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WoW Moviewatch: Mists of Pandaria Beta is Not a Joke
So, the MoP beta is here for many people ... but not everyone. Perhaps inspired by inevitable kvetching, perhaps by the recent April Fools' Day, Wowcrendor decided to answer the question: Is the MoP beta a joke? This video is really more about the players than the game, as the best of Wowcrendor's videos tend to be. Most importantly, he addresses the players who treat beta as more like a promotional version of the game than a testing experience. I think how much you enjoy this video will probably depend on how much patience you have with the grouchier parts of our community. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
Spiritual Guidance: First hands-on look at the Mists of Pandaria shadow priest
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On alternate Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the shadows to bask in your loving adoration. Beta access, sweet, delicious beta access. After weeks of waiting, I'm finally in the Mists of Pandaria beta. And man, does it taste sweet. Sure, in reality, I'd only been waiting a few weeks to get in. But when you're not in the beta and it seems like everyone else is, those weeks can feel like an eternity. But you likely don't care about my emotions (you cruel, sadistic readers, you). You care about shadow priests and the changes made to them in the beta. And believe me, there are a lot of changes to shadow priests coming for MoP. Yeah, I know, we've discussed a lot of those changes here in Spiritual Guidance. But already, there are changes to those changes. And frankly, the latest batch of changes is shocking. Every single spell that we hold dear is seeing a major change to it. Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch, Vampiric Embrace, and even Shadowy Apparitions -- it seems no spell is safe. Are these changes the end of the world? Maybe they are. But you should know by now that I'm not going to tell you anything definite about that until you follow me after the break.
This is the most bizarre and entertaining Dave Kosak interview ever
Imagine this: You run a fairly influential Asian fan site. You're offered the chance to interview WoW's Lead Quest Designer Dave Kosak, but there's a catch -- Kosak speaks English, and you really don't. An in-depth conversation is out. What's a fan site to do? Well, the folks at Player's Cut TV came up with a pretty interesting and entertaining solution: Ask Kosak a series of rapid fire, yes-or-no questions about Mists of Pandaria. They even gave Kosak a pair of discs to hold up: a circle for yes, and a red X for no. It's like watching the dude play through some kind of game show bonus round. A lot of the questions asked in the video have been already asked elsewhere, so you might not get a whole lot of new information out of the video. But it's damn fun to watch. 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!
The Light and How to Swing It: Major AoE healing changes in the Mists beta
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome. Blizzard has been deploying beta patches at a record pace, which has a lot of stale info being bandied about as fact. The official Mists of Pandaria talent calculator is wildly out of date, and much of the commentary made over the past week is now superannuated. The developers haven't been shying away from making major class changes in these early days of the beta, and so everything is still up in the air. What we do know for sure is that there's work being done to modify our holy AoE arsenals specifically. First, Holy Radiance still generates holy power points for us. The holy power generation mechanic was moved from Tower of Radiance and placed directly onto Holy Radiance itself. Other than that, every other piece of our holy toolkit has been updated, and for the better.
Arcane Brilliance: What the MoP beta means for arcane mages
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This column is usually brought to you by archmage and former Hogwarts headmaster Christian Belt, but rumor has it he's still stuck in an alternate dimension where playing World of Warcraft is state-mandated but only offers you 10 different classes of warlocks to play. Senior Understudy and Last Surviving Student Josh Myers is covering his class this week. Arm your spitballs. Throughout Cataclysm, the arcane spec has been a strange beast. At the beginning of the expansion, it was solidly the worst mage spec due to the absurdly high cost of Arcane Blast. After some quick patch 4.1 fixes, it became our top-performing spec, especially if we had access to Shard of Woe. From that point on, arcane was a source of potent damage. While fire has become the vogue spec for Dragon Soul, arcane still is a very viable and desirable spec. Going forward into Mists of Pandaria, that all could change ... or the spec could be made even better. Part of the source of arcane's potency this expansion has been due to how incredibly well the spec scales with intellect. While intellect provides the same spellpower to arcane mages that it does to every other caster, arcane mages' Mana Adept mastery makes the mana increase from intellect critical. Arcane Blast, the pivotal spell in arcane's rotation, has a static mana cost that is only based on mage base mana and not their mana after gear. Because of this, the more intellect you have means the more Arcane Blasts you can fit in at higher mana levels, meaning more damage through mastery.
Blizzard opens the Mists of Pandaria floodgates for 100,000 annual passholders
As everyone who isn't willfully ignoring recent news is aware, World of Warcraft's Mists of Pandaria expansion is currently undergoing beta testing, and we know that many of you can't wait to get your hands on all the new content for yourselves. Well, if you're a World of Warcraft annual passholder, today might just be your lucky day. Bashiok stopped by the official forums to let players know that Blizzard is in the process of sending out a whopping 100,000 MoP beta invites to annual passholders. Bashiok closes the announcement by reminding players that all annual passholders will be invited to the beta before any opt-ins, though there's no telling how many of them are still awaiting invites or how long it will take before the poor/cheap among us get a crack at Pandaria, but hopefully it will be soon rather than soon™.
Warlocks may cast green fire spells in MoP
Warlocks, think of the one thing you most want in the World of Warcraft. If you answered "the total destruction and removal of the mage class, and green fire," you're in luck -- there's a good chance that half of that statement will come true in Mists of Pandaria! Luckily for Christian Belt, it's the latter. According to EU CM Wryxian, Blizzard developers are looking into hopefully adding a quest line that will allow warlocks to use green fire in Mists of Pandaria. Wryxian Green "fel" fire for warlocks, like they've been asking for since... forever? It is our hope to introduce a quest which will allow warlocks to unlock the use of green fire. :) source Remember that the key word here is "hope." Even the slightest possibility of green fire in MoP should have most warlocks salivating. This is especially true since Chaos Bolt, which is one of only two green fire spells currently in the game, has been removed from MoP talent calculators. Given that green fire has been one of the most requested features of the class for years and that MoP is an expansion bringing to us loads of vanity choices in glyphs and challenge mode sets, this seems an obvious way to go.
Beta Testing 101: What to, and what not to, expect from the MoP beta
In the most exciting World of Warcraft news of 2012, the beta for Mists of Pandaria opened up this week. Like millions of other players, I was not one of the lucky few chosen for the first round of beta invites. However, there are a number of diligent players currently hard at work testing some of the changes coming in MoP, as well as datamining glyphs and leveling monks. If you're one of the lucky players who got in this week or if you manage to get in in the next few weeks, there are some important facts you should know before you play the beta. For seasoned veterans of beta testing, these will be self evident. For the others for whom this will be the first beta ever, these are things you should read and consider. If you don't, you could turn into one of the disappointing trade chat trolls who rages about their warrior suddenly having a mana bar (and other fun beta mishaps). Oh yes, there will be bugs Above all else, the thing you can most expect from the beta of any video game ever is that there will be bugs. Bugs are one of the main reasons games go into beta; they're a way of allowing scores of players to scour every inch of the game world for bugs by doing everything possible that could possibly cause an issue. By doing this, Blizzard can isolate and treat bugs before they ever make it to live servers, allowing players on live a smooth playing experience.
3 reasons for casual players to be excited about Mists of Pandaria
While this column is nominally titled WoW Rookie, if you'll pardon the redundancy, it actually tends to serve as a cross-section of content for new, casual, and (as I like to call them) play-a-little players. It's for folks who don't really have hours on hours each week to devote to the hobby. After all, when baby's gotta eat, baby's gotta eat; can't nurse three hours later just so you can do the hard mode first. With that in mind, Mists of Pandaria brings a lot to recommend it to our crowd. While it's tempting to give in to scuttlebutt and think this expansion is mostly for the hardcore crowd, I promise that Blizzard hasn't forgotten about its loyal, beloved casual playerbase -- because boy, oh boy, is there a lot for us to love! This topic comes up this week from reader Angela, who wrote: I've been reading in forums about how MoP is mostly for the raider and hardcore crowd, that Blizzard isn't catering to 'casubads' anymore. Is there any reason for a full-time worker and mom to care about MoP? I promise, Angela, there are reasons to care. Let's talk about them.
WoW's Mists of Pandaria beta download surfaces on Battle.net [Updated]
Kung-fu panda fever is gripping the World of Warcraft community, and the latest tremor comes courtesy of the Mists of Pandaria beta page that showed up on Battle.net last night. Our sister site WoW Insider reported that some players jumped at the chance to begin downloading the expansion's beta client, but the early birds were subsequently stopped by an error page stating that the download server was, well, down. WoW Insider continued updating its news post as the night wore on, and interestingly enough, Mac users were indeed able to download the patch (no such luck for PC folks, though). Blizzard also published a beta character copy page on Battle.net, where players got a good look at all the test servers ready and waiting for a slew of avatar imports. Thus far Blizz hasn't commented on an official start date, but the company has said that it's sending out MoP beta invites in waves. [Update: MoP beta is now live!] Pandas, pagodas, and pet battles are en route in World of Warcraft's upcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion! Stay tuned to Massively and WoW Insider as we bring you FAQs, previews, analysis, and impressions in the lead-up to launch.
Mists of Pandaria Beta: New glyphs
Not much else to say here, folks: On top of the warlock tanking glyph, there are a ton of other new glyphs in the Mists of Pandaria beta that we found via WoWDB. Blizzard has gotten really creative with a lot of them. There are a bunch of really awesome minor glyphs and some incredibly useful major ones. Check out a sample below and the rest after the break! Glyph of Animal Bond While your pet is active, all healing done to you and your pet is increased by 10%. Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell Causes your Anti-Magic Shell to absorb all incoming magical damage, up to the absorption limit. Glyph of Armors Reduces the cast time of your Frost Armor, Mage Armor, and Molten Armor spells by (1500/-1000) seconds and increases the defensive effect of each Armor by an additional 10%. Glyph of Aspect of the Pack Increases the range of your Aspect of the Pack by 15 yards. Glyph of Avenging Wrath While Avenging Wrath is active, you are healed for 0% of your maximum health every 4 seconds. Glyph of Beacon of Light Removes the global cooldown on Beacon of Light Glyph of Blade Flurry Your attacks have a 30% higher chance of applying Non-Lethal poisons while Blade Flurry is active. Glyph of Blessed Life While Seal of Insight is active, you have a 50% chance to gain a charge of Holy Power whenever you take direct damage or are Stunned, Feared, or Immobilized. This effect cannot occur more than once every 20 seconds.
Spiritual Guidance: Brainstorming the future of shadow priest glyphs
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On alternate Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the shadows to bask in your loving adoration. If you're anything like me, you've spend a good chunk of your time this week reading all the great coverage of the Mists of Pandaria here at WoW Insider and at our friends' sites, as well. There wasn't any shadow priest news to be found, but one thing definitely caught my eye: The Great Glyph Overhaul of 2012. Wait, what's that? Another glyph overhaul? To be sure, the glyph overhaul that came with Cataclysm was largely painless and uninteresting from a shadow priest perspective. But here's the exciting part of The Great Glyph Overhaul of 2012: It's all about fun. Blizzard is removing the boring, must-have aspect of glyphs by eliminating prime glyphs and making minor glyphs much more fun. How? Well, Blizzard's super-cool treatment of druids offers a couple of clues.
Mists of Pandaria: Dave "Fargo" Kosak interview
Dave "Fargo" Kosak, lead quest designer for World of Warcraft, sat down with us at the Mists of Pandaria press event for an interview. We talked about the Horde/Alliance conflict, voice acting, pop culture references, Mists' accelerated production schedule, and more. Check it out! WoW Insider: I guess I'm just gonna start off with some basic stuff. Dave Kosak: Basic stuff is good! Let's start with your overall philosophy for Mists of Pandaria. Well, we're constantly experimenting with quests, and in Cataclysm, we created some pretty linear zones, as I'm sure you might've noticed. Some really big story arcs and big finishes. Certainly like in Mount Hyjal, we phased a huge amount of the zone, which worked because it was a pretty linear zone. A couple drawbacks, though: It was a shame that on your second or third time through, you had to play it exactly the same way. You know, you kinda lose some of that open-world feeling, you lose a little bit of that exploration when it's linear like that. But we loved the storytelling, so what we wanted to do with Mists was keep that kind of storytelling but make sure that you have the opportunity to go out and explore and experience the expansion differently, so ... let's see.
Hunters to get Stampede in Mists of Pandaria
As part of the Mists of Pandaria press tour, Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has revealed that hunters will be getting a new level 87 ability that will let them bring out their stable of five pets all at once as a long-cooldown DPS burst ability. Here is the full quote from the MMO-C interview: I don't think we have talked about what we are doing for the hunter yet. I think a lot of hunter players have guessed it but the hunter level 87 ability is basically you get all your pets at once for a short amount of time. So if you have 5 pets in your stable, they all come out and do damage for a little bit of time, and that's really fun cooldown for them. I think it increases Beast Master's damage by 80% while they're out, or something ridiculous like that. That's a pretty fun one. This "Stampede" ability is one that the hunter community has been requesting for years and should provide a valuable burst DPS cooldown that will serve the class well in both PvE and PvP. We have yet to get confirmation that this ability will be available to all hunter specs, but since Ghostcrawler referred to it as a hunter ability rather than a beast mastery ability, it seems likely to be a class baseline ability that enables every hunter spec to unleash a frenzy of rabid death into their opponents' faces. 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!
The Light and How to Swing It: 4 holy talents I want to see in Mists
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome. When I look at our upcoming talent tree in Mists of Pandaria, I'm not blown away. Repentance and Divine Purpose are nearly identical to the versions in the retribution tree today. Pursuit of Justice and Speed of Light have been edited slightly but fulfill the same general roles. There are definitely some new talents in the mix as well, like Holy Avenger and the new Sanctified Wrath, but many of the choices are simply repeats of existing talents. I have a few ideas on how to fix that. With equal parts of stealing talents from other classes and coming up with brand new ones, we could liven up our options quite a bit. I want to see more dynamic healing options available, rather than yet another cooldown like Clemency to manage. We spend most of our time in the trenches, pressing Holy Light and Holy Shock until our fingers are numb. Improving holy's style of healing will go a long way toward making the class more exciting to play.
WRUP: Mists of Pandaria spoiler alert
Every week, just at the start of the weekend, we catch up with the WoW Insider staff and ask them, "What are you playing this week?" -- otherwise known as: WRUP. Join us to see what we're up to in and out of game, and catch us in the comments to let us know what you're playing, too! Oh my God, you guys. You're forgiven if you don't know the ins and outs of our relationship with Blizzard. But right now, Editor-in-Chief Alex Ziebart and The Queue superstar Mike Sacco are in Irvine, California. They're getting a special insider look at the Mists of Pandaria expansion from Blizzard itself. But here's the problem: Though we have a ridiculous amount of unbelievably amazing information, we're not actually allowed to share it with you yet. We're under a press embargo. It's driving us crazy. So in the interest of maintaining our relationship with Blizzard, we're going to spoil every other thing we can that isn't Mists of Pandaria. So -- spoiler alert! Today's WRUP combines the fun of telling everyone what you're playing with the fun of ruining stuff for other people.
Another Mists daily screenshot appears on WoW community site
Blizzard has released yet another picture from Mists of Pandaria featuring a new tauren model with yak-like features. Could this be our first look at a new race of tauren much like the taunka from Wrath of the Lich King, or even a look at a brand new tauren model? Only time will tell. For those of you looking at every pixel of the image, notice the new boot, belt, and legplate models on the tauren as well as the new architecture and environments. Check out a larger version of the picture for increased detail. %Gallery-150647% World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria is the next expansion, raising the level cap to 90, introducing a brand new talent system, and bringing forth the long-lost pandaren race to both Horde and Alliance. Check out the trailer and follow us for all the latest MoP news!
Encrypted Text: Shuriken Toss breaks all the rules
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. Raise your hand if you remember fighting against Shazzrah. I'm not talking about our recent bout with Shannox or even our old fights against Mother Shahraz. Shazzrah goes way back, to WoW's very first raid instance, Molten Core. Due to the frequent AoE explosions that Shazzrah unleashed, rogues couldn't engage him without being slaughtered immediately. While the rest of the raid fought the boss, I joined the other rogues in my group crushing Blindweed and making some food next to the Cooking Fire. As a melee class, our biggest weakness for years has been that we can only deal damage to nearby targets. It's limited our ability to swap targets effectively, our ability to avoid point-blank AoE attacks, and our ability to attack any target that's not on the ground. Rogues, along with other melee classes, have actually been benched because of these limitations. These shackles and restrictions have bound our class since its inception. Shuriken Toss has the chance to change all that. The new level 90 rogue talent slated for Mists of Pandaria might redefine what it means to play a rogue.
Totem Talk: Enhancement buffs and debuffs in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Once a lonely tauren shaman in a bad Scarlet Crusade-themed transmog set, Josh Myers is now a female dwarf shaman with pigtails who raids as all three specs on a regular basis. He kept the same transmog set, though. I'm doing my best not to be excited for Mists of Pandaria yet. This is partly because we've not even seen a hint of the beta starting yet and thus have a few more months of patch 4.3 to play before MoP comes out. This is also partly due to the fact that my new guild just started heroic Spine of Deathwing attempts, and I'm not sure I'm ever going to look forward to anything ever again. Ever. Even though I'll never be excited for anything ever again, Blizzard has released some juicy new MoP information over the past two weeks, and a good chunk of it pertains to enhancement shaman. If you still have the ability to be excited for things, this something you want to read. If you're also progressing on heroic Spine of Deathwing, you probably still want to read this ... if only to know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Encrypted Text: More rogue poison news from Ghostcrawler
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. Two weeks ago, I asked you to throw out everything you knew about rogue poisons. I was being silly, because I know that would be a lot to ask. Many of us have spent years learning the intricacies of the poison system, studying PPM charts and evaluating our options. Unfortunately, it looks like there was actually no hyperbole in my original request. With the latest round of info we've received, every single poison mechanic in the game will be overhauled in Mists of Pandaria. We already know about the new lethal/non-lethal designations and how we'll be able to have two poisons on both of our weapons at all times. We already know that poisons will be critting for double damage in Mists and that their crit chance will be calculated based on our melee crit rate. These improvements are just what we needed to increase our utility options and to boost crit's viability as a secondary stat. In addition to these sweeping changes to poison crit mechanics, we've learned that poison's hit mechanics are also being revamped.
