Posts with tag pandaren

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mathew McCurley (@gomatgo) will be your host for today.

I threw a pie party last night, and I'm still recovering. There were two pumpkin pies, courtesy of my Kitchen Aid stand mixer and me, as well as two Ikea almond cakes, tons of cupcakes people brought, and lots of alcohol. There's this amazing bottle of Septima Malbec sitting on my desk and maybe ... just maybe ...

No, seriously, Malbecs are the best red wines. Even people who hate reds love Malbecs. Go purchase, now. Drink responsibly. How about some WoW questions?

ZodiacDragons asked:

I've been wanting to ask this for awhile because it seems like talk of faction leaders keeps coming up, but didn't Blizz say sometime at the end of wrath that Lor'themar was going to play some sort of role in cataclysm? I think I remember seeing a blue post about it in an article here but can't find it. I think if ANY faction leader needs lore development, it's that guy. At least Velen has that "end of the world" prophesy to fall back on.

So my question(s) are: did Blizz say he would play an important role in Cataclysm? If so, what happened with that plan? If not, what are the chances of him having an important role in MoP?

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we engage in wild, baseless speculation and make hasty, groundless assumptions based on that wild, baseless speculation. So ... just like every week.

A quick recap for those of you who have limited internet access and choose (understandably) to use each of your precious online moments reading this column each week, but otherwise ignore the internet completely:

Blizzard announced a new expansion for World of Warcraft. It has pandas. The WoW online community appears to be simultaneously overjoyed, mildly excited, meh, and borderline suicidal. Monks are the new class, and they will be able to tank while drunk, which makes them pretty much identical to every other tank I know. Most importantly, though, the design team plans to throw our current talent system into a virtual wood chipper, pick up the pieces that come out of the other side, and mash them together into a completely new, singular talent tree for each class.

The three distinct mage trees will survive, but the majority of the school-specific talents and spells we have now are slated to become baseline abilities that we'll gain as we level (automatically -- no more going to a mage trainer). Ability customization once Mists of Pandaria hits will exist as six talent choices available regardless of spec, one choice between three talents every 15 experience levels. Talent specs as we have known them since the game began in 2004 will cease to exist once patch 5.0 hits, and I expect that to occur in less than a year.

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

Amy Millan is great solo, but I love her work with Stars even more. This is from their album Set Yourself on Fire.

NO NAME asked:

Is there any previews of the female pandas yet?

No, and don't expect one for a long time. What you can do between then and now is pray that they fare better than female Worgen did.

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play?

With the announcement of Mists of Pandaria and the inclusion of the Pandaren race in World of Warcraft, the most-asked question that I received was "How is this possible with the laws in China against killing pandas in video games?" The second most-asked question was "How is this possible when Kung Fu Panda will just sue Blizzard?" After I got over the initial hilarity of imagining the actual Jack Black-voiced Kung Fu Panda taking a dude to court, I realized that the myths about China's involvement with pandas in games, as well as what constitutes a real cause of action in terms of copying characters, are finally issues at the forefront of WoW topics.

The Lawbringer is all about pandas today. You might be sick of them, you might love them, or heck, you might be on the panda fence. I can promise you that even if you aren't a Pandaren fan, you just might learn a little something or two from today's all-panda fun. Sit back, relax, get all Zen-like, and let's see what the Pandaren have to offer us.

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.

Today is my first day back in Wisconsin post-BlizzCon, and I have just one word to describe how it feels to be back home: cold.

Phoenix asked:

Alex, you've been saying for years how much you hate pandas. Are you going to quit in MoP?

BlizzCon's over, so let's recap. We get playable Pandaren, neutral characters that can choose either Alliance or Horde at the end of the starting experience. On top of that, we get the monk class that plenty of people have been excited about seeing implemented in game. And then we get entirely revamped talent trees that aren't trees at all -- they are a completely gutted and entirely new system for people to play with. Plus, we get something to do with all those pets we've collected over the last several years.

Yet a lot of what I've been reading here and there has been a general reaction of "That's it?" rather than excitement, and it seems a little odd to me. After trying to puzzle out why exactly it was odd to me that people would feel this way, I decided it really didn't have anything to do with them; it had plenty to do with me. Out of all the posts I write, you guys seem to love the tinfoil hat theories the best -- and the way I create those posts is due to the way that I look at stories and situations.

That said, there is a reason you guys should be excited about this expansion. Actually, there are several of them, but I'm only going to hit five of them. And I'm going to blow your mind with what is the biggest reason you should absolutely love what's coming up in World of Warcraft.

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?

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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!

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One of the most interesting tidbits dropped during the World of Warcraft Open Q&A is a note concerning new character models for the game's older races. If you've played the game for any length of time, it's instantly obvious that not all character models are created equal, and the game's earliest races are in a pretty sorry state in comparison to their later counterparts. As we learned in the art panel, the male pandaren has 10 times the number of digital "bones" possessed by the game's older races, allowing them an unprecedented number of fluid and dynamic animations. As Milka, one of our commenters, just noted, "I heard that they're creating animated belts. My troll woman still can't blink. Result: My belt will be more expressive than my face."

Players have been asking for updates to older races as a result, and developers have confirmed that they are in the works and being actively designed by the character artists. However, they don't want to put something in the game that feels like a betrayal to a character that you've had for years, so they're proceeding carefully. There's no word yet on when we can expect to see them, but it's good news for everyone who'd like their older toons to look as good as their newer ones!

Edit: Zarhym has just posted on the forums clarifying the information given at BlizzCon, although there's no new information to share.

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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!

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I know that the World of Warcraft preview and question-and-answer sessions always tend to attract the most commentary at any given BlizzCon, but for my money, the most interesting ones in the long run tend to be those concerned with the game's artistic and technical sides. Seeing how developers got the game to look the way it does, and the reasoning behind the design of different races, zones, and items gives you a much better appreciation of the game while you're in it. The gorgeous Uldum sky didn't get there by accident.

As you'd expect, the art panel contained a number of previews of the characters, locations, dungeons, and props we'll be seeing in Mists of Pandaria. If you're only interested in a peek at the male pandaren's model and animations, well, you can get that here, but there were a number of interesting observations made. Two of the things that really jumped out at me:

• They're experimenting with tier and item set models. Rather than pasting a design onto the standard-issue flat chest and leg pieces, for example, we may see swinging chains, ribbons, and other three-dimensional objects on more gear in the future.
• Technical advances in very recent months have made it easier and faster to add more detail to the environment. New texture tools have made it possible to add snow or lava between cracks in a road, or pooled in the nook of a hill, much more quickly than they could earlier.

We'll have a full gallery of the panel up later!

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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?

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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!

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Our sister site Joystiq nabbed an interview with Samwise Didier who is, in a way, the spiritual father of Mists of Pandaria. As art director, he's had an influence on every Blizzard game for years, but this one's special: he originally created the Pandaren.

"It was one of the last things that I really wanted to see in World of Warcraft, which is Warcraft in general ... Now I can almost say, well, I think I've done good with Warcraft -- they're finally in."

Check out the full article.

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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!

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I'm sure that you've already heard the news of the next World of Warcraft expansion: Mists of Pandaria. As an added treat to the reveal of the next expansion, those in attendance at BlizzCon have the opportunity to sit down and spend some time with the new race and the new starting zone. I was fortunate enough to get a chance to play through what was available and to get to know the new Pandaran race just a little bit. We also got to spend some time with the new class, the monk. Join us after the break for more information.