World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria

I'm sure this has been mentioned in the main WOW thread, but this is for specific discussion of the expansion.

Pokemon?

Not a World Of Warcraft player myself but I can expect a lot of animosity from the existing races towards these guys who effectively sat out the entire Lich King and Cataclysm debacles, in canon at least.

Oh shit.

I've been gone longer than I thought if another expansion's already been announced.

Blizzard is speeding up the expansion cycle. Mists (or Mo P) is expected to come out in quarter 2? of next year. So, beta should come soon after 4.3 hits.

Summer 2012 then? That's good, because I'll actually have time to play then. The best time to get back into an MMO is right after an expansion.

Begin making jokes about Pandas in World of Warcraft.

Here are some stuff they announced about ranged weapons:

The ranged Weapon slot has been removed from all classes except hunter, who have in turn lost their ability to wield melee weapons.

Relics will be removed from the game, and wands will become Main-hand weapons.

Hunters will also lose their deadzone.

EDIT: Rogues and Warriors will throw their melee weapons.

Updating more as this thread goes along.

edited 21st Oct '11 6:53:26 PM by tclittle

New talent tree: every spec will share the same tree. The tree will be 6 tiers of 3 talents each. You will only be able to put 1 talent per tier.

Specs will have their spec defining moves given to them when you select them and as you level. For instance, fury warriors will gain the passive Titan's Grip (the ability to dual wield 2 handed weapons) at level 38.

You still are able to choose your spec at level 10, but you won't get your first talent point until level 15 and will only get talent points every 15 levels.

Note to Blizzard: The line between 'streamlining' and 'dumbing down' is very thin. Tread carefully.

Just an example of the talents: warlock tier 5 (level 75)◊.

Given how thoroughly we've vetted this already in the main WoW thread, I'm not entirely sure we need this one.

I think it's more correct to say that "Specialization" and "Talents" are no longer related to each other at all. Talents are now basically another form of Glyph that can grant new skills entirely. While there's no doubt that some are better for certain specs than others, it's not like there are any talents specifically tied to any spec.

edited 21st Oct '11 8:27:05 PM by Clarste

Ew. I'm not sure I like the "streamlining".

Any reason why we aren't doing this in the main World Of Warcraft thread? If this were genuinely a new topic I wouldn't mind, but the main thread is talking about the exact same thing, making them redundant.

JAF likes creating threads. It's his thing.

Lumpers Versus Splitters, I suppose.

edited 21st Oct '11 11:08:55 PM by Yinyang107

Incidentally, we also had a Cataclysm-only thread back when that was announced (also created by JAF), but Ironeye locked it after 3 posts because he didn't see the point.

edited 21st Oct '11 11:13:10 PM by Clarste

I'd prefer to have this thread, as I'll be following this but I really don't care for churning through raid tips and other such things in the main thread.

Okay, first off: Panda people? Really? I'm sorry but that is not interesting at all. Maybe it's a sign that Blizz is just out of ideas but I can't really see the promise of Panda people and a new class dragging subscribers back.

edited 21st Oct '11 11:21:53 PM by thatguythere47

Panda people have been part of World Of Warcraft lore since at least Warcraft 3 if not even earlier. Its almost as long running as the Secret Cow Level joke.

A few thoughts...

• Pandaren? Really? Wasn't this an April Fools joke a few years ago? Surprising, but still pretty cool.

• Only one new race, and it's faction-neutral. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

• Monk class seems pretty awesome. Actually, I've been saying for years that the one class the game needs is a monk, and that should be a healer/tank/DPS hybrid that uses something other than mana. Blizzard, you STOOOLE MY BRAAAAIN.

• A new talent tree system? They just overhauled it for the last xpack, it seems quite unnecessary.

It all seems a bit too soon, though.

I know, I'm just saying that it's pretty much scrapping the bottom of the barrel. Especially after cata kicked so much ass. We had old gods and werewolves and giant killer dragons and now we have....pandas.

I actually like pandas, it just seems like a strange choice. What's next, murlocs? Then again, both of those are two of the most requested playable race additions, going by the forums.

The Pandarian controversy is keeping attention away from the real important question for Blizzard fanboys: who's hotter, Nova or Leah Cain?

edited 22nd Oct '11 12:10:44 AM by AirofMystery

Pandarians have been around since WC 3.

I don't know how I feel about the new talent system. I really enjoyed the new version. Yeah you could screw up and make a useless build, but you could fix it at any time. Also, picking a talent every other level was one of the things that kept me going to cap; I can't see many new players being drawn in they have less choice involved in their character.

I'm nudging towards disliking the new system but I'll have to try it myself before I can really say if it's a step back.