MoP Devblog #2
For the past four months, since our first devblog post, we have received countless questions from you about the current state of MoP. We assure you that our developers have not been slacking in the meantime, since otherwise we wouldn’t be able to bring you this post today about the following cool new things they were able to implement.
First of all, the zones that we were working on last time are now almost finished. These zones are the Jade Forest (the starting zone in Pandaria), Valley of the Four Winds, and Kun-Lai Summit. The pandaren starting zone, Wandering Isle, the island on the back of the giant turtle Shen-zin Su, is now also in a pretty good shape.
Next, it is time to talk a bit about the news regarding the MoP instances. As you may know, MoP introduces scenarios, which are short 3-player progressive instances, focused on story and various objectives. Previously, we had already implemented two of the initial MoP scenarios, and now we are pleased to inform you that almost all of the initial content (5.0.4) scenarios were implemented and in a pretty good state.
Our PvP-loving players will surely welcome that the other of the two initial MoP battlegrounds, Silvershard Mines, has also been worked on and is now on par with Temple of Kotmogu.
The classic PvE instances have also received some improvements. MoP updates 4 of the classic dungeons: Ragefire Chasm, Scholomance, Scarlet Monastery (merged from Cathedral and Graveyard), and Scarlet Halls (merged from Armory and Library). The last 3 of these dungeons also have a level 90 heroic version in MoP. All of these dungeons are now working and in a very good shape.
We have begun working on Mogu’shan Vaults, the first of the 3 initial (5.0.4) raids introduced in MoP. The first 2 bosses are already done, but there are still 4 more encounters to go!
One dungeon-related mechanic introduced in MoP is the Challenge Mode. This is a way to test your skills finishing dungeons in the shortest time possible, with cool rewards for players including mounts, pets, titles, achievements and transmogrification items. This mechanic is now also almost fully implemented, including the relevant GUI and dungeon changes, and gear scaling (as Challenge Mode is skill-based and not gear-based).
The improved Group Finder (now including both scenarios and raids in addition to dungeons) is now also working and has been upgraded with countless quality improvements. Among other things, Random Dungeon Finder will no longer give instance lock to a player for a killed boss and will also include dungeons where the players have an instance lock.
At the time of our previous post, the classes that were prepared for Pandaria were the Paladin, Rogue and Warrior. We have made some more polishing on them since, as well as some general changes to all classes, for example spell system fixes and improvements, power cost improvements (in MoP, one spell can now have more than one power cost, depending on buffs), and fixes to PvP resilience and power, including the reworked system of diminishing returns.
Our developers have then harnessed their chi and implemented the new class added in MoP, the Monk. Monks will be available to all races except goblin and worgen, and are now playable and enjoyable like the other classes. The Mage is now also ready for Pandaria, with Priest being worked on currently.
Now the thing you have all surely been waiting for: pet battles! In Mists of Pandaria, you will have the opportunity to train your cute little companion pets and send them out to bloody battles against other critters or players. Our developers have also started working on them recently, and they are already almost halfway to being finished. Many pet abilities are now implemented and duels are also working. Players will also be able to queue for a PvP pet battle in their Pet Journal, but this feature is not yet fully implemented.
There are lots of other improvements to various aspects of the game and we can’t list them all here, but here is a handful of other cool things from our developers:
- Session Persistence. This is something few servers have, and it will allow your character to stay in the game world for an extended period of time in case of an unexpected disconnect, and will not disappear when you reconnect. Under specific conditions, it will also be possible to have multiple active characters at once from the same account.
- Advanced Combat Logging, useful for various combat analysis tools like Warcraft Logs, has been implemented.
- The account-wide achievement system added in MoP is now ready for your characters.
- We are working on including two-factor authentication when joining the game, to increase the security of your account. This will be done via technique known as Time-based One-Time Password.
- Improvements to our networking interface and communication between the login and world servers.
We hope you like the progress and the new features that have been done and are as excited for Mists of Pandaria as we are. As always, you can find the updated status of development progress here.
Thank you for your continued support and see you in our next devblog post!