It’s been a while. I always say that lately it seems.
Anyway, a good bit has happened since I last left something of substance here. Including getting a chance to got o Blizzcon and seeing the new Mists of Pandaria in person, hitting up the demo, and watching the class panels.
A lot has already been written across the WoW blogosphere, so I’ll try not to repeat too much of it. Instead here are some interesting upcoming changes that I have noticed, and think will keep me playing even into the next expansion.
Pandaren - Samwise Didier
First up… Pandaren, love them or hate them, they will still have a place in my heart. I remember seeing a lot of artwork by Samwise Didier, one of the penultimate WoW artists on the Blizzard staff, and its focus on the pandaren. I may be mistaken, but I believe that he may have been the creator of the race in the first place. Of course letting the story tellers move it along beyond his art, I still leave him at the top of that group.
There are those who still think that the Pandaren were some “April Fool’s Joke,” yet those also ignore anything you say debunking this, and talk mean to their mothers.
The Pandaren have been around since Warcraft III, in fact Chen Stormstout assisted Rexxar in taking the first steps into a new Horde, only to take a separate path, not to be seen again.
I guess the only other reason that I am a big fan of the Pandaren is the Asian influence that inspires the art. I have been a HUGE fan of Chinese and Japanese art since I was in 8th grade (I’ll even have a hipster moment and say that I was a fan of Japanese art and culture before it was cool). From what I saw at Blizzcon, the environment and artwork of this new expansion is going to be amazing. An entire continent, and even a giant turtle (though I do think of it as a bit silly, but just imagine the size of a lot of things in WoW), covered in beautiful artwork, both architectual, and natural. I thought that I was impressed when I first saw Darnassus when I began playing WoW some 5-6 years ago, but it can’t even light a candle to what I saw in Pandaria.
Well, enough of my babbling, onto another subject. Next up, is the new talent trees. N0w, most of you have already heard of or seen the new trees, and their new “choice” mechanic every 15 levels. It is a huge step away from the 71 talents to choose from back in the old vanilla days. Despite a lot of folks disliking the new path that Blizzard is taking, I am actually a fan of it. Most core abilities are going to be simply given to you, just because you are a specific class/specification combination. I was excited about how they did this initially with Cataclysm, but this goes even further. I guess it is an over simplification of the abilities system, and I am not that big of a fan of not being able to actually hit up your trainer to learn new abilities. However, will be a nice improvement when you have a ton of alts, though that isn’t everybody.
The choices that are available though, seem to fit into their “fun talents” methodology that they have been working towards. It’s just a big change, and change is scary to some people. I am personally a fan of it, as there are a lot of abilities that I have always wanted to have on my Holy Paladin, that I just couldn’t get because it was only available to other specializations. (Hello Repentance, I can’t help it… I’m a supporting type character.) This is going to change come MoP. Now, I do not deny that the EJ guys will eventually find the “right” build, and begin the cookie cutter cycle again; however, I do not believe that it will be a simply cookie cutter build like it used to be. Instead it will end up being a fight-by-fight type of build, where the choices made are depenedant on the situations that you face. This will provide a nice little bit of complexity, and will separate the good players from the great players.
Alright, lastly, though it’s coming out before Mists of Pandaria (in fact it should be released in patch 4.3) is Transmogrification/Void Storage. I literally jumped for joy… ok I didn’t jump, but I was excited, when I read about this. Do you remember me writing about this a while back. Yeah, I’m a bit of a hoarder, and I have lots and lots and lots and lots of stuff in my bank, most of it I will never actually wear because of the stats… but now… oooohhhh now, I will have a hayday with transmogrification. I will be a very poor Pally soon. I have already hit several old instances to scrounge up old gear, gear that I can almost not fit into my bags or my fully sacked bank… all of them Soulbound. How about you? Are you going to be having fun with the new Transmogrifications?
Well, I know it was a rambling hodge podge of topics, but hey, it’s been a while. And with limited resources, you gotta do what you can. Hope to see y’all again.
Illumination 