WoW: Mists of Pandaria Developer Q&A

With Blizzard announcing the Mists of Pandaria  WoW expansion at Blizzcon there was a lot of buzz and questions amongst WoW fans. And last night Blizzard held a developer Q&A session allowing World of Warcraft players to ask a variety of questions. Questions ranged from PvP, to talents, raids, Glyphs and more.Here at MMO ATK we have compiled a full rundown of all the questions that were asked during the Q&A session.

  • Players will be able to travel to Pandaria via new quests from Orgrimmar and Stormwind.
    • Pets are being fixed so stats won?t lag behind for several seconds upon logging in or dismounting in patch 5.0
  • Monks will have the same hit cap as e.g. an Arms warrior and their energy regen drives everything they do, so their regen will scale the same as rogues and haste in general will scale their damage by the same percentages.
  • Blizzard is contemplating increased players conquest point caps by 10-15% to encourage world PvP
  • When asked whether the new talent system will work differently in PvP and PvE, Blizzard responded:
    • What we don?t want to do is just launch into having different coefficients and talents and everything for PvP and PvE. That just doubles the size of the game which makes it more complex to balance and harder for players to understand.
  • Leveling from 85-90 will take place on the new Pandaria continent
  • Pandaria will have separate player hubs for Alliance and Horde, no sanctuary with the goal to encourage PvP. AH, Bank and general vendors will be available. Valor, conquest, profession and faction vendors will be scattered around Pandaria.
  • When asked if the new talent system would be expanded past 6 specializing skills, Blizzard responded basically saying no. Response below:
    • We tried a lot of tiers. We were worried at more than 6 that the combinatorial complexity of >729 different variations of talents would be challenging to balance or for players to even comprehend. We want to focus on having fewer awesome talents than many tiers that will force us to dilute individual abilities in the name of balance
  • Guild levels will be increased with new perks. Examples: reduce cost on void storage and transmogrification
  • Pandaria is located south of Azeroth. The exact opposite of Northrend.
  • The account-wide ?Pet Library? feature if successful might be extended to mounts.
  • All 9 MoP dungeons will have Challenge Mode enabled on them. Challenge Mode will most likely be extended to other dungeons and raids if successful
    • 6 dungeons on Pandaria, 3 will be classic heroics (Scholomance and Scarlet Monastery)
    • No plans for any max level, non-heroic dungeons
  • Blizzard not happy with Prime Glyphs, might be removed.
  • Players will gain XP for Pet Battles in a similar way to what players see with gathering professions.
  • Players can engage in pet battle with people near them or through a queuing system.
    • Pet battle invites can be turned off.
  • Poisons are being reworked
    • Rogues will have one damage poison, one utility.
    • We also want to reduce the amount of ramping that rogue DPS requires, such as removing the need for Deadly Poison to stack. (And likewise we want to make Bandit?s Guile less punitive when swapping targets)
  • The starting zone for new Pandaren is located on The Wandering Isle (the turtle). The continent of Pandaria itself is not a turtle, its a piece of land.
  • Asphyxiate, the new Death Knight talent, lasts 5 sec, the same as Strangulate, which it replaces.
  • Existing Relics will turn into gray items that players can vendor
  • Harvest of Life upgrades Drain Life (Drain Life turns into Harvest). Soul Harvest is being removed, but shards passively regen outside of combat or can Drain Soul in combat to replace them. Mortal Coil is the new Death Coil.
  • Water Elemental is a Frost spec spell
  • Blizzard wants World Bosses from Pandaria to be optional in regards to item drops
  • Items will be required to change talents
  • Pandaria is about the size of all 5 of Cataclysms 80-85 zones combined.
  • Pandaren will be able to switch factions or defect once. Official response to the question:
    • Try to snatch the Valor Points from my hand.
  • Enhance ?  Will still have a frequent interrupt that locks out for less time than other interrupts. However, overall we want to reduce the frequency of interrupts and increase their duration so that when you use them is more of a decision.
  • Specs as you know them will still exist. We want the specs (especially for the pure classes) to be more distinct than they are today since some of the signature utility is now available to all members of that class. Specs will contain core rotational mechanics and the tools needed to perform your role. Talents complement that with various forms of utility.
  • Cooking will remain a secondary skill
  • Professions new cap is 600.  No plans for any new professions
  • Passive ability are gained from your specs. We are removing some of the less interesting buffs and debuffs (+bleed damage, armor, 3% damage, resists are all on the chopping block at the moment)
  • PvE scenarios queues are localized from specific spots in the world (where the scenario is located), not in the cities.
  • More Proc weapons in 4.3 raid and more coming
  • Epic turtle mount possible for Pandaren.
  • Spectator mode for pet battle in the works.
  • Assaultable areas that can change factions will be added for World PvP in Pandaria.

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