Blizzard had two things to say at last week's Mists of Pandaria showcase. The first was that the Pandaren and their lost island haven't materialised out of nowhere. “We've been talking about pandas for so long it's borderline crazy”, says World of Warcraft producer John Lagrave. “We look at the story we're trying to tell in Mists of Pandaria and it isn't a left turn. We wanted to add in a new race, and we wanted to add in a new class. We wanted to tell the story of the wandering pandas. We don't want to tell you anything until we're ready to reveal, but we've been chewing on pandas for a long, long time.”
For the dedicated WoW player, however, where the pandas came from is of less interest than what they're going to bring to the game. The second thing that Blizzard wanted to stress is that they're listening to the community, particularly with regards to Cataclysm's weaknesses. “One thing that we know we didn't do well with Cataclysm was create enough endgame level 85 content” explains lead content designer Cory Stockton. “I think people were expecting a lot of new stuff and they got to 85 and they got more raids and more dungeons and more item levels, which is very similar to what we'd delivered with [Wrath of the Lich King's] Northrend.”
Blizzard are taking this complaint seriously, and one of the most exciting things about the expansion is how much variety is being injected into the endgame. Getting a character to max level in WoW will no longer necessarily mean a series of take-it-or-leave it raids: if you'd rather solo your way through evolving PvE content, gather lore, or start a farm, you can do that too.
Revamped Dailies
Daily quests are being used extensively as the basis for Mists of Pandaria's endgame, with Cory Stockton claiming that the expansion will include between 120 and 150 quests at level 90. Many of these are clustered around the Golden Lotus faction in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. The Golden Lotus are priests and warriors that defend a familiar-looking Great Wall against the corrupted mantid, and their quests are based on Cataclysm's Molten Front zone. “Molten Front was a big kind of experiment,” Stockton explains. “We learned a lot from it.”
It'll take a while to earn the Golden Lotus' trust, but the rewards for earning reputation are much more substantial - the quests you can go on and the Golden Lotus' fortress will change substantially as you rank up. “More people show up there for you,” says Stockton “the dungeon that you go into - a whole other wing opens up when you earn revered, and that whole wing is full of whole separate quests. It's not just 'oh I'm revered, I got a tabard.' It's 'I'm revered, I have new content to do.'”
This new content will, understandably, be aimed at solo players - but the rewards for multi-stage daily missions can be shared with players at different points on the reputation scale. “When you kill a boss everyone in the area gets credit.” Stockton says. “If you come in and they're on step 4 of the 5 part thing, but you're there for 4 and 5 you'll get credit. The idea is to not make it feel like if you did do it in a group it was a penalty.”
Scenarios
WoW's Dungeon and Raid Finder queuing systems have taken the stress out of finding other players for group content - but as yet there's been no comparably easy way to find allies for open-world PvE. Scenarios - phased group content that is encountered in the wild - are a way of bridging that gap.
Finding an NPC in need - on Pandaria, these will chiefly be wandering Brewmasters - can trigger a series of rolling objectives within a phased-out version of the zone. That means that, as in an instance, players who aren't in your group won't be able to see what's going on: but it does allow Blizzard to be more creative with their encounter design.
One scenario sees you putting out fires in a camp under attack before battling the invading saurok - savage lizardmen created by the evil mogu - back to a Pandaren temple, where their leader is causing havok. We saw images of the saurok climbing buildings and tearing down architecture, set pieces that weren't possible through the old system.
Another major feature of scenarios is the lack of a need for a balanced group. You'll still be able to queue to join a scenario in progress, but it doesn't matter what class you are. While the initial scenarios will all be for five players, Blizzard envisage expanding this in the future - so freeform raid-scale battles are a possibility.
