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Mists of Pandaria releases September 25
Hard to argue with the official announcement right on the EU battle.net page and the US Battle.net page: Mists of Pandaria, the fourth expansion for World of Warcraft, will be available in stores and online starting Tuesday, Sept. 25. Pre-orders are live now. Sept. 25 is a Tuesday, which is one of the preferred days for patching and other fun. The release date is a bit later than many expected, but Blizzard operates under the philosophy of "it's done when it's done," so a later date only means we're getting a product that's been through a lot of testing. You can upgrade to the standard edition and digital deluxe edition through your Battle.net account page now. Update 9:30 p.m. EDT: Added the official press release announcing the release date. You can view it after the break.
Mists of Pandaria: (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
The latest build for the Mists of Pandaria beta has brought new spells, huge nerfs, and Flippable Tables. Yes, that's right, a Flippable Table. Michael Gray speculated about the table last week in Phat Loot Phriday, but at the time, the item hadn't yet been implemented on test servers. Well folks, there is now no more need for speculation. For your viewing pleasure, I give you the Flippable Table. And I only had to kill 400 birds and get spawn-camped by an embarrassingly low-level warlock (I do not PvP as shadow) to bring it to you. You're welcome. Currently, the Flippable Table is purchased from Nam Ironpaw in Valley of the Four Winds using Ironpaw Tokens, a currency you get from completing Mists of Pandaria cooking dailies. The same currency is used to purchase other novelty items such as Apron and Frying Pan. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Improved digsites in Mists of Pandaria archaeology
When I hit the new skill cap in archaeology on beta and achieved Zen Master, someone in my beta guild remarked that 600 skill points in archaeology sounded painful. But it's not -- it's actually better! Archaeology got some buffs in Mists of Pandaria. There are only two new races to worry about, the pandaren and the mogu, and you get nothing but these two on the continent of Pandaria. As usual, players get four random digsites across the entire continent, though it's currently bugging out to three or even two sites only. But Pandaria is so huge, you say. We're restricted to no flying until 90. How can it not be painful?
Mists of Pandaria Beta: Goblin Glider proves engineering is still the best profession
My love of engineering is no secret. Engineering is the best profession in WoW, period, as measured by the only scale that matters: awesome points. We've seen some new head pieces coming in Mists of Pandaria, but there really has not been a huge amount of engineering news. Well, that's all changed now that the Goblin Glider engineering enchant has been introduced. What's the Goblin Glider? This new enchant attaches the Mists of Pandaria version of the Flexweave Underlay (whose update was oddly missing from Cataclysm) that looks to only use a handful of easily obtainable materials. The real kicker with this new slow-fall cloak is that it's got a built-in Nitro Boost that periodically pushes the player forward through the air. What this means is that you've got periodic forward momentum for 30 seconds of slow fall with the ability to steer your character 360 degrees. Not only is this the coolest new escape tool for engineers, it makes WoW base jumping about 900 times cooler. I am really excited to get my hands on the new engineering stuff, and it's great to see the best profession in the game getting some love. Let's see more, Blizz! It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Arcane Brilliance: Archmage Pants expounds on Mists of Pandaria magery and magic
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. Even when the guy who usually writes it is trapped by the ancient warlockian curse known as Long-work-hours-and-three-kids-and-no-free-time-makes-it-hard-to-write-about-Warcraft ... Bolt. A deeply sincere thank you goes out to the incredible Josh Myers, who stepped in and handled my business for me with uncommon style and undeniable skill for the past month and a half. Josh, the next warlock I kill, I will kill for you. Holy crap, it's good to be back. I'd toyed with the idea of quitting entirely, seeing no practical way to consistently scrape together enough time each week with the current demands on my time to provide you guys with quality mage columns. But as the weeks went by, I found I simply couldn't abide not writing about turning warlocks into sheep and then hurling volleys of Arcane Missiles at those sheep until they explode. There was a gaping hole in my life that could only be filled with a massive Pyroblast. So this past week, after squeezing in some quality time with the Mists beta, I sat down at my keyboard and began typing. At first, I wasn't even writing with a clear goal in mind. I had no intention of posting any of my thoughts. But as I played, and wrote, and played, and wrote, I found I was becoming more and more stupidly excited about the prospect of talking to you guys about new stuff. So I had to come back, you see. And it's all your fault. I hope you're happy with yourselves. Josh has already done a marvelous job of sharing his beta analysis with you over the course of several columns. If you haven't already, check them out here, here, and also here. Though some of the ground we cover today may overlap, what follows isn't anything resembling analysis. As I get myself back up to speed, I'll go more in-depth -- but this week, we're going the full stream of consciousness, random observational impression route. Strap in, and for God's sake, keep your arms, legs, and wands inside the vehicle.
Totem Talk: A restoration shaman hands-on with Ascendance
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how This week, we're going to talk about our level 87 ability, Ascendance. That video above is not mine, but it is pretty darn cool, so I figured I would link brandonk99ing's video here since it did such a nice job. It shows our brand new ability for Mists, which we get to play with at level 87. Each flavor of shaman gets a different version of the ability. Elemental and enchancement get some nice damage increases, while resto gets to walk around like a giant water elemental, throwing out crazy healing numbers. Basically, while in the Water Ascendant form, all of our healing done is duplicated and distributed evenly among nearby allies. I've commented that it looks just like the ability Essence of Dreams from the Ultraxion encounter -- and to be honest, that's exactly how it feels. I figured I would share with you my impressions of the ability, now that I've gotten my hands on it.
Demonic Gateway teleports party members without a Dial-Home Device
Demonic Gateway is one of the many new abilities for warlocks in Mists of Pandaria. With the beta level cap rising to level 88, making Demonic Gateway learnable, we can now see how fantastic the portals are. This pair of fel stargates works with party members. The first portal (purple) sits where you are standing, and the other end (green) is directed to anywhere with a small target circle. Demonic Gateway has both a minimum range of 20 yards and a maximum range of 70 yards. Once you've selected a spot to spawn the portal, the finishing cast animation looks like Glyph of Shadow Bolt plus Glyph of Verdant Spheres. Around each portal in its respective green or purple color will be up to five fiery orbs. These represent the number of charges the Gateway currently has, and it recharges one every 15 seconds that it's not being used, starting at zero charges on the summon. To travel, simply walk through the opening and fly to the other side in a fel green or purple ball. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Warlock green fire spells spotted in MoP beta files
Green fire is coming, again! Maybe. Side effects of speculation may vary. Not only has the Codex shown up in recent datamining, but curiously also warlock spells with green fire as icons. Conflagrate, Fel Hellfire, Rain of Chaos, and Fel Immolate all have minimal descriptions and could very well be just creature or boss spells. But Fel Incinerate gives me hope, for it has not only the range and cast time, but the base mana that the real warlock Incinerate does. What boss would need to know the base mana cost, hmm? After the original flurry of excitement, Wryxian noted in the subsequent denial of green fire implementation that the devs wanted green fire "to be an epic accomplishment" for players. With the beta appearance of The Legacy of the Masters (Part 1), players are speculating among other things about a Quel'Delar-like quest line again. In the end, nothing might happen and green fire will stay unfulfilled on our warlock wish lists. But I for one haven't been so excited since I got my Dreadsteed the old way. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Blood Pact: Affliction struggles to burn soulfully on beta
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill finds DoTs no longer crash her client, so she sets about corrupting every soul she can find. Unfortunately, she finds her Abyssal Bag empty, and with frustration wishes that shards could be as plentiful as before. The Soulburn system of Cataclysm was a big bust for affliction, offering plenty of utility but lacking in role-buffing damage abilities. The biggest issue was that Soulburn didn't feel like a real resource. Soulburn largely felt like a complicated set of "oh, crap!" buttons. In Mists of Pandaria, demonology and destruction are each departing from soul shards to gain new secondary resources. Soul shards will be affliction-only, so it's finally time to tailor shards to affliction purposes. Unfortunately, beta is where many things are broken or unfinished, including soul shards.
Mists of Pandaria Beta: Scarlet Monastery revamp
While the level 90 heroic versions aren't available on the beta servers yet, MMO-Champion and Wowhead both took a look into the lower level version of Scarlet Monastery to see all the revamps. The current four wings of Scarlet Monastery have been slimmed down into two wings, the Scarlet Cathedral and the Scarlet Halls, removing most of the unnecessary trash while keeping what made the monastery a great set of dungeons to begin with. Scarlet Cathedral now starts with the graveyard. Interrogator Vishas is no longer there; it's just Bloodmage Thalnos, now outside the mausoleum. Before Thalnos among the mobs are Scarlet Flamethrowers, who drop explosive cannisters that players can use to damage other mobs.
Blood Pact: Don't sell your soul for a warlock tanking spec quite yet
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. Today, Megan O'Neill is your host, and she wants to remind Matticus that warlock fire cannot be rainbow-colored in Mists of Pandaria, else we'd kill all our wild imps that we summon. Everyone's excited about the warlock tanking glyph for demonology. I'm cautiously excited. It's one of those things we warlocks always put on our wish lists, alongside green fire and warlock flying mounts. While we still wait on the flying mount, EU CM Wryxian noted that green fire might be in the works! As soon as I saw the glyphs that change cosmetic things like the felguard's weapon or the color of a bear's fur, I went hunting in the datamines for green fire. I didn't see one, but Wryxian says there's "hope" that we'll get a quest for green fire. I do hope it involves Gorzeeki Wildeyes or Mor'zul Bloodbringer as a throwback to the old Dreadsteed epic mount quest chain. I'm also aware that this is beta, and betas are for testing things, not for setting things in stone. Like Wryxian's statement about fel fire coloring, things can and will change. I want to be realistic about demo tanking. I don't want the hype surrounding warlock-style tanking to lead to disappointment. Looking at some of warlock and tanking mechanical history, I have some major caveats that Blizzard would need to address if warlocks are to become tanks.
Mists of Pandaria beta icon artwork
It's still extremely early in the beta -- servers aren't even live yet -- but goodies are already flooding in. MMO-Champion has posted a dump of many of the new art icons coming in this expansion. The art by itself isn't necessarily news, but the file names of those icons reveal some fun (if minor) details about upcoming content. For one, the icons include the names of the new ores and metals: Ghost Iron and Manticyte. There are also icons for new class spells such as the paladin's Holy Avenger and the rogue's updated poisons -- not to mention the icons for new gear, new achievements, and the pet types in the upcoming Pet Battle feature. The pet types appear to be critter, dragon, elemental, flying, humanoid, magical, mechanical, undead, and water. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Mists of Pandaria beta opt-in and official FAQ
It's 10 p.m. Pacific, and the fine folks have a little surprise for us all of a sudden: the Mists of Pandaria opt-in and FAQ has just been posted on the official Battle.net blog. While there are over a million Annual Pass subscribers eagerly awaiting their chance to get into the beta, the developers may still need a more diverse spread of testers throughout the beta. To opt in, you will need a Battle.net account with at least one Blizzard game attached to it -- I'm sure everyone reading this has one of those, right? You can read the full FAQ on Battle.net or behind the cut below. This FAQ does detail how and when Annual Pass holders will be entering the beta, so those of you who have signed up for that should take a look.
Blood Pact: Soul sticks and soul carrots
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. When she's not bribing the priest to life grip the mage through Hagara's Ice Wall, Megan O'Neill paints her damage done bar like Seurat -- that is, with lots of DoTs. Soul shards -- the special resource that has been iconic for warlocks since the beginnings of World of Warcraft. Once nonstackable in-game items that there were special bags for, soul shards now in Cataclysm are part of the unit frame as a secondary resource. Soul shards are particularly a great flavor match for affliction and will stay as affliction-only in Mists of Pandaria. The only problem is that the Soulburn mechanic doesn't jibe well with affliction. Sometimes the stick is too long for us to care about the crunchy, delicious carrot at the end. Sometimes the carrot isn't big enough for the properly balanced stick. Whatever the problem is, our soul carrots don't match our soul sticks.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Stat changes and you
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. This week, we have statistics and how they will work in Mists of Pandaria to talk about, thanks to our metaphorical friend Dr. Greg Street. (I've never met the man; I can't in good conscience call him my friend, although I have appreciated his work over the years.) These are some big changes to how stats work for every class. I don't write about every class, of course. If you don't wear plate, tank with a shield, and have Bladestorm or Titan's Grip in your talent trees, then someone else is going to have to explain what this all means for you. One of the really big changes is the change to the Block mechanic. Currently, World of Warcraft operates on a single combat roll system, wherein an attack is made and either succeeds or fails based on factors like dodge, parry, block and outright chance to miss. In Mists, things will be very different.
Totem Talk: Mists of Pandaria resto talent calculator update
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how The last few updates to the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator has seen some updates for the other healer types in WoW, but restoration shaman were left untouched from what we saw at BlizzCon 2011. That fact alone was starting to concern many of us, as we eagerly wait to see what we'll get for new spells and what we'll see our talents morph into. Well, this time around, the latest update to the talent calculator certainly has some things for the restoration-minded shaman to enjoy. Talents have been moved around -- some removed and others just reorganized -- and we get our first glimpse at a new spell.
The Queue: Why I welcome the Dragon Soul nerf and why you should, too
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky (@adamholisky) will be your host today. The progressive Dragon Soul nerf that was announced last night should have been expected by everyone. It's something Blizzard has done constantly, and I'm a tad surprised that so many people feel like it came out of the blue. The biggest complaint I've heard is that the Raid Finder was meant for the easy modes. The Raid Finder, while good, isn't for everyone. Some people really hate pugging -- so much so that they'd rather not play the game than have to pug. There are some people who are just interested in running content with their guild, and if their guild doesn't want to run the Raid Finder, then it's normal modes. The Dragon Soul raid nerf will do nothing more than allow a wider base to see more content -- and that's a good thing for the game, for the community, and for the future of WoW. And that is something we should all be supportive of. Even more so, there are groups struggling on various aspects of normal and heroic Dragon Soul. If you're not, that's awesome. Pat on the back, tip of the hat. But ... not everyone is so lucky. If you're hardcore and don't want raid with the progressive nerf active, just turn it off at the entrance. Problem solved; now let's all go kill some internet dragons. Philster asked: What pop culture references should make it into Mists of Pandaria, and what shouldn't?
Know Your Lore: Where is WoW's story headed in the distant future?
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. Because of the way we experience the setting, the story of World of Warcraft progresses in bursts. It's fair to think of each expansion as a new series, and the patches as episodic, in the same manner as British TV series such as Doctor Who or Turning Evil. Therefore, each expansion brings new settings, new dangers, and a new, overarching storyline, while each patch is an advancement of that storyline, bringing it to a conclusion with the ultimate patch of each expansion. In this way, Patch 4.3 is effectively a multi-part episode concluding the story of our confrontation with Deathwing. I bring this up because with Mists of Pandaria, we're going to see a whole new place and explore it. In essence, it will be an expansion that introduces a great deal of new -- new lands, new peoples, new experiences. While it will still be part of Azeroth and still part of the unfolding storyline, it's also a change to switch gears and get away from the familiar. In a game like WoW, it's necessary to introduce new elements in this way to keep the setting engaging. It may be hard to relate now, but Ragnaros, Ahn'Qiraj, the Old Gods, the Silithid, all were introduced in World of Warcraft and not any of the RTS games. Look at the Warcraft III map of Kalimdor. You'll notice pretty much everything south of Feralas is blank on it. This puts me in mind to speculate on the future of the game and where the lore is going to take us. Not just in Mists, of course, as I expect that much of the lore of the expansion is well and truly fleshed out already, and I'm as eager as anyone to see it. But we've got expansions down the road and trends to consider. None of this absolutely will happen ... but some of it might.
Spiritual Guidance: Further thoughts on priest healing in Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. A few weeks back at BlizzCon 2011 when the Mists of Pandaria talents were first unveiled, I spoke at length with fellow priest Oestrus about her thoughts on the new talents. One of the things she proposed was very interesting to me, that the new talent system might spell the end of the strong distinction between disc and holy. The idea was that since holy and disc priests would be able to use each other's talents now, it might blur the edge between discipline and holy to a point that we'd start thinking of ourselves more as healing priests, rather than disc priests or holy priests.
