So...

Two months. Well, almost two months. The better part of two months, to be perfectly accurate. A lot can happen in that time. Incidentally, that's how long this blog hasn't been updated, and a lot has happened.


First off, I did receive a few e-mails concerning my choices for GOTY on the last post. Some sympathetic to my choices, some not so much, some claiming I should have picked some other game for the spot. Unfortunately, most of the less, let's say "polite" ones, were in favour of Skyrim. To which, like an educated, semi-mature adult, I will respond as such.


Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.




And though I feel I shouldn't add to the maelstorm of some confirmed and some unconfirmed info flying around about Mists of Pandaria, I kinda have to. Not that there's not other things we could have a chat about. Kingdoms of Amalur, Mass Effect 3, the final release date for Diablo 3 (May 15th, by the way), the tidbits about the new Assassin's Creed (free-running in forests during the American Revolutionary War and opening up English skulls with tomahawks pretty much sums up all we know eitherway). Still, the biggest newsbomb of the last two months remains the few-days-ago flood of info about MoP. 


Now, suggestions and assumptions were going around even back when Blizzard registered the name, let alone confirmed the game. This blog had a few assumptions on its own (which I'm glad to say were mostly accurate). So let's recap slightly.

Much like Northred and Outland before it, Pandaria will be a separate continent divided into 7 zones, of which one hosts a sanctuary city (much like Shattrath and Dalaran). Go on, put this as your wallpaper, I'll wait. 


Finished? Ok.


Here's what's been confirmed so far:

*Monks now do have an auto-attack, and their Light and Dark Chi mechanic is gone, simplifying the class in theory. Tank and DPS monks now only use Chi and Healing monks use mana. Monks promise to be different to other classes in such roles though, with their focus being in the thick of it at all times; no more standing back out of harm's way and healing, apparently. Brand new animations, too. 


*Pandaren racials seem pretty locked down: Epicurean gives you an extra 100% stat buff from foods, Gourmand gives you a 15 skill bonus in cooking, Inner Peace makes your rested xp last twice as long, Bouncy makes sure you take less fall damage and Quaking Palm sleeps a target for 3 seconds.


*For those of you clocking 10 toons on a realm already or for those of you that intend to have one of each, Blizzard is giving a free 11th slot per realm.


*Blizzard seem to want to give an emphasis to combat, more so than previous expansions. Seeing as there's no specific Big Bad this time around (gone are the personified menaces of Illidan, The Lich King and Deathwing), this might not be a bad idea. War between the two factions will probably break out in the open this time around, but more on that later. Combat will dominate questlines according to devs with new and exciting mechanics, such as the ability to fire ranged attacks out of range of your target; meaning they'll miss, so you have to keep an eye out for range yourself.


* The talent and glyph system is being reworked still. Focus seems to be on allowing players to talent their toons as they wish: talents are earned in level tiers and are not locked down on specific specs. At first sight, there's way fewer talents for proper customization, yet this customization seems less restrictive. Then again, glyphs will probably play a larger role than they already do. We mostly know about utility and cosmetic glyphs so far: the one that whenever a Warrior crits, a flock of doves flies out from underneath him, the one that turns a Druid's travel form into a white stag rideable by other players etc. Well, mostly. The Warlock's Felguard equipping itself with a random Polearm, 2h sword or axe from the Warlock's inventory is a notable exception.


* Unlike previous expansions, where the final bosses and the conclusion of the expansion's lore would only appear in content patches months into launch, the devs seem to want to conclude MoP's lore on launch and then explore the concequences on content patches.  That will see the Alliance and Horde bringing their conflict into Pandaria, making new allies and eventually changing a few things, such as who's going to be the Warchief of the Horde. One raid in specific is going to see players ransack Ogrimmar and dethrone Garrosh by force.


* The new "Challenge" mode will see you racing against the clock to finish instances as soon as possible for gold, silver or bronze medals and rewards depending on the medal. For those, you will not be fighting with your own gear, but rather "normalized" random level-appropriate gear to keep it fair. Pure skills, apparently. The aforementioned rewards will mostly be pets, mounts and gear that's worthless stat-wise but quite unique in looks, meant only for transmog and e-peen purposes.

* The pet battle system isn't something I'm particularly looking forward to. It is, in short, Pokemon. Sort of. You can pit your pets against other pets, they level up, they learn new abilities, and you can find wild pets outdoors and catch them. Ok, exactly like Pokemon.




* Three new raids and nine new instances on launch, including these. These raids will be available on the controversial LFR system.


* Speaking of LFR, the loot distribution system is going to change, hopefully meaning that people will no longer be able to ninja items for "OS" when a main spec player needs them. Tier items will go back to the vanilla way, no longer grouping up classes for the same tier pieces.


* There's talks about changes to character specs, but nothing solid yet. We do know that Druids (the most versatile of hybrid classes so far) are getting their Feral spec split down the middle to better suit melee DPS and tanking roles. Other than that, it's pure conjecture. There's apparently a lot of internal debate about whether or not various dps specs of "pure" classes (Mage, Warlock, Rogue and Hunter) should be equalized to justify via personal taste having several specs for the same role or if they should be occasion-specific, or even if every class should be a hybrid, serving all roles if desirable. There's also talks about re-instating the old status quo of invaluable utility on occasion, meaning that certain points in instances may be significantly harder or nearly impossible if the group is missing a specific class/spec. It's still a bit early to know, but Blizzard intent to shake things up a bit, and I for one applaud that decision.


* Last but not least, there's Scenarios. but apart from what we heard at Blizzcon a few months ago, nothing new has been added to these, so we'll just have to wait and see.


The beta is going to open up soon, and there's no NDA, which means I'll have more info for you soon. Devs say that "players probably don't realize just how far into development we actually are", so we're unlikely to see major changes to the things that have been confirmed. As for a release date? Blizzard are notorious for delaying release dates until a game is completely ready by their standards: Some sources though (namely PC Gamer) seem to think that a late-summer release isn't entirely impossible.


Korn out.