BlizzCon 2011 Fallout Day 1

Must admit I haven’t planned this post so apologies in advance for the ramble….

Well we got Pandas.Mists of Pandaria will be the next expansion. I love that and am now praying that Blizz give us at least 1 more slot on the character selection screen cos I already have my 10 character slots filled with 1 of each class all at a level where I’ll not be deleting 1 (although if pushed I probably would evict one to get a Pandaren Monk on the roster. Am really surprised they don’t get druids as a class option though as it seems a really good fit for the race. Warriors, hunters, rogues (a bizarre choice but hey), priests, shaman, mages and of course monks are the classes so far.

Talent Changes

Personally I’m not a fan I must admit but I’ll wait and see it in action before saying its a complete failure.It will still end up in optimal selections either for certain specs and/or certain encounters but at least all choices will be viable for all specs. I’ll cover my thoughts on the priest talents tomorrow.

New Old Heroics

In addition to the 8 new dungeons coming in Mists of Pandaria (henceforth to be known as MoP) Scholomance and Scarlet Monastery are getting the heroic treatment. I was concerned at first incase they chose SM Graveyard and SM Armory as quick easy dungeons but boy are we getting a treat. All 4 wings will be made into heroics! with SM Graveyard and SM Cathedral joined together as is the SM Armory and SM Library. This is awesome news as SM was one of my favourite levelling dungeons, even if it was a PITA to get to.

Questing and Leveling

5 more levels, a shame I like leveling;

5 new zones I found the lack of variety in zones dull especially as I hated the 3D environment of Vash’jir. This combined with the Molten Front requirement to complete lots of Hyjal and the shoulder enchant forcing you to do all of Deepholm gave very little variety. Evlyxx hit 85 shortly after entering Twilight Highlands and only doing Hyjal and Uldum (I didnt discover the need for Deepholm until 85!) I see the same happening here but lets pray;

No flight in Pandaria until 90 Awesome will see us explore more at least until they nerf it for our alts;

New artwork for the new zones looks awesome;

Battle Pets

Stupid idea, the biggest stupid idea yet. I hope this is this expansions “Dance Studio” and it won’t waste devs time that could be spent on more zones, heroics, raids, PvP areanas, battlegrounds, bug fixes, anything really. If you want pet battles go play Pokemon. And yes I like my non-combat pets and spend far too much gold on them I don’t want to give them names or send them into battles. Hmm I think you get my viewpoint on that one but just to be sure, its retarded.

Diablo Free

Well if we sign up for 12 months subscriptions it will be included in the price. Genius move to keep subscriber numbers up and cook the books for people who disappear for a few weeks/months when Star Wars The Old Republic/Guild Wars 2/Diablo 3/Rift expansion come out. Also a guaranteed beta entry is a damned fine reason to do it if you’re certain you’ll stay in WoW, which I am.

PvE Scenarios

A new style of group quest that uses the the world, instances and dungeon finder to allocate groups but as you don’t need a tank/healer/DPS set up should be insta queues. This is public questing that has seen great acclaim in other MMOs but perfected. Rifts rifts were great but you still need other players to show up at the right time or their incredibly hard or too easy. I love this idea and if it prioritises your grouping with your server could act as a great tool for finding new guildies too. The new WoW lost so much of its social side when group quests became soloable. Blizz have also stated that they could introduce PvP Scenarios too….

Ranged Weapons

Hunters lose minimum range and melee weapons – silly and awesome!

No more ranged/relic slot – wtf Blizz I want wands!

Wands are main hand weapons – ah what about my staff? Is that my off hand?

Melee weapons can be thrown well at least rogues and warriors can pull mobs from range then

4 choices?

Well at least for druids, with the new lame ass talent system there had to be a way of giving feral DPS and tanking or else feral would have been both.

Spells

Improved spell books with fewer abilities – We have too many so this is good as long as they don’t dumb it down too much;

Rotations Improved – hopefully they mean made more interesting like shadow priests, warlocks and fire mages not dumbed down like frost/arcane mages;

No more trainer visits – they are a pain when you level in the early part of a questing session or in a dungeon but I’m not sure if it was so annoying that they should be removed completely;

That is my views on the news so far. What do you like most about the announcements? What do you like least? Are Pandaren a good thing? Let me know in the comments.