World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Announced

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Blizzard announced a new expansion pack to the World of Warcraft franchise at Blizzcon on Friday. Mists of Pandaria will incorporate many new changes, tweaks and features. A release date has not been announced.
 
I have been following this a bit since yesterday. I'm curious how they are going to get past the panda issues with China.

That said, I killed my account back in July. This isn't quite enough to make me reup. Oh well...
 
This expansion is useless, based off.....Pandas? Mini Pets fighting?......their target audience is now officially the Hello Kitty crowd.....
 
pokemon and pandas... i think they have clearly announced who their demographic is now
 
KleeziE said:
pokemon and pandas... i think they have clearly announced who their demographic is now
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WoW players? Majority of the "Pokemon" fan base is in their 20s now. No coincidence that the average MMO player is 23 or 24.
 
Ugh. This expansion is the absolute worst intersection of JRPGs, Asian gaming culture, and the watering-down of a once great franchise, all in a pitiful attempt to cater WoW to the masses.

This game is nothing like it was at the end of Burning Crusade and the launch of Lich King. After 4 years of fairly hardcore raiding, I think I'm done with WoW, and probably MMOs in general. Call it a mix of pandas, burnout, and finally growing up.
 
The put the whole Panda and China thing to rest for once and all ... it's an urban myth. For those that don't know ... there are some ( small group of emo tweeners ) that think for some weird / odd reason that China has outlawed the use of Panda's commercially. This is just not true. Not sure where the rumor started but it's been put to rest many many times and keeps popping back up by ignorant people.

There are a billion free 2 play games over in China, 1/2 of which feature playable and or Panda themed back drops. There are also many hundreds upon hundreds of companies from clothing to food, education, music, game shows, etc etc, even the Chinese government is on on it that use Panda's in one form or another.

Every time I see someone wig out over this I just roll my eyes.

At any rate, Panda's will be a cool addition to World of Warcraft. Anything to get away from more of the same ol' same. If anything, the Chinese will eat this new expansion up like hot-cakes not that already don't love WoW. Also, the New class being able to be a healer, tank and melee class will no doubt help 5 mans get qued much much much faster as now they will add a BILLION tanks and healers to the game overnight.
 
mt2e said:
This expansion is useless, based off.....Pandas? Mini Pets fighting?......their target audience is now officially the Hello Kitty crowd.....
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No its not, go read up on it and you'll see they talk about how they spent so much time remaking the old world they didn't do enough for end game and have stated this one will focus alot more on end game. Hoping this one keeps players interested for more than a month like cata did. Not that it mattersm unless swtor totallly bombs im not going back to wow.

And wtf is wrong with pokemon, I still think the pokemon games are fun to play lol.
 
Makes sense. Their subscriber base is shrinking in US/Euro and growing in China/Asia. Makes sense from a business perspective to take advantage of that, and pandas are held in high regard in Asia.
 
Ragenrok said:
And wtf is wrong with pokemon, I still think the pokemon games are fun to play lol.
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Are you 13? Just a question not a flame!

Raise level cap for X time - Fail
New abilities for the 5 "new" levels - Fail
New Race = Fail (why not give us new races for free, same frame different skin != new expansion worthy)
New world = Just means someone was getting bored but i guess when you rake in $14.99 x 11million a month gotta have those programs do something

Pet's fighting really what is this battle royal pokemon style? While I do love my squirtle, I'm not playing wow to play pokemon.

I'm glad their are new games on the horizon that can soak up the time I'm losing with WoW. Battlefield 3 is downloaded and primed to take over the time between 11pm and 3am. Thanks Blizzard for giving up, the ride was fun but the end result is something like we've seen happen to other MMO's it's losing luster and we can tell by the lack of interest you take in producing the product.

/rant off
 
canna said:
Makes sense. Their subscriber base is shrinking in US/Euro and growing in China/Asia. Makes sense from a business perspective to take advantage of that, and pandas are held in high regard in Asia.
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Do you have facts to back that up? Me and an ex-coworker were watching some of the livestream yesterday (he purchased the virtual ticket), and that was a question we had. I wonder what the high end sponsored raiding guilds feel about this move. Not that I play wow, but I would love to hear what some of those guys think about this new direction they are going in.
 
Blizzard themselves have said they've lost around 800,000 subscribers. They also expected to lose more. I read something not long ago that that number is now over 1.1 million users and slowly falling. Many experts in this area sounded off and agreed as to the why and how which echoed with Blizzard explanation of it all being "content" related. i.e., they mis-judged, again, their subscribers appetite for content and simply did not provide enough. You can go and google this yourself and get the exact details if you wish. Blizzard then said they would quickly move to remedy this and provide more content, this xpac and next.

What they really ended doing was actually very clever. They spent their time and dollars very smarty as to add in lots of virtual "msg" to make you full / give you filler. They are adding in raid helper, 5 man challenges now, 3 and 5 man pve group quests ( forgive me if I have some of this wrong ) the pet battles that have already been mentioned here and I am sure a few other things I might have missed. If you think about it, they've basically structured most of their new features that act as stop-gap measures in-between raiding. At least that's my take on it. This way, people have something to do when they aren't raiding. They still will only provide the same amount of end game raids as before. I could be wrong but to me it's more of a fill in the cracks approach instead of giving us additional 10 / 25 man raids which I'm convinced they should still do.
 
Way to go Blizzard... now how about you fucking release those other Starcraft expansions already... and yes I realize different departments within Blizzard.
 
eqtitan said:
Pet's fighting really what is this battle royal pokemon style? While I do love my squirtle, I'm not playing wow to play pokemon.
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I would be shocked if they made the pet fighting feature a mandatory activity, so you should be fine.
 
fattypants said:
Pokemon + more grinding. I think they've given up.
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ON the contrary, they want to break new ground, its just not the same type of ground as the original playerbase. Its obvious they want to make it more kid friendly, and honestly i get it. Im sure they feel alot of their darker energies could be spent on DIII and presumably Titan. Enjoy it or move on. I will be moving on.
 
dumbest.shit.ever... Cata lasted me all of 3 months, this won't even be a purchase, lol.
 
I played wow until it started to feel like homework, looks like its just getting worse.
 
Great news as this means we might get Warcraft 4 within the next 5 years? I can dream can't I? ;)

Just throw out all of WoW and possible W3 and make a W4 like S2.
 
I'll probably buy it just to check it out, but will end up quitting within a couple months just like I did with Cata.

Westernesse said:
Great news as this means we might get Warcraft 4 within the next 5 years? I can dream can't I? ;)

Just throw out all of WoW and possible W3 and make a W4 like S2.
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I'd loveeeee to see WC4! I say they should work on that once D3 comes out...so yea, about 5 years lol
 
The outdoor PvE stuff sounds like it takes some queues from Rift. When I cancelled our 2 accounts I put Rift as the reason.
 
Also there was rumor about them annoucing some info on Titan. Has this happened or was this expansion the "big news"?
 
Mist of the Bakery? Must be all the yeast.

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I was hoping they would stop releasing expansions so I could finally play for fun at my own pace without constantly being hassled to "keep up" with the crowd. The Pandaren are a pretty cool race, though.
 
westrock2000 said:
Also there was rumor about them annoucing some info on Titan. Has this happened or was this expansion the "big news"?
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They explicitly said they would not be talking about Titan a few weeks back, so no. Maybe next year.
 
Well this is the final nail in the coffin for this game... Time to move on to Diablo 3 anyhow...
 
I actually reinstalled Final Fantasy 14 (The MMO) recently after after a year long break from my 3 days of playing when it came out. I wanted to to play a game that was actually designed from the ground up to suck, not something that has been shaped into suck over time. And at least Sony wised up to the fact that you shouldn't charge for suck, most of these companies are still charging $15 a month for suck.
 
Hate to burst some peoples bubbles but just because you may not play doesn't mean the game is doomed.
 
Hulahoops said:
Hate to burst some peoples bubbles but just because you may not play doesn't mean the game is doomed.
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The game is not doomed in strict sense but its quality is going down, in fact I'm not surprised by this because everything is successful only limited time, why WoW should be exception. I think blizz already added to the game everything that was interesting and there is nothing else to improve, it was great fun...cya, That's how I feel about wow, everyone played it so much that many players are quitting because they are getting rid of it, there is nothing hard to understand this.
 
Hulahoops said:
Hate to burst some peoples bubbles but just because you may not play doesn't mean the game is doomed.
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7 years ago, WoW was made for adults who enjoyed traditional MMOs such as Everquest and RuneScape, as well as the Blizzard franchises of Diablo and Warcraft. The game was challenging, it was progression-oriented, content was plentiful, and server communities were healthy.

Today, WoW is geared towards the Call of Duty generation, aka children. It is not challenging, content is scarce and buggy, server communities are dead, and everything is made for the "20 minute attention span" crowd. Everyone has a sense of entitlement, no one wants to put forth effort, and Blizzard is continuing to simplify the game further and further in the name of "new players."

The whole WoW debate is simply the traditional "old school gamers vs. new school gamers" war. 7 years ago WoW was an old-schooler haven. Activision-Blizzard has realized the new-schoolers have more money (or rather their parents have more money), and so they have shifted the game's target audience.

World of Warcraft is far from doomed. Quite the contrary, it's going to be more successful than ever once they finish the transition of catering to the rich 20-minute crowd. It is, however, dead to the original market; it has taken a 180 degree turn in its target market, and us old guys don't like the new WoW. I'm certain that Blizzard knew that sacrifices would have to be made in order to take WoW to the next level of success. We are the casualties of taking WoW truly mainstream.

Do I hate Blizzard for doing this? No. They are a business and their first and foremost goal is to make money. It's just that I'm not going to keep playing a game that's nothing like it was 7 years ago, and I no longer enjoy. There's no hatred, resentment, or bursting of bubbles. The real gamers are simply moving on, and voicing the reasons for doing so on our way out the door.
 
People have pretty much complained about every expansion so far. WoW's player base is legendary for complaining. If the color of a spell gets changed their forums erupt with "I quit". Generally the people who complain most either don't play any more, or are constantly leaving for the flavor of the month. Rift, Star Wars, Guild Wars, etc. Sadly many of them come crawling back.
 
PRIME1 said:
People have pretty much complained about every expansion so far. WoW's player base is legendary for complaining. If the color of a spell gets changed their forums erupt with "I quit". Generally the people who complain most either don't play any more, or are constantly leaving for the flavor of the month. Rift, Star Wars, Guild Wars, etc. Sadly many of them come crawling back.
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I played 4-6hours a day everyday when it came out and now I'm down to about 1 day a week for 30min, random queues sucks, people, who don't take time to learn a class suck, not getting my monies worth anymore, sucks!

Thank God BF3 is coming out in 19+ hours downloaded and ready to rock!
 
Heh I think it's actually going to be a good expansion. Number 1 reason is, it really sounds like the focus is going to be getting the war back into world of warcraft.

While it's called Mists of Pandaria, and I don't mind all the side games that they are adding, cause honestly Cata's end game, and lack of anything fun to do outside of raiding and PVP pretty much killed it for me (Fireland dailies were only fun for the first few days...), This expansion also should be called "Alliance and Horde throwdown!" The Episcenter of what Warcraft is about is Horde vs Alliance, While they announced this xpac as no new "Master" evil the true enemy for this expansion could straight up be the opposing faction.

THAT intrests me greatly....
 
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