Blizzcon 2011: day one round-up

Blizzcon

Pandas Oh My God! World of Warcraft's fourth expansion has been announced. It will let us play as Panda warrior monks on the back of a giant sea turtle. It will open up the new real of Pandaria to the Alliance and the Horde. It will introduce a pet battling system in which you must catch wild monsters, level them up and make them fight for your own amusement. It's just one announcement of many in a brilliantly, stupidly hectic first day at Blizzcon 2011.

It's not all been about World of Warcraft, either. New units have been revealed for StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, new trailers have appeared for Blizzard DOTA and Diablo 3, and we've learned something new about each one of Blizzard's upcoming titles. Below you'll find our guide to day one of Blizzcon. Get all the latest at a glance.

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria expansion announced, with news of a new playable race, a new Monk class, new zones and a raised level cap.

World of Warcraft Annual Pass launched . Subscribers get a full, free digital copy of Diablo 3, a mount and access to the Mists of Pandaria beta.

Here's the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Blizzcon trailer .

And the first Mists of Pandaria screenshots .

The races, creatures and zones of Pandaria are detailed at the World of Warcraft preview panel.

An overview of WoW's new Monk class

The new World of Warcraft Pet battles system brings Pokemon to World of Warcraft and commits Owen to a lifetime of addiction.

Here's an overview of WoW's new Battlegrounds

Rich takes a look at the Pandarens because he loves pandas and secretly is one

More on WoW's new Challenge Dungeons and PVE scenarios

Diablo 3

The stunning CGI Diablo 3 trailer from the opening ceremony

Blizzard say Diablo 3 has " something like 2.8 trillion builds, " and want to encourage players to experiment with more of them

Normal, Nightmare, Hell and Inferno difficulties detailed . 70% of items will appear beyond Normal difficulty

Diablo 3 is getting team deathmatch, achievements and battle standards

StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm

The official list of new and retired units for StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm emerges

Heart of the Swarm has a fascinating story evolution system

The Heart of the Swarm beta is " months, certainly not years away ."

The StarCraft community will get to decide when esports tournaments shift from Wings of Liberty to Heart of the Swarm

Blizzard DOTA

Beyond its introduction at the opening ceremony , not much was seen of Blizzard DOTA today, but day two's panel should reveal plenty more. We'll be covering it live when it kicks off later today.

Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.