Early Mists of Pandaria Media Leaked.

[Mortilox]

Fuck yeah, AoE looting. I just hope they implement it correctly with no bullshit limitations like they did with transmogrification.

[Petitssk]

Well, the raid story weren't that bad in Cataclysm. You could see Chogall in many places (Feralas, twilight highland, cataclysm pre-release event), and the other bosses followed specific thematic. Sinestra and Nef have been around for a long time as well.

Same deal with firelands, and we had the molten front quests to go with them. Fanghelm's story fleshed most of the instance already, and the few that weren't presented where hinted. Dragonsoul's bosses were probably the most randoms, but the raid itself was still very well introduced.

There is still room for improvement, but in overall, I think raid story is done much better now than it was back in Wrath or BC day. The raid design however was too linear and bland to feel epic.

Oh, that's true, Firelands did have a bit of that (looking back, I really loved how Lord Ryolith appeared in that one cutscene) and Staghelm is a given. Fireland Dailies were definitely an attempt at fleshing out bosses a little, but I feel that a lot more could be done there since all other bosses were pretty much only mentioned in passing, if at all.

Definitely true for Cho'Gall though, I guess it's a lot easier to flesh out bosses and make them feel connected to their respective questlines when you put them in at the start of the expansion, though Blizzard managed that really well with the Lich King in Northrend, particularly in Icecrown (ICC definitely had the advantage of having its own quest hub associated with it, can't really say the same for DS). Nonetheless, almost all of the other bosses in both WotLK and Cataclysm were just random dudes that appeared for the first time, which is a bit of a pity.

Absolutely agree on the raid design still being rather lacking, particularly DS felt terrible, especially the first half. Could have been epic if we had engaged in actual battle along with NPCs maybe, instead we walk down a road with stationary mobs, kill the big guy, then jump down the maws, walk in circles, kill the mobs, then the big guys. It didn't feel like Wyrmrest or anyone was in danger at any point; even the Hour of Twilight instance did a bitter job at that, for instance with all the Earthen Ring Shamans you worked with in quests being slaughtered on the way down to the temple (though their deaths felt a little weak, I worked with those guys, at the very least give them some lines to go with their untimely demises!).

It's fine, he had no backstory whatsoever. But what matters is he is the only boss apart from Deathwing to have a personality. Everyone else was rather bland!

Agreed, that's also why I would have loved to see more of him. I never really saw Deathwing's personality go beyond much more than being crazy and wanting to destroy the world, though. I might be forgetting about something here, but did he ever want to do anything aside from watching the world burn after his introduction in Cataclysm? I know his lore begins long before that, but hardly anything of that seemed to be touched upon in Cataclysm.

[ringthree]

To be honest, I think it's player's fault for overhyping Cataclysm (and every other mmo lately). What we saw was more of the same, and we got more of the same. I don't know why people were throwing a fit about it.

Ain't that the truth. SWTOR is the most recent example. GW2 is next, but the funny thing is that it looks like (just from personal observations on different forums) that the hype may be burning out before the game is even fucking released. Tera is the next big thing, BG is all in, but it's just the next new thing.

I am actually glad that Blizzard is toning down the hype a bit.

[The Stig]

PvP pet battles are going to be fun and causal, only tracking the number of wins and not the number of losses. When fighting another player, you cannot see the other players name or communicate with them.

Probably no one will care, but this really sucks. I would've love an "e-sport" to be created out of this lol (yes, just like Pokemon). That means now I can't roll in there and dominate and get my name known (unlikely, but you know, that option is there!)

I found Hogara to be most random. I didn't even google her backstory, if any. The first 3 seems justified in that they are supporting Deathwing. Hagara makes me "eh?!". Ultraxion was justified, and Warmaster yayyyyy probably some random cool guy who just got called into action (afterall, why hop into the fight mid-way as Deathwing flies to the Maelstrom?)

[Meresgi]

Fuck yeah, AoE looting. I just hope they implement it correctly with no bullshit limitations like they did with transmogrification.

ib4 if only works on mobs of the same level and type in a 5yrd radius.

[Lordender]

Lol MMOchampion forums are so hilarious with the QQ'ing over the press release, you'd figure for a game people claim to hate so much they'd stop giving Blizzard their money and go elsewhere. I don't think MoP will bring me back to the game but honestly it sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than cataclysm was. Now the question is how much of that stuff will Blizzard deliver on? I remember a lot of stuff from Cata was scrapped over the course of the expansion.

Expansion looks interesting to say the least, I never really understood all the doom and gloom over each new expansion Blizzard releases.

[Correction]

Updated OP with as much media as the board settings will allow. Might create a second thread for the new race stuffs.

[SamanosukeShiva]

wewt, hunter gets a DPS cooldown that allows all 5 pets to go out at once

[Katlan]

lol at there being a Farmville faction

[niwaar]

I'm telling you, they stole from every genre of games.... We get "console"s with Pokemon. We got facebook with Farmville and we got MMOs with Scenarios and Chocobo Raising/Racing. Got to love them Blizzard devs... they think of new stuff all on their own.

I can see it now ... "People still want player housing. I know, I know! Let's give them farmville instead!"

[Meresgi]

And yet it still took them this long to try out public quests even with how great they were in Warhammer.

[niwaar]

And yet it still took them this long to try out public quests even with how great they were in Warhammer.

Where are the "Public Quests"? The only thing remotely like Public Quests in WoW are the holiday events such as the Halloween "Save <insert nub town here>" and the Battle for Brewfest events. You could even say that WoW did them first with the Naxx Event, or in some way the AQ Gate. WoW does these types of events mostly on content launches like Naxx, AQ, Elemental Invasion and the undead attacks on SW Harbor and Orgrimmar. While there was no "reward" for helping out in these events, there are in the holiday events.

If you think Scenarios are WoW's equal to Public Quests you are mistaken. They are more akin to Assault Missions or Tera's mini instances (Sorsha, Fairy Escort, etc).

[Kaylia]

Raid tiers should last roughly four months, with content updates also coming between the larger raid updates. This could mean we would see a patch every two months or so.

It's the only fucking promise I wish they would hold.

[Katlan]

It's the only fucking promise I wish they would hold.

highly doubtful unless they secretly employed a lot more ppl. Who knows, maybe we will be getting 4 boss raid tiers so they can keep up that timeline

[Boyiee]

So the Stonestalon Mountains/Twilight Highlands discrepancies in Garrosh's devlopment weren't just a case of bad writing, but just an indicator as to how irredeemable he is? Not that I mind too much, just somewhat lame how that makes him go from "That Emo-Orc in Gardar" to "Homocidal sociopathic leader that dies in an uprising because he got power hungry". Seems like a bit too much of a set up for what's not exactly the most interesting character development, Zach from Desperate Housewives was more interesting in that regard.

Sure hope that they flesh it out a little, this at least gives them room for a story-relevant string of events throughout the entire expansion, as opposed to "Remember the quests you did three patches ago with the guy you saw the last time three patches ago? You can kill him now, along with 6 other mooks you've never even heard of before".

There was a lot in the press release about how Garrosh has been doing things underneath org and became corrupted. They seem to be working on a lot more than just what happened in cata.

[Kaylia]

A good start to avoid corruption would be to not bring old-god infested scales in the middle of your city.

I wonder how he is going to get corrupted tho. Did someone poison his tea with Mannoroth's blood, or is it going to be something like Ulduar's relic and Old God's shenanigans.

Either way, it's a tragic ending considering his father sacrificed himself after breaking free from the curse. Their lineage deserved a better ending.

[Lordender]

It's the only fucking promise I wish they would hold.

I trust that just as much as "Cataclysm is going to have more raid content than ever before." trolololol.

[niwaar]

It's the only fucking promise I wish they would hold.

If they did that I think its safe to say that a lot of us that have left recently would probably come back. Unfortunately, the raid content that took them 7 months and 6 months to create respectively during this expansion were both extremely lackluster and quickly dull.

The 4 month cycle will only work for players if the content is interesting, while it will only work for developers if it often uses rehashed npc models and areas to create it. To put it simply ... no one actually believes this shit. It just makes them look bad. The last thing we want is a less quality raid product than we have now.

[Guyverarmor]

A good start to avoid corruption would be to not bring old-god infested scales in the middle of your city.

I wonder how he is going to get corrupted tho. Did someone poison his tea with Mannoroth's blood, or is it going to be something like Ulduar's relic and Old God's shenanigans.

Either way, it's a tragic ending considering his father sacrificed himself after breaking free from the curse. Their lineage deserved a better ending.

I hate Garrosh, really do...but damn at the same time, I like how he is being used. I am betting another Old God we haven't seen. They did state
"The Sha" is going to be tied to the Emerald Nightmare...so maybe something to do with that ?

I would love to see Voljin as the new Warchief <3

[Katlan]

The last thing we want is a less quality raid product than we have now.

I can't imagine it getting much worse then FL or DS... or the super epic Deathwing fight /sarcasmoff
those 2 raids were like an all time low for WoW next to the Argent Tourny.

Timeline since Wrath:

Naxx - first big raid of xpac and its a rehash of vanilla content w/ some tweaks. off to a great start here!
Ulduar - awesome (made up for Naxx)
Tourny - are you kidding me? This better not be a preview of things to come
ICC - gating was stupid, but in the end the entire raid was pretty awesome and LK was a good last boss fight
Cata initial raids - Kinda cool, but only decent since there were 3 raids at launch (w/combined were about same # bosses as ICC) <-- don't quote me on that, too lazy to do the math atm
FL - it took em 6+ months to create this shit?
DS - zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz (gonna have it for like 8+ months+)