Might as well have this, make random comments on what you wanna share.

I'm just gonna copy the MMO champ stuff.

What is Mists of Pandaria?

• The goal is to combine new gameplay with most fun parts of the past.
• The plan is to get people back into the world, instead of having
  players roam around Stormwind and Orgrimmar all the time once they reach
  max level.
• Developers want you to do what you want to do to progress your
  character. They really want you to feel like you have a menu of content
  where you can pick whatever you want to do, and you shouldn't feel
  forced to do something to progress your character. For example, daily
  quests will reward you with valor points but it will still be faster if
  you raid of course.
• Character builds are going to be entirely revamped. Talents were
  still too cookie cutter, so the developers want to give players more
  choices in their talents.

Pandaria

• 5 New leveling zones to explore
• Single, unified continent
• Influenced by Asian landscapes
• AH, Bank, and Central Questing Hub
• No flying until max level
• There's 5 leveling zones but they are very large zones, and you won't have your flying mount.

Lore of Pandaria

• A long, storied history.
• Magically hidden since The Sundering
• A new land to explore....
• Pandaria was discovered during the cataclysm, a naval battle between horde and alliance was taking place close to it.

Pandaren starting zone

• It's a turtle! It left Pandaria 10
  000 years ago and never came back. Pandarens who wanted to discover the
  world left on that turtle.
• Story focused with simple mechanics
• Cross faction, choose Horde/Alliance at level 10.

Creatures of Pandaria

• The Jinyu are fish-like creatures and will be in a wide number of zones.
• The Hozu are a monkey-like race, they stand up on their legs and can
  walk around. They play tons of pranks on the local pandarens and are
  also in a lot of zones.
• Verming are ... new kobolds, they kinda look like evil bunnies.
• Mantid: Whole raids and dungeons around this race. Insect race that
  has been there since the beginning of ages. They have been seperated by a
  giant wall. They are starting to go crazy and are going through the
  wall
• Mogu: Ancient race, original race on pandaria. The mogu want the
  island back from the pandaren, they are really mad. You will see them in
  dungeons.
• Sha: Manifestation of the evil energies that flow through the earth. If there is any sort of battle these guys pop up.

The Jade Forest

• This is where Alliance and Horde will be
  landing. The horde is washing up on the north side, the alliance on the
  south side. There will be one unified start zone and Alliance/Horde will
  end up meeting up in the middle.
• Lush rainforests and stone spires
• The Alliance will try to become friend with the Hozu, and the Horde with the Jinyu and will try to turn them against each other.
• Temple of the Jade Serpent will be the dungeon of this zone. It will be your 85-86 Dungeon, it has been taken over by Sha

Valley of the Four Winds

• Two zones for the price of one!
  This zone is huge, the whole north side of the zone is pandaren
  farmlands, the south is a coastal jungle.
• You will get to choose between the north side and the south side
  when you arrive. You can go back and switch side if you want the other
  quests.
• The dungeon of this zone is Stormstout Brewery.
• This is where you will have your first interaction with the Mantids,
  they broke through the wall and are now attacking pandarens villages.
• This is a level 86-87 zone

New Features

• The pandarens are the new race.
• The female model isn't done yet.
• At level 10, you will get to choose between horde and alliance.
• Pandaren Classes: Hunter, Mage, Monk, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warrior
• Racial - Epicurean - Increase the stat benefits from food by 100%
• Racial - Gourmand - Cooking skill increased by 15.
• Racial - Inner Peace - Your rested experience bonus lasts twice as long.
• Racial - Bouncy - You take 50% less falling damage.
• Racial - Quaking Palm - You touch a secret pressure point on an enemy target, putting it to sleep for 3 sec.

Monk New Class

• Brewmaster - Tank spec
• Mistweaver - Healer, a healer who can stand up in melee and will let players experience a "new healing style"
• Windwalker - Melee DPS
• This is not a hero class, and it will start at level 1
• The class is very martial-arts based
• Lots of monk-only animations, the healer and tanks will have different stances they can stand in, etc ...
• Monk Races - All of them except Goblin and Worgens

Monk Equipment

• Leather Armor (Agility or Intellect)
• They hit a lot with hands and feet
• They will need weapons for some finishers: Staves, Fist Weapons
• They will also be able to use 1H Axe and maces, swords
• Healers will get off-hands, they don't want healers to use shields.

Monk Resources

• Chi (energy) slowly regenerates and is only used for your Jab and Roll abilities.
• Jab generates Light and Dark force, which are used for everything
  else. Some finishing move uses dark force, some use the light force.
• No auto attack! Devs want you to have this street fighter feel where you punch a lot

Cataclysm Talents / Talent 2.0

Cataclysm Talents

• Pro - The level 10 specs were really nice and gave you a role early in the game, definitely a keeper.
• Pro - Removing junk from the talent trees was also a very good move.
• Pro - Having some kind of choices for optional skills/subspecs worked out pretty well.
• Con - You had a risk of "skipping" important talents
• Con - There wasn't enough junk removed
• Con - There wasn't enough choices, you might have a different final
  talent point than another combat rogue but it just wasn't enough. The
  cookie cutter build still persists.
• Con - No enough customization, no true hybridization (Using a little bit of 2 different trees)
• Con - Players got grumpy

Talent System 2.0[*]The talent system is gone! Ok, not really,
but it's greatly changed.[*]You now have your class abilities, your spec
abilities, and your talents.[*]You still choose your spec at level 10,
and you get a spec ability at level 10. You will get additional spec
abilities later. There are anything that you really need to function,
they will just be given to you to make sure you have all the tools you
need to have.



Example - Prot Paladin

• LVL 10 - Avenger's Shield
• LVL 20 - Hammer of the Righteous (Prot and Ret)
• LVL 30 - Judgement of the Just (Passive)

Talents

• There is not talent points or ranks.
• There is one talent pree per class.
• You earn talents every 15 levels.
• You get to choose 1 out of 3 every time you get a new point, you can
  only pick one of them and can't go back to get the other ones.
• There will be no mandatory talent.
• You can now change talents as easily as you change glyphs.

 

PvE Scenarios

• PvE Scenarios are a way to give new interesting content that doesn't make sense in a dungeon content.
• Scenarios are more about reusing parts of the world in interesting
  new ways, and introducing new types of PvE gameplay that we've never
  seen before like PvE battlegrounds.
• They are short instances for a few players, the amount of players
  can vary depending on the scenario, some of them can be for 3 players.
• You don't need the typical tank/heal/dps setup, you will just be able to enter and play your role no matter what it is.
• It will be a staged experience where you will try to accomplish some greater goal
• For example, a scenario might require you to kill 25 kobolds in
  stage 1, then find and return 4 goldshire children, and then kill the
  boss.
• Developers would like to do PvE battlegrounds, where you will have
  to slay 50 alliance/horde soldiers, destroy 6 towers and the barracks,
  and then defeat the enemy General.
• They could replace group quests.
• It uses the same queue system as the dungeon finder
• Since there is no role requirements, queues should be instant.

Challenge Mode Dungeons

• Complete a dungeon in x minutes
• To earn Bronze, Silver, Gold medals.
• Gear levels are normalized, all your gear will be brought to the same level to make the competition even.
• You can't just get better gear to overpower it.
• It will reward sweet looking gear with no stats, and valor points!
• Challenge Mode will reward you with very unique looking gear to show off how awesome you are to your friends
• A new challenge dungeons UI will be added, you will be able to check
  your medals, your ranking, show what rewards you can unlock, etc ....

Pet Battle System

• You will be able to collect, level, and battle with companion pets.
• It will be accessible to all players.
• Works with almost every pet
• Pet Customization, you will be able to name your pet, give them visual abilities, etc ...
• There will be "Wild pets", you can find them in the world and engage
  in battle with them. You will then be able to get that pet and add it
  to your Pet Journal.
• Pets have random stats, some of them will be very good at tanking, some will have a CC ability, etc ...
• Some pets will only be found during a specific season, while it's
  raining, or during the day or the night. Some of them will only spawn in
  the spring, when it's raining, in elwynn forest at night!
• Most pets will become tradable
• Your pet journal will display info on all your pets, including
  stats, skills, and also drop locations and lore info for the pets you
  don't have yet!
• Winning battles earns you experience, and levels your pets.
• You will learn new abilities. Every pet can use 3 abilities in a battle at one time.
• Every time you level you will also increase the stats of your pet.
• You will level multiple pets to build your team.
• You have 3 battle slots, one for each pet in your team.

Pet Battle System - Battle

• PvE and PvP Battles
• It will be turn based.
• A simple combat system.
• Fight with a team of 3 pets
• Queuing system, you will be able to find a fight pretty fast depending on the level of your pets.

Pet Battle System - Customization

• You will finally be able to name your pets, and see that name in battle.
• Items for your pets, you will have an item slot for your pet and might be able to socket gems in those items, etc ...
• Individual builds of abilities and different teams.
• Masters and Masters abilities, there will be different NPC pet
  masters in the world who will let you earn abilities when you beat them.
  For example, beating the master of mechanical pets will get you a new
  ability for your pet!

Dungeons

• 9 new dungeons in the new expansion
• 6 dungeons will be on Pandaria
• Scholomance and Scarlet Monastery (Wings 1 and 2) will be back in Heroic Mode

Raids

3 new Epic raids!

• They will feature two enemy races, the Mogu and the Mantid.
• Raid Finder, Normal, and Heroic difficulties will be available for all raids from day 1.
• World raid bosses will return!
• More info will be available at the Raids & Dungeons Panel today.

Questing

• Increased focus on max level content, it will reward you with Valor Points.
• Incentives for dungeons/raiders to run quests and do outdoor/daily
  kind of stuff. For example finishing a quest might give you a buff for
  the day, and maybe that buff will let you roll on a loot that only
  appears to people with that buff.
• More quest choices, and a lot less linear
• No flying until max level, it's much easier to keep people on the
  ground and create interesting quests when you know people won't just fly
  away and drop on the boss.
• Faction improvements, there will be group of factions and they will
  let you work for all factions from that group to get your rewards. This
  way you don't have to grind a single faction anymore.

PvP

New Battlegrounds (Not final yet)

• Stranglethorn Diamond Mines - Payload style gameplay.
• Valley of Power - Murderball
• Azshara Crater - DOTA
• New Arena - Tol'vir Proving Grounds

STV Diamond Mine

• Goblin Mine below northern STV
• Payload style gameplay
• Escort mine cars to depot
• Multiple tracks, you will get a lot of options and you will be able to decide which way you want the cart to go.
• First to x resources wins

Valley of Power

• Located in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms
• Murderball style gameplay
• Holding the object earns points
• Multiple point zones, depending on where you're hiding you will earn more/less points
• Object deals damage to holder
• Damage increases over time.

Tol'vir Proving Grounds - Arena

• Located in Uldum
• Simple layout based on Nagrand arena
• Sense of place in the world
• Just a simple square with 4 pillars/statues, etc ...

Achievements

• Allow
  achievements to be shared among all characters on the same Battle.net
  account, things such as the raid achievements and the ones which are
  difficult to get.
• Allows to include new achievements such as "get all the professions to the maximum level"

Major Class Changes

Resilience

• Devs like the way Resilience works in PvP, and
  how it gives a nice goal for players looking to progress/upgrade their
  gear in PvP
• Resilience is a pretty huge barrier for people who want to start PvPing.
• Resilience will become a base stat, and will increase a little every time you level.

Ranged Weapons

• Hunter minimum range is gone!
• Hunter melee weapon is gone!
• Ranged slot for all other characters are gone.
• Relics are gone.
• Rogues and warriors can now throw their melee weapon
• Wands become main hand weapons

Warlock

• Unique resource for each spec.
• Affliction will keep Soul Shards, they are currently not interesting enough but devs have cool ideas for them.
• Demonology will get Demonic Fury, you build up Demonic Fury and you
  metamorphosize when you max your Demonic Fury. More skills will be added
  to Demon Form, etc ...
• Destruction will get Infernal Embers. The destruction warlock who
  keeps getting casting fire spells get hotter and hotter and will
  eventually deal insane amount of damage, you can build it up pretty
  quickly and unleash your big spell.

Shaman

• Buff totems are gone. It just wasn't very interesting to be the buff bitch of the group.
• All totems are now utility
• New totem examples:
• Earthgrab totem - roots
• Repulsion totem - repels
• Bulwark Totem - absorbs

Druid

• They always felt like they had 4 specs, so now they do.
• Feral - Cat (melee dps)
• Guardian - bear (tanking)
• Some overlap between the two
• All druids can still go cat or bear form.

All classes

• Spell books cleaned up, got rid of more junk, the goal is to clean up action bars a little more without removing the fun things.
• Rotations will be improved
• Spells will be automatically learned, you won't have to go to your trainer anymore.
• You will get a new spell at level 87, level 90 new talent point.
• Talent trees should be fun, and you should have more choice than just a cookie cutter build.

 

 

Talents 2.0

• Major change to class talent trees, and this is a new phase of development for the talent system.
• The goal is to have you sit to another next to another combat rogue,
  and this combat rogue will actually have different talents than you do!
• Character customization was the original point of talents in the
  first place but overtime cookie cutter builds dominated the scene.

New Model

• Class Abilities are available to all specs in the class. All warriors learn heroic strike for example.
• Spec Abilities are available to certain specs. Only Arms warriors
  learn Slam. Retribution and Protection paladin get Hammer of the
  Righteous, etc ...
• Talents are optional skills/bonuses available to all specs. Any
  warrior can choose Throwdown, and you will have to pick between 3
  different crowd control abilities on this level of talent.
• Level 15 - You pick your first talent. For example, warriors have to
  pick between Juggernaut / Double Time / Warbringer and players will
  have to pick which mobility ability they want to pick depending on their
  playstyle.

Talent Philosophy

• Access to stuff you never could before.
  If you were a subtlety rogue you knew you weren't going to get something
  like Killing Spree. And because talents are going to be all in the same
  tree, you're going to be able to combine them in a way that you never
  could before. For example, any rogue can have Shadowstep!
• Several new, overpowered (feeling) talents will be added to the game.
• If you don't see a beloved talent in your new talents list, don't
  worry, it's probably something we gave your spec as a baseline. For
  example all Holy priests now have Circle of Healing.
• No mandatory talents anymore.
• Every choice should be hard but fun!

Talent Preview

• Design will iterate a lot on individual talents
• Don't obsess about the numbers

 

 

Shado-pan Monastery

• Located in Kun-Lai Summit
• Mountain retreat of the mysterious Shado-pan Clan
• The Shado-pan protect Pandaria from hidden evil
• The Sha have escaped! (Shado pan keep Sha caged in the monastery, but it's escaped and you're trying to help figure this out)
• A great idea for layout..Changes into something more epic!
• Like to do outdoor dungeons because there are so many indoor already. They jump at opportunity to make outdoor.

Scholomance

• Level 90 Heroic
• New layout with familiar rooms (shuffle rooms around to make a remix out of it)
• Easier to navigate
• Concentrate on the coolness (of Scholo and take away everything that didn't quite make the cut)

Scarlet Monastery

• Level 80 Heroic
• Too much awesome for one dungeon (Remixed and keep all the coolest rooms)
• Split Monastery in two!
• Graveyard + Cathedral
• Armory + Library
• Update all boss mechanics

Challenge Modes

• For players looking for a greater challenge
• Timed dungeons runs to earn medals. The concept of Zul'Aman timed
  runs and similar things is now turned into a brand new game mode!
• It will work only on Pandaria dungeons at the beginning.
• It will work with the Dungeon Finder tool.
• Gear will be normalized, everyone is going to have the exact same
  item level on their gear. This is a skill based exercise and your gear
  doesn't matter.
• Rewards will be very awesome looking gear for Transmogrification
  purposes (no stats). You will also get valor points since the new goal
  is to let you progress your characters no matter what you do.
• Leaderboards will be available, you will be able to compare your performances with your guildies or even your entire realm!

Raids

• The raids are going to feature the Mogu and the Mantids
• All the new raids will work in Raid Finder, Normal, and Heroic difficulties.

Mogu'Shan Palace

• Located atop Kun-Lai Summit at the center of Pandaria
• Six boss raid
• It will let you explore the hidden secrets of the ancien Mogu empire. Even the Pandarians pretty much never went to this place.

Raid Finder (Patch 4.3)

• The concept came up when developers realized how succesful the dungeon finder is.
• They want the raid content to be available to a wider audience,
  everyone should have a chance to see that new content. They wanted most
  players to be able to experience the fight against Deathwing, etc ...
• The Raid Finder will have a Lower difficulty and rewards than Normal
  Difficulty. It won't be just a damage or health point reduction,
  mechanics will be reworked to make fights easier.
• This is only in Dragon Soul in Patch 4.3, but it will be available in all raids in patch 5.0
• Works for 25-Player and not with 10-Players, makes queue times much faster.

Goals for Mists of Pandaria

• Keep the experience short and
  focused. Dungeons should be short enough to let you run a couple of
  dungeons when you feel like it, not just one.
• Make encounters understandable and do not set up groups to fail. The
  dungeon journal has been added to the game to make sure that people
  don't die and wonder what the hell happened.
• Fights will be made clearer and more understandable, the Dungeon
  Journal was a first step and the goal is to make fights even clearer. It
  also means that you shouldn't be able to just tank and spank and wonder
  what happened but still win.
• Flex our creative Kung-fu. This expansion offers a lot of creative
  freedom and a lot of new stuff, developers tried to make sure that
  you'll get dragon punches and all kind of crazy and fun moves.

Q&A

How is gear going to scale in the challenge mode?

We are currently planning for it to scale down. An alternative to
scaling the gear would be to scale the monsters up, to make sure that
players do not feel less powerful.



Regarding the dungeon finder and raid finder, are we going to be able to enter a random queue for possibly TBC raids, or WOTLK?

Currently weve talked about it a little bit, one of the things we are
concerned about is that if there are actually people to fill that queue.
We are not sure if raid finder is a fit for those cases. In the future
we could do it.



Dungeons are now visible in outside world, but in BC there were also lots of these. Why did you not do this in Cata?

Over time we have dungeons that existed in outside world, and theres a
secondary thing to it. for example the stormbrew brewery where quests
actually go inside/around the dungeon. Historically we have had to scale
them to be smaller, here they are 1:1 scale so they have awesome impact
to the zones.



Can we do quests in a raid group?

Maybe, it has been talked about.



Why are kick wait timers so long?

It depends on how often that person has been kicked, as well as how often you kick people. It is modified dynamically.



Why did you start Cataclysm with so many bosses and raids, and then add so few in the later patches?

Plans aren't finalized for the first tier yet. It might be two or three
different raids, loot distribution also needs to be worked out.



In Cataclysm, there is a very steep difficulty jump between normals
and heroics, how are you going to handle that in MoP? Will there be more
Level 90 normals?

We are currently not planning to have 90 normal dungeons in MoP.



Previous hard modes required internet research to figure out how to
toggle them, now it is just a switch. Can we go back to the old way with
multiple difficulites?

It was hard to come up with this kind of mechanic for all the bosses, it
worked with bosses that had order or additional minibosses, but not
most others. We are all for fun toggles, but most bosses don't need
multiple difficulty modes.



Right now you currently randomly choose legendary to a class that
hasnt got one for a while cant you make a quest chain where guilds can
give the legendary to their most deserving raid member?

The questlines we are currently making have really class specific
features, we could open it up but it would lose some of that
exclusivity. Do you want unique and awesome or generic and boring?



The 10/25 man lockout is frustrating because I have nothing to do on
my alt. Will Raid Finder let us join as a group with our guild?

You can queue with a group, there are no lockouts, and normal/heroic
raids do not share any lockout with Raid Finder difficulty. (You only
get loot once from Raid Finder)



For Cata, there are 3 raids that came in right from the expansion.
Have you guys thought about a way to not make it so overwhelming? Is
there going to be like a middle ground?

Essentially the number of bosses comes down to make sure we can spread
the loot around. It mostly comes down to the number of bosses we can get
down for a patch.



Are any more old classic WoW dungeons going to be remade, maybe Hogger?

Everyone loves them, but it is a matter of time. We made sure to get
some in for Cataclysm launch, we want to add them whenever we have time
to do so.



So when you guys announced 4.3 you said there were only going to be 7
hours. You said you were going to focus on epicness and putting more
work into them. Firelands only felt like half a raid. Is this omsething
we can expect to see in the next raid tiering in MoP?

We want as many people as possible to experience that content. We were
looking at the number of people getting kills on the raid bosses and
there were not a lot. We immediately put out hotfixes to make sure more
people can experience the content.



Is there any plan to seperate 10 and 25 man achievements again, especially server firsts?

There were some difficulty differences, it is something we have talked
about but we aren't making any promises right now. Maybe in the future!



You were talking how challenge modes can be done for dungeons, are
they also for raids and will they be unlocked immediatly or will they
unlock gradually?

There is a chance we could do them for raids, we want to start out with
dungeons and see if it feels right. There is one thing we didnt really
mention, but say when you get the gold medal, your gear would get nerfed
so you can run it again. We havent really finalised this to be honest.



Two raids on the same tier gives players choice in progression.
Single raids make it hard to get to the end and make progress. Will you
add raids that have multiple paths to get to the last boss?

This is something we are talking about, especially with Raid Finder. It
breaks up Dragon Soul in 4.3 into two parts, giving you the big reward
for beating either part. This might be something we can do if we figure
out the logistics in the future.



Last years BlizzCon and during cata you hinted at an Abyssal Maw raid, what happened to it?

We do not have any plans to release the Abyssal Maw raid, it was going
to fit in the end of this year. The story line we were telling didnt fit
with the patch cycle. It just ended up not fitting. The concept was as
far as we got on it. From the story perspective we have moved on so we
probably wont use it again.



For the new dungeon challenges, how are you going to handle lower stats like hit. Will it put you below your hit cap?

Good point, there are lots of details like that to work out. We have Top Men working on this. Top Men.

In Ulduar and Icecrown you could get the Mimiron's Head or Invincible
for completing the hard modes, but in Firelands you gave the Fire hawk
mounts to people completing normal mode as well. And it's a bummer to
see people who don't deserve it running around with the awesome mounts.

In normal mode you had a small chance to get them, and in Heroic mode
you had a 100% drop rate, you were rewarded more. That's part of the
reason why we will separate the Raid finder difficulty now, mounts will
only come from Normal and Heroic modes since the Raid Finder is an intro
to raiding. All the prestige items will stay in normal and heroic mode.