Mists of Pandaria is the next WoW Expansion.

[Nesyla]

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Trailers :​

• Trailer 1
  
• Trailer 2
  

Dungeons Trailers :​

• Stormstout Brewery
  
• Shado-pan Monastery
  
• Temple of the Jade Serpent
  

Pandaren Monk In Combat :

• Video 1
  

Official Website​

Talent Calculator​

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Features

• Level cap raised to 90
  
• New class: Monk
  
• New race: Pandarens
  
• Pve Scenarios
  
• Pet Battle System (Pokemonnn!)
  
• New Talents
  
• New continent
  
• Challenge Mode Dungeons.
  
• The pandas will be playable by both Alliance and Horde.
  

Race : http://www.wowpedia.org/Pandaren



Racials.

• Bouncy: reduces fall damage by half.
  
• Inner peace: double rested XP.
  
• Gourmand: +15 to cooking.
  
• Epicurean: double stats to food buffs.
  

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Monk Abilities Preview.



Level 1 Abilities



Jab

40 Chi - Melee Range, Instant

Requires Stance of the Drunken Ox, Stance of the Fierce Tiger.

You jab the target, dealing 5 damage and generating 1 light force and 1 dark force.



Tiger Palm

1 Light Force - Melee range, instant

Requires Stance of the Drunken Ox, Stance of the Fierce Tiger.

Deals 10 Physical damage, deals 5 additional damage if the target is above 50% health.



Level 2 Abilities



Roll

50 Chi - Instant

Roll a short distance.



Level 3 Abilities



Blackout Kick

2 Dark Force - Melee range, Instant

Kick with a blast of energy, causing 28 physical damage to an enemy target. If the target is killed by blackout kick, you are returned 1 Dark Force.



Level 5 Abilities



Flying Serpent Kick

8-40 Yards range, 25 Seconds Cooldown, Instant.

Soar through the air towards a targeted enemy, knocking them down and stunning them for 2 seconds.



Spinning Crane Kick

Instant, 2 Lights and Dark Forces

Requires Stance of the Drunken Ox, Stance of the Fierce Tiger.

You spin while kicking in the air, dealing 23 damage every 1 second to all nearby enemies within 8 yards. Movement speed is reduced by 30%, last 6 seconds.



Level ?? Ability



Statue of the Jade Serpent

5 Sec Cast

Summon a statue at the target location. Anytime you deal damage, a nearby friendly target within 20 yards of the statue will be healed. You can have up to 3 Jade Dragon Statues active at a time.



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Pandaria.

• 5 new zones
  
• 1 unique continent.
  
• Influenced by asian landscapes.
  
• No flying until max level.
  

Mists of Pandaria Goals.

• The goal is to combine new gameplay with most fun parts of the past.
  
• The plan is to get people back into the world, instead of having players roam around Stormwind and Orgrimmar all the time once they reach max level.
  
• Developers want you to do what you want to do to progress your character. They really want you to feel like you have a menu of content where you can pick whatever you want to do, and you shouldn't feel forced to do something to progress your character. For example, daily quests will reward you with valor points but it will still be faster if you raid of course.
  
• Character builds are going to be entirely revamped. Talents were still too cookie cutter, so the developers want to give players more choices in their talents.
  

Lore of Pandaria

• A long, storied history
  
• Magically hidded since The Sundering
  
• A new land to explore...
  
• Alliance vs. Horde
  

The Wandering Isle

• Pandaren start zone
  
• It's a turtle !
  
• Story focused with simple mechanics.
  
• Cross faction, choose Horde / Alliance at lvl 10
  
• One way choise, no way back.
  

Creatures of Pandaria

• The Jinyu are fish-like creatures and will be in a wide number of zones.
  
• The Hozu are a monkey-like race, they stand up on their legs and can walk around. They play tons of pranks on the local pandarens and are also in a lot of zones.
  
• Verming are ... new kobolds, they kinda look like evil bunnies.
  
• Mantid: Whole raids and dungeons around this race. Insect race that has been there since the beginning of ages. They have been seperated by a giant wall. They are starting to go crazy and are going through the wall
  
• Mogu: Ancient race, original race on pandaria. The mogu want the island back from the pandaren, they are really mad. You will see them in dungeons.
  
• Sha: Manifestation of the evil energies that flow through the earth. If there is any sort of battle these guys pop up.
  

The Jade Forest, one of the 5 zones.

• This is where Alliance and Horde will be landing. The horde is washing up on the north side, the alliance on the south side. There will be one unified start zone and Alliance/Horde will end up meeting up in the middle.
  
• Lush rainforests and stone spires
  
• The Alliance will try to become friend with the Hozu, and the Horde with the Jinyu and will try to turn them against each other.
  

Valley of Four Winds

• Two zones for the price of one! This zone is huge, the whole north side of the zone is pandaren farmlands, the south is a coastal jungle.
  
• You will get to choose between the north side and the south side when you arrive. You can go back and switch side if you want the other quests.
  
• The dungeon of this zone is Stormstout Brewery.
  
• This is where you will have your first interaction with the Mantids, they broke through the wall and are now attacking pandarens villages.
  

New Features

• The pandarens are the new race.
  
• The female model not done yet.
  
• Pandaren Classes: Hunter, Mage, Monk, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warrior, which means no Death Knight, Druid, Paladin or Warlock.
  

Pandaren Racials

• Epicurean - Increase the stat benefits from food by 100%
  
• Gourmand - Cooking skill increased by 15.
  
• nner Peace - Your rested experience bonus lasts twice as long.
  
• Bouncy - You take 50% less falling damage.
  
• Quaking Palm - You touch a secret pressure point on an enemy target, putting it to sleep for 3 sec.
  

Monk New Class

• Brewmaster - Tank spec
  
• Mistweaver - Healer, a healer who can stand up in melee and will let players experience a new healing style
  
• Windwalker - Melee DPS
  
• Not a hero class, you will have to start at lvl 1
  
• Very martial art based.
  
• Lots of only monk-only animations
  
• Monk races all of them except Goblin and Worgens
  

Equipment

• Leather Armor (Agility or Intellect)
  
• They hit a lot with hands and feet
  
• They will need weapons for some finishers: Staves, Fist Weapons
  
• Also be able to use 1H Axe and maces, swords
  
• Healers will get off-hands, no healers with shields.
  

Monk Resources

• Chi ( energy ) used for jab and roll
  
• Jab generates Light and Dark force, which are used for everything else. Some finishing move uses dark force, some use the light force.
  
• No auto attack!
  

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Cataclysm Talents



Pros.

• lvl 10 Spec
  
• Removed Junk
  
• Some Choises
  

Cons.

• Risk of skipping talents
  
• Diden't remove enought junk
  
• Not enought choises
  
• Not enought customization
  

2.0 Talents

• Talent System - Gone !
  
• Okay, not really but greatly changed
  
• Class Abilities
  
• Spec Abilities
  
• Talents
  

Specialization

• Choose your spec at lvl 10
  
• Get a spec ability at lvl 10
  
• Get additional spec abilities later ( ie lvl 20, 30, 40 and so on )
  

Talents

• No talent point or ranks
  
• One talent tree per class
  
• Earn talents every 15 levels
  
• Every talent choose 1 out of 3
  
• No mandatory Talents
  
• Change talents as easily as glyphs
  

Pve Scenarios

• PvE Scenarios are a way to give new interesting content that doesn't make sense in a dungeon content.
  
• Scenarios are more about reusing parts of the world in interesting new ways, and introducing new types of PvE gameplay that we've never seen before like PvE battlegrounds.
  
• They are short instances for a few players, the amount of players can vary depending on the scenario, some of them can be for 3 players.
  
• You don't need the typical tank/heal/dps setup, you will just be able to enter and play your role no matter what it is.
  
• It will be a staged experience where you will try to accomplish some greater goal
  
• For example, a scenario might require you to kill 25 kobolds in stage 1, then find and return 4 goldshire children, and then kill the boss.
  
• Developers would like to do PvE battlegrounds, where you will have to slay 50 alliance/horde soldiers, destroy 6 towers and the barracks, and then defeat the enemy General.
  
• They could replace group quests.
  
• It uses the same queue system as the dungeon finder
  
• Since there is no role requirements, queues should be instant.
  

Challenge Mode Dungeons

• Complete a dungeon in X minutes
  
• To earn Gold, Silver or Bronze medals
  
• Gear levels are normalized
  
• Rewards sweet looking gear with no stats
  
• Plus valor points !
  

Pet Battle System

• You will be able to collect, level, and battle with companion pets.
  
• It will be accessible to all players.
  
• Works with almost every pet
  
• Pet Customization, you will be able to name your pet, give them visual abilities, etc ..
  
• There will be "Wild pets", you can find them in the world and engage in battle with them. You will then be able to get that pet and add it to your Pet Journal.
  
• Pets have random stats, some of them will be very good at tanking, some will have a CC ability, etc ...
  
• Some pets will only be found during a specific season, while it's raining, or during the day or the night. Some of them will only spawn in the spring, when it's raining, in elwynn forest at night!
  
• Most pets will become tradable, even after it's leveled, etc ...
  
• Pets will be account wide.
  
• Your pet journal will display info on all your pets, including stats, skills, and also drop locations and lore info for the pets you don't have yet!
  
• Winning battles earns you experience, and levels your pets.
  
• You will learn new abilities. Every pet can use 3 abilities in a battle at one time.
  
• Every time you level you will also increase the stats of your pet.
  
• You will level multiple pets to build your team.
  
• You have 3 battle slots, one for each pet in your team.
  

Pet Battle System - Battle

• PvE and PvP Battles
  
• It will be turn based.
  
• A simple combat system.
  
• Fight with a team of 3 pets
  
• Queuing system, you will be able to find a fight pretty fast depending on the level of your pets.
  

Pet Battle System - Customization

• You will finally be able to name your pets, and see that name in battle.
  
• Items for your pets, you will have an item slot for your pet and might be able to socket gems in those items, etc ...
  
• Individual builds of abilities and different teams.
  
• Masters and Masters abilities, there will be different NPC pet masters in the world who will let you earn abilities when you beat them. For example, beating the master of mechanical pets will get you a new ability for your pet!
  

Dungeons

• 9 new dungeons in the new expansion
  
• 6 dungeons will be on Pandaria
  
• Scholomance and Scarlet Monastery (Wings 1 and 2) will be back in Heroic Mode
  

Raids ( 3 new raids )

• They will feature two enemy races, the Mogu and the Mantid.
  
• Raid Finder, Normal, and Heroic difficulties will be available for all raids from day 1.
  
• World raid bosses will return
  
• More info will be available at the Raids & Dungeons Panel today.
  

Questing

• Increased focus on max level content, it will reward you with Valor Points.
  
• Incentives for dungeons/raiders to run quests and do outdoor/daily kind of stuff. For example finishing a quest might give you a buff for the day, and maybe that buff will let you roll on a loot that only appears to people with that buff.
  
• More quest choices, and a lot less linear
  
• No flying until max level, it's much easier to keep people on the ground and create interesting quests when you know people won't just fly away and drop on the boss.
  
• Faction improvements, there will be group of factions and they will let you work for all factions from that group to get your rewards. This way you don't have to grind a single faction anymore.
  

Player vs. Player ( New Battlegrounds - Not done yet )

• Stranglethorn Diamond Mines - Payload style.
  
• Valley of Power - Murderball
  
• Azshara Crater - DOTA
  
• New Arena - Tol'vir Proving Grounds
  

STV Diamond Mine

• Goblin Mine below northern STV
  
• Payload style
  
• Escort mine cars to depot
  
• Multiple tracks, you will get a lot of options and you will be able to decide which way you want the cart to go.
  
• First to x resources wins
  

Valley of Power

• Located in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms
  
• Murderball style gameplay
  
• Holding the object earns points
  
• Multiple point zones, depending on where you're hiding you will earn more/less points
  
• Object deals damage to holder
  
• Damage increases over time.
  

Tol'vir Grounds - Arena ( saw the picture, love it ! )

• Located in Uldum
  
• Simple layout based on Nagrand arena
  
• Sense of place in the world
  
• Just a simple square with 4 pillars/statues, etc ..
  

Achievements

• Allow achievements to be shared among all characters on the same Battle.net account, things such as the raid achievements and the ones which are difficult to get.
  
• Allows to include new achievements such as "get all the professions to the maximum level"
  

Major Class Changes



Resilience

• Gm's like the way Resilience works in PvP, and how it gives a nice goal for players looking to progress/upgrade their gear in PvP
  
• Resilience is a pretty huge barrier for people who want to start PvPing.
  
• Resilience will become a base stat, and will increase a little every time you level.
  

Ranged Weapons

• Hunter minimum range is gone!
  
• Hunter melee weapon is gone!
  
• Ranged slot for all other characters are gone.
  
• Relics are gone.
  
• Rogues and warriors can now throw their melee weapon
  
• Wands become main hand weapons
  

Warlock

• Unique resource for each spec.
  
• Affliction will keep Soul Shards, they are currently not interesting enough but devs have cool ideas for them.
  
• Demonology will get Demonic Fury, you build up Demonic Fury and you metamorphosize when you max your Demonic Fury. More skills will be added to Demon Form, etc ...
  
• Destruction will get Infernal Embers. The destruction warlock who keeps getting casting fire spells get hotter and hotter and will eventually deal insane amount of damage, you can build it up pretty quickly and unleash your big spell.
  

Shaman

• Buff totems are gone. It just wasn't very interesting to be the buff bitch of the group.
  
• All totems are now utility
  
• New totem examples:
  
• Earthgrab totem - roots
  
• Repulsion totem - repels
  
• Bulwark Totem - absorbs
  

Druid

• They always felt like they had 4 specs, so now they do.
  
• Feral - Cat (melee dps)
  
• Guardian - bear (tanking)
  
• Some overlap between the two
  
• All druids can still go cat or bear form.
  

All Classes

• Spell book clean up
  
• More junk gone the goal is to clean up action bars a little more without removing the fun things.
  
• Rotation Improved
  
• Automatically Learn Spells
  
• You will get a new spell at level 87, level 90 new talent point.
  
• Talent trees should be fun !
  

Talents 2.0 ( details ) - Goals

• You are standing next to another combat rogue, and she has different talents than you...
  
• Holy Crap !
  
• Character customization was the original point of talents in the first place
  
• Players : We want more talent customization !
  
• New model is all about customization
  

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New Model



Class Abilities

• All warriors learn Heroic Strike
  

Spec Abilities

• Only Arms warriors learn slam
  

Talent

• Any Warrior can choose throwdown
  
• Talents are optional skills/bonuses available to all specs. Any warrior can choose Throwdown, and you will have to pick between 3 different crowd control abilities on this level of talent.
  
• At level 15 - You pick your first talent. For example, warriors have to pick between Juggernaut / Double Time / Warbringer and players will have to pick which mobility ability they want to pick depending on their playstyle.
  

Talent Philosophy

• Access to stuff you never could before. If you were a subtlety rogue you knew you weren't going to get something like Killing Spree. And because talents are going to be all in the same tree, you're going to be able to combine them in a way that you never could before. For example, any rogue can have Shadowstep!
  
• Several new, overpowered (feeling) talents will be added to the game.
  

Talent Preview ( some sick stuff )

• Design will iterate a lot on individual talents
  
• Don't obsess about the numbers
  

Blue post about Talents



Death Knight



Druid



Hunter



Mage



Paladin



Priest



Rogue



Shaman



Warlock



Warrior



The change is in fact quite amazing and scary at the same time.

Bare in mind that the talents are not 100 % set yet.



And for those of you waiting for Diablo 3, here is a little something.

Annual Pass - Diablo 3 Free



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Challenges Modes

• For players looking for a greater challenge
  
• Timed dungeons runs to earn medals. The concept of Zul'Aman timed runs and similar things is now turned into a brand new game mode!
  
• It will work only on Pandaria dungeons at the beginning.
  
• It will work with the Dungeon Finder tool.
  
• Gear will be normalized, everyone is going to have the exact same item level on their gear. This is a skill based exercise and your gear doesn't matter.
  
• Rewards will be very awesome looking gear for Transmogrification purposes (no stats). You will also get valor points since the new goal is to let you progress your characters no matter what you do.
  
• Leaderboards will be available, you will be able to compare your performances with your guildies or even your entire realm!
  

Raids

• The raids are going to feature the Mogu and the Mantids
  
• All the new raids will work in Raid Finder, Normal, and Heroic difficulties.
  

Mogu'Shan Palace

• Located atop Kun-Lai Summit at the center of Pandaria
  
• Six boss raid
  
• It will let you explore the hidden secrets of the ancien Mogu empire. Even the Pandarians pretty much never went to this place.
  

Raid Finder ( Patch 4.3 )

• The concept came up when developers realized how succesful the dungeon finder is.
  
• They want the raid content to be available to a wider audience, everyone should have a chance to see that new content. They wanted most players to be able to experience the fight against Deathwing, etc ...
  
• The Raid Finder will have a Lower difficulty and rewards than Normal Difficulty. It won't be just a damage or health point reduction, mechanics will be reworked to make fights easier.
  
• This is only in Dragon Soul in Patch 4.3, but it will be available in all raids in patch 5.0
  
• Works for 25-Player and not with 10-Players, makes queue times much faster.
  

Goals For Mists of Pandaria

• Keep the experience short and focused. Dungeons should be short enough to let you run a couple of dungeons when you feel like it, not just one.
  
• Make encounters understandable and do not set up groups to fail. The dungeon journal has been added to the game to make sure that people don't die and wonder what the hell happened.
  
• Fights will be made clearer and more understandable, the Dungeon Journal was a first step and the goal is to make fights even clearer. It also means that you shouldn't be able to just tank and spank and wonder what happened but still win.
  
• Flex our creative Kung-fu. This expansion offers a lot of creative freedom and a lot of new stuff, developers tried to make sure that you'll get dragon punches and all kind of crazy and fun moves.
  

Shado-pan Monastery

• Located in Kun-Lai Summit
  
• Mountain retreat of the mysterious Shado-pan Clan
  
• The Shado-pan protect Pandaria from hidden evil
  
• The Sha have escaped! (Shado pan keep Sha caged in the monastery, but it's escaped and you're trying to help figure this out)
  
• A great idea for layout..Changes into something more epic!
  
• Like to do outdoor dungeons because there are so many indoor already. They jump at opportunity to make outdoor.
  

Scholomance

• Level 90 Heroic
  
• New layout with familiar rooms (shuffle rooms around to make a remix out of it)
  
• Easier to navigate
  
• Concentrate on the coolness (of Scholo and take away everything that didn't quite make the cut)
  

Scarlet Monastery

• Level 80 Heroic
  
• Too much awesome for one dungeon (Remixed and keep all the coolest rooms)
  
• Split Monastery in two!
  
• Graveyard + Cathedral = 1
  
• Armory + Library = 1
  
• Update all boss mechanics
  

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Q&A



How is gear going to scale in the challenge mode ?

We are currently planning for it to scale down. An alternative to scaling the gear would be to scale the monsters up, to make sure that players do not feel less powerful.



Regarding the dungeon finder and raid finder, are we going to be able to enter a random queue for possibly TBC or WOTLK raids ?

Currently weve talked about it a little bit, one of the things we are concerned about is that if there are actually people to fill that queue. We are not sure if raid finder is a fit for those cases. In the future we could do it.



Dungeons are now visible in outside world, but in bc there where also lots of these. Why did you not do this in Cataclysm ?

Over time we have dungeons that existed in outside world, and theres a secondary thing to it. for example the stormbrew brewery where quests actually go inside/around the dungeon. Historically we have had to scale them to be smaller, here they are 1:1 scale so they have awesome impact to the zones.



Can we do Quests in a raid Group ?

Maybe, it has been talked about.



Why are kick wait timers so long ?

It depends on how often that person has been kicked, as well as how often you kick people. It is modified dynamically.



Why did you start Cataclysm with so many bosses and raids, and then add so few in the later patches ?

Plans aren't finalized for the first tier yet. It might be two or three different raids, loot distribution also needs to be worked out.



In Cataclysm, there is a very steep difficulty jump between normal and heroics, how are you going to handle that in MOP ( Mists of Pandoria ) ? Will there be more level 90 normals ?

We are currently not planning to have 90 normal dungeons in MoP.



Previous hard modes required internet research to figure out how to toggle them, now it's just a switch. Can we go back to the old way with multiple difficultites ?

It was hard to come up with this kind of mechanic for all the bosses, it worked with bosses that had order or additional minibosses, but not most others. We are all for fun toggles, but most bosses don't need multiple difficulty modes.



The 10/25 man lockout is frustrating because I have nothing to do on my alt. Will Raid Finder let us join as a group with our guild ?

You can queue with a group, there are no lockouts, and normal/heroic raids do not share any lockout with Raid Finder difficulty. (You only get loot once from Raid Finder)





For Cata, there are 3 raids that came in right from the expansion. Have you guys thought about a way to not make it so overwhelming? Is there going to be like a middle ground?

Essentially the number of bosses comes down to make sure we can spread the loot around. It mostly comes down to the number of bosses we can get down for a patch.



Are any more old classic WoW dungeons going to be remade, maybe Hogger ?

Everyone loves them, but it is a matter of time. We made sure to get some in for Cataclysm launch, we want to add them whenever we have time to do so.



So when you guys announced 4.3 you said there were only going to be 7 hours. You said you were going to focus on epicness and putting more work into them. Firelands only felt like half a raid. Is this omsething we can expect to see in the next raid tiering in MoP ?

We want as many people as possible to experience that content. We were looking at the number of people getting kills on the raid bosses and there were not a lot. We immediately put out hotfixes to make sure more people can experience the content.



Is there any plan to seperate 10 and 25 man achievements again, especially server firsts ?

There were some difficulty differences, it is something we have talked about but we aren't making any promises right now. Maybe in the future!



You were talking how challenge modes can be done for dungeons, are they also for raids and will they be unlocked immediatly or will they unlock gradually ?

There is a chance we could do them for raids, we want to start out with dungeons and see if it feels right. There is one thing we didnt really mention, but say when you get the gold medal, your gear would get nerfed so you can run it again. We havent really finalised this to be honest.



Two raids on the same tier gives players choice in progression. Single raids make it hard to get to the end and make progress. Will you add raids that have multiple paths to get to the last boss ?

This is something we are talking about, especially with Raid Finder. It breaks up Dragon Soul in 4.3 into two parts, giving you the big reward for beating either part. This might be something we can do if we figure out the logistics in the future.



Last years BlizzCon and during cata you hinted at an Abyssal Maw raid, what happened to it ?

We do not have any plans to release the Abyssal Maw raid, it was going to fit in the end of this year. The story line we were telling didnt fit with the patch cycle. It just ended up not fitting. The concept was as far as we got on it. From the story perspective we have moved on so we probably wont use it again.



For the new dungeon challenges, how are you going to handle lower stats like hit. Will it put you below your hit cap ?

Good point, there are lots of details like that to work out. We have Top Men working on this. Top Men.





In Ulduar and Icecrown you could get the Mimiron's Head or Invincible for completing the hard modes, but in Firelands you gave the Fire hawk mounts to people completing normal mode as well. And it's a bummer to see people who don't deserve it running around with the awesome mounts.

In normal mode you had a small chance to get them, and in Heroic mode you had a 100% drop rate, you were rewarded more. That's part of the reason why we will separate the Raid finder difficulty now, mounts will only come from Normal and Heroic modes since the Raid Finder is an intro to raiding. All the prestige items will stay in normal and heroic mode.



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----------------------------



Mists of Pandaria FAQ



----------------------------



Q: What is the story of World of Warcraft®: Mists of Pandaria™?



Alliance warships prowl the seas. Horde armies thunder across Kalimdor. Tensions between these factions edge closer to erupting in a savage war that threatens to consume all of Azeroth. Against this backdrop of impending conflict, an uncharted island mysteriously appears....

Shrouded in fog since the world was sundered more than ten thousand years ago, the ancient realm of Pandaria has remained unspoiled by war. Its lush forests and cloud-ringed mountains are home to a complex ecosystem of indigenous races and exotic creatures -- including the enigmatic pandaren.

All but the bravest pandaren explorers have been hidden from the world for thousands of years. Now, in the aftermath of the events of World of Warcraft®: Cataclysm™, Pandaria's heroes are stepping forward to declare their allegiance to either the Alliance or the Horde and share the extraordinary secrets of their ancient martial arts with the world.



Q: Who are the pandaren?



The pandaren are an enigmatic race native to the long-hidden continent of Pandaria. Honorable and filled with a love of good company, good food -- and every now and then, a good friendly brawl -- the pandaren have been content to live in seclusion, allowing their culture to flourish and thrive away from the influence of the outside world. However, every now and then, a pandaren is born with a thirst for adventure that rivals his or her thirst for a strong drink, and he or she strikes out to explore beyond Pandaria’s shores. One of the most famous such wanderers was the brewmaster Chen Stormstout, who set out to look for exotic ingredients for a special ale and wound up assisting the Horde during the events of Warcraft® III: The Frozen Throne®.



While the pandaren are predominantly a peace-loving race, their history is marked with turmoil and strife. After years of living under the oppressive rule of the cruel mogu, who banned the use of weapons as a means of control, the pandaren developed the martial arts that would become the hallmark of their monk caste and used their skills to free themselves from the mogu rule. Terrifying natural forces and strange indigenous enemies -- such as the voracious mantid, who emerge every few years to consume everything in their path -- have also had a hand in shaping pandaren culture over the centuries. Now, the pandaren way of life faces its biggest trial yet, as Horde and Alliance forces make landfall on Pandaria’s pristine shores....



Q: What are the features of World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria?



Some of the new features of World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria include :

• New Playable Race -- Pandaren: Adventure through Azeroth as World of Warcraft's first neutral race and decide whether to side with the Alliance or the Horde.
  
• New Playable Class -- Monk: Unlock the secrets of pandaren martial arts and do battle as a damage dealer, healer, or tank.
  
• Level Cap Increased to 90: Learn potent new spells and abilities while exploring uncharted zones and taking on challenging new content.
  
• New Zones: Explore the lush Jade Forest, treacherous Kun-Lai Summit, and other exotic areas of Pandaria designed for high-level characters, and uncover the mystery of the Wandering Isle.
  
• Scenarios: Join up with some friends to achieve a common goal, such as mounting a defense against invading monsters, in a flexible new type of PvE challenge.
  
• Dungeon “Challenge†Modes: Master the ultimate 5-player time trial and earn prestige rewards in a new dungeon mode that will put your resolve and coordination to the test.
  
• Pet Battles: Challenge other players’ companion pets with your own collection in a new tactical mini-game, and find out who's king or queen of the pint-sized battlefield.
  
• New Talent System: Customize your character to suit your play style with the newly overhauled and improved talent system.
  

Q: How are the pandaren a “neutral†race? At what point do you choose which faction to side with?



Pandaren who strike out to explore the world outside their homeland begin their journey on the Wandering Isle (a new starting zone for pandaren characters level 1 to 10), where they face a number of trials -- and meet with a number of characters from both the Alliance and the Horde -- before arriving in Kalimdor or the Eastern Kingdoms. Pandaren remain neutral through most of their Wandering Isle quests, but before they leave, players will need to make a decision whether to permanently side with the Alliance or the Horde. After that decision is made, the character will be treated just like any other member of their chosen faction in cities, on quests, and in character interactions. Choose wisely, because once your decision is made, it’s irreversible (except through the Faction Change service).



Q: What is the monk class? How does it differ from other classes in the game?



The monk is a martial arts expert who excels in close-quarters hand-to-hand combat, and can fill the role of a tank, damage-dealer, or healer, depending on a player’s chosen specialization. As with most classes in the game (with the exception of death knights), monks begin their journey at level 1.



Monks have a number of unique mechanics and resources that set them apart from other classes. For example, the class is being designed with a more active approach to combat than other classes; every kick and punch is performed with the press of a key, so they will not have a default auto-attack. In addition, monks build up “chi†through a combination of punches, kicks, and other basic martial arts moves, and then expend it to unleash powerful special moves, such as finishers or potent heals.



Q: Which races can be a monk?



Since coming into contact with members of the Horde and the Alliance, several of Pandaria’s masters have begun to teach their new allies the secrets of their ancient martial arts. Currently, every race except goblin and worgen can learn the ways of the monk.



Q: Which classes are available to a pandaren?



Currently, pandaren can choose to be hunters, mages, priests, rogues, shaman, warriors, and -- of course -- monks. Pandaren are not able to become death knights, druids, paladins, or warlocks.



Q: What end-game content will be available for players at level 90?



With World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, our focus was on rebuilding the old world and improving the level 1 to 60 experience for players -- and as a result, we didn’t end up creating a lot of new types of content for players to tackle once they had reached max level. One of our primary design goals for Mists of Pandaria is to give players a wider variety of content and different types of gameplay to enjoy once they reach level 90, in addition to the Heroic dungeons, raids, and daily quests that they’re used to. To that end, we are introducing three major new features in the new expansion: scenarios, challenge modes for 5-player dungeons, and companion pet battles.



Q: What are Scenarios?



Scenarios are a new type of PvE challenge designed for groups of as few as 3 or as many as 25 players, depending on what is appropriate for the content. Scenarios require players to band together to complete a specific goal, such as defending Goldshire against a gnoll attack or storming a beach near a Horde fortification. Each scenario will have its own set of unique objectives, and in general they will offer a different type of gameplay from the trash-and-boss design of 5-player dungeons.



Scenarios will allow for more flexible group compositions than dungeons do, so parties won’t necessarily need a specific number of tanks, healers, or damage-dealers (though exactly what’s required will vary by scenario). And while a scenario may take place in a familiar location within the game world, each scenario will be instanced. In general, expect a scenario to take anywhere between 10 to 30 minutes to complete.



Q: What are Challenge Modes for 5-player dungeons?



Challenge mode is a new, advanced mode for 5-player dungeons designed for players looking for the ultimate test of coordination and skill. In challenge modes, players are tasked with trying to complete an existing 5-player dungeon as quickly and skillfully as possible. Depending on how well the group does, players will receive recognizable prestige rewards such as mounts, pets, titles, achievements, or special armor artwork that can be used with transmogrification to customize a character’s appearance. The inspiration for challenge modes comes from events such as the 45-minute Baron Rivendare runs in the original Stratholme dungeon, or the timed Zul’Aman dungeon run for the Amani War Bear.



We want challenge modes to be a test of player skill and not of player gear, and so the stats on all players’ armor and equipment will be normalized to a set level upon beginning a challenge. As a result, players will have the same chance at victory whether they are wearing quest rewards or Heroic-raid-level epic items. Regardless of equipment, challenge modes will remain just as challenging at the end of the expansion as they were at the beginning.



Q: What are companion pet battles?



In Mists of Pandaria, we are adding a new tactical mini-game that will give the Snowshoe Rabbits, Mechanical Squirrels, and other cute lil’ companion pets players collect something to do other than stand around looking adorable.



Companion pet battles allow players to pit their pint-sized pals against other players’ pets (or against special critters you come across in the wild) in strategic, turn-based combat. Pets will level up as they earn combat experience, and each companion in the game will have its own set of stats – such as attack and defense rating – along with unique abilities with their own tactical merits. During a pet battle, players will be able to swap companions out strategically depending on which pet they’re facing or what abilities might come in handy against a given foe.



Pet battles are meant to be completely independent from your character’s main progression, and the rewards won’t offer additional advantages in regular PvP or PvE situations such as Battlegrounds or raids -- though they should help pass the time while you’re waiting for your group to recoup from a particularly nasty wipe.



Q: Are any changes in store for dungeons and raids?



As with the upcoming patch 4.3, Mists of Pandaria will include a third difficulty level for raids. Expect one difficulty to be roughly equivalent to the current normal mode, one to be about on par with the current Heroic mode, and one to be much more pick-up-group-friendly. Our goal is to allow more players to be able to experience the content -- especially the climactic boss encounters that are a part of each expansion’s story arc -- while still satisfying players looking for the most epic challenges and rewards.



Q: What’s in store for professions?



While we don’t plan to add any brand-new professions in Mists of Pandaria, the profession skill cap will be extended, and new recipes and content will become available for every existing profession.



Q: What are the new zones?



The continent of Pandaria will consist of five enormous zones for players level 85 and above, and new pandaren players will begin their adventures in a unique starting zone separate from the pandaren homeland. Here’s the breakdown of the zones, along with their current working names:

[*]The Jade Forest: High-level adventurers will make landfall in the lush Jade Forest, where they’ll meet some of Pandaria’s indigenous races, such as the fish-like jinyu and monkey-like hozu.[*]Valley of the Four Winds: Playing home to both farms and rainforests, the Valley of the Four Winds is also where travelers will find the legendary Stormstout Brewery.[*]Kun-Lai Summit: Amid this treacherous mountain terrain, players will encounter the Shadowpan, a clandestine sect charged with keeping one of Pandaria’s darkest secrets.[*]Townlong Steppes: Here, a tremendous wall separates Pandaria’s verdant forests and plains from the desolate wasteland left in the wake of the ravenous, all-consuming mantid.[*]Vale of Eternal Blossoms: Adventurers from either faction are welcome to share a drink in the central city of the pandaren. This zone also hosts many daily quests for max-level characters.[*]The Wandering Isle: Pandaren adventurers looking to explore the world outside Pandaria begin their journey here, on a mysterious island that never seems to settle in the same place for too long.



Q: What changes are being made to the talent system?



We are making a couple of major changes to how class specializations and talents work in Mists of Pandaria. First, your specialization is now completely independent from your talent choices. When you reach level 10, you will still choose one of three specs (e.g. Discipline, Holy, or Shadow priest) to determine your role, play style, and which signature abilities your character has access to. In addition, you’ll receive more of your spec’s defining abilities as you level up.



Secondly, the talent system has been redesigned completely. At regular level intervals (at level 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, and 90), players will now be able to choose between one of three very powerful talents. All three specializations will have access to the same three talent options, and our goal is to make sure that these talent choices are appealing to all three specializations with no obvious “must-have†options for any of them. For example, level-15 warriors will be able to choose one of three movement-related talents: Juggernaut, which permanently lowers the cooldown of Charge; Double Time, which lets the warrior Charge twice before incurring a cooldown; or Warbringer, which causes the target to be rooted in place following a Charge. Once you choose a talent in a specific tier, the other two talents are locked out from your talent build, even when you reach the next talent tier. We want players to be able to change their talent build independently of their specialization, and without visiting a class trainer. This new system is designed to provide players with hundreds of distinct and meaningful options for tailoring their character’s gameplay to their specific desires and situation.



Q: Why is the talent system going through an overhaul?



As with the talent-system redesign in Cataclysm, our goal is ultimately to give players more meaningful character-customization options and to eliminate “cookie-cutter†talent builds. We were only partially successful in realizing that goal in Cataclysm, as many talents still felt mandatory to a given specialization, and some talent choices in the trees were still not particularly interesting or exciting. By giving the benefits of the previously “mandatory†talents to players automatically as part of their specialization choice, and allowing any specialization to choose any given talent, we hope to be able to give players much more significant and interesting decisions to make about their character.



Q: Will you be making any changes to how stats work?



Yes. As World of Warcraft has matured and more expansions, content updates, and tiers of equipment have been released, players’ stats have begun to inflate exponentially. At this point, the numbers for health, mana, and so on are threatening to get out of control. In order to combat this and bring statistics back to earth -- or Azeroth, as it were -- in Mists of Pandaria, we will be “flattening†the statistic curve in places where it no longer needs to behave exponentially (primarily at the point of the end game for old expansions). In practice, this means that upon the expansion’s release, the numbers for Strength, Health, Intellect, damage, and so on will be significantly lower than you’re used to seeing across the board, from level 1 to level 85. It’s all relative, of course -- enemies’ and bosses’ stats will be reduced as well, and it should take a level-85 warrior roughly the same number of many sword-whacks and ability uses to kill a level-85 monster as it did before. However, this also means the difference between each level between 1 and 85 will be less significant, so you may find that an enemy 5 or 10 levels below your own will be a little tougher to deal with than it was before.



Q: Will players be allowed to fly in Pandaria?



Upon arrival in Pandaria, players will be restricted from flying until they reach a certain point in their quest progression. While the ability to fly is a great convenience for players once they have completed content, we can provide a much more enjoyable, rewarding, and varied questing experience if players are (mostly) grounded while the story of Pandaria unfolds.



Q: Will there be any updates to the graphics and changes to the minimum system requirements?



Yes, there will be incremental tweaks and updates to the graphics engine in this expansion. For example, we’ve made improvements to the way textures are displayed. We’ll announce the exact system requirements closer to the expansion’s release.



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World of Warcraft: Classes, Item, Professions Q&A :​

Why does Ghostcrawler hate paladins ?​

A ret paladin killed his parents.



Shadow Priests: The wording on the new Shadow Orbs suggests that they're going to be based on a resource, is that true ?

We're still working on the details but yeah, it will be a secondary resource kind of mechanic, take out the RNG aspect maybe. The idea currently is that Mind Blast will cost shadow orbs and have no cooldown



Are you satisfied by healing in PvP ?

Balancing PvE and PvP healing is kind of a big challenge. Its something we talk about all the time, I dont think we have solved the problem yet and its something we are still working on. We've seen a lot of dual caster comps in the blizzcon tournament and we've buffed Mortal Strike and healing reduction in 4.3 and hopefully you'll be able to bring back warriors and rogues in PvP.



How do the old debuff talents work with new talent tree and tanking model ?

We want tanks to do more of the active things to keep themselves alive rather than relying on the healers



My classes are about classes that have a 100 cap on a resource. Currently there are talents that increase these resource, are there any plans for the new talent trees to do that ?

It's going to vary on class by class basis, its something that does not really fit into the current talent system as it is currently designed.



I have 10 characters, will you add an 11th slot so we can have all 11 classes ?

Not sure just yet, might keep the current character cap but let you have them on any realm, so you can have many many charaters on one realm.



For event items like the Scourge Invasion or the Vengeful PvP set, can we get those for transmog account-wide ?

We want to make sure that all the times you remember from the good old days are available for transmog. Im happy you brought up the vengeful set, and in Area 52 there are vendors where can you buy these items. Regarding accountwide event items we have to watch out on our side as its kind of resource expensive. We could certainly look into that.



Can feral druids have two fist weapons? / As an enchanter we never got any good drops, are we getting new enchanting item drops ?

Nope, working the talents to support it would make a mess. Monk tanks will use staff or polearm. / No plans on enchanting item drops to change.



I was wondering since this next expansion coming out is going to be so faction focused, if we could see faction specific legendaries for maybe a shield like Might of the Alliance or for the horde a Fist of the horde that are completely badass ?

Legendaries are something we look at on case to case bases, if the stories supports it and we find a cool item possibility. Everything is always possible. (Ghostcrawler loves the idea)



Death Knight tanks are bad right now, stats and talents need some changes. Set bonus is based on us being at low health, which shouldn't happen. What changes will fix these problems ?

Death Knights get some love in 4.3 to fix survivability, Blood presence armor bonus is going to 55% from 30%. We don't want Death Knights to get killed in one GCD, but we don't want them to be the best tank by far.



A balance druid can be really low on the damage and then theres the problem of sitting on solar when we need to do AoE, is there anything you guys are planning on doing to adress that like the DK ability that generates unholy power ?

In 5.0 Hurricane will have a new arcane function to make sure you can use it whenever you have to.



Any plans to improve the Death Knight gargoyle melee attack ?

Nope, it is designed to work at range, There are no plans to change Death Knight stat weights during this expansion, maybe some balancing in MoP.



I have been playing since vanilla and one of my fav items i have been using up to today is noggaholic elixier, and i am wondering why we cant mount while skeleton ?

Our animation system does not have animations for some costume models that can be on a mount so we decided to completely disallow mounting while transformed to make it consistent, it was the only way to fix hundred of bugs.



Is there any plan to make solo Holy Priest DPS better ? Running daily quests take a lot of time in Holy.

Nope, we have dual spec, it isn't a priority for us to make it viable for raiding or fast daily quests. We have to keep it balanced for PvP as well. In the Firelands some of the daily quests are designed to be actually easier for healers.



I'm a rogue so thanks for the legendary! Regarding the new introduction of the Windwalker monk class and also the formalization of cat druids as an official spec, with all these new melee DPS hybrids what doyou guys have planned as rogues to be competitive as a utilitiy class ?

Everyone brings a little bit of everything, reasons to get a rogue now are things like poisons, interrupts and stuns. These will stay important during encounters.



New talents will still be cookie cutter, how is this new ?

Most give utility choices rather than damage, this can't be number crunched. We will continue to balance them to make them hard choices.



Quick followup to the noggenfogger elixir question, there have been other places where you get onto something when you lose a transformation and then get it back later ?

One of the things that make consumables fun is that they are consumables. They can go away. If they were permanent things you are going to lose the impact of what a transformation really is. Fundamentally we want these to be fun things that arent everywhere. Ideally we would have it make an error message if you are near to doing this.



Archeology has been ignored as far as i can tell other than a few things here and there, are we gonna see lower than max level items on max variety ?

The archeology items are all over the place, I use the vrykul helm always because I like being bigger than everyone else. We are looking into ways to sex it up and take out the grindy nature of it.



Tanking as a druid, I can go cat and do decent DPS when I am not getting hit. Is the new druid 4-specs model going to let me do that ?

Other tanks can't do that and you won't be able to do that anymore, talents are set up this way to keep both seperate for PvP and PvE.



Q: Resto druids have pretty decent single target rotation for healing, but when we want to AoE heal we go back to mindlessly spamming buttons. Are we getting more options for this in the next expansion ?

There is one new ability plan like the wild mushroom to detonate to heal people. A lot of druids enjoy that kind of playstyle. When we did try to tone down the HoTs we got a lot of push back there. Some of the healing you mentioned is also needed in an encounter and we will try to not do this as much.



The 4pc bear T13 bonus, you don't want cats to get it but it's also impacting utility for bears ?

You can swap to bear, press it, go back. We can't let cats use it because it would just force them to add it their rotation and stack them in raid, we'd just have to change the bonus completely.



Are we getting new spells at like 86, 88 and 90? If so, what are the new mage spells ?

We are adding a lot of new spells to fill out the talent trees. One plan we have talked about is to get one new spell at level 87. Pretty sure we are not going to be able to get 3 more spells along the way. We dont know yet what the mage one will be. In the past we said 5-8 new abilties while they level up. Some classes however might get more than one new ability.



Can we have another tank legendary ?

Legendary needs a story to go with it, we aren't taking turns with the classes or specs, we put them in where they fit in the story. If there is an opportunity you will get one! A legendary shield would be great.





Regarding arcane mage mastery, it created the possibility for really deep gameplay for managing your resource. But we were promised this toolkit to manage our mana and all we got was Arcane Blast and clearing our Arcane Blast stacks. Are we gonna get anything else to help us not be 2 button wonders and make it deeper ?

We are really not happy with the role of Arcane Barrage, we have some plans to make arcane more deeper. We would like to redesign so that Arcane Missiles barrage and explosion all have an equal role in the arcane role.



Can we have some shadowform tweaks so that you can see the gear ?

We have a glyph in 4.3 coming to tweak the alpha of shadowform



Where is the Death Knight tier 13 ?

Its really awesome and you will see it soon.



What about new Death Knight gear for transmog ? Other classes can go back farther.

That is really expensive art to do. For us its a metter of budget, if we ask for certain armor sets we have to delay patches or expansions to get them. We have to make hard choices sometimes and it's not a matter of just throwing money at the problem, it just takes more time and delays things further.



Can we have strength polearms ?

They are awkward right now, we want all Strength classes to be able to use them. Maybe in MoP with the hunter tweaks it will be possible.



Back in vanilla you had the hunter epic questline with Rok'delar and I was wondering if you guys are going to bring that back at all ?

It's something we are looking at and are considering, if we do something like that it has to be on our level of quality. It's also worth noting that that feel of solo quest/gameplay is something we've tried to re-introduce in 4.2 and 4.3 with the new legendary staff and legendary dagger.



Engineers got cool stuff in the past, can we have more powerful versions or something new and cool ?

Yes, we can make powerful and cool stuff but it has to have downsides. We can add some new stuff with restrictions on where you can actually use it, not PvP, so that it is still balanced.





Regarding hunters; you are eliminating the use for melee weapons, are we still going to be able to equip it ? Can we also get some mace love ?

There are not any plans for that now, we are probably not going to let you equip melee. If it makes you feel better, the rogues wont be able to equip the orange legendary bow either. We do want to change hunters so you can see quivers and or ammo pouches, potentially customize them, etc.



What happened to engineering, you make it very cool once and then added something useless every once in a while ? Goggles were very cool, but there are no upgrades, so they are worthless now. Archaeology gives almost as many pets as engineering.

We made engineering too good, then it was not so good. We are trying to make sure it offers cool stuff this time. Post your suggestions on the forums!





How is monk healing going to work ? When I played yesterday you had chi and light and dark power. Is it going to be like I choose healing spec and you get a mana bar or something ?

When you switch to healing stance you will get a mana bar, and regarding healing, the monk will be less target based and more proximity based. And there is also this mechanics where you can put statues in the raid, and when you melee the boss they give out healing for example. We are challenging ourselves into new ways to look at this.



One of the things WoW doesn't have right now is a melee cloth class. When you announced the monk yesterday I was super excited and I was wondering if there was any discussion to make them a cloth class to make them have a better monk feel ?

The main concern was that if we introduce a melee cloth healer, we'd need a whole new kind of item drops in the loot table and you'd have to wait for your specific gear to drop. That's why we went for an already existing loot archetype, you already have the leather agi and leather int/spirit and it was the best way to go without having to create new armor types.



Since we're going to be able to name companion pet, is there any chance we'll be able to name warlock pets ?

You're just grabbing a demon for your own use from the Twisting Nether, use it, and then get rid of it, it's not the same emotional attachment as a companion pet or hunter pet. Something we did talk about is a way to reset the name of your pets, for when you get a pet and really don't like the name.



I know that removing the min range for hunters is a great key, but for melee this means we are losing some stats too.

Everyone is losing some stats with the ranged slots, relics, etc ... going away. Your range weapon will have stats so you wont lose more stats than everyone else.



JCing and Inscription selling is hard because of constant undercutting from others or gold farmers. Can we have perfect cuts back so that we have something not mass produced to sell ?

That is how an open market works. Perfect gem cuts are problematic. BoP Chaos Orbs help for some professions, maybe we should do something like that for Jewelcrafting.



I got to play the monk, and the play of it feels amazing. Can we expect the removal of auto attack on other classes? If so, hunters will be really confused.

The monk not having auto attack was controversial around the office too, we are not even 100% sure the monk will keep it. And removing auto attack for other classes will just feel like a huge change. We do crazy things on new stuff, not on old stuff. There are some downsides too.



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General Q&A - Open Q&A





As a 10 man raider there is a lot of difference between 10 and 25 man. When heroic magmaw came out 25 man raiders couldnt do it in 10 man heroic, when are we seeing the difficulty for 10 man being higher ?

That's pretty fun because in Korea the 10-man guilds are usually the ones considered hardcore while the 25-man are considered easier. They are definitely hard to balance, 10 players might not always have the buffs they need like with 25 man.



Is there a chance that youll go to a 10 vs 20 man to make balancing easier ?

I honestly think that wouldnt make stuff easier, we would still have a lot of problems.



Do you have any plans to implement some sort of spectator mode for raids or battlegrounds ?

That's something we've wanted for a long time, spectator mode and replays, but it's just a question of getting around to doing it so ... some day, hopefully.



Do you have any plans on adding more options to the guild leaders UI? So as I can give more options to a banker or to my different officers since Im the only one that can turn guild repairs on and off.

Yeah, thats definitely a good reason why we would want to do that. We need to make sure how much control we can give to people that are not the guild leader. It sounds like something that can be useful.



Wouldnt that be the GLs decision ?

It is but if something goes wrong it comes back to us to fix it



With the upcoming expansion coming, are all the purple you get from Firelands going to get replaced with greens on first day ?

Green is the new purple, so yeah. The problem is if we don't upgrade equipement too much we are cheating those players from the leveling experience, so usually by the 2nd or 3rd zone your gear should be replaced to make sure the content is still a challenge for you. Hopefully in the future we will have a way to "track" your progress in the past and make sure there's a way to record your accomplishements in each expansion to make sure that all your progress isn't "lost" at the beginning of each expansion.



How are you guys going to fit Draenei and the BEs getting monks ?

We will probably throw it in like its always been there.... We'll make it work!



Hunters and Crowd Control: Currently with Wyvern Sting having a DOT it makes it a little difficult to quickly Wyvern Sting and then trap something after. Before Cataclysm we had the option of removing the dot with Scorpid Sting but it was removed, is there going to be a way to remove that DoT in the future ?

It's probably something we're not going to do in 4.3, and 5.0 is such a big reset for all the talents that I can't really answer that now. It's definitely a problem but we also don't want everyone dotting up their characters before they crowd control, we don't want crowd control to always break on things like that and we'll see in 5.0.



Wind Shear change shouldn't hurt enhancement shamans, but most don't take Reverb. It also hurts Resto Shaman, any plans to fix this ?

Raids usually have enough people, so it won't hurt the raid. PvP might force you to make the choice, but it is still an interrupt with a longer cooldown.



Do you hate enhancement shamans? DPS sucks, in PvP they suck, any plans to fix them? / Any plans for Illidan to come back ?

Lets answer the Illidan question. Do you want to see Illidan come back ? ( Crowd yells Yes ) We will think about that.



This is a problem, just like frost mages dont do well in PvE but the difference is you can't tell an enhancement shaman "hey just go elemental". In PvP it will be much easier in 5.0 but for PvE we will try to adress some of the issues in 4.3



Do you want combat rogues to use cooldowns more often or hold off until 30% and use all the cooldowns at once ?

You should follow the guidance from Restless Blades.



Is the guild name change service going to be in 4.3 or 5.0? Will it fall to the wayside like Dance Studios did ?

One of these days we are going to unleash Dance Studios to the world and it will be awesome. But not today. We are releasing the new guild services within two weeks.



Your design in MoP are you bringing more healers into 25 man raids because there is a new healing class as a monk healer and 25 man guilds will usually have two people per class. Are you going to design your raids to bring more healers into raids ?

I dont think we will change the number of healers needed for a raid.



Will challenge modes put us under the hit cap or affect core stats when the gear is tuned down ?

There are some details to work out, people should be able to do roughly the same DPS and Healing as everyone else.



Are we going to see account bound mounts ?

Hopefully some day, i dont think that will happen in 50 but somewhere down the line its likely.



Can we have an option to require auth on login every time

Soon.



What are your plans for the moonkin form, are you going to do the same thing you did for warlocks ?

We are going to update the art on the moonkin form as we see fit. Its too early to tell what we will exactly be doing.



Race changing breaks quest progress for some quests, any plans to address this ?

We might try whitelisting some quests, like the important legendary quest. We need to be careful to not bog down CS with this kind of thing though.



In the future are you going to make BoA items actually transferable account-wide ?

Maybe some day! Probably not in the immediate future. The databases dont do the best job of talking to eachother right now.



The past few patches brought Arcane Mages and Feral Druids that are two button classes, any plans to make sure the Monk isn't easy like those classes/specs ?

AoE rotations weren't a big focus at first, we want to make it a little more interesting. Arcane mages do have some mana management gameplay, we are adding back Arcane Missles to their rotation.



Do you ever plan on altering spells or maybe adding a new spell to Arcane mages and maybe nerfing arcane blast a little bit ?

In 5.0 Living Bomb is a spell all mages will have.



Will enchanters be able to make epic wands in the future ?

Yes



What are your changes going to be for gathering professions in the new expansion ? Crafting gives you the best stuff but gathering isnt very useful.

No sweeping change has been planned for the perks of these professions but we'll look at it. We dont want people to feel like they need 2 crafting professions.



Will you be able to craft different quivers ?

Little visuals like that is something we want to add to all classes, it isn't really clear on how we can add that just yet.



I have a priest with a benediction staff but the quest for that was removed. I am very excited to transmog that. But I am worried that you might open up the models for other players, which would be unfair to the players that worked for it at level 60.

One way we have solved that problem in the past is to offer the model with a different texture or something. We did something similar with the ZA bear mount.



Ret has one clear choice for the Level 90 Tier in the new talent trees, any chance to balance it better ?

We feel like they will be balanced once we tweak the numbers.



You are nerfing wind shear for resto PvP, do you intent to make a trade off or to not let them have it completely ?

Ideally we would not want them to have it



In that case why dont you hardwire it into the spec masteries so enhancement and elemental dont have any effect ?

That would have been another way to go, but this is a fairly big change and we dont want players to feel like everything is being changed. In 5.0 it might be a good oppurtunity to take away Wind Shear completely but we have not made a decision on that yet.



Will MoP bring us mounted combat ?

No



Will MoP bring more craftable mounts ?

Maybe a Jewelcrafting mount.



Any plans to fix Heroic Leap ?

Heroic Leap has a lot of technical problems, people keep trying to exploit it. Works fine when it is flat, not so much when there is a height increase



Where are the LGBT characters in WoW Lore ?

Everything is gravy as long as its just a great character. There is the possiblity of adding them, as long as the story is compelling, might see it in the future.



It seems that in a 10 man model there are huge negatives with class representation and wasted loot. Is there a possibility to change the 10-man model to a 15-man model? If not, maybe make some kind of smart loot system that checks if the loot is useful for your raid ?

It might be a good idea to make the loot system slightly more intelligent, but moving up to a 15-man model would be very hard for us seeing existing 10-man guilds would have to recruit 5 more members.



Are you going to add more visuals for druid forms? Will effects such as Fandral's Flamescythe be transferable by transmogrification ?

Maybe, we are connecting them with items so that it isn't something everyone has forever. We don't want you to have to go back and get different forms.



As a hunter who has played that class for 5 years I want to thank you for the pet challenges that came out in 4.3, that being said and how much we are so proud of all the pets we have obtained. Its a shame when you cant use these pets in a dungeon without being spec'd beast master, i was kind of hoping this might be a change in the future.

We'd like to let hunters chose any pet with Tenacity/Ferocity/Cunning in 5.0. It doesn't solve the problem of MM losing Beast mastery pets but BM DPS is pretty good.



Gallywix is in charge but he's the bad guy, what happens to him? Also, blinding shield for paladins, what happened to that ?

We haven't had a discussion about Gallywix in a while, he's interesting but I don't know if we have a core decision about him. Most of our discussions lately have been about pandaren characters and how to make them interesting.



This is not set in stone but Blinding Shield is currently the paladin level 87 ability.



The new shaman talent points seem to be geared for resto and not to a damage point, I know you said you want hybridization is coming more into play but what about DPS ?

There are DPS options there, some of the tiers are based around movement, totems, etc ...



In End Time, we kill Murozond, is this the last we see of the Infinite Dragonflight ? Any plans to add player housing ?

No player housing anytime soon, too expensive in terms of time to make if you still want dungeons, raids, models, and other stuff.

Infinite Dragonflight is done, at least for now, but the concept is cool and useful for the world. The timeways will always exist and there will always be bad guys there, there's no current plans for it but we could bring it back if it's cleverly done.



Jewelcrafting endgame is boring, can we have trinkets, rings, or necklaces ?

We want to add some items, not every tier though. We need to keep it balanced compared to the other professions.



I'm pretty sure I understand how you pick Alliance and Horde as a Pandaren, do you guys have any idea how pandaren's factions will be distinguished at higher levels ?

We have seen in arenas that the only thing that really matter is the Red Text and stuff, the UI is primarly the biggest indicator to see what faction they belong to. We explored going down the path were Horde Panda's were more feral and wild but it come to that they don't look like Pandaren anymore.



Will we see raid leaderboards, including wipe and kill counts ?

There is a lot we could do to track player accomplishments, we could see it being extended to raids in the future.



Theres lots of people wanting the reskinning for old races, I was over at the art panel and the pandaren just looked so amazing. They were talking about being 10-20 in the fact alone, is that also something they are looking into for reskinning the new races ?

Its the one thing we really want to see brought up to the pandaren level. There are about 10 times more bones in the pandaren models compared to the current character models. We dont know when this exactly will happen, because we are still not unsure how to roll this out because some people might not like the new models as much as they do the old models.



What will the theme for raid art and gear going to be ?

Brewing, bamboo, everything crafted, respecting the Asian feel we have in the starting zone and expanding on that.



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World of Warcraft: Lore and Story Q&A​

(Red Shirt Guy) Thanks for putting a representation of me in the game! In Gilneas, the questlines end with the strong feeling of to be continued and that we are going back, the only zone that had that feel was Hyjal and we went back there too. Are we going back to Gilneas too ?​

It would be fun to go back to Gilneas, its not on the cards right away but we just love the way the area feels. The zone has its very own story and it's a little hard to integrate to the rest of the world.



You did not mention a world PvP zone for MoP, maybe that could be the World PvP area for MoP ?

The war between the Horde and Alliance will really heat up in Pandaria every patch, so we are looking forward to integrating that.



What happened to Arthas's body? What happened to Illidan's body? What about Kael'thas ?

It is likely we will bring Illidan back, not so much for Kael'thas, he already had his come back. Arthas's body is somewhere but we don't really know where.



What is the motivation that the Pandaren have for fighting each other ?

Something that is hard to get across in the demos is that the pandaren that live on the turtle have been seperated from the pandaren on the mainland for ages. Its almost like a splinter culture. They are the ones that you as players you are going to play. They are going out to the world. You can see these events in the 1-10 experience. By the time your Pandaren gets to 85/90 you have traveled the world fighting for the Aliance and Horde.



When the Pandaren meet eachother on the field they are more of whats up instead of being pissed at eachother. They would probably be drinking beer right after. All the sort of anger, hatred and other negative energies become the Sha. It literally can come and bite you in the butt. They dont want to bring all that bad bagage into a fight. When a Pandaren fights he fights to reach a conclusion. When things are settled you take a beer.



You wrote the book Blood and Honor, are you planning on writing something else in the future ?

Writing made me nervous and was exciting, it is different than the writing we have to do for the game but maybe one day I will do another.



This question is regarding Lordaeron, I want to know what happened to Arthas s sister, what happened to her ?

We are thinking about it. We dont really have a plan but we have been talking about her forever. There were some hooks in the RPG line but no current plans. While thats on my mind, how many RPers are there in the audience?



We said the RPG line was non canonical but there are some really good bits in those books so all I would say that they are broadly non-canonical but there are lots of bits in there that we want to use. At some point we might put some project together to some ideas that we want to say yes or no on. Admiral Proudmore has some elf baby so that wont actually go through for example.



Why have characters like Krasus, Khadgar, and especially Rhonin that have been directly tied to the Black Dragonflight not been in Cataclysm ?

A lot of time we'll have stories in the novel that feel like they should continue in the game but we decide to not include them in the game because it would be really hard to make everybody catch up on the whole story.



Whatever happened to the crown of menethil, or is that something we are going to find out about ?

Terenas Crown ? Legendary loot drop.



Tyrande was a strong character, but hasn't done anything much recently, why ?

Thrall took an entire expansion to add in, we haden't gotten to him before that. Tyrande is the same way, we haven't gotten around to it yet. We don't intend on leaving her being a weak character, she will get her turn when we can get to it.



Jaina proudmoore will also get some love pretty soon. Thrall isn't done yet either, he isn't weak. Champion level Thrall is on the way.



This panel has said that Pandarians have no sense of hatred. How does it make sense for a Pandaren to be a Warlock, but not a druid ?

If that is true, I do not like it. I usually get overruled when it comes to game design. These classes, Warlock, Deathknight are not choosing this life. If they can indeed roll Warlock, it is not impossible for them to not hate.



Why cant they roll Druid then ? The bear as a bear argument is crap.

Monday morning we will yell at the design dudes. Pandaria was not there during the Sundering so I guess Cenarion was not there teaching them. I still think druids are out, that might change though.



Dragon Soul is inconsistent with a lot of lore or changes a lot of lore, how does that work ?

Wait and see.



Arthas's mother was mentioned in the WotLK novel, there was never any mention to what happened to her. Was he a Mamas boy that he did not kill her ?

We have not officially -made that up- yet, we have not crafted her fate. My impression from WC3 is that it works better if she would have died somewhere before the fall of Lordaeron. Killing Terenas is pretty striking, I just think it diminishes the moment if he goes on a Charlie Manson spree.



..or you kill her and you get a legendary crown. (Reference to earlier question) ... but probably not!



Is it safe to assume his mum was killed previously by Arthas' corruption ?

It is something we need to talk about.



I just read the Sylvanas Windrunner short story, what happened to the Shards of Frostmourne ?

It wasn't specifically adressed in the story, I don't think we've adressed it in the lore. Some very smart people in the lore picked these things up and took them somewhere safe and I imagine there might be some shenanigans one day, with some people trying to reforge it one day, and that's all I know about it ...



My question is about Algalon, he kind of goes into a mid-life crisis he seems to wonder how you can differ from the Titan plan, then he decides more than one hour a week to see what makes us tick. What is he up to? Are there more of his kind to see what he is up to ?

We don't know, it wasn't addressed in the story or lore. We might see someone reforging it in the future. Good question.. hmm.. the whole titan storyline.. who those folks are, what they are doing in the universe. Are they still alive? Do they have a plan if the world goes south ? The titan storyline throughout WoW is something that needs to play out during a long time. Its not like we will have titans in two expansions. They are from somewhere really exotic. Not sure how to leveraget them into the timeline again, I loved what we did with in WotLK and Cataclysm. Ill riff a little bit and tell you that there are things about TBC that I really really loved. Shattered planets in the sky and etherals running around.. but as we talked to the community people wanted to kill kobolds and stuff thats what fantasy means to them...



There is a part of me that just wants to launch into the universe. Are the titans still moving out there ? Is the Burning Legion still out there ? I want to go to Argus. How badass would it be if there was a shiny fleet of Draenei out there... oh technically thats Protoss. Its just a matter of feeling it out. We have a lot of time with this game. Let me just ask you all.. Is anyone here into the cosmic stuff?



*crowd goes YUUUUS* There is something about Azeroth that is unique within the cosmology and thats why its in the focus of this.



Do you have plans to resolve the Forsaken's strained place in the Horde ?

We realize that it is unresolved, we are going to explore the fissures in the Horde more in the future



I love trolls. They are awesome. They are the best race ever created in WoW in my opinion. You gave us the new heroics and they were great and fun to play. But will we ever see a return of the troll empires ?

*Chris looks like he got the best idea ever just now* If the troll tribes could ever unite, look out world! We are going to continue the troll storyline in MoP. We will probably actuallize the Zandalari. They are not done yet and they are crazy. They are being driven by something just now.



I like the serious parts of WoW, some comic elements are fun, but will MoP be all lighthearted or will we get some war and darker parts ?

You haven't even seen them or the expansion yet, we went back 15,000 years when creating them. We created a rich history and they aren't a joke race. There is a lot of story behind them, we think they are awesome fighers. They love life, play hard, work hard, fight hard, sleep hard. We aren't building an expansion based on an April Fool's joke. The Pandaren had some nice artwork for a long time, we have been thinking about them forever. They aren't a joke, they aren't silly, just a little bit lighter. They are relaxed, but this is part of the growing war between Horde and Alliance. The Pandaren are going to be part of this story.



I read the shattering and the short story and Cairne Bloodhoof seems like he's walking the Sunwalker path.

It can go a lot of ways. The sunwalker thing, everybody had a fit when it came out. It just did not feel all that right. Sunwalker was an attempt to atleast try and realise the lore and make sure it would fit as well as it could fit and the quest designers did a good job figuring that out. I dont think its appropriate for a tauren leader, I like the idea that Baine and Cairne are not supernatural people, they are just Tauren. Im not a huge fan of making them a sunwalker. I dont think we have solid plans yet of where Baine was going to go.



Are we going to see more of the book's events in game ever ?

Some big things are coming in Patch 4.3, really big. It completes a very large story. It has been hard to develop the story for the books in real time with WoW, that is why we talked a lot about the past. Moving forward we want to try and do some story in the books that is current with the game. Not everyone wants to go and read books and comics, they want the content in the game. Players feel cheated when it is in a book and not in the game, which is why big current events happen in game rather than in books.



The books provide more details, but we are going to try to get more of the books in game beyond just the big events.



Ive played Alliance for 7 years *crowd woos* you have done a wonderful job with the Horde story, and its really great but when it comes to Varian he is a boring and 1 dimensional characters. Does Alliance ever get to kick ass in WoW ?

Heres the deal, part of the Thrall thing I have been pushing, I particularly love that character. I dont see that as a Horde issue but as a Thrall issue. Im biased. Heres what we are going to do: I dont know exactly where its going to drop, we are tyrying to get this for 5.0. Varian has the possibility to be a very awesome char. There will be a really awesome questline where Varian really shines out as a character. You will be his squire and will help Varian be an awesome character. And all the Alliance races WILL worship Varian as a true king.



The Alliance is going to need a king that has his shit together. We are going to need this for MoP. We owe the alliance big time! We are also going to explore the various relationships with Andruin (his son), before Christie Golden wrote the shattering we had no plans for Anduin. Its all thanks to Christie that Anduin has been such an important character.



We got some plans for that boy one day, so there you have it.



Are there any rules to the Val'kyr Resurrection of Sylvanas ?

She had nine, used five so far, so there are only four left.



I brought my archive to sign for you. I have 10 Horde 85s on 1 server. One of each class. I have always had a soft spot for Tirion to kind of justify why I loved him so much. Now for my question, Neptulon in the Throne of Tides. What happened to him? Are we going to find out about his relationship to Ozumat ?

Maybe we ill just leave that buried under the ocean. I have no good answer for that. What happens in the Throne of Tides stays in the Throne of Tides.



The new Lich King was awesome before, but once he became Lich King he hasn't done anything about the Scourge. Why not ?

The Scourge and cult of the damned are independent of one another. The timeline is messy, if we could do it like a book the Scourge would have toned it down and things aren't as bad as they used to be. Clearly the quests are still in the game, it isn't something we can go back and fix right now. Someone picked up those Frostmourne fragments.



In the Gundrak dungeon there is an area with the stone sentinel guys, and if you look over the rig you see a huge snake tail. There is nothing that massive and snakey in .. its a Chris Metzen answer to just go well look into it so I brought a screenshot of it for Chris.

*Chris looks at snake tail*

Dude just showed you his snake, man. -Dave



That is not the thing that is driving the trolls. Its a super secret WoW storyline. Thrall is going to leave Aggra and start dating Jaina.. in all seriousness I have no idea what it is but its really awesome! Sometimes really awesome stuff shows up ingame and we scramble to explain what it is. Welcome to developing video games. We put the WHAT in WHAT.



How will the panda leadership work since they belong to both factions ? Can the leader be voiced by Jack Black ?

They don't really have leaders like the other factions. There are important pandas, representatives to each faction sure, but no single leader. No Jack Black voices, it isn't a panda movie. We were going to give Alliance pandas in Burning Crusade, but it didn't really fit. We have been serious about doing it for a long time, and it is a good thing we didn't do it then. We can do it much cooler and in a more interesting way now.



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Mists of Pandaria Live Developer Q&A​

How will one get to the continent of Pandaria ?​

Players will get to Pandaria via new quests from Orgrimmar and Stormwind. We have tried to make these quests short and sweet to make sure players can into the new continent as fast as possible.



Any plans to fix pet stats being too low for a few seconds after spawning ?

We are fixing pets so stats won't lag several seconds after logging in or dismounting in 5.0.



Currently, it was announced that Monks might not have an auto-attack feature. With the lack of auto-attacks, are there plans on balancing the values for Hit Rating and Haste Rating for a DPS-spec'ed Monk, since one would only need to reach the "soft" hit cap (8%) for specials and Haste Rating will only be affecting their power regeneration and reducing their GCD ?

Monks will have the same hit cap as e.g. an Arms warrior and their energy regen drives everything they do, so their regen will scale the same as rogues and haste in general will scale their damage by the same percentages.



At Blizzcon Tom Chilton mentioned possible incentives for raiding enemy towns to encourage world PVP in mists, can Greg or Cory elaborate on this at all ?

In regards to extra rewards for world pvp, we are contemplating the idea of increasing players conquest point caps by an extra 10-15%.



With the new talent system, will you start to follow the model in place with Collosus Smash, where a move functions completely differently in PVE and PVP ?

We don't have a problem with specific mechanics working differently in PvP and PvE. Curse of Doom worked that way for years. Same with PvP durations on debuffs. What we don't want to do is just launch into having different coefficients and talents and everything for PvP and PvE. That just doubles the size of the game which makes it more complex to balance and harder for players to understand.



Currently in 4.2 as a Balance Druid I have to kill critters before every boss fight so that I start in Solar Eclipse. Is there going to be more critters in MoP or even better, a cooldown that puts us straight into an eclipse ?

We don't think the answer is more critter spawning in instances. We don't have a specific solution we're ready to announce, but we plan to address the problem.



Where do we level from 85 to 90 ?

You'll leveling on the new continent of Pandaria, of course!



Hey there. Will Pandaria have a new Dalaran like city or will we be using the ones already existing ingame ?

We will have separate player hubs for both the Horde and Alliance on Pandaria. Separate hubs means we do not have to make them sanctuary and will encourage world PVP. These hubs will have access to an AH, Bank and general vendors. Valor, conquest, profession and faction vendors will be scattered around the world to encourage travel.



Will there be more guild levels in MoP, if so how far will the cap go and do you have any examples of new perks ?

We will be adding new levels to the guild leveling system for Mists of Pandaria. These new levels will come with new perks too! An example of a couple perks we are thinking about are reduced cost on void storage and transmogrification.



Are you still considering expanding the proposed talent system or is the general form already set ? As in, is there still the possibility of get more choice from the new system ? (Six overall specializing skills seems quite limiting)

We tried a lot of tiers. We were worried at more than 6 that the combinatorial complexity of >729 different variations of talents would be challenging to balance or for players to even comprehend. We want to focus on having fewer awesome talents than many tiers that will force us to dilute individual abilities in the name of balance (for example, if you ended up with 6 forms of crowd control, then all of them need to be pretty weak).



Where exactly is Pandaria located on Azeroth ? many speculate that it is in the south, but I have always assumed it was to the west of Kalimdor.

Pandaria is located on the south side of Azeroth. Think the exact opposite of Northrend. Come to think of it, we should have named it Southrend.



Hey there. Will Pandaria have a new Dalaran like city or will we be using the ones already existing ingame ?

We will have separate player hubs for both the Horde and Alliance on Pandaria. Separate hubs means we do not have to make them sanctuary and will encourage world PVP. These hubs will have access to an AH, Bank and general vendors. Valor, conquest, profession and faction vendors will be scattered around the world to encourage travel.



Will there be more guild levels in MoP, if so how far will the cap go and do you have any examples of new perks ?

We will be adding new levels to the guild leveling system for Mists of Pandaria. These new levels will come with new perks too! An example of a couple perks we are thinking about are reduced cost on void storage and transmogrification.



Are you still considering expanding the proposed talent system or is the general form already set ? As in, is there still the possibility of get more choice from the new system? (Six overall specializing skills seems quite limiting)

We tried a lot of tiers. We were worried at more than 6 that the combinatorial complexity of > 729 different variations of talents would be challenging to balance or for players to even comprehend. We want to focus on having fewer awesome talents than many tiers that will force us to dilute individual abilities in the name of balance (for example, if you ended up with 6 forms of crowd control, then all of them need to be pretty weak).



Since we're getting an account wide "pet library" so to speak, do you have any plans to extend this functionality to the mount page ? Many players are hanging onto exclusive mounts on older/unplayed characters.

We will be testing out account wide features with pet battles and if it proves successful there, we would certainly want to the same thing with mounts.



Often as an enhancement shaman, I find that weapon drops, specifically agility one handers, are always rare or not made to be slow (I know slow daggers seem pretty odd, but stay with me here). Is there any chance we would be able to reforge swing speeds ?

We don't want minute differences in weapon speed to have a non-obvious, massive effect. We like daggers being fast and other weapons being slow and will make shaman etc. mechanics work around that.



During the first discussion on talents, you revealed that Druids would be receiving a fourth talent tree to differentiate between bears and cats. I think this has been mostly received as a positive change by the community. You also stated that the notion of a hybrid tax is an antiquated view on class structure. Are there any plans to provide unique buffs to the four pure DPS classes to compensate for their lack of diversity, or maybe, creating a 4th spec in their areas that would allow for another role, such as a tanking Warlock ?

We don't want to have unique buffs per DPS spec within a class, but we do want to make sure the DPS specs do offer utility that the tanks and healers can't bring alone. We also want to have greater variety and richness among specs for those classes with multiple DPS specs (e.g. hunter, warrior). We definitely want for there to be a reason to bring pures to a group as well.



In regards to the Challenge Mode dungeons, how many of the dungeons will offer these modes and will our entire level/stats be reduced to a level equal to lower level dungeons if applicable ?

We are hoping to have challenge mode dungeons enabled for all 9 of the new Mists of Pandaria dungeons. Assuming we like how it pans out, we would certainly be excited to extend the feature to more classic dungeons or raids.



With shadow orbs becoming a new resource, do you have any plans to improve the interface to make tracking shadows orbs easier, like what was done with paladins ?

If you saw the way we handled the monk resource bar at Blizzcon, we are experimenting with doing that for various classes and specs who have resources like that. So we could move shadow orbs down in the middle of the screen for Shadow priests if that paradigm works out.



Will you consider giving glyphs the same treatment as the talent trees ? Glyphs are also somewhat cookie cutter, as passive damage increases are not fun and are mandatory for any player wishing to compete

We aren't happy at all with Prime glyphs because they are no-brainers (but often mathy to figure that out). We want to expand the Major glyphs because that is where the real decisions lie. Not sure of the future of Primes quite yet. They *might* go away. (Don't freak, scribes!)



With MoP you're introducing the pet battles. Will that be a new way of earning XP and/or valor points ?

We are hoping to implement XP gain for pet battles in a similar way to what players see with gathering professions now. You would not want to level your entire character just on pet battles, but we do think you should be rewarded for participating in it.



So with the removal of talent points it seems like players leveling lose their "awesome I just got zealotry" feeling. Though the new talent system seems interesting and unique the gap between each 15 levels makes a dullish feeling in between each gap. Any word on how this will play out ?

Couple of points. With Ret specifically, we wanted to try and address some of the feedback from players about the rotation. Divine Purpose and Zealotry add too much complication or RNG for some players, which is why we think they make good optional mechanics. Overall, when you see the rate at which you get new spells, you are still rewarded about every other character level (much like today). There are just a lot of core or spec spells that used to be no-brainer talents.



I think I read somewhere that resilience is becoming a base stat in MoP -- if this is the case, what does that mean for PvP gear and/or does this mean that end game guilds will be top in PvP.

Resilience will still be an important stat for competitive PvP. Likewise, PvE gear will still be the best gear for PvE. The hope is to lower the barrier of entry by making the gap smaller (but not trivial).



One of the current issues discouraging World pvp is the presence of highly overpowered guards around cities and hubs, 1-shotting anyone who engages in PvP. How will this be in MoP ?

We know this is an issue in the current game and we plan to address it in Mists. We want to encourage world PVP, not make it a one-shot game for NPC guards. This is one of the main reasons we decided to make two separate player hubs instead of a shared sanctuary.



Will pet battles be created the same way as duals ?

We will let players duel other players that are near them in the world, but we will also have a queuing system you can join to fight against other pet trainers of similar level.



I see two new poisons given to rogues in the new talent system, does this indicate we'll be seeing poisons reworked for MoP? As it is the Assassination spec relies so heavily on the instant/deadly combo for damage it's not viable to use anything else.

We are reworking poisons. For starters, rogue damage is balanced around the expectation of two damage poisons, which makes it really brutal to use a utility poision instead. In MoP, you will have one damage poison and one utility poison so you can choose which utility poison to use (and not IF you want a utility poison). We also want to reduce the amount of ramping that rogue DPS requires, such as removing the need for Deadly Poison to stack. (And likewise we want to make Bandit's Guile less punitive when swapping targets.)



Will the pandarian racial that benefits XP bonus give them twice the blue bar for the same amount rested, or will it give you a larger multiplier when receiving XP ?

Their blue bar (rested XP) will last longer before running out.



The island of Pandaria is set to be located on the back of a giant turtle, will this turtle go under water ?

The starting zone for new Pandaren is located on The Wandering Isle (the turtle). The continent of Pandaria itself is not a turtle, its a piece of land.



Is there any chance of a new spell for paladins to fill the role of Holy Wrath for single target fights ?

Holy Wrath becomes a nuke for Holy. Ret and Prot will generate Holy Power from Judgment, Exorcism procs, Hammer of Wrath and other abilities that make sense. We still want there to be some small gaps in rhe rotation, but smooth over some of the frustration of today.



How does the new death knight talent Asphyxiate work at this point? Does it last until the target takes damage, like Repentance or Hex, or is it channeled like the succubus minion's Seduction ?

Asphyxiate lasts 5 sec. There was a typo in the Blizzcon presentation. Asphyxiate is the same duration as Strangulate, which it replaces.



What's going to happen to the currently existing Relics once the MoP arrives? will they be turned into gold/grey trash/off-hands/trinkets ?

Relics will turn into gray items that you can vendor.



My questions concerns the limits to Pandaren faction chat. How do you intend to deal with if you meet someone at the starting pandaren area and friend each other (not RealID) yet choose seperate factions ?

Much like the worgen and goblins cannot leave their starting areas, you cannot friend a fellow pandaren until she has chosen her faction.



At Blizzcon you stated that mage's primary nukes will be spec specific ( Fireball for Fire, Arcane Blast for Arcane, and Frostbolt for Frost). However, what will happen to Frostfire bolt? Currently it is only used by Frost Mages and only when a talent procs. Is this spell going to be reworked or simply removed from the game?

Frostfire Bolt is the starting spell at level 1. You get Frostbolt, Fireball or Arcane Blast at level 10. Fire or Arcane can still use Frostfire if they want a snare, or when Brain Freeze procs for Frost.



I have a question about dungeons... many people have complained that there were not very many dungeons this expansion (compared to the number of dungeons in 1-60 Azeroth, Outland, and even Northrend). In Cataclysm endgame, there were very few normal dungeons for a casual player to easily PuG, and the rest are perhaps a dozen or so heroics (which do get boring after doing the same ones over and over!). Do you plan to have more dungeons come MoP? Will there be more choices for both regular AND heroic versions to have a little something for everyone ?

We will have 9 normal mode dungeons at launch for Mists of Pandaria. 6 of those will be on Pandaria and 3 will be classic heroics (Scholomance and Scarlet Monastery). All of these dungeons will have a normal, heroic and challenge mode version. We are currently planning to not have any max level, non-heroic dungeons. Most players never found a good niche for dungeons at that tuning level.



With MoP featuring the battle between the alliance and the horde, can we expect to see more prominent roles or appearances from famous NPCs ?

Yes, we certainly are.



Is drain life ,death coil and soul harvest being removed since there are similar talents in it's place ?

Harvest of Life upgrades Drain Life (Drain Life turns into Harvest, which is a mechanic we use for several spells such as Strangulate -> Asphyxiate and HoJ -> Fist of Justice). Soul Harvest is being removed, but shards passively regen outside of combat or can Drain Soul in combat to replace them. Mortal Coil is the new Death Coil.



Will there be a system where you can turn pet battles on/off at will? Sometimes I don't want to be pestered by obnoxious pet owners that constantly want to duel. Or perhaps I don't want to get a random encountet while trying to get anywhere. Anyways, will there be an option to switch pet battles off temporarily ?

We will have an option to disable invites to pet battles. Similar to what we have for player duels.



The new Cold Snap talent resets Ice Block, Frost Nova, and Water Elemental. I realize that the talents are early, but given that the first two are baseline, might this mean that the Elemental (like Living Bomb) is becoming a core mage spell ?

Water Elemental is a Frost spec spell.



How does the new warlock talent that allows you to move while casting, but doubles cast time affect channeled spells ?

Channeled spells take twice as long to tick after you have started moving with that talent.



One of the issues with the Outland expansion was that it felt too 'off-worldly'. Northrend resolved this a bit by actually taking place -on- Azeroth, and Cataclysm brought back that wholesome Azerothian nostalgia. How does Pandaria handle this issue, considering how foreign the land (and indeed, the entire Pandaren lore) is to the world ? When you're playtesting MoP, how do -you- feel about the land ?

We are actually working very hard on this specific concept. Pandaria is based on Asian landscapes but its important to remember that these landscapes need to feel like they fit in Azeroth, not the real world. So far, we feel really great about how we are doing on this. Hopefully that was clear to players at BlizzCon as well!



What place will the World Bosses have in the scheme of raid difficulty and the item level of gear they drop? Will they be a mandatory part of the raiding cycle ?

We want the world bosses to be optional, kind of like Baradin Hold.



Are we going to require items to change talents like changing the glyphs ?

Yes. Our goal (which is more important than the mechanism) is that we don't want swapping talents to be a huge pain, but don't want it to be so easy that making the choice isn't interesting. We don't want players to feel the need to swap talents in 5-player dungeons or for every trash pull in a raid.



How big are the MoP areas going to be in comparison to say Outlands or Northrend ?

The zones themselves are quite large, even bigger when you take into consideration that you will not be able to use your flying mount until level 90. If I was to guess, I would say you could imagine the entire continent feeling like all 5 of the Cataclysm 80-85 zones combined.



Will their be any raid size PvE scenarios ?

One step at a time, grasshopper.

Will there be a way for pandaran to switch factions (once) after they choose alliance/horde ? Can they defect ?

We are currently planning for this to be a permanent choice.



I play Enhance - with 4.3 the cooldown for Wind Shear is going to 26 seconds untalented, with Talents back to 5 Seconds, when MoP comes out those talents are gone. Are there plans to give the 5 second Wind Shear to Enhance as a base skill, or can I kiss my reputation as my Guild's top interrupter goodbye ?

We want Enhance to still have a frequent interrupt that locks out for less time than other interrupts. However, overall we want to reduce the frequency of interrupts and increase their duration so that when you use them is more of a decision. We want them to be more impactful for both the interrupter and target rather than a spammy nuisance.



Any plans to rework the crowd control system? Currently fear is not a reliable form of CC unless a glyph is used so they won't move others, like warriors have no real CC at all. Speaking of which, how much CC will be needed in the new dungeons ?

We're currently exploring ways for Fear to behave more consistently without the glyph, but don't have a precise answer yet.



Regarding the talent trees, will there be trees as we know them at all ? I like the way you guys are moving with talents, but I wasn't sure if combat/assassination/subtlety would exist anymore at all ? Using a rogue as an example, will all three trees be merged into 'Rogue' now ? It's hard to tell from the examples given.

Specs as you know them will still exist. At level 10 you can choose Assassination and get Mutilate. We want the specs (especially for the pure classes) to be more distinct than they are today since some of the signature utility is now available to all members of that class. Specs will contain core rotational mechanics and the tools needed to perform your role. Talents complement that with various forms of utility.



I don't like PvP, I play on a PvP server, because my friends on a PvP server and most people from my country is playing on that particular server. I have to face world PvP every time I am doing my business in the new hubs in Pandaria? I love the new zone, but I don't want to be backstabbed by a rogue while I am selling my stuff, or buying equipment. Can non-interested players avoid the world PvP

Yes, we certainly don't want you to always be back-stabbed while you are setting up your auctions. However, if a group of the opposing faction wants to form a raid and attack your city, we want them to have a chance to be successful. So yes and no. =)



There seemed to be a bit of a backlash at BlizzCon against the idea of counters in the Pet Battle System. An example would be a water-based pet (Murloc) vs. a fire-based pet (Lil' Ragnaros). This makes the fighting seem a bit more intricate, but I can understand the desire to have Pet Battles be easier to approach. Is there any thought to more than one skill level ?

We intend to create a simple combat system with some engaging depth. We're still in the process hashing out the details. Suggestions are certainly welcome !



So far everything I have heard about the expansion sounds too good to be true! I was wondering however - I had heard that Cooking will become a primary skill, but others say I have misheard/read this. But wouldn't it make the Pandaren racial moot if that were the case ? Can you clarify ?

Cooking will remain a secondary skill. We do have some cool stuff planned to match the Pandaren love of cooking. For example, you can choose to specialize in different styles of cooking. For example, grilling may create Strength food. You can choose the specialization that makes the most sense for your character and still unlock feasts at the end, or you can try and learn all specializations.



What will be the new cap for professions ? Do you plan to create any new professions ?

The new cap for professions is 600 and we are currently not planning to add a new profession. We are hoping that pet battles will offer a fun, new type of activity for players to do that offers an alternative to player power progression.



Will there be any grasshoppers ?

Yes! It actually just got checked into the game by the artists today! Going to be awesome to use in pet battles!



Do you plan on making talent options for each class spec or only 1 set per class. In the preview it seemed that each tier complimented a specific spec rather the class. Also if you believe that talents should be fun choices why put damage dealing spells in the talent options rather then make them only things that increase movement speed, change rotation ( ie makes 1 spell faster to cast ).This new system will not kill off cookie cutter builds if things people view as optional are mixed in with abilities. Make abilities base line with spec/leveling and make talents optional increases in power not through damage like the disc priest talent soul warding or rogues improved slice and dice....they both increases possible damage without a direct damage increase. Any comments ?

The damage-dealing talents aren't core rotational abilities, but situational or utility abilities. When there is a damage option, it should compete against other damage options. The idea is to get away from cookie cutter builds. We don't think there is always a right answer for whether you'd choose to run for longer or more often. Even today, guides will say "choose what you want" for those options. Some talents will probably be better situationally (if the boss can't be interrupted, then your interrupt talent isn't so sexy for that fight), but every e.g. shaman should not have the same talent set at the same time, or our design has failed.



What will happen to passive abilities like trueshot aura, arcane tactics, improved icy talons and unleashed rage ? Where will they go in the new talent system ?

Many of those become passive abilities you get for your spec. We are removing some of the less interesting buffs and debuffs ( +bleed damage, armor, 3% damage, resists are all on the chopping block at the moment ).



At Blizzcon it was mentioned that PvE Scenarios will be something that we will queue for...Will we be required to be in the area that the PvE Scenario will take place in order to queue, or will we be able to queue for them from the cities like we do for the Dungeon Finder. If they are instanced events how will this "get the players out into the world" other than standing around a specific area waiting for the queue to pop, or am I missing the idea?

We are planning to only let players queue for scenarios from specific spots in the world (where the scenario is located), not in the cities. We want players out in the world, not spamming the queue button in cities.



Is there any chance we'll be seeing more weapons with procs ? Something akin to thunderfury, sulfuras, or even the Revenge of Kalimdor ?

Yes, proc weapons are fun. There are several in the 4.3 raid. We will add more.



What will the pandas ride? non anthropomorphic pandas ?

We are still working on ideas for their mount. An epic turtle is certainly one of the most popular options around the office right now !



At Blizzcon you said that demolocks will create demonic fury and turn into a demon when it is maxed out. will this be automatically or will we be able to choose when we use our full demonic fury ?

You have control over when you transform. The amount of Demonic Fury you have determines the duration of the Metamorphosis.



Can other people watch the pets battle ?

We are working really, really hard to have spectating for the pet battles. Trust me, we want it just as bad as you guys. Stay tuned.



With the world PvP that is being talked about, are there any plans to add any Quest Hubs in Mists of Pandaria which functions like a smaller scale of Baradin Hold/Wintergrasp that will change faction when it is assaulted? Maybe even ones with actual leveling quests instead of just more dailies to add a dynamic questing experience like the ones that were talked about at Blizzcon ?

Yes, this is exactly the kind of thing we are thinking about. We will share more info on our ideas for this soon. The idea is that we want to give players more options and not just always have one place to go or one thing to do.



What exactly is a PvE scenario ?

It's a short, instanced 2-3 player experience without the need for a tank/healer. Think of them as a short series of group quests with a queuing option available.



It's clear from the consideration and thought you give your answers that you all have a deep understanding of the theory behind MMOs. Is this all knowledge learned on-the-job, or did you have any guidance such as school or peers when making these design decisions ?

There isn't a lot of formal training that goes into it (though that seems to be improving over time). A lot of it is playing a lot of games, but it helps to have a bunch of really smart dudes on the WoW team (and throughout the company) who can poke holes in what you were certain is a brilliant idea. The guys behind the scenes don't get enough credit for the success of our games.



Will there be any new underwater zones in MoP ? I personally loved Vashj' and would hope that there's at least some mini-zone in the starting area or something.

Nope, we are not making another Vashj'ir. Glad you liked it though ! =)



I'm in a high end raiding guild and if the racials for Panderan stay as is, we are almost all going to have to race change. Do you plan to have the Panderan racials (specifically the double food buff) nearly balanced with the other races on release or do you want them to be the best to start with so more people play them ?

The food buff is the equivalent of racials like the haste or crit buffs of the goblin and worgen. We are still evaluating the power of our primary vs. secondary stats. Primary stats (Agi etc.) are a bit good right now, but that also helps ensure that new tiers of gear are nearly always upgrades.



Will Arms Warriors do an equal amount of damage when using Bladestorm (lvl 90 talent) as Fury warriors, who have double weapons over arms ?

We don't want there to be obvious talent decisions. We can make Bladestorm do more damage with two weapons or let Arms do more damage to keep Arms vs. Fury equivalent.



When do we except this x-pack to come out ? ( hopefully not late 2012 )

Based on what we showed at Blizzcon, hopefully sooner rather than later. =)



Just have to say Blizzard are doing a wicked job with this expansion. It is very hard to hype up an expansion without some epic badass villain. The idea of the raging war between the two factions and the Pandaren being stuck in the middle ( somehow trying to find peace ? ) looks to be so cleverly laid out. So very well done for that. New talent system is one of your best ideas yet. Just one question. How will the story be planned out with no villain, will there be a consecutive story eg every patch will release a raid focusing onto the main raid in the last patch. Or will every patch be unique in terms of story ?

There are definitely villains in Mists of Pandaria. We just didn't want to put one on the "box cover" so to speak (we don't know what the box looks like yet of course). You have seen some of them, like the mogu. We know who the final boss is. Seriously. It's just too epic to share. Yet.



----------------------------

​

This is up to date.​

 

[Kore nametooshort]

Sounds like solvogero loses 2 dollars to someone

 

[Nesyla]

Updated racials.

 

[Eliot]

This is really funny! I can play as a panda. Hehe. Looks pretty cool.

 

[Curley]

racials look quite awful for pvp

 

[Mrcer]

I told everyone the next class would be monk!



Who said it? WHO SAID IT!!!?!?!?!





<----

 

[Nesyla]

Second updated is up.

 

[Mrcer]

racials look quite awful for pvp

racials look quite awful for pvp

Not really: "double stats to food buff".



So basically anyone with rumsey rum black label gets 30 stam instead of 15 stam. That seems a bit of an impact of twinking does it not?

 

[Nesyla]

Updates keep going, doing my best to stay up to date with blizzcon.

 

[Kore nametooshort]

Lovely work. I've put this thread on the front page.

 

[Sanit]

it is my honest opinion that this game has officially gone to shit.

 

[Mrcer]

Fak, Pandaran Prot Warriors @lvl 39 are gonna own...

 

[yougotcriton]

I was all ready and prepared to argue about pandas being a playable race with links and all talking about china's proposed law to ban images of violence against pandas, then i saw the wow insider article.

 

[Modified]

racials look quite awful for pvp

[Quaking Palm (from the live stream): Puts a target to sleep for three seconds.



- wowinsider.

 

[Poket]

I hope

Character builds are going to be entirely revamped. Talents were still too cookie cutter, so the developers want to give players more choices in their talents.

Will reduce the burst..

 

[Rivfader]

Looks like pseudo pokemon will be the focus of this expansion. I think they're activly trying to kill the game at this point.

 

[Nesyla]

And i'm done for 10 minutes of break now, before they start on wow again.

Hope all this is somehow usefull, if you liked it dont forget to click on "Like This" !

 

[Awesome]

Pet Battle System

• You will be able to collect, level, and battle with companion pets.
  
• It will be accessible to all players.
  
• Works with almost every pet
  
• Pet Customization, you will be able to name your pet, give them visual abilities, etc ..
  
• There will be "Wild pets", you can find them in the world and engage in battle with them. You will then be able to get that pet and add it to your Pet Journal.
  
• Pets have random stats, some of them will be very good at tanking, some will have a CC ability, etc ...
  
• Some pets will only be found during a specific season, while it's raining, or during the day or the night. Some of them will only spawn in the spring, when it's raining, in elwynn forest at night!
  
• Most pets will become tradable, even after it's leveled, etc ...
  
• Pets will be account wide.
  
• Your pet journal will display info on all your pets, including stats, skills, and also drop locations and lore info for the pets you don't have yet!
  
• Winning battles earns you experience, and levels your pets.
  
• You will learn new abilities. Every pet can use 3 abilities in a battle at one time.
  
• Every time you level you will also increase the stats of your pet.
  
• You will level multiple pets to build your team.
  
• You have 3 battle slots, one for each pet in your team.
  

• 
  

 

[Fabiyoyo]

Resilience

• Devs like the way Resilience works in PvP, and how it gives a nice goal for players looking to progress/upgrade their gear in PvP
  
• Resilience is a pretty huge barrier for people who want to start PvPing.
  
• Resilience will become a base stat, and will increase a little every time you level.
  

mhm i'm really curious how much this will affect the 70 bracket.

 

[ClayReedWhite]

it is my honest opinion that this game has officially gone to shit.

I agree greatly but i know i will most likely get it for like one month because first month of cata was ok but rest was terrible