The Queue: Let's guess the Mists of Pandaria release date
by Adam Holisky 
Oct 25th 2011 at 11:00AM
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky (@adamholisky), senior editor at WoW Insider, will be your host today.
Let's talk about this for a bit ... We know that Blizzard wants to accelerate patch and expansion release timelines. It's feeling competition from other games, and that's good, and it's in agreement with all of us devoted fans that the game needs more awesome content to play. That's also good.
Let's talk about this for a bit ... We know that Blizzard wants to accelerate patch and expansion release timelines. It's feeling competition from other games, and that's good, and it's in agreement with all of us devoted fans that the game needs more awesome content to play. That's also good.
Given that, I'd like to get the ball rolling on some good old-fashioned release date guesses. My personal guess is May or June of 2012. It'll happen in the summertime, the initial awesomeness of Star Wars and Diablo III will have worn off, and Blizzard will be in a prime position to drop a major expansion to the tried-and-true World of Warcraft.
A quick, late-night WoW Insider staff poll suggests that Mike Sacco, Anne Stickney, and Mat McCurley think July 2012. Daniel Whitcomb and Allie Robert say August or September of 2012. (Allie thinks November/December might also be possible, even though she wants her [expletive deleted] pandas before the world ends.)
But when do you think? Yes, that means a reader poll:
| April 2012 and earlier | |
|---|---|
| May 2012 | |
| June 2012 | |
| July 2012 | |
| August 2012 | |
| September 2012 | |
| October 2012 | |
| November 2012 | |
| December 2012 and later |
BCMan asked:
When do you guys think the Mists of Pandaria beta is coming out?
We haven't a clue (and I'm serious). But if I have to wager a guess, I'd say that a target date of sometime around Dec. 20, 2011.
RFPd quipped:
We don't have anything in-game that closely resembles Pandarens or their style. How does this architecture even fit in?
Take a very close look at the Night Elf buildings. Then go and take a look at eastern (Asian) buildings. Well, wait, let me just illustrate:
The Pandaren architecture, pictured below, fits Asian themes even more.
SCristie asked:
With the introduction of the Monk class, do you think Blizz will extend the 10 Character per server limit to accomodate the extra class? Seeing as many people may already have a character of each class at some stage or another.
Ghostcrawler responded in a panel at BlizzCon that Blizzard's thinking of ways to solve this, and it doesn't have anything yet. One idea that's been thrown around is to remove the individual realm restriction of 10 characters per realm but keep the account restriction of 50 characters per account. That'd certainly solve things.
But again, this was just an idea being thrown around, so don't get mad if it doesn't happen. Greg shares things like that to let us know Blizzard is working on it, not to get our hopes up for that exact solution.
My guess? We'll see the 10 character per realm limit lifted somehow in MoP.
The Dewd asked:
Do we have any idea what itemization will be for the Monks? Did Blizzard reveal anything about it or does anyone have any theories?
We already know they'll share their itemization with rogues and druids. As for exactly how the stats will be weighted slightly differently, that remains to be seen. Small weighting changes are just the type of thing Blizzard likes to play with in betas.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!
Filed under: The Queue, Mists of Pandaria
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 22)
Sorro Oct 25th 2011 11:01AM
So with this new talent system where we swap out talents like glyphs, is dual-speccing being removed?
ejunk Oct 25th 2011 11:03AM
I have been wondering this, as well!
Bellajtok Oct 25th 2011 11:05AM
It seems we'll still have dual spec. It's still convenient, just as when you have to switch gear sets.
STHedgeHog Oct 25th 2011 11:07AM
Ive noticed on the screen shots of the new talents theres a Specialization tab at the bottom. So my guess is no, we'll still have dual Spec.
Jex Oct 25th 2011 11:08AM
I doubt it -we may not have as much involvement in 'building' them, but the different specialisations are still designed to do the same thing. A player will still need a second spec in order to fulfil a second role on the same character.
Chris Oct 25th 2011 11:10AM
I read that Druids will now have 4 specs. Tank and Feral are getting their own specs along with Boomkin and Resto. That leads me to believe that Duel Specs will still be in place even though the talent trees are the same for all 4 specs.
Angus Oct 25th 2011 11:08AM
Probably not.
The talents are not specs and those will matter still
Imnick Oct 25th 2011 11:12AM
You still choose a specialisation (EG, Frost or Arcane or Fire, or Holy, Retribution or Protection).
You still get spec-specific abilities (Deep Freeze, Water Elemental, Arcane Power) as you level up as if you still had talents, only you don't have to spend points in them and they just pop up in your spell books.
Removing Dual Spec would be silly because it is the individual talents, not the specialisation, that you will be able to change on the fly. You will still have to swap between protection and holy to tank or heal and that will still require a dual spec.
Zenotho Oct 25th 2011 11:12AM
I don't think so. But you have to keep in mind talents and specs are now completely unrelated, so the talent changes shouldn't impact the spec changes and vice versa. You'll see combat rogues with shadowstep and spriests with desperate prayer. Your spec will give you all your basic dps/tank/healing abilities. Your talents will be utility, mobility, and survival abilities unrelated to your spec choice.
Hyacintha Oct 25th 2011 11:15AM
From what I understand, talents =/= specs in MoP. You choose your spec and get exclusive abilities based on it as you level. For instance, Arms warriors will still be the only ones with Mortal Strike, Prot warriors will have Shield Slam, etc. You will still need dual spec to switch between your roles, they just won't be tied to the talent system anymore.
Zachariahs Oct 25th 2011 11:16AM
I was wondering this as well, because the reason for dual specs was to have two commonly used talent trees, and now the trees are really easy to change, and all specs share the same tree.
It just seems silly for me to know how to switch between Discipline and Shadow abilities, but have to go all the way back to the trainer just to learn how to use the holy ones. I'm hoping I can just switch between all three. Even if that means carrying around a new type of dust of disappearance.
Blackdemon Oct 25th 2011 11:24AM
Talents are completely different to specs. You choose a spec say Prot or Holy for Paladin, which equates to a role with some characteristics e.g. Tank or Healer. The talents allow you to customise your character to make it more personal to your playstyle, while still theoretically performing the role as well as someone else with the same spec but different talents.
Dual spec allows a character to have 2 roles, which is really useful for levelling a healer or a tank by having a dps levelling spec, or allowing a char to have a PvP spec. Dual specs aren't going anywhere.
Celton Oct 25th 2011 12:10PM
It sounds to me like we'll be able to easily change our talents on the fly without having to also change our spec. What this means is that as a paladin, I'll finally be able to have a PvE and PvP Holy "spec" (just changing a few talents), as well as a dual PvE Prot spec (right now my two specs are PvE Holy and PvP Holy). So in a way, I now have at least 3 easily accessible specs without having to spend a lot of gold. So, I'm happy!
loop_not_defined Oct 25th 2011 12:32PM
Nobody brought up this direct issue, but Blizzard off-handedly referred to dual speccing in reference to MoP a handful of times.
Dual speccing isn't going away.
V Magius Oct 25th 2011 12:37PM
I think someone on the forums gave a good suggestion to figure it out. We need to stop thinking of them as talents and more like glyphs.
I'd expect it will effectively be the same. Some people have the same specialization for both specs, just slightly different point distribution on talents. Same as now, just looks different. I doubt one would want the exact same talents while tanking vs healing vs dps. Some, maybe you would.
Moanique Oct 25th 2011 12:43PM
I can't imagine it would be removed. It's not like shadow priests are all that much like healing priests. You still pick a spec at level 10 and many of your former talent tree spells will be baked in as you level.
So if I want to heal, I change my spec to Disc/Holy and go with those spells and talents. Just like now.
gunar.bastos Oct 25th 2011 1:39PM
You still need to change specialization, that is what will define what role-specific skills you will have.
So my guess is that it will be staying.
Or they could allow us to change to any of the 3 specs on a 10 seconds cast and resources reset. I would like it.
Wowcoholic Oct 25th 2011 2:04PM
The difference, as I understood it, is the talents are the same for any given class. The specializations are where you are given the specific abilities to perform the spec chosen. Much like arcane mages are given arcane barrage, and resto druids are given swiftmend, there will be more specialization abilities granted.
The idea is that people were skipping abilities in talent trees in favor of cookie cutters. Now you're getting everything you need to do your job, and it's your fault if you screw up, not your spec.
Natsumi Oct 25th 2011 2:24PM
Dual speccing will be for changing from Arms to Prot, Fire to Arcane, Beast Mastery to Survival, Cat to BOOMKIN!, etc. While we will no longer need to do Arms/Arms for PvE/PvP (we can just switch our talents around as we need to) we will still want to do this to change our role/style. Each spec will have several of it's own abilities and mechanics so choosing 2 flavors of DPS or Healing will be very different. I think GCs description of the differences between Warlock Specs (Shadow DoTs are Affliction ONLY, Immolate and several Fire Spells are Destro Only, each spec has it's own sub-resource to play with) makes it clear that we'll have what feels like 33 different classes to choose from.
All I can say is 10 mans are going to be ...... interesting.
Skarn Oct 25th 2011 3:38PM
As others have mentioned, it's important to realize that specs and talents are COMPLETELY separate now. Well, you might have two talent panes like you have two glyph panes, but respeccing won't reset those.
There are still class specializations, there are simply more "default" spec abilities now. Previously, I got Explosive Shot for choosing Survival. Now I would get Explosive Shot, Black Arrow and a couple other passive or active abilities. THEN I place my talent points.
Think of it as the new spec system gives you exactly what you have today and then add the new talent system on top of THAT.