Posts with tag monk

Mists of Pandaria is bringing us the new monk class as well as the new Pandaren race, finally making its way to World of Warcraft after years of speculation and wondering. Blizzard Insider, Blizzard's own internal look at the wheelings, dealings, and development processes of the company, pulled Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street aside and asked him a bunch of questions about the Pandaren, monks, and the newest expansion.

Ghostcrawler discusses the motivations behind the Pandaren and how they differ from the other races of Azeroth, how the monk class came about and was decided upon, and what monk players outside the Pandaren race will have in store for them when they travel the world. One of the more interesting pieces of information is how player character monks who choose to start as a race other than Pandaren will still have a heavy Pandaria-inspired kit and experience, since it is the Pandaren that bring the monk class to both the Horde and the Alliance. Of course, we have extra confirmation that DPS and tank monks will be sporting agility leather gear, and the healer archetype will don intellect-based leather gear.

I don't believe that I am alone in this observation, but Blizzard has been out and about like crazy talking about the Pandaren and the monk class nonstop. Personally, I'm loving it. The more, the better. Over the years, Blizzard has gone from a very secretive company to pulling back many of the curtains for players and fans alike, with peeks into the development process and getting out ahead of the speculation machine. It's learned a lot from The Burning Crusade and Wrath days. Hit the jump for the full interview with Greg Street.

Here at WoW Insider, we're somewhat known for our crock pot, tin foil hat theories. Anne Stickney and Matt Rossi are definitely the best-known for this, as both of them possess levels of lore knowledge that can only be bested by Red Shirt Guy. Personally, I'm not a lore buff. My tin foil hat theories have relatively little to do with wondering if Elune is secretly a Naaru but instead with class balance, generally within the DPS role. With last week's announcement of the monk class in Mists of Pandaria, I've kicked my brain into overtime to figure out just how this class -- and specifically, the windwalker spec -- might come out.

What do we know about monks?

We know that monks will be agility-based melee DPSers (and tank and healer, but I'm focusing on DPS today). We know that they'll be able to use staves, polearms, fist weapons, and one-handed maces, axes, and swords, which means they'll need to be balanced with both two-handed weapons and dual wielding in mind (that is, unless Blizzard restricts dual wielding to DPS and two-handers to tanking, which is a possibility).

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Chase Hasbrouck will be your host today.

Yes, I went with the easy joke.

At the moment, the majority of my fellow writers are sleeping or have only finger nubs remaining from trying to liveblog, so the European team has been called in as relief. Admittedly, writing the Queue while half-asleep has never stopped Fox before, so I suppose there's a precedent.

Whew. Well, those of us who were at BlizzCon 2011 are all on their way home today (except for Fox, who wandered off in the middle of the last panel and has not been seen since ... but we figure he'll turn up eventually). On behalf of all of us here at WoW Insider, we'd like to thank you for hanging with us, and apologize for the fact that this week's articles are all going to be written while sleep-deprived, hungover, or under the influence of copious quantities of caffeine.

So what did you think of this year's BlizzCon? This was definitely a more raucous convention than last year's, which was the calm before the Cataclysm storm. While readers have weighed in on what they're looking forward to the most (and the monk seems to have a clear advantage), there was still the rest of BlizzCon to consider. Did you watch the Foo Fighters concert? Did you order the annual pass? Do you have a favored pet picked out yet for battling other players? And what's up with that snake tail in Gundrak, anyway?

---

The news is out -- we'll be playing Mists of Pandaria! Find out what's in store with an all-new talent system, peek over our shoulder at our Pandaren hands-on, and get ready to battle your companion pets against others. It's all here right at WoW Insider!

---

As one of the youngest writers on the WoW Insider staff, I was of an acceptable age for Pokémon playing when Pikachu first sailed the ocean blue and Pokémon Red landed in my Game Boy Pocket. It was Christmas Day, 1998. I hadn't quite learned that electronics required battery power to operate at that point, and losing my Charizard because I didn't save once in an eight hour pocket monster marathon would be my most crushing video game defeat until our first 20k HP wipe on Professor Putricide 12 years later.

As you might expect from someone whose first video game glory days involved beating the Elite Four with a Mewtwo and thinking he was the best Pokémon master in the world, I'm a little psyched for companion battling. And by a little excited, I almost forgot to be excited about the rest of the awesome stuff coming in the freshly announced Mists of Pandaria, including the Pandaren themselves.

While I'm now allowing myself to be excited for monks, PVE scenarios, and the entire talent tree overhaul, I can't help alt-tabbing out of our blogging platform to decide which of my companion pets I'm going to level up first. Will it be my shiny new Murkablo, my staple Fossilized Hatchling, or am I going to go Black Kingsnake, just because no one else will? Maybe I'll even name him Onyx.

BlizzCon 2011 has begun! And it turns out that that trademark Blizzard registered back in August really was a sign of things to come. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. If you're just joining our BlizzCon coverage, or you may have missed something, you'll find a round-up of our articles and galleries below.

• The WoW Insider/Wowhead reader meetup The now-famous annual party, co-hosted with Wowhead, Members of ZAM Network, TankSpot and WoW Interface, smashed previous attendance records (and, we're told, the Annabella Hotel's liquor supply). We were a little the worse for wear the day after, but not so much so that we couldn't bring you a gallery of the night's debauchery.
• Liveblogs If you aren't at BlizzCon and don't have the livestream, fear not: We've got you covered. The Opening Ceremonies, the Mists of Pandaria Preview panel, the Class Talent System panel, and the Dungeons and Raids panel are here in all their liveblogged glory.
• World of Warcraft: Those Crazy Bastards Did It Technically the next expansion's name is World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, featuring -- what else? -- a new race, the Pandaren, and a new class, the monk. So who gets Pandaren, Alliance or Horde? Turns out it'll be both. Not only do we have the first trailer for you, but we also got an early peek at their racials, and Joe Perez played through the Pandaren starting area for a bit. By the way, it turns out the Pandaren started with a picture that Samwise Didier drew for his daughter.
• What to expect in the next expansion Quite a lot, as it turns out. Of interest to all players will be the WoW annual pass (giving a free digital copy of Diablo 3 and a new mount, Tyrael's Charger), an overhaul of the talent system (with pictures of all the new talents for each class), new PvE scenarios, an adios to melee weapons for hunters and the ranged slot for everyone else, dungeon and raid changes, and -- let's not forget -- WoW's version of Pokemon. On which I believe our commenters Cyanea and Arcanum have had the final and best words on.
• Fun, games, and random news We've already got one slot knocked off our BlizzCon bingo cards. Check out the last batch of readers' predictions in the few hours before the convention started here. We got some great shots of the cosplayers running around the convention. In a pleasant surprise for everyone, Murkablo (the special pet awarded to BlizzCon attendees and purchasers of the livestream) is available early. And don't forget Blizzard's auction of server blades to benefit St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

---

The news is out -- we'll be playing Mists of Pandaria! Find out what's in store with an all-new talent system, peek over our shoulder at our Pandaren hands-on, and get ready to battle your companion pets against others. It's all here right at WoW Insider!

---

When we saw that Blizzard had registered the Mists of Pandaria trademark back in August, no one was sure what to think. Was it a sign of the next expansion, a WoW Trading Card Game pack, or simply Chris Metzen playing an elaborate prank on us all? It turns out that the first option was the correct one, but big fat pandas are not the only things we have to look forward to next year. Huge talent changes, the WoW version of Pokemon, scenarios and challenge modes, a new class (the monk), and even a free copy of Diablo 3 (with the new WoW annual pass) are all bundled into the next expansion. Which one of these interests you the most?

---

The news is out -- we'll be playing Mists of Pandaria! Find out what's in store with an all-new talent system, peek over our shoulder at our Pandaren hands-on, and get ready to battle your companion pets against others. It's all here right at WoW Insider!

---

We'll be live blogging the opening ceremony at BlizzCon 2011. The start times for this liveblog is as follows:

Pacific Time zone: 11:00 a.m.
Mountain Time zone: 12:00 p.m.
Central Time zone: 1:00 p.m.
Eastern Time zone: 2:00 p.m.

We're expecting a lot from this BlizzCon opening ceremony, including the Mists of Pandaria expansion, some StarCraft expansion announcement, and potentially an announcement concerning the Diablo 3 release date.

Stay tuned! We'll start liveblogging soon.

10:42 a.m. - Patch 5.0 will introduce a new talent system.

10:42 a.m. - Initial reports are that the expansion will be playable at BlizzCon today.

The rest of the liveblog after the break!

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Let us ponder upon classes, the very thing that defines one's playstyle the most in World of Warcraft. Whether it be the ever-gorgeous, plate-clad warrior who shouts, "I HAZ TWO ROCKET SWORDZ, UR POINT IZ INVALID," the warlock-hating mage or the mage-hating warlock, or even the druid who thinks that Woodstock was really great, we all have our preferences on what we think is the best class of them all.

Yet if Blizzard has taught us anything, it is to plan for upsets or twists in class selection. Remember the great death knight massacre of 2008? Everyone and his great-grandmother's mailman had a death knight. They were easy to acquire, incredibly powerful and just a blast to play. Yet modern death knights are shells of what they once were. They play like the polar opposite of paladins now, but upon their initial release, they felt more like a battle mage class. Now, thanks to a complete revamp of the death knight class, the closest thing to a battle mage is long gone, leaving those who enjoyed the class idea from different roleplaying games feeling rather empty and disappointed, much the same way as when we discovered that the delicious cake we were promised was actually a lie.

It leaves us with a curious idea, though. Considering that the idea of a battle mage in WoW is doable, could it be brought in as its own class? Or would Blizzard dare to put in a totally different class?

The @warcraft twitter account has been posting a few carefully taken pictures of something the past couple days, and today it's been reveled what the object is -- a Pandaren Brewmaster Figure that you can buy from the Blizzard store. The little guy is "on sale" for $50, and there are limited quantities available. Everything is first come, first serve, so if you want one I suggest getting getting it quickly.

The figure is of Chen Stormstout, who left his Pandaren home world to find better ingredients to make his brew with. These figures are usually of pretty high quality, and by the looks of it this one is exceptionally detailed. It's also not a small figure. It's over 8 inches tall and 4 pounds in weight, which makes it quite a nice desk statue.

Should be a good collectable for this who want it!

This morning I want to play the hypothetical game a bit and talk about what would happen if Cataclysm included a new class. Not only what it would be, but how it would fit into the overall balance of WoW. And just to be clear, there won't be a new class in Cataclysm. Numerous Blizzard employees have stated that doing one new class an expansion would be too much work (paraphrased, don't go complain to your favorite blue that this was a direct quote).

The Death Knight in Wrath of the Lich King was the first class introduced to WoW, and it's inclusion in the game has had mixed reviews. Most folks agree that the class provided a great new element to play in the game, however its balance in raids and PvP is something that is constantly under the microscope. Ghostcrawler has mentioned numerous times that the Death Knight has taken up more time to balance in Wrath than any other class. This is problematic for numerous reasons, but has been able to be handled nicely by the designers and programmers (I'm sure there'll be some who disagree, however show some restraint in your disagreement).

So now for the hypothetical part -- if Blizzard were to introduce a new class in Cataclysm, I would suspect that it would be the healing counterpart to the Death Knight. Mechanics of the class would probably operate similar to the Death Knight's rune system: each small heal or heal over time would be castable based on an available rune, which would in turn generate runic power for larger heals. The class would rely less on spam type heals (such as the Paladin, to some extent), and more on preventative heals (such as the Druid, to some extent).

MMO Champion has datamined up some video of the new Pandaren Monk vanity pet that's been floating around, and as you can see above, it's pretty darned awesome. Just like the Grunty the Murloc pet, this one comes with some fun animations, and they look terrific. Blizzard has been pretty coy about getting the Pandaren into the game, and they're teasing big here, too -- this little bear's got moves that would make the Diablo III Monk hang his head in shame.

However, the question remains: how do we get it? At this point, it's just speculation and rumor -- some say it might be a special anniversary pet for people who've been subscribed all five years of the game's life, some suggest it might be part of the Cataclysm collector's edition (past CEs have had a pet in each one, including a Diablo figure in the first box), and still others suggest that the Monk will be a new pet in the upcoming Brewfest holiday. How do we get it, really? We won't know for sure until we hear it from Blizz.

PAX wrapped up over the weekend in Seattle, and from what we've heard of our friends' experiences over at Joystiq, it was a wild, wild time. Blizzard was there as expected, and it sounds like the setup was pretty awesome. They had all three playable demos up from BlizzCon, including the Starcraft II singleplayer game, the Diablo III monk class, and of course the Cataclysm Worgen and Goblin race starting areas. We hear that Blizzard had their GMs in attendance as well, and reader Aveiceae (whose pictures you can see in the gallery below) reports that she saw both Drysc and Bornakk there. She also says that Blizzard gave away some of their famous hand sanitizer throughout the show -- very important, especially at a gaming convention during swine flu season.

Tisoi also has a report over on WoW LJ, including a few pictures of the setup on the convention floor, as well as a few (sneaky) screenshots of the Worgen and Goblin areas. He also got to meet Jeff "Vork" Lewis and Sandeep "Zaboo" Parikh of The Guild. Felicia Day wasn't there (she spent the weekend at Dragon*Con, where there was other WoW-related shenanigans going on), but as Sandeep reported on his Twitter, she wasn't needed, thanks to cosplayers. Sounds like a great time was had by all. Next year, PAX is headed out east -- we'll have to keep an eye out and see if Blizzard is going there as well.