Mists of Pandaria

[Kurenio]

The final reason there has to be panda's in wow

[Royi]

Panda mounts:

[Aritria]

Royi, my week has been made. SO CUTE!

Another WoWInsider article, this time by Matt McCurley: Titles Tell Stories: How "Mists of Pandaria" Breaks the Mold. I never realized that having "Mists" as a trademark is a complete 180 from the other (World of) Warcraft titles. To find time to rediscover our world within Azeroth, under one banner with Horde and Alliance ultimately working side by side, I'd like to see, if anything comes out of it.

[Worba]

I never realized that having "Mists" as a trademark is a complete 180 from the other (World of) Warcraft titles.

Bearing in mind that with WOTLK all of the major events from the WC wargame had been "MMO-ified", we are definitely now in a "brave new world".

Cataclysm was a fairly obvious device for giving the largely forgotten levels 1-60 a desperately needed facelift (and in fact if you think about it, it was about the ONLY thing they could have done to make that happen).

Now here we are with Mists of Pandaria... now personally, I think including the name Pandaria in the title adds about 5 tons of obvious right there , but let's look at "Mists"... the Orient has ALWAYS been viewed (by westerners) as a place of boundless wonder and mystery, where anything is possible, a feeling which "Mists" certainly captures.

To find time to rediscover our world within Azeroth, under one banner with Horde and Alliance ultimately working side by side, I'd like to see, if anything comes out of it.

I didn't see any speculation about horde / alliance uniting at that link... did I miss something?

[Sukurachi]

Is it wrong that I can't help seeing "Mists of Pandiarrhea" every time I come to Petopia?

[Wain]

EWew. So not so much 'mists' as 'steaming pile'?

[GormanGhaste]

More that everyone is running at the mouth about it!

[AdamSavage]

You tube video on the rumor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6upuh71CZ3k

[Worba]

You tube video on the rumor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6upuh71CZ3k

I was wondering what the Swifty cultists looked like...

"I want more girls to play world of warcraft so I can own them" <-- yeah this guy is a real winner*

*not really

[Andine]

Don't get too distracted by the WoW Insider articles, they seem to have not even played WarCraft III. I mean, they keep mentioning Pandaren Monks, which I never heard of before, and forget the Brewmasters, actual pandaren hero class. I mean, where is the whole monk thing coming from?

And BTW, a blog post that claims to be from march 2011 (on http://daeity.blogspot.com/2011/03/huge-news.html), claims we will not only see the Pandaren as a playable race, but also one "overpowered" new class (the "op" thing being a bit tounge-in-cheek, I guess). Seeing as other claims in the post proved to be true, I find this intriguing. So either this guy is right, or we have an elaborate hoax with faked post publication date.

[Lisaara]

Don't get too distracted by the WoW Insider articles, they seem to have not even played WarCraft III. I mean, they keep mentioning Pandaren Monks, which I never heard of before, and forget the Brewmasters, actual pandaren hero class. I mean, where is the whole monk thing coming from?

And BTW, a blog post that claims to be from march 2011 (on http://daeity.blogspot.com/2011/03/huge-news.html), claims we will not only see the Pandaren as a playable race, but also one "overpowered" new class (the "op" thing being a bit tounge-in-cheek, I guess). Seeing as other claims in the post proved to be true, I find this intriguing. So either this guy is right, or we have an elaborate hoax with faked post publication date.

*points to Pandaren monk minipet* It exists.

As for hero classes, I recall a blue post from Blizz saying there will be NO hero classes for a long time to come. So the guy is sorely mistaken, imho.

[Andine]

*points to Pandaren monk minipet* It exists.

As for hero classes, I recall a blue post from Blizz saying there will be NO hero classes for a long time to come. So the guy is sorely mistaken, imho.

Well, I forgot about the pet. That's why all the people who never played the RTS games keep thinking about monks... Still, hero classes were supposed to be modelled after WC3 hero units - and we have a perfect candidate this time.

This guy has also foreseen the Diablo III real cash auction house (if the date is right, ofc) months before official announcement, and Blizzard has stated "no hero classes now" at the beginning of Cataclysm, so the "right time" might be now in their opinion.

[Lisaara]

No I'm pretty sure the blue post I remember seeing not too long ago said it won't be happening in the next expansion or the one after it.

[Worba]

Frankly they could justify either (monk / brewmaster) as a hero class included in Mists; pandaren are described as using martial arts "because it works", with the alcoholism element added as more of a racial pastime - now obviously Chen & co. do integrate both together into a drunken style, but that's not to say EVERYONE on the pandaren isle(s) practices the exact same way.

In other words they could add a monk class, which brewmasters happen to be a part of (e.g. drunken would probably be one of its talent trees, but the other two might be Crane and Tiger, or etc), making it less booze-o-centric, or they could go the simpler more traditional route of just making Brewmaster be the class (where the trees might be earth, fire and lightning - iirc those are the 3 types the brewmaster splits into in WC3 battlenet?).

Either way would be cool imo.

In re: heroic classes and future plans, I'll have to see if I can track it down but the one I read basically said "Yes, we do plan to release more heroic classes, no, it won't be in cata, but after that anything is possible".

[Gimlion]

People are way over-analyzing the "No hero classes soon" thing. Blizzard said that their original intentions were to have an alternating Race-Hero Class-Race... etc. for each Expac. They specifically said that there would be no hero class in Cata, and at the end of Wrath stated "The DK was harder to handle/balance than we expected, and as of right now we have no intentions of adding a new Hero class within the near future."

It's been around 3 years (Correct me if I'm wrong) since Wrath/DK's, and they are just fine now (though, I wish I could still Dual Wield Tank, or UH tank...). As far as I'm concerned, everything is relatively balanced, sure there are a few stronger DPS specs, but I've not seen anyone of legible 'status' complain about any spec that someone uses, It just doesn't happen as much, b/c for the most part, especially in more casual play, everything is fairly balanced.

That was one of Blizz's biggest concerns, and I don't think adding a new class would really crash this system. DK's royally screwed up Balancing in Wrath, b/c balancing coming into Wrath was already poorly done. It won't be nearly as bad if they add a new class this coming Expac, b/c:
A.) The classes are much better off now than the end of BC
B.) They've already gotten behind and balanced one new class, so they have the skill and experience.

I definitely think Blizzard hasn't forsaken the idea of another class, as well as, for the most part, think everyone is over-analyzing what they said about it nearly a year and a half ago.

[Worba]

Ok, here is one of the articles (linked earlier by ShadowAkz) - this was posted 3/14/11. Basically they said we like the idea, we want to add more, and we will do so "when the time is right", e.g. no fixed limits on when they will or won't add the next one:

Q: Were hero classes considered a failed experiment, or are there plans for more? – Grozzil (North America/ANZ)
A: No, we still like the concept a lot. The story behind the death knight character was that you were this fallen champion risen by the Lich King, who you eventually turn against (spoiler alert). It wouldn’t have made sense to start you in a forest killing gnolls and boars. You were supposed to feel like a high level character already! We also wanted to make the DK mechanics slightly more complex, so we wanted to make sure only veteran players were exposed to them. In general we want to add classes to the game very selectively because the game can probably only support so many and it’s a lot of new stuff to learn; even if you don’t play the new class yourself, you’ll group with them or fight against them. Introducing the DK was a learning experience for us, to say the least, but we aren’t afraid to try it again when the time is right.

Source: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2228225718

[Andine]

Frankly they could justify either (monk / brewmaster) as a hero class included in Mists; pandaren are described as using martial arts "because it works", with the alcoholism element added as more of a racial pastime - now obviously Chen & co. do integrate both together into a drunken style, but that's not to say EVERYONE on the pandaren isle(s) practices the exact same way.

Of course not every Pandaren is a Brewmaster, but not every servant of the Lich King was a death knight - they were just the ones we got to play. I'm backing up on the old info that the hero classes were supposed to be based on the WC3 hero units and Brewmasters were 1) a hero unit in WC3, 2) completely badass. I mean, monks are rather bland when applied to a world without psionics (or psionics that are just a form of shadow magic, like in WoW), because they become just barefisted fighters - which also removes significancy of weapons that normally is there in WoW. If your "monk" was drawing his power from being epically drunk with various semi-magical connoctions, it has the potential to be as awesome as your stereotypical monk.

[Worba]

Well I agree Brewmaster would be a better fit with the (mostly now MMO-ified) WC3 content; also when talking about WoW monks we are not talking D&D (re: psionics... ugh); we are talking about something that could be perfectly badass in its own right and just including Brewmasters as a talent tree (so you get all that awesomeness plus a bunch more).

The difference really is just that with Brewmasters you already have cool playable content out there in some form, whereas with monks you pretty much have to use your imagination and trust that the Blizzard dev team could do something equally cool with it.

As above though, either one would be cool imo.

[Lisaara]

Actually DKs are still NOT balanced. Blood is still way overpowered. Unholy is still underpowered. Frost is just kinda there but from what I've seen, Frost is OP too.

So no, DKs are very far from being balanced. Another reason to support the fact, from their very own quote, there will not be another Hero Class for some time and it's not over-analyzing. It's just looking at the actual facts from the DK.

[Worba]

Most likely any additional major changes to the DK class will be either wrapped up or flagged as Working As Intended (tm) by next fall.