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The racial traits of Pandaren, at least according to current plans, include twice the stat benefits from foods, in addition to starting out with 15 points in the Cooking skill. Their rested experience will be twice as long as other players, and take 50% less damage when falling. The Pandaren’s background describes their homeland, Pandaria, as being secluded from the rest of Azeroth and its fighting. Beginning Pandaren PCs start out as among a group of explorers on the back of a giant turtle. The Pandaren are neither Horde or Alliance, but unaligned. After some time progressing, new Pandaren characters will need to choose which faction to support.
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A new class of character is introduced as well: the Monk. They are available to all races except for the Worgen and Goblins. Monks have three specilizations: Brewmasters, which can take more damage, Mistweavers, which are healers, and Windwalkers, whom deal more melee damage. They can use staves and fist weapons, in addition to one handed maces, with Mistweavers being able to use off-hand items. They wear leather armor. They use a new resource bar, a Chi-bar, which is described as being similar to the Energy bar for Rogues.
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There is one change that will be a bit upsetting to some players. All classes are losing their secondary weapons, which means hunters lose their melee items (though will be able to shoot point-blank), and other clases lose their raged weapon slots, though warriors and rouges can throw their weapons, and casters can use wands in their main hand.
Blizzard got an enthusiastic response to news of the expansion at Blizcon. Since then, reactions have varied, as one can tell from the WoW forums. Joystik called the expansion an interesting move in new directions. They quoted game lead designer Dave Kosak, "What we're trying to do is find other ways to incorporate other playstyles into the game and give everybody something to do. ... We have this big, giant, incredible world -- what else can you do in it?"
But “Pandaren” and all its changes are about a year away most likely. Until then, WoWers still have some new content coming up, which we’ll be covering in our next article about World of Warcraft.
Images from Blizzard.
Other articles at PC World, Joystik, WoWWiki, ING
Bixyl Shuftan
I quit WoW in March, and this is too corny to make me want to return. I think they dumbed it down to the lowest common factor to make it way too easy for their target audiences (like they did for Wrath of the Lich King).
ReplyDeleteOh, and you'll be pleased to know Rift runs on macs, but I hear there is something of a lag issue. If I can find a link for downloading it mac-wise I'll throw it your way; I haven't been in-world much the past few days.