandas. You can learn more about patch 5.2 by clickin’ right here.

There are a lot of silly stereotypes about gamers and anti-social tendencies, but for those who genuinely believe them, here’s a nice bit of counter-evidence: give gamers the chance to fork out a bit of cash for something special that marks them as a caring individual, and they’re all over that. Take World of Warcraft’s Cinder Kitten, which has totted up a whopping $2.3 million in sales.

The frankly adorable pet goes for $10, which is pretty hefty even for such a delightful little bundle. But when Blizzard announced hat all proceeds from purchases made before December 31 would directly benefit the Red Cross and its Hurricane Sandy relief efforts, the Battle.net community rallied around nicely. Maths isn’t my strong point, but surely that means about 230,000 players ponied up for the widdle bundle of wuv? Well done, everyone.

Source: Battle.net

Welcome back to another Community Soapbox article! If you’ve got something you’d like to say to our community, check here for more information about how to get your thoughts up in lights.

I’ve been playing World of Warcraft on and off since the initial release of the game. Generally I get excited when hearing about details of an upcoming expansion pack — however with the details being released on Mists of Pandaria I wasn’t happy at all. I felt that jumping on the Kung Fu Panda bandwagon and releasing an expansion based on a small part of the lore of the world was a mistake, and it didn’t help that the released intro for the expansion had comedic elements to it. So I had decided this would be the first expansion I wasn’t going to play.

That was until someone decided it would make a good birthday gift.

So I decided not to waste it and loaded it up. Maybe it’s because I was expecting a disaster, but Mists of Pandaria is a mostly well made expansion. Blizzard seem to have figured out that questing is good for delivering story: voiced character conversation and cutscenes are used more in this expansion then any other. Because of this the gimmick type quests, ones that involve vehicles and weird quest items, are few and far between. I liked it this way, however some people have complained in game about it being too monotonous.

Cyrinno has also made a video version of this review, if that’s your thing! Enjoy.

Dungeons are generally well made, but they feel unchallenging. Half the dungeons you can access while levelling up and the others are heroic only. Heroic isn’t what it used to be, crowd control isn’t really necessary and everything still gets AOE’d down. Blizzards attempt to add danger and difficulty usually involve just avoiding new AOE and cone attacks.

Scenarios have been added too, which essentially are three player quests that are in an instance instead of out in the usual questing zones. These also have no challenge at all and are only good at pushing the story onwards — but just barely.

There’s also the raid finder. Most raids start off easy, but it does ramp up. Even though I found it still too easy, the raids are still the hardest content that is non-hard mode and found it enjoyable. Here we see the problem: when most of the game is easy, there is no challenge and there is just grind. By having the game so accessible and with there being so much competition, I haven’t felt the need to move onto hard-mode content as I have with previous expansions.

Then there are Pokemon style battles between player pets which is good for killing time while waiting for raids, but the system — while well constructed — lacks flash. Combat moves from pets in the battle system just re-used already existing assets with very simple moves, and I found this disappointing. X-COM: Enemy Unknown has shown what a few good cutscenes can do even in turn based combat.

The new class added to the game is the Monk. The new starting area is, again, well-constructed, but I found it disappointing having to level up from scratch again. Starting off a bit higher such as the death knight would have been welcome. When levelling up as a monk you aren’t really given that many skills to use, and it can feel a bit dull. The tanking spec at low levels seems to outdo the DPS spec by a large margin as well.

Last of the big changes is the talent system. They have removed talent points, and instead added a system where you choose from one of three talents every 15 levels or so. The idea is for the player to make hard choices, but it generally doesn’t come down to that. Usually the talent that you want to choose is very straight forward. I never came to a point in the game where it was a hard choice. The system really should have been implemented instead of the glyph system and kept in combination with passive talent points.

With the new system of talents, however, levels are starting to lose all meaning. Mists of Pandaria advertises that it includes five extra levels, but it may as well just be one level. The other four are essentially meaningless, although at least you can pat yourself on the back.

Overall, I found the expansion to be serious, and of generally high quality. The questing is well made and so are the dungeons, and the new talent system works but is underwhelming. Mists of Pandaria makes the game feel far too accessible, resulting in a been-there, done-that feeling. Unfortunately, there is a lot of competition these days in the MMO market — and I felt there wasn’t much of a reason for me to keep playing the game after I had completed it.

The next World of Warcraft patch has been given a brief overview in this new trailer from Blizzard, showing off both the dinosaur mounts that you’ll be able to ride and the new environments you can clamber over in your quest for phatter lootz. Blizzard published list of all the things you can expect from 5.2 last week, but if you don’t want to read text then here is a video instead. Enjoy!

Blizzard have release patch 5.1 to their juggernaut World of Warcraft. The new patch, titled ‘Landfall’, ramps up the Horde v. Alliance quest with more daily quests in the Krasarang Wilds, adds two new factions with their own unique rewards, and five new Scenarios — two unique to each faction, and one playable by either.

The Pet Battle System has also been overhauled with much-requested upgrades, including a UI improvement and new rare pets. A new underground, invitation only ‘Brawlers Guild’ (the first rule is that you don’t talk about it) has been established too, providing gladiatorial PVE fights against some of Azeroth’s toughest creatures.

Raid groups are also no longer necessary to enter pre-Pandaria raid dungeons, and the next step in the Mists of Pandaria Black Prince legendary quest line has been opened up. For the full, enormous list of patch notes including class and balance tweaks, hit up Battle.net.

Still not sure on the latest expansion? Click here for our massive review of Pandaria.

Source: Press Release

World of Warcraft changed the MMO landscape forever when it launched on November 23, 2004 — and now, eight years later, Blizzard are offering a bunch of tasty free treats to players who log in to celebrate.

If you log in anytime between now and December 1st, you’ll get a unique Feat of Strength achievement and Celebration Package item. Opening your celebration package will launch commence the party times, granting a (purely cosmetic) tabard to your character, and giving you 8% bonus experience and reputation from any enemies defeated while active. Here’s a nice little trailer for you to play as you walk down memory lane:

Source: Battle.net

Reviewing an MMO expansion is sort of like giving a game a physical. It’s an opportunity to look at the new content that the expansion has added to the game (which, for a World of Warcraft expansion, is never a small amount), but also to look at the state of the MMO as a whole. Because, as more and more content is added to the same product, there’s always a risk that a game might lose its direction or momentum, or make older content completely irrelevant. A really good expansion will find a way to not only make advancement fun, but create a new experience for players who want to go back to their roots.

Mists of Pandaria goes about this through three different methods.

First: The addition of the Monk class means that players can level their way up to the newly elevated level cap of 90 with a  whole new set of skills. The Monk is a very versatile character, somewhat akin to the Paladin in terms of flexibility. Each specialization option conforms to one of the three group roles of tank, healer or damage-dealer. Being a leather-wearing class, the tank option, called the Brewmaster, doesn’t have the raw damage-mitigation of the Warrior or Deathknight and instead relies on the ability to redirect damage back at enemies. Brewmasters also passively delay portions of incoming damage, letting healers keep them alive through bursty situations. Mistweavers, the Monk’s healing option, blend their heals with damage, but at the cost of not being able to focus their heals as effectively as a Priest. The damage-dealing Windwalker option focuses on melee damage and high mobility.

It’s a fun class to use, and the flexibility means you’re never without a function in a group, but the rate at which players acquire new skills makes the early levels quite tedious. The fact that you also have to level one from scratch, unlike the Death Knight which unlocked and started at level 55, means that the fun of a Monk is mostly limited by how well you can tolerate levelling through old content for the umpteenth time.

This is where the second method of reinvigorating leveling comes into play – the Pandaren race. Players, regardless of whether they’ve actually purchased the expansion or not, can now play as the fluffy, beer-gutted joke race subtly introduced in Warcraft III. The Pandaren have potentially one of the most powerful racial abilities in the game – Epicurian – which doubles the statistical benefits of eating food. Any high-level player knows how important maintaining a food buff can be. They also come with a short-duration crowd-control ability, take reduced fall damage, and gain a boost to their rested experience rate. This, at least, should make leveling a new Pandaren character a little quicker.

Pandaren players begin on a new sub-continent called The Wandering Isle. It’s a fairly small, highly polished island set on the back of a turtle, and Blizzard has nailed the aesthetic. It’s colourful and varied, and the sight of the giant turtle flippers flapping in the water is highly memorable. But as an introductory zone, it’s not one of the best. It’s a little too polished, leaving players following a very linear path with little reason to stray and explore and learn on their own. The zone also leaves the introduction of the two warring factions too late and doesn’t really explain what the ideologies of the factions are. Not an issue for experienced players, sure, but a newcomer may find themselves choosing their faction based mostly on the description slapped in front of them at the end of the quest line, and not based on experience. Seeing more of each faction in action would have made the choice more impactful.

Once your choice is made, it’s back to your standard Azeroth, with one difference – the third feature to cut through that leveling tedium – the Pet Battle System. From level 5, players can get training which allows them to use their non-combat pets in, well, combat. It’s a turn-based battle system where each pet has a type and a selection of abilities, each with their own type as well. Some types are stronger against others. In addition to the pets you can acquire through questing, from vendors, or are mailed to you for buying games or cards, a lot of pets are found in the wild. In fact, the strongest pets tend to only be found in the wild, and only if you’re lucky. The Pet Battle System is genuinely a lot of fun, even if it is a blatant rip-off of a certain Nintendo property. The ability to match-make battles at any time, and with any level of pets, is a really nice addition. And even with the slow-pace of combat, fights can still be exhilarating, often coming right down to the wire.

But let’s face it. No one is buying Mists of Pandaria because they really love pets or pandas. They want to push their characters up to the new level cap of 90, to explore the titular Pandaria, obtain new loot, do new quests, dungeons and raids.

Pandaria is, without a doubt, the most beautiful landscape in World of Warcraft so far. Every expansion brings something new to the table visually, and Mists hasn’t broken that streak. Each area in Pandaria has its own unique visual style, be it massive stone spires topped with cascading trees, open green plains ripe for farming, rolling foothills that lead to intimidating snow-covered mountains, or a piece of once-beautiful land ruined and darkened by conflict and the living manifestations of hate and aggression. No part of Pandaria is unappealing, and no part is lacking in detail. A huge amount of care went into crafting the land, and the most exciting part of the expansion for me was when I could finally scour the land on my flying mount, admiring all the subtleties I missed from the ground.

But the same care wasn’t taken with questing. Mists, for the most part, deemphasized the vehicle system introduced in Wrath and used heavily in Cataclysm. The great majority of quests in Mists involve you killing something, collecting something, or collecting something from something you just killed. And the framing of these quests is inconsistent. Sometimes a quest will show an entertaining, complex cinematic that totally puts you in the mood to go slice some bugs up, and sometimes an NPC gives you a half-assed, occasionally typo-ridden, bit of dialogue. It’s a shame, really, because the quests that try something new, like the martial-arts training montage, do so much to add to the feel of Pandaria.

There’s also a distinct lack of difficulty in Pandaria’s questing. The only times I felt challenged were when I brought that challenge on myself. Vanilla World of Warcraft would regularly put you in situations where you couldn’t reliably fight one enemy without having to deal with two of its friends at the same time. With Mists, Blizzard seems to actively avoid giving you tough situations like that, and instead loads your enemies up with extra health and high-damage, but easily avoidable, abilities. I felt no more challenged doing level 85 quests than level 90 quests, and found the most enjoyable part of questing to be when I stumbled upon a rare enemy intended for small groups, and took it out solo.

The endgame is what most WoW players are concerned about, though, and Mists comes packed with the standard array of heroic dungeons, raids and PvP. The new PvP maps are actually very enjoyable, and provide two completely new game-types. One is a murderball-style format where players hold an object as long as they can, but with four potential balls up for grabs. It’s chaotic and enjoyable, but highly favors teams with dedicated healers. The other is a capture-point map, but the points are mobile and move along set tracks. Think the Payload maps on TF2, except there are three payloads, and they appear at the beginning once they reach their destination. This is, in my opinion, the more enjoyable of the two. It splits the action up in a manageable way and encourages interesting team movement and composition.

Scenarios are the other major addition to World of Warcraft’s endgame lineup. These are mini-dungeons for teams of three, tuned for whatever roles you have available. Some follow silly side-stories while others further progress the expansion’s story arc of factional conflict. They fill a niche for players who feel intimidated by tougher group content, but for everyone else, the rewards are negligible and the challenge almost non-existent.

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria is a very solid expansion. Some say the best yet, and while that point could certainly be argued, I believe that Mists falls just shy of the high water mark left by some of the previous expansions. In trying to cater to everyone, Mists at times forgets to service the hardcore, the people who have been subscribers for almost eight years. But if you’ve been playing World of Warcraft for that long, you probably don’t mind the occasionally flat quest or easy leveling, because you’re already chasing epics on a new class, from a new race, in a new world.

Good:

• Pandaria is gorgeous
• Pet battles are the surprise hit
• Two brand new PvP battlegrounds, and they’re both entertaining

Bad:

• Quests and storytelling swing in quality between superb and lazy
• There’s little to challenge experienced players

Let’s just get this out of the way now: the Pet Battle System introduced in World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria is a massive Pokemon ripoff. And that’s totally fine by me. For years, fans of the Pokemon franchise have cried out for a Pokemon MMO. The thought of an open world filled with hundreds of adorable little monsters to find, battle, collect and train is tantalizing at the very least and yet Nintendo has never capitalized on it.

Well, you snooze you lose, Nintendo. Blizzard stepped up to the plate and has mimicked the Pokemon model, or at least the core elements of it, to a tee. The little non-combat pets players have been able to collect since World of Warcraft’s launch now each come with a potential move-set of six abilities, and a passive ability determined by the creature’s type. Mechanical creatures, for example, will revive themselves after they’re killed with a small amount of health, while beast-types will deal extra damage when their health drops below a certain threshold.

Stats are simplified down to health, damage and speed, and each pet can only use up to three different abilities in battle, making the whole system much simpler than Pokemon’s. But that doesn’t mean it’s actually simple. There’s complexity to the Pet Battle System, and it stems from the way pet abilities can affect the battlefield. Only in recent years have Pokemon games begun to experiment with persistent effects, whereas WoW has happily adopted weather effects, lingering poison clouds, and healing mists that remain regardless of who switches in or out of the fight.

The result is a system which, thanks to the huge number of pets out there to use, gives players a gigantic number of feasible team composition options.

I’ve experimented with damage-over-time teams and teams with lots of evasion. My current setup is built around outlasting the opponent through copious healing and damage-over-time. And it’s extremely easy to see how well your team stacks up against others, as the in-built matchmaking does a surprisingly good job of pairing you up against a team of approximately equal strength.

There’s a whole series of sub-quests that will take you across all of the continents to battle AI-controlled trainers too, though the difficulty curve seems to have a few speedbumps. Unlike the Pokemon games, which often makes levelling your pets feel like a side-effect of your journey across the region, most players will probably find times when they have to buckle-down and grind out a few pet levels. And while there are many, many pets to catch, unlock and level, the locked-down skill system means that you won’t ever really be able to surprise your opponent with a fire-elemental that spits ice.

That said, of everything in Mists of Pandaria, the Pet Battle System has attracted the most interest from me, if not the most time. I instinctively check my my mini-map for new pets, and become actively excited when I encounter a powerful new one. And unlike the PvP or Dungeon systems, Pet Battles are something I can do while I’m having my lunch or waiting for the rest of my guild. It’s a Pokemon ripoff, yes, but it’s a well-executed one that fills a niche without feeling overtly tacked-on. Kudos.

Over the weekend, various citizens of Azeroth were terrorised by a level one priest who thought it’d be a sweet idea to run through major cities and use mad sploitz to kill every player and NPC around them instantly. The priest, by the name of ‘Haahaahaahah’, can be seen in the video below trashing everything that is good and holy and filling Stormwind with corpses — something that Blizzard have immediately hotfixed and are hotly chasing down the culprit of. Check out the video below which shows the massacre in action:

Source: VG247

If you’re at all interested in things that are awesome, perhaps you’d like to know that the ambitious project to recreate World of Warcraft inside Minecraft has now been released in a beta stage. The Crafting Azeroth project is exactly that, and is now available via a 2.17 GB torrent that will extract to a monstrous 24 GB.

A Bukkit server is required to run the map yourself in order to transition between areas properly, and the comments in the Reddit thread announcing the release indicate that you’ll need to be careful or the map will begin to tear itself apart through lava and fire. Good to know! Google Map overviews are available if you don’t want to host it yourself, starting with Kalimdor and The Eastern Kingdoms. The whole process is apparently heavily-automated, assisted by custom software created by the developers, and the beta product alone weighs in at 275 square kilometers built from over 68 billion blocks.

If you’d rather just page have a quick flick through, a full image gallery of the recreation is available here, along with some before-and-after shots.

Blizzard may have only just launched, but Blizzard are already hard at work planning what their next patch will achieve. Patch 5.1, which they plan to deploy on the PTR shortly, will increase the tensions between Horde and Alliance as both sides land expeditions on the shores of the islands of Pandaria, bringing new daily quest hubs and faction reputations.

Solo PVE challenges will also be available in the form of the ‘Brawlers Guild’ challenges, against “some of the toughest creatures in World of Warcraft”. The Pet Battles system UI will also undergo significant changes, including a way to “upgrade the rarity of the pets that you’ve captured”.

Finally, Valor Points will be able to be used on upgrading the item level and quality of gear you already own, while sure Wrathion is “additional tasks for players to complete as they continue their quest for Legendary gear”. Get in.

Source: Battle.net

Blizzard have proudly revealed this morning that Mists of Pandaria, the latest expansion in the World of Warcraft franchise, has shipped 2.7 million units in the first week of launch. That number is expected to grow when the figures from the China launch, which occurred on Tuesday, are finally calculated.

As a result, World of Warcraft‘s subscriber base has been pushed back above the 10 million mark — still down from its peak of 12 million in October of 2010, but solid growth from the 9.1 million figure most recently released.

While we work to bring you our final thoughts on the game, Blizzard have announced that they are hard at work on the first major post-launch content update, with more info to come in the weeks ahead.

Source: Press Release

A touching story for your public holiday Monday: Blizzard have crafted special in-game items to honour British soldier Ben Shaw, an Iraq veteran who lost his sight to a roadside bomb while on a tour of duty in Basra.

Shaw continues to play the game with the help of his guild-mate, a Scotsman named Owen. Through a series of macros installed on both computers, Owen’s character Davidian (a Death Knight) is able to help Shaw’s character Hexu (an enhancement shaman) with all in-game tasks, from raids to repairs.

Touchingly, Blizzard have now honoured the pair with their own pair of in-game items: Hexu’s Amplifying Helm and Davidian’s All-Seeing Eyes. The descriptions for the items are beautiful as well: “A man with a friend is never without vision”, and “Sharp enough to see for two men” complete the picture. Lovely stuff.

You can read more about the pair over here on WoW Insider.

Source: WoW Insider

Blizzard continue to beaver away behind the scenes of Mists of Pandaria, dropping hotfix after hotfix on issues affecting players.

A new batch of hotfixes was released late on Saturday night to deal mostly with quest bugs and pet battles — check out the full list of changes below.

• Classes
  • Vengeance now ignores overkill damage.
  • Arcane Torrent now returns 2% of base mana (was previously an unintended 6%).
  • Priest
    • Void Shift can no longer be cast on Dominate Mind targets. 
    • The priest Season 12 four-piece healer set bonus can now only be consumed by the priest that applied it.
    • The priest Season 12 two-piece healer set bonus should now grant Diamond Soul buff to other players when Power Word: Shield is cast on them.
  • Rogue
    • Blind should always land as intended. Other players should not be able to dodge, block, or parry Blind.
    • A priest’s psyfiend’s Psychic Terror should no longer affect targets under a Rogue’s Smoke Bomb.
  • Warrior
    • Second Wind no longer interrupts a Warrior who is eating or sitting down.
• Creatures
  • Thieving Plainshawks in Valley of the Four Winds now cast Peck while in combat with players and no longer cast Steal Weapon.
  • The humanoids of Pandaria are no longer devoid of coin, and level 86-90 creatures are now occasionally carrying a Vine-Cracked Junkbox in one of their pockets.
  • The Hozen Diver in Jade Forest now has 271k health as opposed to the 135k he had before.
  • Cheung the Stablemaster should now do the duties of a stablemaster, as expected.
• Items
  • An appropriate amount of spell power has been added to Masterwork Forgewire Axe, Amber Spine of Klaxxi’vess, Amber Saber of Klaxxi’vess, and Forgewire Axe.
  • Zen Alchemist Stone should now work as intended.
  • Mysterious Camel Figurines should again provide the player with the ability to see Dormus.
  • The Quilen Statuette now has an item level of 463 (was 384).
  • Ancient Pandaren Fishing Charm should work as intended to give the player a chance to catch additional fish.

• Pet Battles
  • Turn inputs should no longer sometimes be inadvertently skipped, causing only one pet to take action that turn.
  • Conceding in a random PVP Pet Battle should now count as a loss.
  • State-dependent abilities should now properly require that the state be present to gain their bonus effects.
  • Strong and Pristine Traps should now properly be awarded when the corresponding achievement is obtained.
  • The Achievement “Win Streak” should now function as expected, and be awarded to players who win 25 consecutive Pet Battles.
• Quests
  • Players should be able to complete “Burning Down the House” as expected.
  • “SI:7 Report: Fire From the Sky” should always eject the player from Sully “The Pickle” McLeary’s vehicle, and can be completed even if the player dies and returns to camp before completing Sully’s event.
  • “Last Toll of the Yaungol” should only provide you with Xiao Tu’s companionship while you are in Hatred’s Vice.
  • Players who slip and fall from Serpent’s Overlook while on the quest “The Seal is Broken” should be able to find their way back to Serpent’s Spine by first returning to Grookin Hill or Pearlfin Village. Do watch your step!
  • All of the trainers for both the Horde and Alliance versions of ”Battle Pet Tamers: Cataclysm” and “Battle Pet Tamers: Pandaria” now properly apply pet recovery once defeated.
  • “Sha Can Awe” quest NPCs should only apply their Languor effect on players who are currently on that quest.
  • “Gardener Fran and the Watering Can” now includes a bit more guidance for new horticulturists.
• Bug Fixes
  • Loving a Shore Crab in Azshara … as you do … now properly counts towards the Achievement “To All The Squirrels I’ve Loved Before”.
  • The Luck of the Lotus buff should provide a chance to find Plundered Treasure as intended.
  • Crossing a zone boundary while traveling by boat or zeppelin on a multi-passenger mount should no longer result in players being removed from the transport, but may still dismount the passengers from the multi-passenger mount.
  • Players can no longer access different Pandaria daily quests by visiting other realms.
  • Players visiting other realms via RealID or Battletag groups will no longer receive loot from the Salyis’s Warband encounter.

Source: Battle.net

Mists of Pandaria marks the fourth expansion for World of Warcraft, a game that has been around for close to eight years. Despite World of Warcraft‘s long reign as the most popular subscription-based MMO, it’s tough to ignore the shifting trends of its slowly shrinking audience. These first days in Pandaria have shown, quite starkly, the effects that other high-profile MMO launches have on World of Warcraft since it reached its launch-peak with Cataclysm.

Anyone who had played during a previous expansion launch will recall how chaotic it is. Thousands of players funneling into a couple of specific zones, all competing for a limited number of quest objectives. You can barely get anything done, because it feels like every possible monster spawn-point is being camped round-the-clock, even during off-peak times.

Mists, by contrast, has felt quite empty. There are still people, but the terrain isn’t crawling with them the way it had in Cataclysm, Wrath of the Lich King or The Burning Crusade — and the last two even split players into different areas in an effort to make it less chaotic. Pandaria only has one primary arrival area. That’s not to say that it’s bad, because everything I’ve played so far has lived up to Blizzard’s high standards, and many innovations from other MMOs in the last couple years have been implemented to various degrees. But it does feel a little sad. Even the Pandaren starting area lacks hordes of new Pandaren Monks.

Putting that aside, there have been relatively few launch issues with Mists of Pandaria. Servers have mostly been stable, and although I’ve seen screenshots of hilarious-looking bugs that cropped up in the first few hours (see above), I have personally only experienced a minor issue where the victory theme from the Pet Battle System looped instead of actual battle music.

Actually, the Pet Battle System has attracted more of my time over the past couple days than it perhaps should have. Anyone who had paid attention to Blizzard’s announcement of the feature knew how similar to a certain monster-filled Nintendo series it sounded, and the reality is that it is indeed basically a Pokemon side-quest.

And it’s great. I’m genuinely, unironically enjoying it.

And, strangely, although Cataclysm‘s setup seemed darker and everything leading up to Pandaria seemed to be quite tongue-in-cheek, the general tone has been much more grim than most of what we’ve seen in World of Warcraft. There’s no looming threat like Arthas or Deathwing — instead it’s you and your faction causing strife in what was previously a very peaceful land.

After this long playing World of Warcraft on and off I was ready to go into Mists and hate everything about it, but I’m slowly being charmed. There are certainly some questionable elements – some of the dialogue and accents strike me as, well, a little racist – but World of Warcraft‘s undeniable charm is ever-present. And while some of the usability upgrades Blizzard added in the past, such as the Raid Finder, have been controversial, the changes to the Talent and Glyph systems seem to be almost universally preferred, and have made playing my mage a substantially more varied experience.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of what Pandaria has on offer, so look forward to a review in a few weeks where Pandaria is thoroughly disassembled for your reading pleasure.

How is Pandaria going for you? Share your experiences in the comments!

Blizzard’s latest World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, launches today — and Blizzard are very excited to reveal that you don’t even need to log out in order to start accessing the new content.

Here’s the official word, straight from the forums:

• A yellow System Message will appear in your Chat Log telling you to visit Orgrimmar or Stormwind to start your travels.
• Level-85 characters will receive a new quest, no matter where they are in the world, which will guide them to Varian or Garrosh for further orders. If you’re online at midnight you will receive the quest even if your Quest Log is full — or you can visit Varian or Garrosh to get started on your journey to Pandaria.
• Level-85 players will notice their experience bar automatically change so that experience can once again be earned.
• Players who are at the Character Creation screen at midnight will notice the button to create a pandaren character will be enabled. (Reminder: This also applies to players who don’t have a Mists of Pandaria license, as all races are now included with a base copy of World of Warcraft.)
• Players who are at the Character Creation screen at midnight will notice the button to create a monk character will be enabled.

For details on the start time in your particular state or timezone, click here.

One of the biggest changes for Cataclysm was Blizzard’s wholesale adoption of phasing as a go-to technique for storytelling — but in Pandaria, Blizzard are cutting back on all that. As I instruct my team, phasing is like a story sledgehammer,” said Blizzard’s lead quest designer David Kosak. “It’s the big gun. We want to avoid it as much as possible.”

“There’s still phasing in Mists of Pandaria for major story moments, but it’ll be very obvious that you’ve been phased,” he said. “And even then, the big change for Mists of Pandaria over most of Cataclysm is that players will be able to see their friends even if they’re in different phases — the difference being that one player will see one version of the surroundings and others players will see another.”

Kosak also discussed the addition of companion quests, where you can unlock different companions to accompany you as you progress through your faction, as well as the removal of group quests. “People have less patience these days,” he said. “The biggest problem with group quests way back in the days of vanilla WoW was the process of actually getting people together. It took a long time.”

Source: Gamespy

If you’re one of the many hanging out to get into Pandaria ASAP, Blizzard have just revealed the times you’ll be able to do so. Copies of the game will be available for sale (or collection) as of 9AM on Tuesday, September 25 (that’s next Tuesday) so you can get your pre-load on, but you won’t be able to actually get into the game until:

• New Zealand Standard Time: 7:00 PM
• Australian Eastern Standard Time: 5:00 PM
• Australian Central Standard Time: 4:30 PM
• Australian Western Standard Time: 3:00 PM

Plan your evenings, work leave applications, and snack purchases accordingly. If you’re not up to speed on what’s happening in the world Pandaria, why not check out our catch-up guide or our advice on playing the Monk? NVIDIA users will also want to grab these new drivers.

Source: Press Release

In case you haven’t been paying any attention in the last year or so, Blizzard has another World of Warcraft expansion on the way. World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria is due out in a matter of weeks (the 25th to be precise), and with it comes the introduction of the first new class since the Death Knight, and the first new class that is immediately playable regardless of your progress. The class? The Monk.

Tying in with Mists‘ whole Eastern-culture-theme, the Monk is a martial-arts expert. It’s a leather-wearing class like the Druid, even at the level cap, and also like the Druid class, the Monk is hugely flexible — able to fill almost any gap in a group.

Unlike the Druid though, the Monk can’t switch roles at will in quite the same way. And the Monk has a new resource system revolving around Chi (it’s changed a lot since its introduction at BlizzCon last year), which is earned by a few moves and spent by several others. Monks also use the energy system, unless they take on their healing role, which swaps the energy for standard mana.

The three possible talent specialization options available for the Monk are the Brewmaster, suitable for tanking, the Mistweaver, suitable for healing and the Windwalker, which is your damage-dealing option.

What the Brewmaster lacks in raw damage-mitigation, he makes up for in utility. The Brewmaster has a spammable area-of-effect slow that deals high threat and has a chance to make the enemies caught in it hurt themselves instead of whoever they’re attacking (probably you!). He also has ways to direct damage around the battlefield, and can create his own personal damage-absorbing shield. He’s still quite squishy, but passively delays a portion of incoming damage, which gives healers an extra window to keep him alive.

The Mistweaver puts a large emphasis on heal-over-time spells, and many of the Mistweaver’s spells will automatically choose their target, or jump between players. Playing a Mistweaver consists of some elements that may ring familiar to Shaman players, as Mistweavers can drop structures that heal nearby allies. Mistweavers also have quite decent damage potential, as healing stats are simultaneously converted into damage stats while in Wise Serpent stance. Mistweaver players gain all this at the cost of bursty healing and the ability to control their heals as well as a Priest might. But, Mistweavers get to drop green balls of healing power for allies to run over. So that’s pretty cool.

Windwalkers are going to be an absolute pain in PvP, as they’re extraordinarily mobile. Flying Serpent Kick, for example, sends the Monk flying forward for a surprisingly large distance. He can then hit the ground anywhere along the path, dealing damage and substantially slowing any nearby foes. The Windwalker also has ways to redirect damage, though whereas the Brewmaster is happy to direct it away from allies and towards him, the Windwalker is all about flipping that damage back on his foe.

Perhaps you’re wondering if the Monk is right for you. The best way to describe the playstyle is somewhere between the Death Knight’s methodical rune system, and the Rogue’s burst capabilities. To play a Monk effectively, you have to carefully choose how to generate and spend your Chi, as Chi is used for your core skills, and your ability to generate it is limited by your energy supply. It’s a much faster, more tactile class than what we’re used to in WoW, and leveling one up should be a good deal of fun — but 85 levels is a big gap to close to catch up to your friends.

A thread on OwnedCore alleges that World of Warcraft screenshots are now being automatically watermarked with account-identifying information inside, and offers steps for you to see this information for yourself.

Sharpening images to high levels reveals non-random, non-artificated sets of repeating symbols which some users have discovered to contain references to player account names, realm time, and realm IP address.

The pattern does not contain any information such as passwords, user IPs or real names, but users have raised concerns that this is not mentioned in the game’s Terms of Service agreement and that Blizzard should have disclosed it. The popular theory at the moment is that the functionality was added in order to track any possible leaks from NDA’d alpha testers, but testing has shown that this has been in place some time between 2008 and 2010.

Blizzard have yet to release an official comment.

Source: OwnedCore via Blue’s News

A lot of really excellent games have come out since World of Warcraft‘s last expansion, Cataclysm. One of those games was even from Blizzard themselves. So even if you, like I, have not really involved yourself in World of Warcraft since seeing what Deathwing did to Azeroth, there’s still time to catch up before checking out World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria.

Time away from an MMO can make it difficult to get back in. Stat gaps form, players change, and sometimes entire systems undergo revamps. World of Warcraft also features an actively evolving world and storyline, which can make it even tougher to know where you stand. Here’s the absolute basics to ensure you’re not totally lost come September 25.

The World…

Deathwing has been defeated, and as of right now there are no overarching threats to the inhabitants of Azeroth. This time of relative peace has, ironically, allowed the tension between the two player factions of the Horde and the Alliance to build.

Varian Wrynn, the king of Stormwind, has firmly positioned himself at odds with the Horde, though he isn’t acting outwardly hostile like the Horde’s new warchief Garrosh Hellscream. Hellscream, in fact, has been vying for a full-on war with the Alliance since Wrath of the Lich King, and in Mists of Pandaria that looks set to occur.

His outlandish, warmongering behaviour has become so volatile that neither faction can really abide him, and Blizzard has revealed that he will in fact be the final boss of the upcoming expansion (the Deathwing of Mists, if you will). Bearing that in mind, Horde players are still obliged to follow his rule until then — as traitors and challengers to his title have been known to be quickly cut down. Alliance players can keep doing whatever they like, really. Their leadership is fine (and boring!).

…and you

If it’s been a while since you’ve played, your character has likely undergone some pretty sweeping changes.

The talent system has gone from a complex tree that ultimately feels like a maths puzzle, to a hyper-basic choice every 15 levels. Talents no longer provide passive benefits like increased damage, but are instead a specialized, and often very powerful, new ability. Some of these harken back to the older talent system from days of yore, but many are new, and the system puts far less emphasis on filling a single role as much as providing avenues of flexibility.

For passive increases, the Glyph system has been reworked to provide a much greater difference in the Major Glyph slots, and minor cosmetic changes (such as goofy polymorph options for mages) in the Minor Glyph slots.

Everyone now has vast amounts of gold, but that’s okay, because gold is mostly useless (until the Black Market comes with Mists). If you want to buy gear or do basically anything, you’ll need to collect one of the many, many other currencies floating around such as Valor. Some of the old currencies you might have had have also probably been converted into something more useful.

Engaging in content and finding social circles is also much more streamlined, as in addition to the Dungeon Finder function from Wrath of the Lich King, there is now a Raid Finder and a Guild Finder.

If you still can’t find someone to play with despite all these tools at your disposal, then chances are you aren’t actually playing World of Warcraft and might accidentally be spacing out while staring at a WoW-themed mousepad or something.

A great number of changes and additions are still yet to come with the launch of Mists, but you still have until the 25th to get to grips with those. Stay tuned as we explore more of Blizzard’s newest world.