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World of Warcraft: Mists of Pokemon (and DOTA)!
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Several brand new features will be coming to World of Warcraft when the Mists of Pandaria expansion goes live "when it's ready". MMORPG.com's Joe Sanicky is pretty hyped up on this stuff and has a lot to say about them. Check out Joe's thoughts and then let us know what you think in the comments.
Go ahead, get it out of your system now. Complain how you can already tell this expansion is for the tweens and Asian market (because obviously what brings in the Asian players are environs based on the Orient, right?) and the cute and cuddly feel will be the end of WoW. Don’t worry you aren’t the first and you won’t be the last, but the sentiment will basically be ignored, but please let it run its course sooner rather than later. Done? Keyboard broken yet? Yes? Perfect.
Read more of Joe Sanicky's The WoW Factor: Mists of Pokemon (and DOTA)!.
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Only a small sample of the deadly foes you shall face.
Comments
Yeah well... Pandas.... I'm not hyped with this new race. But the boatload of new stuff does interest me. Even the pokewow could be appealing, something to use my ultra-rare vanity pet on ^_^
Also, they intent on getting the game to lvl 100, so, if their last two idea of expensions wants to be "serious matter" they cant keep their Pandaren idea much longer.
There's really good game coming out on the horizon : SWTOR, TSW, GW2. So if WoW doesnt deliver, I couldnt care less. But I'll keep a subscription anyhow, because I admit it, WoW is fun.
What's a DOTA and MOBA?
I'll not play it because I can't be bothered to invest so much cash to play a game with a monthly fee any more. (I get a couple hours here and there to game and console gaming has picked up in innovation over the last 5 years). I quit back during BC's heyday.
That said; this all looks fine and dandy. How dare a game that gets accussed of stagnation change things all the time.. /shrug
I used to play MMOs like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
So is the MOBA BG played like normal WoW or is it more like LoL with top-down click-fest? Could be interesting...
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
As long as the Pokewow can be completely and totally skipped... zero interest in that.
Blizzard is very, very good at taking what is out there and refining it, eliminating the bad parts, and making something truly polished and well designed...
This gives me hope in their PvE scenarios and re-focus on open-world content.
But, at the same time, it's still all talk at this point and without a release date it's hard to be too excited for MoP at this time.
And I really, really dislike the talent changes (though in fairness, some of the prospects sound quite interesting)
MOBA = Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, a type of team-PvP game where you fight both small AI-controlled units (creeps) and enemy players with the overall goal of taking down all the defensive buildings and destroying the enemy base.
DOTA = Defense of the Ancients, a Warcraft 3 custom map. It was the first well-known MOBA.
I googled the terms and so can you.
Good for you.
Have a cookie.
With so many AAA MMOs on the horizon, I see Blizzard doing what George Lucas did with the later ( chronologically earlier), Star Wars movies: trying to apppeal to a younger demographic and get some new blood to prolong the franchise. Pokemon? Really? Meh to that. I think it just reinforces my hypothesis of Blizzard's intentions with this panda expansion.
To the WoW haters....
If you don't like the game or what they are bringing to it then don't play it. Love it or hate it WoW is a great game. Period. So many players sit on the in game channels all day bitching and whining about how much they hate it. Do the people that enjoy the game a favor and leave the game you hate so much instead of spoiling the game for the ones that love it.
I myself am on a break from wow but am excited to see what the new expansion will bring and will definately return to the game soon. Far too many people take this game too seriously. I applaud Blizzard for creating an expansion that looks as though it will add a great deal more humour into the game.
No flying til max level? So all my expensive flying mounts (when I say expensive, I mean in time invested) and my flying ability that I paid for on 10 characters on just my MAIN server.....gone until my 85's hit 90 and also....no flying on ANY of my toons til 90?
Just one MORE thing for me to not like about this expansion.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
MOBA is not the good terms. Sadly.
Otherwise, good reviews.
The "rage" from mostly non-wow player will have the time to go down.
And they are always going to have some whiners that cry for no reason.
I'm excited to see how the expension really turn out.
Just no flying on the new continent, which is exactly what blizzard did for both BC and Northrend (well til level 77 for NR)
Oh well excuse the f**k out of me. I had no idea that just because this article writer is excited and has positive feelings towards this expansion, that we peasents (and long time Wow and Blizzard fans) were not allowed to voice or even hold a contrary opinion. My apologies Your Majesty. Won't happen again.
Opinions are wonderful things, its too bad you seem to mistake yours for concrete facts.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Think Star Wars wow, with less freedom and more voice acting (not really more story...).
When I first watched the video for Mists of Pandaria I honestly thought this was a joke, and I don't mean that in a nasty way, I really did think this was some kind of clever marketing ploy and that any second now Blizzard are going to show the real thing.
The fact this isn't a joke has left me a tad puzzled. I don't play WoW anymore so on the one hand I don't care as much what they do going forward, although I did tend to pick up the new expansions and resub for a month or two and then move on again. I don't see me picking this expansion up at all, but then maybe I'm not the kind of person Blizzard is targeting. As for the actual expansion itself, I'm sorry but I just cannot see past the Panda's. I get what people are saying about the game already having cows and space-goats and I honestly cannot explain it nor defend it, but my honest gut reaction is: Talking cows yep fine, Talking space goats yep fine, talking Panda's...... WTF! sorry just a stretch too far, and for the life of me I don't know why. I honestly look at them and just have an instinct to laugh at them, and not in a good way.
A part of me thinks they should have introduced two races again, have the cuddly panda's for the kids and the girls, and then some kind of rock hard, serious, nasty looking race for others, might have mitigated some of the hate. And yes I know that panda's are apparantly part of the WoW lore since WC3 etc, but I still can't help but look at them and think 'Really!'.
Anyway, I'm not gonna hate on the expansion seeing as how I don't intend on playing it, it's up to Blizzard what they do moving forward with WoW, I guess if anything it will help cut the remaining ties I had to the game and get me out of the cycle buying new WoW expansions and subbing for a few months. Besides, I'm happy with my current home in Rift and there are some promising titles on the horizon.
Coyote can pull off the snarky attitude in his column. This sad piece of pastiche does not have the snark. It has what I like to call the "jerk."
what is a serious pc gamer?
When a male gamer makes a female Twi'lek avatar he is more serious then a player with a panda avatar?
It's a race people have been asking for every.single.expansion without fail.
Now they get their wish.
This is a bad thing... how?
i only endorse a polished turd if it has a color i like... This one does very much so. I play my games for fun, i like lore and i like it when it fits at least half decent together. And blizzard is good at fitting lore together... Especially considering that the original game did not have much lore at all and that they have built upon that for ever game they released. Sure it is a bit messy here and there and a few retcons have happend. But they are still not as bad as most comic companies or people writing tv-series so it is for me cheap entertainment.
This have been a good conversation
I don't consider myself a "WoW hater". I totally agree that Blizzard made a great game; it drew an incredible number of gamers into MMORPGs. Blizzard did a lot of things right, and it showed in the numbers.
The problem, from my persective, is that Blizzard, and WoW in particular, have stalled. The complaints about lack of innovation are spot-on. Nothing says that more than the fact that Blizzard has stuck to adding expansions to WoW rather than trying for a new and innovative MMO. They are going to drive this vehicle until it falls apart from the rust, and, well, the rust is starting to show, even under the new coats of paint. That is contributing to the stagnation in the industry; other companies are afraid to take chances simply because they look at WoW's numbers and say, "well, that must be what works, we'll do more of the same".
One specific example. I stopped playing WoW years ago, and have only come back for one or two month subscriptions every year to so, just to see what has changed. I have no interest in getting back in for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest is: it's just too much work. Every expansion raises the level cap, which means that it's that much more work for me to get up to the new areas, even with the XP boost.
How does that attract new players or "inactive" players like myself? It doesn't. It helps keep existing players, but does nothing to bring in new players. But that's the whole story of WoW over the last few years: do everything possible to hang on to the die-hards, and forget the new players and the disaffected former players. And Blizzard is surprised that subs have stalled?
One easy way to make it so that new content does not distance new players and previous players: kill the leveling system (which has been a ball and chain holding back RPGs in my opinion) and replace it with a flat skilling system, and make a lot more content available earlier in the game. But that would be innovation, and it would require literally designing a whole new MMORPG from the ground up, and as long as the WoW machine is still generating money, Blizzard won't even think about it.
So we get more expansions, where we get to kill level [last expansion max level + 5] boars, so that we can get swords with [last expanions max DPS + 10%] DPS. Oh wait, but with a Panda instead of a Tauren! No thanks.
This is a well written article. It's got me excited so much I too will use an ardent amount of exclamation points!!!!!!!!!
Keep em coming.
World of Warcraft has finally jumped the shark. I thought this was some kind of joke, but they really have slapped their original fanbase in the face with this one. I am not going to complain, because it is obvious the direction World of Warcraft is taking is the stay-at-home mom and the younger kids. My son at age 11 would enjoy this expansion. If a fourteen year old boy would think this expansion idea is 'immature' what does that say about us 36 year olds? Hey at least it hammered the final nails in the coffin for my old account ever getting activated again.
[Mod Edit]
Thirty years of gaming experience...not sure if I should be proud of that
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