World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Message Board

Just a heads up: Tickets for this year's BlizzCon event in Anaheim, California, are going on sale in just a few minutes at 7pm Pacific. The tickets - which will likely sell out quickly - are priced at $175, and include a swag bag and admittance to the two day event beginning November 8.

Tickets are on sale on from the official BlizzCon site.

If you don't get tickets today, there's two more chances to do so. This Saturday, April 27, a second round of ticket sales will begin at 10am Pacific, and when that's done, all of the regular admission tickets will be gone. Your last chance, then, will be on May 1 at 7pm Pacific, when Blizzard will sell 200 tickets at $500 a piece for the Blizzcon Benefit Dinner, which includes full admission to the show and a charity event.

The film adaptation of Blizzard's Warcraft universe, simply titled Warcraft, is moving ahead with director Duncan Jones, The Hollywood Reporter says. Jones, whose previous work includes Moon and Source Code, is an award-winning English director and the son of music icon David Bowie. Joystiq has also obtained separate confirmation that Jones is indeed signed to direct Warcraft.

Legendary Pictures tapped scriptwriter Charles Leavitt back in August and has chosen to stick with his adaptation. Previously, Sam Raimi was up to direct but chose to opt out instead for another film, Oz: The Great and Powerful. The plan is to start filming Warcraft this fall, with a theatrical release in 2015.

Back in March during a press event for the fourth expansion for World of Warcraft, Blizzard's VP of Creative Development Chris Metzen said that the release of Mists of Pandaria would mark a turning point for the grandest of MMOs. "This is definitely different fare from any expansion we've tried so far," he said at the time. Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard believed right in the middle of its development, wasn't just about five more levels or pet battles or big, playable Pandas, though all of those things are in there. It was about designing the next cycle of content for World of Warcraft. "The big global threat that's coming, to define the next couple years of WoW's gameplay, is really war itself," Metzen said.

At the end of the last expansion, Cataclysm, Blizzard did need a new plan. Long ago, even before the game's first Burning Crusade expansion, word had leaked out that the development team had ideas for expansions about the world's Northrend continent (which eventually became the Wrath of the Lich King expansion), and the setting's elemental planes (which was reworked into Cataclysm). But Pandaria was never on that list, or any other lists that have reached the public's eyes before it was announced.

So Mists of Pandaria, then, does represent a new turn in the already long and still growing story of World of Warcraft. It represents not only a turn in the game's lore (which up until this point has been heavily based on the series' previous titles), but a turn in the game's direction, the first step in answering how (and even why) you keep a PC game this old and this unwieldy still profitable, fresh, and growing.

Back in March during a press event for the fourth expansion for World of Warcraft, Blizzard's VP of Creative Development Chris Metzen said that the release of Mists of Pandaria would mark a turning point for the grandest and oldest of all MMOs. "This is definitely different fare from any expansion we've tried so far," he said at the time. Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard believed right in the middle of its development, wasn't just about five more levels or pet battles or big, playable Pandas, though all of those things are in there. It was about designing the next cycle of content for World of Warcraft. "The big global threat that's coming, to define the next couple years of WoW's gameplay, is really war itself," Metzen said.

At the end of the last expansion, Cataclysm, Blizzard did need a new plan. Long ago, even before the game's first Burning Crusade expansion, word had leaked out that the development team had ideas for expansions about the world's Northrend continent (which eventually became the Wrath of the Lich King expansion), and the setting's elemental planes (which was reworked into Cataclysm). But Pandaria was never on that list, or any other lists that have reached the public's eyes before it was announced.

So Mists of Pandaria, then, does represent a new turn in the already long and still growing story of World of Warcraft. It represents not only a turn in the game's lore (which up until this point has been heavily based on the series' previous titles), but a turn in the game's direction, the first step in answering how (and even why) you keep a PC game this old and this unwieldy still profitable, fresh, and growing.

#review World of Warcraft's Mists of Pandaria expansion is huge. One one end, it starts at level one, with a new starting area for the new Pandaren race. On the other end, it raises the level cap from 85 to 90 and adds an enormous amount of high-end and end-game zones. More »

#worldofwarcraft Some weeks you have a lot of time to be a panda-person. And some weeks, you don't. More »

#worldofwarcraft Reactions to World of Warcraft's newest expansion, Mists of Pandaria have been more or less positive, overall—but the expansion has sold fewer copies, and those more slowly, than WoW's previous expansion, Cataclysm. WoW, while still a popular and beloved juggernaut among MMORPGs, is aging, and the world of gaming in which it competes has changed. More »

#worldofwarcraft Things are just not going well for me in Azeroth, I'm afraid. More »

FIFA 13 debuted in the UK last week and the footie franchise dismissed last year's record-setting premiere. According to Chart-Track, FIFA 13 outsold the previous year's installment in units and revenue by 27 and 31 percent, respectively. The game represented 80 percent of all entertainment software sales on the British isles.

Last week saw the biggest sales week in the UK of the year so far, with a 196 percent increase of unit sales in the market and 282 percent in overall revenue.

FIFA 13 wasn't the only major player to come on the field last week, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria got its kung-fu panda on in fourth. Although that may seem like a lowish debut for what's still one of the biggest MMOs in the world, it should be noted that the game was available digitally and therefore wouldn't be tracked.

Finally, on the hardware front, the PS3 'Super Slim' 500 GB sent PS3 sales up 138 percent, with the console representing 37 percent of PS3 sales. Storm on past the break for the UK top ten.

#worldofwarcraft This morning, I got up early and sat down to a freshly-patched World of Warcraft to play a brand-new Pandaren. I still don't love the WoW art style—I never have, it's just personal preference really—but even I had to admit that the vivid blue streak in my panda's pigtails was kind of cute. And if I didn't love the way she ran, well, at least I could get used to it, and the vivid colors of the vistas she merrily stabbed her way through were worth appreciating. The experience started out smoothly, if a little on the slow side. More »

#watchthis Channeling Mel Gibson's Braveheart in this new video, Francis gets totally psyched for the next World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria. Totally. Psyched. More »

Enter a whole new realm with World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria...

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#warcraft The next World of Warcraft expansion will be out on September 25, developer Blizzard said today. More »

Blizzard will attend Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, and bring its latest wares to the show. From August 15 to 19, Blizzard will showcase new content for Starcraft 2 and World of Warcraft.

Attendees will be able to sample the new Terran, Zerg and Protoss units coming to multiplayer in StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, which is slated to launch sometime this year. Blizzard will also give patrons a chance to check out the starting zone in Mists of Pandaria, the fourth expansion for World of Warcraft.

Finally, Blizzard will have Diablo 3 available to play, but you're probably doing that now anyway.

The Pandaren experience begins on the back of a floating turtle, a level 1 through 10 zone that serves as the starting point for anyone that wants to start over as World of Warcraft's newest race. Unlike the rest of WoW's playable races, Pandaren are not auto-aligned with Horde or Alliance right from the beginning. Instead, they're neutral, and initially unconcerned with the Horde versus Alliance rivalry that so strongly defines life in Azeroth...

The World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria beta is now live. In a post on WoW's official site, Blizzard welcomes fans to the first phase, which will focus on "the 1-10 starting experience" in Pandaren. "High-level content as well as template characters will become available in future beta updates,...

How do you change a persistent online world in a way that makes it feel like completing a quest made a difference? Blizzard's phasing was one way, where parts of the world were altered to reflect the consequences of your actions. You could see it in Northrend after Wrath of the Lich King launched an...

While WoW is still the world's largest subscription MMORPG and once held as many as twelve million subscribers, Activision Blizzard revealed last month that the number has fallen to 10.2 million, down 100,000 from November 2011. In a new interview, WoW producer John Lagrave has confirmed that the decline is at least partially attributable to Star Wars: The Old Republic...

The pandas are coming, the pandas are coming! More precisely, it's the Pandaren, and whether or not you feel this is Blizzard nuking the fridge on its stalwart cash-Tauren, there's no denying it's the cutest expansion to be bestowed upon the warriors of Azeroth.

Blizzard took us to the land of kung fu pandas to check out more details about the game, but here are several trailers of the terrain we'll explore when the expansion arrives.

The chaps at Wowhead’s coverage of a secret press peek at World Of Warcraft’s Mists of Pandaria is 100% better than RPS’s coverage. The trivial detail of us not actually seeing the game is only a technicality: touche, Wowhead. Our coverage of the Terrible Night Of Sleep expansion to Craig’s Weekend is clearly better than yours, though: I was AFK for two hours, but after that spent 5 hours in a raid on Sleepless Dungeon.

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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."

The Monk is a strange class to play, and only the second new class added since World of Warcraft's launch in 2004. It can't be an easy task coming up with a cohesive set of abilities to define a distinctive role in a game that's been running for almost eight years and where every class can be customized in so many ways...

For a limited time, Blizzard's Scroll of Resurrection will give sizeable benefits to inactive World of Warcraft players. If you accept a Scroll, you get one character auto-leveled to 80, a free upgrade to Cataclysm, the newest WoW expansion, seven free days of play time and a free transfer between r...

Blizzard Community Manager Jonathan Brown is spreading the news about the updated Talent Calculator for World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. Available on the game's official site, the calculator allows you to spec your character out to the new level 90 cap...

It's a problem that most massively multiplayer online game developers might surrender vital organs to have: over the past 15 months, Blizzard Entertainment's 400-lb. virtual gorilla, World of Warcraft, has dropped from 12 million to a pitiful 10.3 million global subscribers (as of November 8, 2011, ...

Blizzard doesn't make decisions without really good reasons. That's why Mists of Pandaria, the next expansion for World of Warcraft featuring a race resembling pandas, and introducing the martial-arts using Monk class, seemed like such a strange choice. Here's the situation: World of Warcraft's ...

World of Warcraft is about to celebrate its seventh anniversary on November 23 next week (which means that some of its players have been alive for less time than the game's servers have been up), and to celebrate, Blizzard is giving everyone who logs in between this Sunday and December 3 a Feat of Strength achievement (which means it's only available during this time) and a "celebration package" item. The item will fire off a virtual fireworks display, and gives players a spiffy new tabard, as well as a 7% experience point and reputation bonus when used.

The company will also introduce a brand new "What's your game?" celebrity TV commercial this weekend during the Bears/Chargers game on CBS. The star of the new commercial is set to be a surprise, so you can start guessing right now in the comments below. We have no idea who it might be, but considering all of the stars so far (William Shatner, Mr. T, Ozzy Osbourne, Jean Claude Van Damme, and Verne Troyer), a girl might be nice?

Blizzard has made the next expansion in the World of Warcraft official as Mists of Pandaria, and after conquering other planets, the Lich King, and a big bad dragon, the Horde and Alliance are headed to ... China. Well, not China per se, but Pandaria, a long-rumored, Eastern mysticism-influenced realm, where panda-based humanoids roam, brew and drink beer, and offer players the next five levels in their continuing progression.

As is often the case with this game, many players have revolted. The Pandaren have long been used as a joke in the world of Warcraft, either referred to on April Fool's Day, or showing up in the company's parodic Christmas cards. But lead quest designer Dave Kosak says players who scoff at Pandaria should think twice. "Maybe people, because they've only been portrayed as cameos or only April Fool's jokes, people think that there's nothing to this race, and that's not it at all," Kozak says to us during BlizzCon last week. "I think the Pandaren are kind of fascinating -- they work hard, they play hard, they eat hard, they drink hard, and they don't do anything half way."

The Pandaren, in addition to some of the other announced features of the new expansion, point to the next long arc of the World of Warcraft game. In the first few expansions of the title, Blizzard has cashed in on the earlier origins of the series. But with Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard seems to be setting up the world's most popular MMO for years of content to come.

There's not much you can say about a World of Warcraft character before level 10. At that early stage, describing a character is like trying to describe what a full grown man will be like from the zygote. Well, that's the case usually. For the Monk, it's a little different, thanks to the new resourc...