World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria

Yesterday's announcement of the Mists of Pandaria expansion pack for World of Warcraft featured a number of exciting new prospects for the future of Blizzard's popular MMO. Two major reveals will be the biggest changes to the game: the new Panda race and the new Monk class. At Blizzcon I was able to check out both in one single, cuddly, kick-ass package.

The Pandaren begin in a zone that is actually located on the back of a giant turtle floating in the ocean. Players pick up at the Shang Xi training ground, which provides a much more literal training for beginning players than any of the other starting zones in the game. The simple tutorial quests that task you with taking out training dummies are actually quite useful considering that the monk has some mechanics that are totally different from anything else in the game.

Although the monk is not a hero class, it's more complicated than most regular classes. Monks use two different resource pools. First there is Chi, which is a regenerating resource that is used for the Jab and Roll abilities. Roll provides a quick burst of speed, but Jab is an essential attack for the class. Every time you hit an enemy with Jab, you build up one point of light force and one point of dark force. You can build up to four points of light and dark force, neither of which will fade until you use them, and these are used to pull off more powerful attacks.

Since the monk must constantly be building light and dark force, it has no auto-attack. Smart monk players must continue using Jab over and over in order to unlock abilities such as the light-force-draining Tiger Palm or the dark-force-using Blackout Kick.

The martial arts style of the monk's attacks makes them a very animation-heavy class. Luckily Blizzard has totally delivered on this. Even the physically large Pandaren are made to look agile and powerful with their sharp punches and swift kicks, and I can only imagine that more slender races will look even better with this move set.

Monks in the Pandaren starting area begin with a set of handwraps as their weapons. Blizzard has promised that they'll be getting more fist-based weapons in the game, which is good, but they need to fix the animation for monks who aren't using fist weapons. Later in the starting zone I found and equipped a staff, but it made my attacks look clunky and goofy.

Blizzard has been quite open about where they're drawing influence from in Mists of Pandaria. The locales have a unique Asian flair, and the quests pull from anime and kung-fu films. The latter is definitely evident in the Pandaren starting zone. Players have to complete the physical part of training by sparring with other up and coming monks, but then they get sent on a journey across the zone to complete the spiritual part of the journey.

At one point you go to the Cave of Meditation and receive a ghostly vision of your mentor. Later in the zone's storyline, you need to defeat that mentor to prove yourself worthy. Beyond that, the main story of the Pandaren starting zone consists of performing tasks to revive and gain the trust of the various elemental spirits of the island. For example, on your way to the fire spirit, you will fight off a bunch of monkey-like Hozu creatures attacking a village. While looking for the water spirit, you will jump around poles in a shallow pool, knocking down other trainees.

The Pandaren starting zone maintains the tight pacing that Blizzard has become so great about in World of Warcraft, even if the subject matter is a little bit more light-hearted. It's difficult to tell how the monk class will feel 60-plus levels from the start, but at the beginning, it's an enjoyably complex and interesting class to play with, and I'd like to spend more time with it. These new pieces of content aren't going to blow anyone away or shock players the way Cataclysm's world-changing did, but they at least seem like solid additions to World of Warcraft so far.