World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Launches On September 25

New submitter JestersGrind writes "Blizzard has announced that Mists of Pandaria, the latest expansion of the popular World of Warcraft MMO, will be launched on September 25, 2012 and can be pre-ordered now." The game page has a good deal of information about the new expansion. The level cap is increased to 90, there is a new race (Pandaren) and a new class (Monk), and the talent system has been completely redesigned. They've added Challenge Modes for dungeons, which normalizes player gear and lets them compete to see who can clear it the fastest. The MMO-Champion website keeps track of all the minor details, if you're interested.

Said it here first...

[Thundaaa Struk]

If you call in for tech support on September 25th and the hold time is more than one hour, you can bet your arse many nerds have taken the day off to play this.

Re:Said it here first...

[Anonymous Coward]

You've played since the first day and havent noticed each expansion progressively and consistently dumbing down the mechanics and encounters? Do you just hit level cap and unsub or something?

I've noticed people complaining about that. Of course the same applies to so much else. D&D. NASCAR. Football. Baseball. Politics. Rock and Roll.

I think the only thing actually true is that people consistently complain about the same things.

Re:yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because they've been in the game a while (as a joke, mind), doesn't mean that making an expansion pack based around them is a good idea, or even interesting.

Re:Long time WoW player here

[Krojack]

Honestly, the technology underpinning WoW is just too dated these days

Hey Blizzard, how about this: World of Starcraft. And make it awesome, using latest technology - not an groaning engine that's 10 years old.

Personally I think the WoW servers are on the leading edge of MMO tech. The new cross server phasing zones would be awesome for the lower pop servers and those people with friends spread out over several servers. To bad it's being added now and not 3-4 years ago.

As for the game engine, yes it's dated. That said I would still rather have the WoW graphics then a game with the latest and greatest graphics that require a $500 video card to play at max settings only to still get frame rate dropping in large fights with several people. The game graphics are at the bottom of importance. The game play and content are #1.

Re:yawn

[scot4875]

A perfect example of when it's a bad idea to give the customer what they want -- Homer's car also comes to mind.

Also, last time I was playing WoW back in the WotLK days, the majority of subscribers seemed to be happy with sitting around in general chat making Chuck Norris or Anal [whatever] jokes. This isn't a population of erudite people.

--Jeremy

Liar

[SmallFurryCreature]

If you wanted a non-dumbed down WoW you would be playing Everquest. WoW has ALWAYS been dumbed down. It was Everquest-light and it sold like hot-cakes to the twelve year olds that couldn't handle WoW or were spit out by the community.

Hence you got Barren-chat, a type of chat that would have had the ban-hammers flying in any hardcore game but is the staple for WoW.

Complaining that WoW got dumbed down is like complaining teletubbies lost their hard satirical edge. That Full House lost its black humor. That reality TV became boring.

It might very well be true on an absolute scale but when you are the bottom, digging down doesn't really make a difference anymore. When you are last in a race, stopping won't make you drop any more places.

Go play a real game. Here is a hint, if you encounter barren-chat, that ain't a real game. Real games have a population of 200k, 300k at most. WoW has 10 million.

And people wonder why democracy sucks.