WoW: MoP: Shameless Pandaren

This just in, apparently the World of Warcraft pandaren in Mists of Pandaria have no shame at all. This comes as a surprise as even the worgen had a underwear for the females and shorts for the males, but this time, Blizzard has gone for a more down with nature look for whatever reason. To be honest when I was shown the screenshot bellow, I thought at first that it might be a mod or something... but no. November-December 2012, everyone... that and Pokemon, ugh, I mean pet battles.

Here's a video from The Yogcast featuring the appropriate reaction when seeing a pandaren with no gear on for the first time.

In other news, some more info has came out around the pet battles. There's going to be a queue system much like the dungeon finder, but apparently you won't be able to see whom you're fighting so as to not turn the battles into a sort of name-and-shame. At least that's what I understand. Now for me that's a bit of a let-down, I wouldn't honestly see a pet battle as a situation where I'd be gravely ashamed if I lost a battle, or more so if someone spammed my name in trade chat announcing their victory. 

As I've mentioned before there's going to be random pets roaming around that you can catch, we're yet to see a pokeballs system involved in any way, so far it seems that to catch the wild pets you'll just have to defeat them. There's also going to be pet trainers around Azeroth, much like the dojo masters in Pokemon. And there's going to be a Pokedex-like journal where you'd get a list of all the pets you've gotten so far and also some info on where to find particular wild pets. As with fishing schools, pets may appear in an area only at a certain time of day, or a certain season, or twice on the night of Pirate's Day on a leap year, or something outrageous like that. Blizzard has stated that they don't want the pet collection to be something you're done with after 2-3 months of grinding, and they have a track record of keeping exclusive items exclusive within reason, so expect some insanely difficult to catch purple-grade pets alongside the usual trash. Me, I'm still trying to catch that dreaded turtle mount and no Pandaren snapping-turtle mount (to be a part of the Faction mounts) is going to replace that. 

More about the up-coming Faction Mounts here: http://1990silicondreams.blogspot.se/2012/03/some-amazing-mists-of-pandaria-faction.html

Blizzard's Don't Ask Don't Tell Policy: Mists of Pandaria Beta

Your take on what a Panda Taster would actually taste like? I'd say sweet and sour. 

World of Warcraft Annual Pass and Mists of Pandaria beta When will access to the beta be available?

There's quite a controversy right now around the World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria beta Annual Pass deal with regards to the Terms and Conditions of the deal. As you may know part of the contract was that you'd get access to the MoP beta as soon as it was available. Or at least that's what many of us were lead to believe. But does the Annual Pass contract actually say anything about when will you get access to the Pandaria beta?

Here's the part of the contract that deals with the MoP beta access:

Unfortunately the contract never mentions when access to the beta will be granted. It only states that Blizzard will flag your battle.net account so you will automatically receive a beta code.

Understandably a lot of the WoW fan-base has been frustrated with Blizzard's choice to postpone access and release beta codes to Annual Pass holders when it deems fit. According to the official statement the beta will be handed out in waves, according to the age of your World of Warcraft Account and also how early did you sign up for the particular deal.

The fact that screenshots have came out of people with beta access, who don't even have the Annual Pass further aggravates the situation. What do you think. Did Blizzard make a huge mistake with this one?

On a side note people have suggested that if you're running Apple's OS X you stand a better chance of being invited to the beta, regardless of weather you have the pass or not. So if you're running WoW on a Mac go to Battle.net and download the small piece of software that will automatically assess your system specifications and upload them to Blizzard's site.  

WoW: Mists of Pandaria Beta to start soon

According to the Warcraft Facebook page, the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria beta is going to be starting pretty soon. What's going to happen is, players will be invited in waves, based on how long they've had a WoW account, and also based on how early they got their Annual Pass. As you know everyone with a WoW Annual pass (that is a one year non-suspendable subscription) gets a free mount (Tyrael's Charger), Diablo 3 for free (coming out May 15th) and beta access to Mists of Pandaria.

Battle.net info post 

So log-on to Battle.net and update your system specifications info and check the Warcraft Beta option to make sure you're not overlooked when the time comes to dish out beta codes. You'll need to download a small program that is going to evaluate your graphics card, processor, among other things. As with code giveaways I'm sure there will be plenty to go, but in the meantime your best bet for the Mists of Pandaria Beta, if you don't own an Annual Pass, is to upload your system specifications to Battle.net and hope that your rig is unique enough to warrant Blizzard's attention. 

In the meantime the Non-Disclosure Agreement on the WoW: MoP media event fell so here's some more reading for those who are interested to know what to expect from the early stages of the Beta:

GameTrailers Scarlet Monastery and Scholomance Heroics, the new Zones and class, all stuff I'm going to cover, when I can get my hands on it, which should be within a week or two if we trust Blizzard to not keep us waiting for too long. 

Blizzard Announces Release Date for Diablo 3: Pre-purchase Available

The wait is over! Blizzard has just announced that Diablo 3 will be coming out two months from now. The game is now available for pre-purchase at the Blizzard Store so you can start playing as soon as the servers go live. The official date of the release will be May the 15th.

Battle.net Front Page

Apparently the Anual Pass deal is still available where, if you have an existing World of Warcraft account you can get Diablo 3 for free, if you subscribe for 1 year of World of Warcraft. On top of that with the deal you'll get a Tyrael's Charger mount for all your WoW characters past present and future, and access to Mists of Pandaria Beta as soon as it is available. Take note that if you agree to this deal the payments will be monthly or every six months depending on what you prefer, but the contract cannot be cancelled or frozen for any reason. 

The news about Diablo 3 coming out comes shortly after Bethesda started a countdown to a major announcement on their web-site, so Blizzard's CEO came out with the statement, I guess in a hope to 1up Bethesda's efforts. After all two equally expected RPG's coming out at the same time, would be a disaster for Blizzard. This further fuels our expectations that Bethesda might be cooking up something really amazing. Or it might be just that Blizzard's acting paranoid. Either way here's the statement about the Diablo 3 Release Date from Blizzard's CEO, Mike Morhaime:

"After many years of hard work by our development team and months of beta testing by hundreds of thousands of dedicated players around the world, we're now in the homestretch.  We look forward to putting the final polish on Diablo III over the next two months and delivering the ultimate action-RPG experience to gamers worldwide starting on May 15."

The Diablo 3 game client is already available for download.

Indeed it has been almost twelve years since the Diablo 2 came out. It's been a long wait, but based on my
experience from the Diablo 3 Beta it might have been well worth it. As I've mentioned before the game is going to come out without the PvP arenas, since the developer didn't want to delay the game any further. The Player vs Player capabilities will be patched into the game at a later point in time.

Diablo III Will Come out Without PvP Around June

Blizzard just announced that Diablo 3 is going to come out without the PvP arenas to avoid any more delays in the release of the game. According to the developer, the PvP is just not good enough yet. So they're going to be patching all of the arena maps into the game after some time. That said, Blizzard hasn't even announced an official release date yet, all they're saying is they're looking to the second quarter of this year. That means Diablo 3 should come out sometime in June 2012.

The news once again comes from GametTrailers Facebook Page and SideMission Some more speculation on the actual release date: Side Mission

To be completely honest, I'm not at all bothered by the news. I've never looked forward to PvP in Diablo, as long as I can play the full single-player campaign.

On a more positive side of Diablo 3 news, yesterday was patch day for Diablo 3 beta, and now the Hardcore Character mode is available for testing. If you happen to have the beta you'll need a character who's at least level ten to unlock the mode. As usual when you're creating a Hardcore Character, Blizzard will give you the fair warning that you only have one life and they will not under any circumstances resurrect your hero if it happened to die.

There's also going to be a new difficulty called Inferno, after the usual three - Normal Nightmare and Hell. Now that's something that I'm looking forward to. To access it your character will have to be level capped at 60, while all of the monsters inside will be level 61. For your troubles in Inferno duifficulty you'll get the best gear in-game and the best part is the drop chance of the first act monsters and bosses will be the same as that of the last boss. All enemies being level 61 means that you won't have to grind any particular area, instead you can just replay your favourite parts and still get the best drops.

Diablo 3 Beta Key: First Impressions of the Gameplay

Since I've posted about GameTrailers giving away Diablo III beta keys yesterday, I've been playing the game and I've managed to do a play-through of the entire quest-line that is available in the beta content.  So here's some first impression notes, before I review every detail of the game separately. (More info on how to get a beta key: Diablo 3 Beta Code Giveaway)


The Quest-Chain, available for the beta, starts in New Tristram, located near the Ruins of Tristram in Westmarch, which is entirely over-ran by the undead as a result of a strange occurrence. A Fallen Star has descended upon the old Tristram Cathedral (which we know from the first Diablo game) and your role is to find out what happened. As it turns out the Fallen Star is a meteorite that has crashed through the several layers of the Cathedral, leaving it hollowed out. There's also a Skeleton King involved and the Crown of Leoric, though from the somewhat rushed playthrough I couldn't really understand what their role was other that it is connected to the Fallen Star episode. I'll look into that the second time around, as the beta allows you to take your character and run it through the quest-chain as many times as you like.

Diablo 3 Beta Code Giveaway

Diablo 3 is coming out soon, and currently it's in closed beta, but I've managed to swipe a free beta code from the GameTrailers Facebook page. They're currently doing a giveaway, where they'll be handing out one hundred codes for the game every day, at undisclosed times through their FB page and Twitter.

A tip if you want one: lurk their Facebook page, where they're periodically posting the codes in heaps of 10-30. As soon as you see the first post chances are they're going to be gone within the first minute or two, so have your Battle.net account open on the Add/Upgrade game page. Start refreshing Facebook, for the next 15 minutes to an hour, more are sure to come. Stay tuned for more codes this weekend, and I'll also be doing a review on the beta content.

http://www.facebook.com/gametrailers

Twitter @Sidemission