06/27/2012 09:55 AMPosted by Rainydays

I'm not trying to rant so don't take this as a hate thread, but I need a question answered...what's the point of pandaria? The rest of the expansions made sense whether you liked them or not...started in vanilla it was after WC3 if you played that...then the dark portal opened so we had to go back there to fight them...then the scourge became an even bigger issue so we fought them in lich king, all of these tied together with the original stories from warcraft. Even cataclysm, even though it's not my favorite kind of makes sense in a way story wise...but then pandaria, I just don't understand how that made sense in any of the story when their main goal was to be an april fools joke not a piece of lore...anyone care to enlighten me?

Mists of Pandaria is sort of getting back to what we did in the original release of World of Warcraft. If you recall (if you were here then), there was no ultimate unified story of "here is the bad guy/gal go kill them". It was more focused on the conflict between the Horde and the Alliance with some additional Azerothian dangers mixed in.

With Mists of Pandaria, we've really wanted to add it in for awhile because the idea of the pandaren evolved over time and became something more. (At one point it was considered for Burning Crusade.)

So, that said, in the expansion, we're sort of going back to our roots of adventure, exploration, and that ongoing conflict between the Horde and the Alliance. Thus, the point of it all. You'll get to explore Pandaria, meet the pandaren and the denizens of that area of the world, and will be embroiled in the not so happy history between the Horde and Alliance.

06/28/2012 02:58 PMPosted by Morgam

Well I do love exploration and adventure.

Who doesn't? ;)

It's my own fault for asking isn't it? ;)

There will be lore. Oh yes, there will be.

This thread got abit off topic, the OP wanted to know the point of the expac. A blue posted and answered it's about getting back to the roots of the horde/ally war, no central bad guy. Sort of how things were in vanilla.

I've leveled to 90, I've found no Halaa's, no wintergrasp/tol borad, no venture bays, I did not do 1 single quest that would flag you for pvp, cuz you were pitted against horde doing a mirror quest to yours. Think that beach quest in twilight highlands. That last part is what i thought we we're going to get alot of, quests that had great reward choices both pve and pvp relate but they flagged you and put you into pvp competition to complete the quests.

Aftering questing through every zone I could count on 1 hand, maybe I'd need a couple fingers from the other, the quests that had direct ally vs horde story to it. The rest is what wow has always been, new factions, that send you out collecting and killing monsters.

If there is a war going on between ally and horde in Pandaria, there must be some island still shrouded in mist and they're all fighting over there.\

I should add, or it hasn't been implemented yet.

Actually, let me address this a bit for you:

First off, we didn't want to force anyone to PvP that doesn't want to PvP. So, our focus is on creating opportunities for those on PvP realms just by the guard changes we hope to implement as well as having solid hubs of activity.

Second off, I don't want to give away too much, but the release of Mists of Pandaria and what you see in beta is just the beginning. Like any expansion we've done before, you can expect a patch (or two etc.) that continue to move things forward. The launch is about learning about Pandaria, what the intrusion of the Horde and Alliance (and their conflict) means for the land and the denizens within it. That would be the "explore" and "adventure" portion I mentioned. It would also seem a bit odd if that was all we focused on in Pandaria given that we don't need to go to a new land for there to be conflict between the two factions, right?