Posts with tag pandaren

A new short story is available on the official Blizzard website for lore fans. Bleeding Sun, written by Matt Burns, sheds some light on the Golden Lotus and the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. Although there have been small bits of story about the Vale and its guardians, there wasn't a lot of clarification on the process itself. We knew that the Vale had guardians, that those guardians had been there before the August Celestials chose to open the gate, but how those guardians were chosen, or what that choice entailed was still a mystery.

Matt Burns, also the author of Charge of the Aspects from last year, tackles this subject with flair -- but it's a dark flair, one that was entirely unexpected. I'd mentioned before that Trial of the Red Blossoms, Blizzard's first foray into Pandaria's many factions, was a little dark. Bleeding Sun beats it, hands down -- and all by using a character who is entirely devoted to the Light of An'she's sun. Sunwalker Dezco makes a unexpected return in Bleeding Sun, along with his twin sons, now named Redhorn and Cloudhoof. Dezco has been trying to to come to terms with the death of his wife Leza and the result of their grand journey across Pandaria. He and his followers found the Vale ... but what now?

And that's where it gets really grim.

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

WoW Insider posted recently about rare race-class combinations, and received several reader requests for further data manipulation, so like the Korune Spellweavers of Kun-Lai Summit, we have returned to RealmPop, and recommenced decanting their data into lists for your delectation.

The top request, from several commenters, but also the Editor-in-Chief of WoW Insider, was to lose the monks. He, and several readers, commented that they were skewing the list thanks to their newness, and while the original list was interesting to me, thanks to how it highlighted the dominance of pandaren and human monks, I rather agree. So, first up, the top ten most underplayed class-race combinations, excluding monks, but including pandaren. I've also added male and female character stats, thanks to the requests of commenters.

The run-down is after the break, but first, a few other observations that might pique your interest. Please do note, as before, that this is based on RealmPop's data, which, while good, is never going to be perfect! One thing I noticed on comparing the EU data and US data is the differing overall class numbers. Hunters are the most numerous on both sides of the Atlantic, followed by paladins, then druids. On the NA side, the rest went, in descending order, DK, warrior, mage, priest, rogue, warlock, shaman, monk; while on the EU side we have warrior, mage, DK, priest, rogue, shaman, warlock, monk. Now, the difference is not huge between these classes, so small variations could move the positions around, but both data sets noted a large drop-off for warlock and shaman, while the other classes hovered around similar numbers.

Inspired by a thread we found on the EU forums, which in turn is inspired by a thread on the US forums, WoW Insider began thinking about rare class-race combinations. It's interesting, really, in a world where you can be anything, how many people all choose to be the same thing. Doubtless, there are reasons behind it, more than just preference. Racial skills, for example, are likely a huge influence, but maybe others surface, as, with a little investigation, excluding Pandaren as they're very new, it seems that the three least popular races are also the ones that don't show off transmogs so well, and are perhaps less conventionally "pretty": gnomes, goblins and dwarves.

We headed over to RealmPop to check out their statistics and see what was the most popular and what was the least. Of course, no resource is completely perfect, and a few sites exist, but alas, the other well-known resource, WarcraftRealms, was offline. Looking at the US statistics, the least popular race, including pandaren, but by a narrow margin is the dwarf. The EU stats tell a very similar story, with dwarves outpaced by everyone, even pandaren. Why is that?

So, it makes sense that dwarves make up the race element of some of the rarest race-class combinations. Notably, however, although their total numbers are higher overall, the huge proportion of pandaren monks (64-65%) means that they're among the very rarest of combinations when playing anything but a monk.

Hit the break for the top 15 underplayed class-race combinations! Or should that be the bottom 15?

It appears that Blizzard is far from done with short stories on the official website -- and that seems to be a pretty good thing. The Trial of the Red Blossoms, written by Cameron Dayton, is the latest offering to hit the official website. And for those wondering, there isn't a Li Li in sight in this tale. Instead, we get a tale highlighting just what it takes to become one of the Shado-pan, woven through the eyes of a young, scrawny pandaren thief simply named Ten.

If you thought that Pandaria and its residents were all about good cheer, food and drink, it's time to think again. The Shado-pan are among the least sociable of the pandaren, and are quite vividly illustrated as a group of warriors that you really, really don't want to mess with. It's a dark, grim tale about some of Pandaria's darkest, grimmest citizens -- and it absolutely shines. Ten is nothing like the sometimes too-precocious to handle Li Li, and his past and future hang in the balance of the Shado-pan. Whether or not he can rise to the occasion is entirely up to him.

The Trial of the Red Blossoms appears to be the first of what may be the next collection of short stories. Cataclysm saw the Leader Short Story series, and Trial is filed under Faction Stories on the Expanded Universe page, suggesting there are more tales of other factions to come. If they are even half as good as Trial, I suspect we're in for a treat this expansion. And frankly, I can't wait to see if we're finally going to get some dirt on the August Celestials.

You can read The Trial of the Red Blossoms on the official website, in the Destination: Pandaria section of the Expanded Universe guide. And as an added bonus this time around, the story is available for download in multiple formats -- choose from PDF format, ePUB format for the smartphone, tablet or Nook, or mobi format for the Amazon Kindle.

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If there is one thing I have perfected in eight years of playing this game, it is filling my bags with useless stuff. I'm not talking about armor bits and pieces for transmog, or weapons with pretty glows, or bags full of crafting material like cloth or leather. No, I'm talking random baubles that will make you look like your neighbor. Or fling you in the air, without worry of what happens when you eventually hit the ground.

You know, stuff. Everybody likes stuff. And who has the best stuff in Pandaria? Rare mobs, of course! But which rares have the good stuff? Which ones will let you summon a fleet of angered puppies in party hats to fight at your side? Or inexplicably get you ready for a day at the beach in the middle of a raid? Or turn you into a statue with no apparent purpose other than sitting there pretending to be a statue?

You want useless stuff? Oh we've got all kinds of useless stuff for you, sorted by category.

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

Azeroth is a volatile land fraught with conflict. In recent years of history, this conflict has been highlighted by the battle between Alliance and Horde, a seemingly never-ending struggle that began the moment the orcs made their way through the Dark Portal and began attacks on the Eastern Kingdoms in earnest. But prior to the orcs, there were still wars to contend with. In early days, pandaren rose up against mogu, troll against aqir. Kaldorei against Burning Legion, and against each other in the process.

It almost seems as though Azeroth's destiny is one that is irrevocably tied to war -- we're destined to fight, regardless of who we are, or what we happen to be fighting. But why do the Alliance and Horde continue to fight? They've worked together in the past, and yet it seems that every time they are close to some sort of peaceful resolution, they are drawn once more to war. What's making the Alliance and Horde so aggressive this time around?

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

Mists of Pandaria contains an utter truckload of new lore. Pandaria has been hidden behind mists for ten thousand years and the elusive pandaren were little more than a myth to most, a rare sighting to others. Because of this, there was little to no record of anything related to the lost continent of Pandaria or its history. And because of that, Pandaria is packed with tons of new stories and information regarding the continent and the races that live upon it.

Even to someone familiar with lore, that overload of information can be a little overwhelming. We're all starting out at the same point in Pandaria, a point where we know nothing at all. So I find myself frequently getting asked questions about what's going on in this strange new world, and why we're doing what we're doing. As I answered the questions to various friends and guildmates, I thought perhaps I should share the answers to the most frequently asked of these questions with you all.