Are you planning on rolling a pandaren? Or a monk? (Or a pandaren monk?) Are you going to set forth and explore Pandaria? Try to get a server-first level 90 character? Craft like a fiend? Roleplay your heart out?

Leave a comment below and let the world know!

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Theramore’s Fall was, quite honestly, the one scenario I was not looking forward to. I knew what had to happen (the Horde destroying it, naturally), but I didn’t know how. I didn’t want to know how. I had been to Theramore only once or twice as a little Alliance character. I had seen Jaina high in her tower, and I remembered thinking how amazing it was that the Alliance maintained a city so close to Horde territory. I know what it meant to other Alliance members, and I knew what it meant to me. Knowing that I had to help destroy it was ridiculously painful for me. Little did I know how that would actually come about.

Before I continue, I would just like to start off by saying that when it comes to Theramore’s Fall, I am painfully lore-ignorant. I have not read Jaina Proudmoore: Tides of War, although I know I should. It’s on my “To Be Read” list and will be read once I’m done with the book I’m currently reading. However, it’s important that I say this now because, when I loaded into Theramore, I legitimately had no idea what was going on, nor would anybody else who hasn’t read the appropriate tie-in. The Horde version, at least, has no intro video, so you come into it going “wait, why are we we here? What’s the purpose of this?”

So how does the Horde version of this go, you may ask? Well, I’ll tell you.

The Horde version begins on a ship, and brief dialogue (that most people don’t bother to pay attention to; I can’t help but feel like this is a flaw in the design) reveals a summary of what is going on:

This is seriously all the Horde gets as an explanation as to why you’re there.

I really have to confess that this bugs me. I mean, I know our scenario takes place before the Alliance version, but that’s legitimately all we get as an explanation. I mean, this doesn’t explain a damn thing. Why are we trying to lay siege to Theramore? What does Garrosh honestly hope to accomplish by laying siege to it in the first place? It isn’t as though Theramore is in the middle of an area loaded up with resources the Horde can use. It’s out in Dustwallow Marsh, for crying out loud. The only resource I can think of is food, and the Horde has plenty of that given the surplus of boars out in Durotar. So, really, what is the point? For that matter, who is this spy? Why is this the first we’re hearing of him?

….as we can see, I like explanations.

Anyhow, from the Horde ship, you and your two other party members advance onto the docks, rigging barrels of powder to explode on Theramore’s own ships and happily slaughtering the Alliance crew as you go. The captains are the toughest crew members on each of these ships. A couple are easily bypassed, but others are not and may aggro if you get too close to the stairs. Once you visit all six ships and rig their powder barrels, Blastmaster Sparkfuse lights them up, the ships are on fire, and the Alliance, well, knows you’re still there.

Your next task is to slaughter even more Alliance troops, and kill Baldruc (the Theramore flightmaster) and his gryphons, effectively preventing further departure from Theramore. Be mindful of the Arcanist mobs from this point on as they will polymorph you and you’ll frolic about as a sheep for a few minutes. It isn’t fun. You have to fight through a couple of groups of them and various other soldiers before you get to your goal: Baldruc. Baldruc drops totems occasionally that you need to either stay away from or destroy, otherwise they will eat you.

Once he’s dead, you need to find their tanks, specifically one named Big Bessa, and then rig the others to explode. Then, it’s off to Foothold Citadel to rescue the spy! Depending on which way you go, if you pass near the entrance to the tower on your way to the keep, you can see Jaina, Kalecgos, and Rhonin inside on the first floor. They will probably attack you if they know you’re there, as their nameplates are all red, but we never got close enough to them to find out. Once you’re inside the citadel, you must kill even more Alliance soldiers, and find Hedric Evancane, as he has the key to your spy’s chains. He dies fairly easily, but he does periodically emote that he’s switching weapons which will effect how much damage he does, I believe.

With the keys in hand, you must head to the basement and kill the two soldiers guarding your spy: Thalen Songweaver. There’s little about this blood elf that I legitimately don’t like. I love his voice actor (it’s so appropriately stuck-up and blood elfy that it’s hard not to like him), and he even blows you a kiss when you release him (hilarious to my guildies and I at the time as the one he blew a kiss to was an ICly married blood elf shadow priest).

However, as he summons a portal for us to escape through, he reveals that the failed Theramore siege was just a ruse. Apparently, Garrosh wanted them to think they had failed! But why?

It wasn’t until we stepped through the portal to Orgrimmar that we see exactly why. Garrosh has a ship loaded with a mana bomb hovering nearby even as we escaped. Perhaps they learned we were clear before they dropped it. I don’t know. All I know is that the bomb was released, Theramore exploded in a burst of purple light, and I sat there staring at the screen in shock for several minutes as I loaded back into Orgrimmar. The one thing I hadn’t wanted to see, the one thing I hoped Garrosh would never do, had actually come to pass. Theramore was destroyed, innocent people were now dead, and Jaina would be forever changed by the event.

And we were responsible.

What does this mean for Jaina now? I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t bring myself to look at Garrosh right now and Thyanel will be paying her respects to the dead at the newly destroyed Theramore.

Today was going to be a different post. However, today Blizzard unleashed the Mists of Pandaria cinematic and I was so thrilled by it that I had to share it with all of you. It would have been nice, at least, to see the monk be a female pandaren, but I still enjoyed it.

Other people have said that the cinematic is missing the epicness from previous cinematics, and while that’s technically true, it fits into what seems to be the general theme of Mists of Pandaria. For once, there’s no major villain we have to worry about here (that I know of, anyway, though I will maim people if Blizzard throws one in at the last minute). It’s just the game getting back to it’s roots, with the Alliance and the Horde fighting each other, and something new getting a starring role (in this case the pandaren). The cinematic itself also emphasizes the pandaren and their initial neutrality by having the monk fight both the Alliance and the Horde, which, I have to admit, is pretty cool to see.

It might not be as epic as seeing Deathwing break through Azeroth, or watching Arthas raise an undead army, or even seeing what we could be depending on the classes we choose. However, I really don’t think the cinematic needs to be. It is what it is, no more, no less. That in and of itself seems to be what the pandaren are all about. They aren’t flashy. They are practical, in my experience, and this cinematic captures that from the minute the pandaren enters the picture.

Also, would you just look at the backgrounds in this one? They’re gorgeous!

Unfortunately, despite her happy-looking face, Hahani is incredibly disappointed with me.

Why?

Well, thanks to a comment left on my previous post regarding the Mists of Pandaria beta, I realized I had been incredibly remiss in my shadow priestly duties. Pictures of the adorable pandas are all well and good, but how do the priests look in Shadowform? As a shadow priest, you spend the majority of your time in Shadowform. It’s not enough to like how you look outside of it; you have to like what you see in all your shadowy glory, too!

So, Marc? This is for you.

Clearly, the thing that was the most important to me was checking out the Pandaren starting zone, so it made sense for me to start there first. After waffling over class choices for several hours, I chose to create a little pandaren priest. Shadow priests are my thing, after all, and with Adaret’s story officially at a close, I’ve been giving some serious thought towards race-changing her into something else. Why not a pandaren? However, I had to make sure I liked them. They were cute and their women were appropriately curvy (which I did like), but could I stand to play one for an extended length of time? I figured this would be a very good test of that.

There were a few things I noticed immediately once my beta!priest was rolled and I was peering around at everything and everyone. First off, everyone and their mother, it seemed, was determined to play a pandaren monk (not that I blame them, as both will be new for all come MoP release day), and I couldn’t help but feel a little out of place as a little pandaren priest with her tiny little staff and adorable Chinese-inspired robes. Secondly, the zone itself is incredibly detailed and gorgeous, as are the models. At one point, I paused so I could zoom in on my panda’s face, and I could clearly see the detail they put into the fur. It looks gorgeous.

The adorable little pandaren priest I wound up rolling my first day in the beta. Lookit that cute little face!

Of course, as we all know, all pandaren begin life factionless. You get the option to join the Alliance or the Horde around level 12. However, before you can join your faction of choice, you must train! Your first ten or so levels are spent improving your skills and doing various important tasks around your home before you learn that things are not all happy and wonderful on the back of the giant turtle that you and the rest of the pandaren live on. Once you get to this point, the events that unfold afterwards shape the choices you make to select your faction. No spoilers, for those who are avoiding them, but let’s just say bits of the plot made me sad.

What I can tell you, however, is this: the entire leveling process, at least where you begin as a pandaren, is pretty streamlined. Strangely, however, there was a complete lack of class trainers. I discovered that as I leveled, new abilities appeared on my actionbars, completely eliminating the need to stop whatever I was doing to run back to town to try to find a trainer. I’ll be honest; I found that kind of nice.

The abilities I had to start off with up until level 10, were Shadow Word: Pain, Smite, Power Word: Shield, and Flash Heal. Upon hitting level ten and choosing the Shadow specialization, Smite immediately transformed into Mind Flay. Smite was locked to me from that point on. There are some abilities you get no matter what your specialization is, though. For example, I could still heal myself decently as Flash Heal didn’t go away. However, I don’t think I could manage to heal an entire group that way.

Being the shadow priest lover that I am, there was still more left to do once I was done with the pandaren starting zone. I had to see how things were at the former level cap of 85! Fortunately, beta lets you play with an 85 template, and I created a new pandaren shadow priest that way and was promptly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people in the middle of Orgrimmar. (I come from a tiny server; I’m not used to seeing that many people.) The beta wound up giving you a lot of THINGS when you logged in, namely gems, enchanting materials, and even gear. I had two sets of gear on me, one with spirit and one without. I promptly switched to the set without the spirit as we no longer had anything that converted spirit to hit, rendering spirit pretty much useless for a shadow priest. Also, 5000 gold were waiting for me in my bags. Not a bad place to start off!

I didn’t get very far, as it took me a bit to get used to how certain abilities were triggered and what they did now, but even the short amount of time I spent as an 85 in the beta was some of the most fun I’ve had as a shadow priest in a long time. It was fun trying to figure out how things worked again. I’m still not sure which of the redesigned talents are the most beneficial to me, but, for now, it’s still a ridiculous amount of fun and I can honestly say that I’m looking forward to the release of Mists of Pandaria now. I want to be a bouncy panda priest.

Image © Blizzard Entertainment

LOOK AT HER. No, really, just look at her. She looks so happy and properly curvy and not a stick! I was hopeful that the model would be a bit rounder, myself, but considering the lack of bulkier women in this game, I’m happy with it as it stands. Currently, there are only three races that boast a thicker-looking female model: dwarves, orcs, and tauren. Everyone else seems to be more along the lines of a stick-figure model that you’d tend to see in everyday fashion magazines. To add another race to that tiny, tiny list makes me so ridiculously happy. You guys honestly have no idea. I hear that you can choose to be a red panda, as well, and, if you do, you get a tail. While there are screenshots of a female red panda floating around the internet, there are no shots of this mysterious tail, so I don’t know how accurate that is in the long run.

But there’s more! Today was not just about showing us all female pandas! Oh, no, there was much more to today than that. Not only is the Mists of Pandaria website updated with a whole bunch of new information and new screenshots, but today, the NDA on the press tour was finally lifted! You can read the longer version of what everybody discovered at the press tour over at MMO-Champion or check out WoW Insider’s Mists of Pandaria tag, but for those of you who only have a short amount of time, I can tell you that it looks like we have fun things coming, including an additional character slot and… Farmville, if that’s your thing. Don’t believe me? Check it out!

• The final patch of Mists of Pandaria will be the Siege of Orgrimmar! Both factions lay siege to the city to bring Garrosh down and end his reign of Warchief.
• The new LFR loot system will allow everyone to roll individually. The highest few rolls will win an item from the boss. Upon winning a roll, if the boss has an item that you can use, you will win it. If not, you will get some amount of gold. It will only be in LFR to begin with, but can be added to other parts of the game later.
• An 11th character slot has been added.
• AoE Looting has been added.
• There will not be an item squish in Mist of Pandaria.
• No new race models are ready to be added yet.
• There will be nine level 90 heroics for players as well as three raids with 14 raid bosses and three difficulties. There will be an additional two world bosses.
• Scenarios will take place at level 90, in an instance, and reward reputation and Valor points. They don’t need a healer, tank, and DPS, just DPS is fine. Each will take 10 to 30 minutes to complete and five or more will be available for launch.
• In Challenge Modes, the vast majority of players will most likely earn a bronze medal even if they are a relatively unskilled player. After a player earns all the medals at the Bronze level, they will be rewarded with an achievement and title. Completing all of the Silver medals will earn a set of spectacular gear for transmogrification, and completing all of the gold will earn a unique epic flying mount. Challenge modes will be available for the six new dungeons at launch.
• Cloud Serpents are the Pandaren’s mount of choice. You can raise your own by doing 20 days of daily quests.
• The Tillers faction will let you run your own farm! The farmer’s market will provide daily quest to improve your farm every day, you will be able to clear plots of land and plant things like cooking ingredients, herbalism nodes, gifts for NPCs to build your reputation… etc.
• Warlocks got the most class changes in MoP, along with new pets.
• There will be more mounts and less color swaps for different rewards.
• They are adding armor to creatures to give them varied appearances, something other than just simple color changes.
• There are now seven zones, up from five. This was done to add more content to the game and give players a less linear progression path so that leveling for a second or third time isn’t the exact same.
• There will be one new arena and two new battlegrounds at launch.
• 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.
• Currently, every race except Goblin and Worgen can learn the ways of the monk.
• The pre-Mists of Pandaria Patch will be roughly two weeks before launch and bring simple rewards. It might involve a scenario with Theramore and the Alliance vs Horde theme. Chen Stormstout might also come to the local cities and get players excited about what is coming.

From the look of things, it seems like Blizzard’s trying to bring us back to the days of Vanilla WoW. There’s no Big Bad to fight, which pleases me. The idea of fighting Deathwing seemed much more impressive than the overall story really was. With MoP, there’s just pure conflict between the Alliance and the Horde, and I love the idea of it.

So am I looking forward to the new expansion? Well, if everything I’m reading about it holds true, then yes. Yes, I am. At the very least, I’ll be rolling a wonderful lady pandaren and she will be bouncy and adorable.