Blizzard Announces 4th WoW Expansion: Mists of Pandaria

[tuanmai]

Hope you like pandas!

Blizzard Announces 4th WoW Expansion: Mists of Pandaria : Read more

 

[hokkdawg]

Kind of stopped playing WoW about 1 week after Cata...

 

[Arkive]

If this is what has been pushing Diablo 3 back, somebody's going to have to pay...

 

[AbdullahG]

PANDAS!!!

 

[crewton]

I'd play a pokemon mmo just not one inside of WoW.

 

[Guest]

World of Warcraft: Kung Fu Panda 3

 

[bejabbers]

What a load of bull.... this is the crap blizzard is putting their resources into when they should be putting more effort into Diablo 3. Wow is old now.. it's time to put your efforts into new games, not trying desperately to hang onto your 7 year old crap. As it is, thanks to WoW, blizzard has screwed around with diablo more than the average diablo fan likes. Ugh, Blizzard is very quickly falling from the top of game developers.

 

[rasagul]

I think they should have gone with penguins...

 

[Guest]

Ha they just Jumped the Shark. World Of Warcraft: Hello Panda Island Adventure

 

[crinkdude]

What a load of crap

 

[wildkitten]

I don't understand why so many people were in denial over Mists of Pandaria. It was the only thing Blizzard had trademarked so it was either this or no expansion next year.

While I have my doubts on whether it may be a good idea to create content based on something that came into existance as an April Fool's joke years ago, I will hold judgement because much of Warcraft is tongue in cheek, so it could be ok. They were after all in WC3.

The issue is this. Will Blizzard stop doing what they have done in Wrath and Cataclysm and actually put the Warcraft story back in WoW. For both these past expansions we have not gotten half the content they talked about during the beta's for them and instead gotten constant nerf/buff cycles as well as 'premium' items.

If Blizzard puts the Warcraft story back into the game, I will seriously consider going back. But after nearly fours years and two expansions with little of the Warcraft story actually playing out in game, I won't hold my breath.

I'm just hoping the conference call with shareholders in a couple of weeks will show some more bad news that may actually lead to Vivendi shaking up some management at Activision Blizzard. Kotick should never have been made CEO and the division would be much better off with Morjaime over it. I believe that would allow Blizzard to be able go back to being the Blizzard of old.

 

[applefairyboy]

I'm curious if good ol' Leeroy still plays...

 

[gallovfc]

Platypuses are better than pandas... they are not monks, they are ninjas!

 

[izoli]

I just quit playing WoW a little bit ago. Cata started off decently but they went the wrong direction with it. And this looks just horrible.

 

[wildkitten]

[citation][nom]dirtyferret[/nom]OMG Blizzard is putting their efforts into expansions that are constantly setting PC game selling records because the game is played by 12 million people! what insane business practices are these??!!FYI, in about 12 months after this panda expansion...Blizzard will have another one...cause people keep buying them...if you don't play WoW (i don't) then who cares since it won't affect you.[/citation]
Actually 12 million don't play it. When Wrath of the Lich King was released, they had 11.5 million subscribers. A little more than a year after Wrath's release Kotaku had an article, in February of 2010, talking about where the subscriber base was still at 11.5 million. A month after Wrath was released in China, that was when the 12 million mark was announced. The problem is Blizzard rushed Cataclysm out in China only about 8 months after Wrath's release. While Wrath lacked a lot of the content that was talked about in beta, that is still incredibly fast to try to push out the next expansion there especially when you consider that it barely gives those players time to experience the content and not to mention sort of makes all the extra work Blizzard put into China's version of Wrath rather irrelevant. It's not hard to believe that Wrath was not well recieved in China.

Then the problems really accelerated after Cataclysm was released. In the very first quarter after it's release, they lost 600,000 subscribers. In the second quarter they lost an additional 300,000. Those numbers would be disturbing in a year leading to a new expansion where there is precious little new content. But the fact they lost that many in the first six months following the release of a new expansion has to be worrisome. With the third quarter ending after September, it won't be too long before that quarters numbers are released, and I don't think any improvement will be seen.

For a long time it seems as if the Warcraft franchise fan, those who buy the novels, comics, collectibles, etc, have been leaving in droves. The fact that the comics, the place where intended content for the game that never made it into the game, was finished was canceled due to very poor sales, sort of makes that seem very true. They also canceled the magazine after only 4 issues because of poor sales. The Shattering, what was suppose to be the first of three novels dealing with the events leading up to Cataclysm had weak sales as well. Only a couple of months ago was the second novel released, and considering Cataclysm is about to get it's last content patch, that's rather late for a pre Cataclysm novel to come out.

And there won't be another expansion 12 months after MoP. Blizzard has never released a WoW expansion in just 12 months time. They have always been on a two year time line. For one thing, 12 months after MoP is released, Q4 of 2013, is the intended release date for the Titan MMO Blizzard is working on.

 

[mavroxur]

I used to love WoW back in the early days. With every expansion (except Burning Crusade) the game is getting stupider and being dumbed down. BC was a good expansion. WoTLK is where Blizzard lost my money. Cataclysm did it even worse. And, i'm sure, this new expansion will make it a "faceroll = win" game even more. Maybe i'm an oldfart, but I enjoyed Pre-BC best of all. Lots of challenge, and it took time and skills to succeed. Now, it basically just takes time (much less of it now) to succeed. Pretty soon the game will be dumbed down to the point it can be played on a console controller i'm sure. Just give it time.

 

[Kamab]

Blizzard, I am disappoint.

 

[MasterMace]

More crappy expansions with crappy gameplay.

 

[benzjie]

Looks like a cartoon network production. And monks sound kinda familiar as well.

 

[saxplayingcompnerd]

Blizzard is dumbing the game down to the point that a 3 yr old could play, but they design dungeons that require 40 hours a week to kill in a timely manner. How does this even make sense?

 

[nebun]

really.....isn't there another cow to be milked somewhere else?

 

[Guest]

Personally I don't see this expansion saving WoWs dwindling subscriber numbers. If they continue to loose 300k subscribers each quarter their playerbase is going to shrink quite quickly. I played WoW for 5 years and stopped 6 months after Cata came out.
I don't quite see how there can be only 1 new race. A Monk class seems pretty lame too considering there are lots of other heroic classes they could have introduced: Demon Hunter, Arch Druid or Arch Mage which people were dying to play.
So they have 4.3 on the PTR and this expansion coming out whenever and it probably won't land for 12 months. From a personal perspective this is the first expansion that I have seen nothing in it that makes me want to play it.
I can also see how the expansion may be considered offensive by the Chinese Government so perhaps there my be a WoW banhammer falling in China.
Oh and, Blizzard will have intense competition like never before when Star Wars: The Old Republic launches at the end of the year.

 

[beayn]

Pandas? This was all they could come up with? Warcraft lore is rich, I'm sure there were lots of other options...

 

[wildkitten]

[citation][nom]dirtyferret[/nom]who cares if they have 12 million, 11.5, 10 or 13. They sell the expansions like hot cakes and they have no competition unless you think with their base of under 1 million affects them? FYI, they just released news that Diablo III is free to any WoW player with a one year agreement (can be made in monthly installments).Why is Tom's news so slow? http://www.techspot.com/news/45964 [...] eiled.html[/citation]
I'm sure their shareholders care. Yes, 11.1 million, at least until the next announcement in a few weeks is made, is a lot. But as I said before, losing 900,000 in the FIRST six months after a new expansion has to be troubling.

In fact, the Diablo 3 announcement actually points to the fact they believe WoW needs help. They gave Starcraft 2 for free in Korea to people who had active WoW subscriptions and that's a country where they could have charged $300 a copy for Starcraft 2 and not affected sales at all. The only reason for a D3 giveaway is to prop up WoW's numbers, so in fact when you ask "Who cares", your post indicates Blizzard cares.

 

[wildkitten]

[citation][nom]saxplayingcompnerd[/nom]Blizzard is dumbing the game down to the point that a 3 yr old could play, but they design dungeons that require 40 hours a week to kill in a timely manner. How does this even make sense?[/citation]
That's rather their problem. They are catering to the so called "casuals" who do not care one bit about the Warcraft franchise and lore.

They never should have strayed from their original vision. WoW had a rich lore to base itself on. It started as a nice balance, not as hard or demanding as EQ but not as easy as say Guild Wars (for the record, i love GW, but they don't go after the same audience WoW does, or at least did in the beginning).

The reason WoW broke all of EQ's subscriber records on the first day was because of the Warcraft story and the fan's familiarity with it. Keeping true to that vision does not push away the "casual" player, but abandoning it does push away the franchise fan. With all of the canceled Warcraft material as of late, it seems as if that core base is definately leaving.