World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria’s Pandarens are playable. Also, they’re pandas.
Don’t know about you, but spending my time sat on a hillside in central China, eating bamboo and getting hugged by volunteers sounds like a nice life. Unfortunately, we can’t all be pandas. But wait! Thanks to World of Warcraft’s next expansion Mists of Pandaria, we can all be Pandarans.
Pokémon coming to WoW with companion pet battles
I think Evan said it best when he tweeted, “Wowkemon?” this morning when Blizzard announced that “pet battles” would be coming to World of Warcraft. But Blizzard’s new system is even more similar to the classic pet-collecting game than most people thought at the announcement. Read on to see how pet-lovers will be spending all of their WoW time in the future.
Kung fu fighting (fast as lightning) with the new Monk class in WoW: Mists of Pandaria
With the reveal of the new Monk class in the next World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard’s taking a whole new approach to combat. As the bruiser Monk class, available to every race except Worgen and Goblins, you’ll be flinging punches and thwacking enemies with impunity through the new content. They’ve even got an entirely new approach to killing mobs in WoW: absolutely no auto-attacking. Here’s everything you need to know about the class that let you live out your Pandaren Brewmaster fantasies.
New details revealed for Mists of Pandaria and Blizzard’s plans for the future
After the opening ceremony, Blizzard held a WoW-only panel to reveal additional details about the Mists of Pandaria WoW expansion coming out. This post was updated as the information was revealed, and holds most of the big news we learned about the expansion.
How one WoW fan is memorializing the big bad bosses of yesteryear
Cataclysm might’ve saved Azeroth, but Andrew Kuhar believes that the old world deserved a proper send off. We talked with the longtime World of Warcraft player and PCG reader about the vintage posters themed after old school bosses he’s making, and what the heck that really abstract one is all about. Best of all, you can download these gorgeous posters with the click of your mouse—just click which ones you want (we recommend all of them) and you’ll be downloading the 50MB original file in no time. We wouldn’t be offended if you took ‘em to the printers to be made into actual posters; there’s no doubt that your end-game experience will be enhanced as you reflect on bosses past, staring at your from your wall, while you raid the newest content.
WoW patch 4.3 Dragon Soul interview, part three: Void storage and Darkmoon Faire revamp
With World of Warcraft’s Patch 4.3 set for release with tomorrow’s update, we’re more excited to jump back into Azeroth than we’ve been since Cataclysm’s released. Today, we conclude our interview with WoW’s lead designer Tom Chilton, who gave us the 411 on the battle against Deathwing and the new Transmogrification system. He’s got more info to share on the new-and-improved Darkmoon Faire, the Void Storage system (that’s overflowing with slots), and what needs to happen for WoW’s design in order to keep players happy.
WoW patch 4.3 Dragon Soul interview, part two: It’s transmogrif’ time
In part one of our interview with WoW’s lead designer Tom Chilton, we got insight into the fight against Deathwing in the game’s most grandiose encounter yet. But who cares about killing raid bosses if you can’t do it in style? We’re getting into the nitty-gritty of transmogrification in today’s installment, the feature that lets you graft the look of your favorite gear sets onto the items with the stats you need to survive. And what’s the verdict on Legendary weapons, anyway?
WoW patch 4.3 Dragon Soul interview, part one: Downing Deathwing
Yesterday, we gave you a look at Dragon Soul, the upcoming Patch 4.3 for World of Warcraft that’ll finally let you face off against Catacylsm’s biggest baddie: Deathwing. We had the pleasure of speaking to WoW’s Lead Designer, Tom “Kalgan” Chilton, and picked his brain about what’s coming up in the lore-riffic patch and just how crazy the big boss of this expansion will be. Be warned: if you want to encounter Deathwing entirely spoiler-free, you’ll need to cover your eyes for some bits. But if you want a leg up on how to take down the colossal black dragon, read on.
PC Gamer US Podcast #278: Days of Yore
On this week’s podcast, the rag-tag PCG squad members Chris, Dan, Tyler, and Lucas join forces once again with recurring special guest Brian Brushwood. Listen in awe as they chat about post-apocalyptic themes, Zynga’s intimidating market share, World of Warcraft’s Rage of the Firelands, and some more zany Truthiness and Falsity questions. Also: find out which nostalgic games we love, and which ones aren’t looking too hot these days.
Play World of Warcraft for free forever with the new endless trial mode [Updated]
…Up to level 20 at least. Blizzard announced today that they’re completely revamping their trial account system. Instead of limiting the amount of time you can spend playing, trial accounts will allow you to play as much as you want all the way up to level 20 on as many characters as you can create (similar to Warhammer Online’s endless trial system). There will likely be some restrictions on the accounts to prevent spammers from abusing them, but those details have not been outlined yet.
Players that like what they see can purchase the game and the Burning Crusade expansion (which increases the level cap to 70, opens Outlands, and unlocks the Blood Elf and Draenei races) for only 20 bucks. In addition, anyone that currently owns the original game, but did not have the Burning Crusade expansion, now has that expansion automatically added to their accounts for free.
What do you think? Will you play around in the new endless trial mode? Is this the Blizzard’s first step in making WoW free-to-play? And is that a change you want Blizzard to make for WoW?
First impressions: WoW patch 4.2 brings new loot, dailies, raids and the ability to move characters on the selection screen [UPDATED]
Goblins everywhere are rising to the top of players’ characters lists (where they rightfully belong). WoW’s huge Firelands raid patch (4.2) is hitting live servers this morning, and while it does add a new 10/25-man raid, a brand new daily quest hub that we’ll progressively unlock by aiding their cause, a legendary staff, and an epic story with Azeroth’s resident badass Thrall, I’m probably more excited about being able to finally meticulously order my characters in order of their sentimental importance.
First look at Ragnaros’ new raid dungeon, and the upcoming progressive quest hub in patch 4.2′s preview videos
It’s been less than 24 hours since patch 4.1 hit live servers, and Blizzard’s already showing off the raid and daily quest content coming in World of Warcraft’s next major content patch, 4.2. Read on for both videos (which show all of the bosses located inside the Firelands raid–filled with as much fire, magma, and associated burning things as you’d expect) and everything we know about Molten Front, the new zone being added, and how its progressively-unlocked quest hub in Molten Front will work.
WoW player reaches level 85 without killing a single mob
If you’ve ever played World of Warcraft, it’s likely that you thought some stretches were too grind-heavy. (Granted, the WoW grind is minuscule compared to traditional/Korean MMOs.) Now, take that boredom and impatience you felt during that grind, and multiply it times a billion. That’s what us lesser beings would feel when leveling an alt strictly through Herbalism and Mining—but Everbloom is so much more. Come delve into the mind of the Night Elf druid that’s a patience demigod.
MMO fight: WoW blogger demands an end to Rift posts
In what is either a genuine call for World of Warcraft purity or a subtly brilliant Rift marketing scheme, a WoW-centric blogger has created a campaign, complete with a badge that you can post to your site, to designate his and other WoW blogs as “Rift-free zones,” in response to what he considers to be an excessive amount of Rift-related posting cropping up in the wake of the fledgling MMORPG’s well-received release. He’s got a fair point: after all, you don’t come to PC Gamer to read about Mario’s latest adventure.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Review
It’s big. Oh god, it’s big.
World of Warcraft is the world’s most successful subscription MMO. Orcs and humans, fighting dragons. It’s four games welded into one vast whole: a multiplayer cooperative RPG in which you quest. A competitive fantasy team battleground game. A three-versus-three arena competitive ladder. And a 10- or 25-man dragon bashing cooperative raiding thing.
Together, those elements make for a deep and terrifyingly compulsive mix. The trouble was that to get anywhere in the latter three games, you had to go through the former.
80 levels of questing in WoW translates to around a month of fairly solid play. And pre-Cataclysm, that was a month of trawling through some of PC gaming’s most mindnumbingly boring tasks. Ferrying packages across continents. Crawling through shit to find excreted seeds. Massacring leopards en route to killing more leopards.
