spend their time brewing beer and fronting
international wildlife conservation
campaigns. Players who roll a new
Pandaren character start off as a third
faction. They’ll find themselves at a fluffy
crossroads at Level 10, where they must
choose bet ween aligning with either Horde
or Alliance.
Pandaria is split into five zones; you’ll be
galumphing through the Jade Forest, the
Kun-Lai Summit, and the Valley of the
Four Winds during your time in Pandaria.
The expansion’s Pandarens aren’t imbued
with the knockabout silliness you’d expect
from a kung fu panda. Instead, they’re a
measured, insightful race, and Blizzard
avoids playing the furballs for laughs so as
not to piss off the very country they’re
trying to court: China has rigid guidelines
on how the fluffy treasures can be
represented. It creates a slightly jarring
effect that leaves Pandaria feeling more
sober than you might expect, even with
a gigantic brewery acting as one of
the continent’s major dungeons.
The continent uses space
effectively: Horde and
Alliance characters who pop
over on either boats or zeppelins
will find themselves dropped at
opposite ends of the same sector.
Being able to see your mortal enemies on
the other side of a treeline will, Blizzard
hopes, spark the kind of animosity that
future patches will escalate. But the most
creative new landmass isn’t in Pandaria
itself—it’s the Pandaren starting zone.
The Wandering Isle is a set of villages,
hills, and lakes situated on the back of a
gently floating turtle. It’s home to all fresh
Pandarens, curious enough about the
outside world to hitch a lift on the panda
hopes, spark the kind of animosity that
future patches will escalate. But the most
creative new landmass isn’t in Pandaria
d I
hills, and lakes situated on the back of a
gently floating turtle. It’s home to all fresh
“Quick! To the booze!”
Pandas love the pub.
version of public transport. I’d chosen to
make my man-panda a Monk. Monks are
Mists of Pandaria’s new class choice—the
only one in the expansion—and they chime
well with the race’s eastern aesthetics.
Monks balance three resources. Chi acts
as mana and lets me deliver my panda’s
punchy powers. Complete certain moves,
and you’re awarded with pips of light and
dark energy, the fuel for different types of
attacks. It leads to a nice rhythmic combat
style: I’d jab an enemy a few times,
exhausting my chi but filling my boots with
light energy, then let fly with a tougher,
energy-using thwack. That rhythm is
compounded by the lack of an auto-attack:
your opponent.
a dust-up, you’ll need to be
your opponent.
Blizzard name-checked Street Fighter as
an influence in the monk’s fighting style,
but where the difference between a Zangief
and a Chun-Li is obvious in that game, it’s
harder to see where the Monk slots into the
pantheon of Wo W classes. At BlizzCon,
Blizzard suggested that the Monk was a
melee scrapper, but could be press-ganged
into bot-absorbing damage and fixing fluffy
boo-boos while still laying down the hurt.
But the class’s stats are of particular concern
to fans—with certain core attributes
becoming useless in the proposed character
sheet—leading the developers to state that
the class is still at an early stage and is
subject to severe alteration. Auto-attack, in
particular, seems a fractious issue internally.
Pandaria is a largely
peaceful place—that
is, until you turn up.
Don’t be surprised if the next time you see
these pandas, they’ll be punching people
without provocation.
Don’t be surprised if the next time you see
these pandas, they’ll be punching people
without provocation.
com
www.pcgamer.com
Expanding Azeroth
The introduction of a brand-new slab of
earth is Blizzard’s tried-and-tested
approach to Wo W expansions,
although Cataclysm took the route of
refining the existing world. Street
explains, “By splitting Cataclysm up as
we did, we were able to get really diverse
environments. But at the same time, it felt
less like a massively multiplayer world and
