Wandering Through The Mists

I decided to get the Annual Pass. I really thought Diablo 3 was right around the corner. Two months later they announced another delay, in the form of a release date - May 15th. My two month game card has 3 days left and I have logged about 20 hours during that time. That was all more than a month ago. I have been playing lots of other games during that time: Bastion, Skyrim, SWTOR, Worms Reloaded, Mass Effect, and the demo for Kingdoms of Amular: Reckoning.

The short time that I was in Azeroth, I had decided to level up all of the classes that I had yet to play. This included the mage, warlock, priest, shaman, and warrior. I had this weird idea to level them simultaneously, leveling up each class a few levels at a time.

Since my mage and priest were about level 40, I had some catching up to do with the other classes. I play on the primarily horde side, but since the cataclysm changed so much of the 1-60 content, I think I am going to start my baby warrior over as an alliance race. WOWInsider had a great article listing the top 5 alliance questing zones to see before Mists launches. This really brought to my attention some of the great stuff I have yet to see.

By now even my grandmother has heard at least some of the recent news about Mists of Pandaria. Blizzard posted a really great blog about all of the things to do in Azeroth come Mists launch. I can't believe how much stuff there will be to do! One thing that caught my eye: the new Proving Grounds, "lored-up solo instances that make trying out rotations a lot more fun since you can chase achievements." I have not seen Proving Grounds mentioned anywhere else, so details are lacking; however, I have long thought solo instances would be a fun addition to Warcraft. These may just be themed training rooms with target dummies, but how do the achievements figure into all that?

All of the news about Mists of Pandaria has me really looking to jump back into Azeroth and see all of the content I have missed before the expansion launches. I have have done very little raiding this expansion and I aim to change that soon. I heard about a website called Openraid.us. This site allows you to sign up for raids using Real ID and eventually Battle Tags with players from across realms. Groups are going for many different raids and I think this is the solution I have been waiting for in regards to pugging. With a large pool of interested players from across all realms and only players signing up that can read, Openraid.us is already head and shoulders above the rejects in LFR.

Before Cataclysm launched I was all kinds of excited about the changes coming to the existing world. I even had a wicked dream of what it would be like when Deathwing was unleashed and terrorized the world. Now it looks as if Mists of Pandaria is set to change the world again, but in a different way, by adding so many different activities to do in game. I thought Kung Fu Panda was already cool, but now I see that Mists is so much more than fuzzy drunken pandas and Pokemon.

I will leave you with my final word on Mists of Pandaria: STAMPEDE!


P.S. MMO Champion's own Boubouille says the Beta starts this week or next.