Video games these days have a shorter shelf life than ever before. Titles fall out of the top ten within days or weeks (if they ever get there at all), there are awesome new releases arriving every month or so, and even the biggest games are on a yearly (if that) sequel schedule at this point. And yet World of Warcraft has remained a constant. Blizzard's MMO has held millions of players in sway for over half a decade, and those players have killed countless boars, cleared out endless quests, dungeons, and raids, and have vanquished not one but three world-threatening expansion bosses, in the forms of Illidan Stormrage, Arthas the Lich King, and Deathwing and his Cataclysm.

So Blizzard is perhaps taking on its hardest task ever with the upcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion. There's no question in the halls of the (recently quieter) Blizzard campus in Irvine, California that the game is at a crossroads of sorts. Blizzard's formula for WoW expansions (define a baddie, and lead a player to gear and level up to the final fight) has worked so far, but it's almost as if the company realizes that the old tricks are getting old.

Blizzard needs, then, to take World of Warcraft, one of history's most-played, most-traversed, and most-conquered games, and make it feel new. "This is definitely different fare from any expansion we've tried so far," VP of Creative Development Chris Metzen said in a presentation to assembled press. He then talked about the game on a much longer scale than a few weeks, a few months, or even a Call of Duty-length year. "The big global threat that's coming, to define the next couple years of WoW's gameplay, is really war itself."