Mists of Pandaria: Jade Forest Preview and News Round Up

geposted 26.03.2012 um 20:15 von perculia

Press Eventupdated our talent calculatorScholomanceScarlet MonasteryRagefire ChasmAlliance Cutscene
"We have swept the wreckage for days, Your Majesty. There is no sign of Admiral Taylor or his ships."

"Five hundred ships at my disposal, yet the one that holds the key to the kingdom is missing. How can this be?"

"...west of the planned rendezvous...Horde airfleet......casualties! ...Thick fog bank to provide cover...retreat...uncharted land...hostile creatures. But the White Pawn is accounted for. Repeat: the White Pawn is safe."

"Did you hear? They're safe somewhere!"

"......immediate danger! Reuqesting rescue, requesting - "

"Sir, we can have the entirety of the seventh fleet on the scene within the month--"

"No time! We'll send a small team immediately. An elite force. Rescue the survivors, AND their precious cargo! You, meet up with Commander Nightwind at the harbor, immediately. Once the White Pawn is recovered, the full might of our navy can engage the Horde. On OUR terms."Alliance Quest HubHorde Quest HubTemple of the Jade SerpentBlue PostsMarch 26 Hotfixes

Blizzard Entertainment

March 26

Dungeons and Raids
Dragon Soul
The Madness of Deathwing
will no longer prematurely spike up to 100 stacks if players damage the Armtentakels and Schwingententakels very quickly.

Items
Scroll of Resurrection outfit items designated for healers no longer have Strength.

Quests
The deprecated quests Keannas Wille and The Shattered Blade are now removed from quest logs upon login.

UI
Fixed a bug that locked some Mobile Armory users into Away status in-game.

Zandalari and the Mogu

Wryxian

Thousands of years ago, when the Zandalari and the Mogu boasted the most powerful empires in Azeroth, the Zandalari were actually allied with the Mogu. So when the Pandaren revolted against the Mogu, of course the Zandalari displayed their allegiance to their Mogu friends by attacking the embryonic Pandaren empire. Overcoming this threat was to be one of the Pandaren empire's first tests of strength.

After the passing of so many thousands of years, after the mists had covered Pandaria for so long — keeping ancient threats like the Zandalari at bay — Pandaren children have now come to see the mythological Zandalari somewhat like our children see bogeymen. Scary enough to ensure compliance with the instructions and requests of parents, but at the end of the day, not the kind of threat you ever really see with your own eyes and in your own backyard... right?
The place I come from is called New Zealand, and that is how it is known around the entire world. I also call myself a New Zealander, much like the Pandarens of Pandaria. However, the original inhabitants of the place I call New Zealand called (and still call) the exact same place Aotearoa. A place does not necessarily have just one name, and often the name to which a place is referred is a matter of perspective. :)
The misty shrouds that the last Pandaren Emperor used to protect Pandaria from the demonic jeopardy that threatened Azeroth have done a particularly good job, for no troll has been seen in Pandaria for over 10,000 years. No wonder the Zandalari seem like nothing more than freakish figures of fiction to many Pandaren.

Imagine the Pandaren's surprise when the mists collapse and Pandaria's lush forests and cloud-ringed mountains are once more threatened by the ancient Zandalari menace that they had come to see as nothing more than scary savages in some superstitious stories.
So why would the Pandaren accept trolls as allies, with the Horde.

Um... after 10,000 years and hundreds of generations how do the living Zandalari even have any knowledge of Mogu or Pandaria?And, also, if Pandaria was not shrouded before then, shouldn't some Kaldorei records include some mentions of a now missing continent?Alright, alright, got me there... I just meant, "we" haven't heard/seen a single thing. And I guess no expeditions were sent over there in the meantime either? ;) Or maybe they have, and everything that was (or wasn't) found out about is in one of those unreadable books... *starts to get entangled in own thought threads*Warlock Tanks

Ghostcrawler

Just to make our intent clear, the Glyph of Demon Hunting isn't intended to turn Demonology warlocks into a tanking spec. You won't be able to queue as a tank for Dungeon Finder for instance and won't have the survivability or tools of say a Protection paladin.

Historically, warlocks felt tankier than other casters and could even off-tank some encounters. We have made an effort in Mists to recapture some of that flavor. A warlock with this glyph should feel like they are about as effective tanking as an Arms warrior who pulls out a shield and swaps to Defensive Stance, or a Feral druid who goes into Bear form. You might be able to off-tank adds or pick up an actual boss for a short period of time if the tank goes down.

To make warlocks an actual tank would take more significant changes. For example, we want tanks to have to pick up separate tanking gear than their DPS gear (this is even true of druids) and want tanks to have to give up some of their DPS potential in exchange for their survivability. In short, it needs to be a commitment, and that's the sort of thing that needs larger gameplay changes than just a glyph.

That shouldn't stop the glyph of Demon Hunting from being fun though. As you can probably tell, we are trying to make even the major glyphs more about character customization and fun.

Item Squish

Nethaera

The way you “demand” an item squish is by testing, talking and sharing your constructive feedback with us here. We realize that there are players on both sides of the fence on this issue and we want to be able to evaluate the comfort level for moving forward with the possibility before we actually do anything more (should we feel it’s necessary.) Essentially, we want players to start expecting it rather than fearing it. While we stand 100% behind the new talent changes, we also recognize that they may be a bit controversial. We thought it would make sense to first have everyone try out the new talent model for the expansion before we tried doing any item squishes. We don’t want a returning player to not only have to relearn their class because of these big talent changes, but also to have to get used to doing lower damage. That’s a lot of change to take in at once. As we mentioned, we had the squish all in and working, but seeing those small numbers felt odd to us – and we knew exactly what to expect. For a player not knowing what to expect, it might feel downright alien and not very “ WoW like” which is not a good experience with which to welcome a player to a new expansion. We know that veterans are ready and willing to take on whatever gets thrown their way, but for others, we don’t want to completely overwhelm them if we can avoid it.

Again, we welcome constructive feedback and discussion and we’ll continue to evaluate the thoughts of the community along with evaluate our own testing to see where we end up.Just to follow-up a bit and so that you're aware we're still following this thread:

As we said in the original blog, we don’t want anyone to reject the idea of an item squish solely because they enjoy soloing old content. There are other solutions to that problem, if in fact it becomes a problem.

The primary motivation behind an item squish is to make the numbers more readable for players. It would have almost no balance implications. There are however some programming implications. It’s easy to get bogged down into technical details quickly, but many of the numbers in WoW have a cap of two billion. There are cases where we already have gotten close to that cap, with which many of you are probably already familiar. We already had to do some work in Cataclysm to increase the gold cap (because gold is stored in the game as copper). We have already had some bosses, such as Flame Leviathan, with health of over one billion. We have already had fights in the game where players could hit the threat cap. All of these problems have solutions, but they aren’t free solutions, and focusing programmer time on fixing them means less time for other features. We think we will be fine for Mists of Pandaria, but we are going to have to consider those solutions soon after.

European MoP Beta Forums

Wryxian

At the moment we're looking into adding a further set of Mists of Pandaria beta forums right here, as it appears it won't be quite as easy to replicate the beta forums of previous expansions. We'll provide more information as and when we can.
You could let us use the american ones.

I hope you understand this and find a way to resolve this tech issue so we can post on the American beta forums.lotDuring the WotLK and Cata Closed Beta, it was possible to post with the new characters you made on the beta servers..European Bug Reports

Wryxian

Well, as I've mentioned elsewhere, we're looking into opening more beta forums here. One of these might be "Beta Bug Reports" which our US-based QA team would gather bugs from.
Any beta-specific forums we open here would most likely be restricted to be posted in only by beta testers. Which, of course, is going to become a lot of people as our invitation system progresses. The forums would still be readable by non-beta testers, though, like they are in North America.

So, here's the new Beta Bug Reports forum for EU:
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/3946366/

Bug reports need to be made in English so our US-based QA team can read them.

Fun Minor Glyphs

Wryxian

t's been relatively straightforward to add glyphs to druids for new shape-shifting models, as basically we just change what game model the druid shape-shifts into.

Though it isn't quite this easy for other classes, we do have a number of minor glyphs that should give comparably fun options for other classes. :)

New Moonkin Form

Wryxian

We hope the Glyph of Stars will help you here.

Don't take the owlbears away, they're cute! <3

I think they deserve a revamp, though, same as cats and bears got.

Updated Scholomance

Wryxian

I loved old Deadmines, but after you "updated" it I almost never play it. I now fear the same could happen to Scarlet monestary which today is one of my favorite places when leveling alts. The new Shadowfang keep is however okay though, but I still miss the old version.

A boss? From what I read about the revamp, it sounded more like she's a quest giver/companion in that dungeon :/ I hope "boss fight" doesn't mean we kill her.Green Warlock Fire

Wryxian

*casts curse of forum thread resurrection*

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. :)
I'm not properly documentated, could anyone be more specific and detailed... What are people complaining about now?

MoP Graphics

Wryxian

There are actually quite a lot of graphic engine improvements in Mists of Pandaria, however for the most part they are subtle. For example, improved shadowing, blending and enhancements to the fog effect.

Amongst the large list of information we hope to share with you is included a list of the new graphic engine improvements with some before and after screenshots to highlight what each one brings to the game.

Each one might be subtle but as a whole they bring an improved visual appearance to the game. :)

Kommentare

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Kommentar von deathbyteCan't wait to see the other minor glyphs for the other classes, druid ones look awesome alreadyKommentar von pewpewxAWESOME!
*Sparkly Eyes*Kommentar von Br0thaGood job on the screenshot. THEY ARE AWSOME.
But they also make me want to play MoP asap. Can't wait grrrrr.Kommentar von 479137This post was from a user who has deleted their account.Kommentar von BahamutBBobUm... after 10,000 years and hundreds of generations how do the living Zandalari even have any knowledge of Mogu or Pandaria?
Very good record keeping, perhaps? :)
Kommentar von AkimboYojimboAdmiral Taylor? Is someone moving up in the world?Kommentar von InterestBurning Blood will no longer prematurely spike up to 100 stacks if players damage the Arm Tentacles and Wing Tentacles very quickly.Kommentar von DoctorLockWas looking forward to Warlock Tanking =[Kommentar von 970342This post was from a user who has deleted their account.Kommentar von nik666Is that a talbuk on screenshot 45?Kommentar von OptimusJWait, what? SI:7 are now nice guys? Alliance QQ messed the lore at this point?Kommentar von AdoxeIsn't that human female in the picture wearing a Kul Tiras tabard?Kommentar von OverZealousSo, troll instances. Zul'Zandalari, I bet.Kommentar von kerstmangangThe cutscene is the intro of the lvl85 to pandaria, not monk onlyKommentar von matheus314What is Vanessa VanCleef's lost sister doing in the cutscene?

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