The Casual Mage

This weekend BlizzCon 2011 came and went, leaving a flurry of news in its wake.  Some highlights for those who don’t know yet:

• WoW Annual Pass – If you tell Blizzard that you’ll keep paying for WoW for another year, you will receive Diablo 3 for free, a beta invitation to the next WoW expansion, and a Bind-On-Account mount in 4.3.  This is however a limited time offer only.  For the FAQ about this program go to WoW Annual Pass Extended FAQ for the news article go to Sign Up for the World of Warcraft Annual Pass and Get Diablo III Free
• The next WoW Expansion – Mists of Pandaria, which will incorporate the long awaited Pandaren race (originally seen in Warcraft 3, and the subject of an April Fools joke by Blizzard) and the Monk class.  The Pandaren will be a neutral at the beginning of the starting experience, at level 10 the player can chose their faction of choice.  Monks will be available to all races except for Goblin and Worgen.  As a small side note, it was mentioned during BlizzCon, in an interview with Chris Metzen, that the Pandaren were originally slated to be the Alliance race in Burning Crusade.
• New Talent System – You know the talent trees we have now?  Kiss them goodbye!  In an effort to get back to the original purpose of the talent system, to help make your character unique, the talent system is being overhauled like we have never seen before.  The goal right now is to have a talent tree that will not allow for “cookie-cutter builds”, from what was announced, it will be just that.  More on the new talent system, as it affects mages, in a later post.
• Pet Battle System – Ever want to pit your Core Hound Pup against your friends Hyjal Bear Cub and see what happens?  Well, that is what is coming with Mists of Pandaria!  Some say this smells of Pokemon, I say, this could be interesting.  Personally, it seems like this could be a whole new realm of fun for casual type players who don’t have the time for raiding with their guild or grinding honor to no end while still being able to satisfy the need for competitiveness and being with friends.
• Challenge Modes – Remember the old Baron run in Stratholme?  Where you needed to complete the last half within 45 minutes?  That is pretty much what the challenge modes will be like.  How quickly can you complete a dungeon, with a normalized gear and/or bosses.  In the beginning of the announcement Blizzard said they would lower the players gearscore upon entering the challenge mode, so it is fair.  Towards the end of the discussion though it appears they may be looking at increasing the bosses health and abilities.
• Last but not least, Scenarios – Not too much information has been given about this feature.  From what it seems, you will be given a quest of some variety to complete, which leads to another and so on.  One example given was called Defense of Goldshire.  In stage 1 you would kill 25 kobolds, in stage 2 you find and rescue 4 children and in stage 3 you kill Goldtooth.

This seems to be great for reinvigorating the WoW franchise, we don’t have a big bad boss known to us for the expansion (much like vanilla WoW), it seems aimed to enlighten an Azeroth which has dealt with one thing after another trying to destroy it and much like a friend told me yesterday, it appears to be able to turn WoW from a second job into a game again.  I welcome this change, especially its promise of many things that you can do without having to be a “hard core” player.