Currently watching the BlizzCon DirecTV event, they just now officially announced the new EP for WoW. Some found the name to be obvious. The “Mists of Pandaria”, or “MoP” for short.
What is known is there will be new content (of course), level cap will be increased to Level 90 (to help balance it from Cata). Some kind of “Pet Battle System”. This system was highly detailed later on. The way they described it, it sounded just like Pokemon. Pitting your pet against another, getting it leveled, naming it.
A new race and class have been announced for the new EP. The “Pandarian”, and the new class is “Monk”.
This time, there won’t be a overpowered threat to Azeroth. This time… …we, will be our own enemy, to the planet, due to the continuous fighting between the Alliance and Horde. Deathwing, will be defeated (they showed a clip of the Dragon Soul raid in Patch 4.3). But Azeroth will never truly be at peace while the two factions clash over this new land for its resources.
Ghostcrawler was there, and he mentions about the Pandarians will talk about why the fighting continues between the Alliance and Horde, and try to calm the tensions between the two. He also mentioned the new Pandarian race will be playable by both factions, making it the first cross-faction race. It’s mentioned later when you get to Level 10, you can choose which faction you want to be on. And no, this is not a new hero class.
In my opinion, I’m looking forward to the next EP. I was hoping this would put the series to bed, but it’s mentioned that isn’t even done past this one. That there will be more in the future.
Before the announcement, the CEO of Blizzard announced something that shocked everyone. What if you played WoW, but didn’t know if you wanted Diablo 3? Well.. now, you can get it, FOR FREE!!! “HOLY SHIT!!” was the first words that came out of my mouth.
The trick is, you have to subscribe your WoW account to this 12-month deal. And when Diablo 3 comes out, you get it, for FREE! No demo. THE FULL GAME!
Now, I never really cared for the Diablo series.. but I love free stuff.
Even better, when you do this, you will also be able to play the Beta of WoW’s new EP before it shows up on the PTR. And, get this new flying horse mount that beats the shit out of the Celestial Steed.
Ghostcrawler mentions the new EP is to “relieve the pressure” of the tension of the EP’s. With Illidan, The Lich King, .. and Deathwing. This is to “lighten the feeling” and make the game look more friendly. I now like him, and take back every mean thing I’ve said about Blizzard over the years. 🙂
Unfortunately, this comes with one bad thing… no flying ’till Level 90. They claim the reason is because how big the new continent will be, and they want players to stay on the ground and see it all; see the work they put into it. They know people like flying, but they don’t want them to miss content.
What they aren’t saying is where is this new island in Azeroth. That still seems to be hush hush to them.
Over at the Facebook feed, players are already voicing their opinions over the new EP. Some don’t like the new race (due to being the only new player race). Others say Blizzard is being too kind to new players.
The hammer Ghostcrawler was holding before the announcement of the EP, will be available on the Blizzard Store as an Epic weapon (the first ever buyable weapon outside of the AH). He mentioned about “we need something like this for the Alliance”.
A redesigned talent system will be shipped when the EP is, and was shown in detail what the (possible) new talents will be. Instead of having a full “cookie cutter” tree, all classes will pick a single talent from a tier of three talents. Every 15 levels, you’ll get another one. They are levels 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, and 90. Hunters will start off at Level 15 with three never done before bullet types; frost, arcane, and poison.
The reason for this redesign of the talent system is to give players more freedom of how they wanna play, to allow them not to have the same type of talent tree as another to keep things fresh, and different. They want more player customization.
Other changes for WoW include two changes for PvE. With one that may ultimately replace the need for Group quests.
The first one is what they call, “Challenge Modes”, which is similar to what VALVe did for Portal. What they mean is having a timed dungeon, where people run in, do their thing, and beat it in an X amount of time, and you get medals for how well you do. These medals are basically for bragging rights. I don’t think I’ll be getting into that.
The second thing, they call “PvE Scenarios”. These might replace Group quests and will throw in a PvE version of a Battleground. Your buddies will work with you to help you complete these challenging quests. And what’s better, an improved LFG system just for it.
The Raid Finder that was announced with Patch 4.3 was mentioned again. They would like to see more people raiding. So as well as Valor Points, they offer a “Side of Fries” for completing a raid. I think this is just a dev joke. Pretty funny one, though.
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Day 2 of BlizzCon was mostly about PvP tournaments for WoW and Starcraft 2, with an amazing finish between two of SCII’s best Turren and Zerg players. It kinda makes me wanna look at RTS games differently. Maybe even give Starcraft 2 a chance.
They had a new Q&A for WoW for general questions, with six of the devs answering questions from players. There was some QQing about how Blood DK’s got nerfed. And someone even asked them “player housing… please?”, and their response is that as long as players want new dungeons, raids, and more content, they don’t have enough time to do it. But it’s not something they threw away. So there’s still hope.
At the closing ceremonies, L80ETC rocked the house with classics like “Power to The Horde” and “I Am Murloc”, and ‘leveled up’ before our eyes; becoming L90ETC to celebrate the announcement of the EP.
And the Foo Fighters helped to end the event. The event ended at 12:20am EDT.
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Seeing this is my first time watching BlizzCon, I really enjoyed it. Loved seeing the info of the new EP for WoW and what to expect, and the heavy details of every new feature mentioned to not keep players in the dark.
Next year, I’m just going to buy the Virtual Ticket instead of through DirecTV, since it wouldn’t show it. I was wrong about the shitty stream. It came in beautiful. Others, were complaining about it.