How is mists of pandaria

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. View source. History Talk For the actual mists that surrounded the continent, see Mists of Pandaria lore. The Wandering Isle. A brewery with a virmen in front. Jade Forest concept art. Temple of Kotmogu concept art. Pandaren seen during BlizzCon. Water strider.

World Map with patch 5. Blizzard Entertainment Archived from the original on Retrieved on After the widespread zones of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm , MOP keeps things centralized with the appearance of Pandaria, a massive island consisting of seven varied zones.

This is the mystical homeland of the Pandaren, a race of portly panda people with origins tracing back to the Warcraft III. The long-anticipated race is now playable for both factions a first for the MMO , alongside the latest class, the Monk. Creating a Pandaren plops you into their short-but-sweet Wandering Isle starting zone, on the terraformed shell of a gargantuan turtle.

The Pandaren race is the perfect pairing to the near-universal Monk class, which becomes exponentially more fun to play as you approach the new level cap of Classic Vanilla The Frozen Throne Reforged. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Mists of Pandaria lore. View source. The big disappointment of the levelling content though is the continuation of the Horde and Alliance battle, as previously set aside in no fewer than three expansion packs due to greater evils.

Pandaria was promised as the place where this would be reignited - a lush, peaceful land ripped to shreds by a conflict it wants no part in, with war itself being the driving evil behind your adventures. The first zone, Jade Forest, goes hell for leather to make it work, and mostly succeeds. It's much too long, with a massively unfocused middle section, but manages to add a sense of danger and looming threat from the very start.

Both factions arrive on the island for their own reasons, with a small group ending up stuck there and awaiting reinforcements.

Despite warnings from the Pandaren that things are different here and that violence is a really bad idea , they raise armies of natives fish people for the Alliance, monkey men for the Horde and unleash the Sha - imprisoned spirits of hatred and fear and similar that feed on negative emotion and violence, yet can still conveniently be punched in the face until they drop loot.

This is a great start, with emotional resonance, the spice that every quest you personally complete drives this land towards its undeserved end, and a powerful finale where the shit really hits the fan. The Sha look terrific, with their ghostly forms and white energies flooding through cracks in the world.

Finally, the gloves are coming off and this party is ready to get started - Horde and Alliance, with no distractions, nothing that needs ganging up against, and no splinter faction to blame for their mistakes. What happened?

There's the occasional "Grr! True, there's the promise of the poop finally hitting the fan in the next patch, when both factions' fleets are due to arrive on Pandaria, but that's far too late. Escalation needs something to escalate from , and right now only the Sha of Apathy has any hope of drawing dark power from this unenthusiastic squabbling. This is a tragically wasted opportunity to finally make the war mean something.

Worse, without a real arc to the story, you spend most of the expansion simply doing random stuff, asking "This is my problem why, exactly? Areas have their stories, but they tend to be unexciting and poorly paced. What should be the big finale for the levelled content - the opening of the last zone, the Vale of Eternal Blossoms - actually happens around Level 87, despite it being completely irrelevant until you hit 90 and activate its questgivers.

Bearing in mind that Pandaria's levelling plays like a single-player RPG, this is weak storytelling. It feels like multiple teams were just assigned to do their own thing without any particular interest in the big picture. That lends to lots of individually good moments, absolutely, but a whole that assumes too much interest in simply poking around Pandaria even without the excellent arc premise.

Thinking about how the conflict could have played out with all Blizzard's skills and systems, structuring Pandaria's progression like this isn't so much dropping the narrative ball as dumping a whole crate of them off a cliff. Beyond the levelling curve, Pandaria's big goal is to give players more to do between updates.

Of the familiar content types, there are four Normal dungeons while climbing to 90, which are fairly standard in terms of design. At maximum level, there are nine, including a revamped Scarlet Monastery two dungeons and Scholomance from the original game.

Three raids are currently detailed, with a fourth that really focuses on a couple of world bosses, and more due in future updates. With Dungeon and Raid finders now fully in place, you don't need to be part of a guild to play any of this content, though pick-up groups do tend to be about as social as sitting alone in a darkened room, weeping at the state of humanity and eating Jaffa Cakes, only without Jaffa Cakes being provided.

Dungeons also now offer a dedicated challenge mode, where you and your group race to beat them in a time limit rather than simply getting through. You're given a set of equipment rather than bringing your own, putting the focus on skill rather than getting loot. There are also new Scenarios, where you and a couple of friends team up to finish a more quest-style set of objectives - the most dramatic at the moment being Theramore's Fall, where Spoilers, ho! Pandaria sees some big additions though, starting with the aforementioned Vale of Eternal Blossoms.

At Level 90, this becomes a hub for daily quests, with Pandaria's various factions offering rewards for longer-term play. They're still time-sinks, but at least a few offer something a little something more to focus on.

The Lorewalkers offer rewards for tracking down stories in Pandaria for instance, while the Order of the Cloud Serpent offers a new type of mount that supposedly takes around 20 days to unlock.