WoW: Blizzard is Evil™ Edition

I am so glad for sites like WoW Insider and MMO Champion. They make data gathering for ranty sites like mine so easy.

With that aside out of the way, Blizzard is just totally evil. Not in the megalomaniac villain sort of evil, but the "business evil". The kind of evil where you know it is nothing but a cash grab, but you can't resist it because of one or more compelling reasons. One cannot fault them for it though because, well, they are a business after all. For every company, despite all the repeated "for the players" speech or PR quote they do, they all have to watch their bottom line.

So why is Blizzard "evil" this time? Behold the Annual Pass! You sign up and you get a bunch of free stuff. A new mount for World of Warcraft, a free digital copy of Diablo III, and guaranteed access to the next WoW expansion beta. All the other stuff is great, but that last one really caught my eye. 

I am still on the fence with regards to purchasing the next expansion, even if I have already accepted the pandas invading WoW. My hope was that I would be lucky enough to get a beta invite to try it out before I decide. And this is where the annual pass comes in. If I want to make sure I get beta access, I should get locked into a subscription for a year and there is already speculation that Mists of Pandaria™ can go live sometime Summer 2012. If this is true, then I'm basically paying for the game whether or not I buy the expansion. If this is the case, I would not be able to play any of my max level characters except for fiddling around the new systems. And I certainly would not be able to make a Monk or Pandaren character.

So basically, getting the annual pass makes getting Mists of Pandaria™ pretty much a sure thing. Unless it gets released late Fall or Winter 2012.

How evil. But also incredibly smart.

Will I get the annual pass though even after seeing all this mindbending evil? The magic 8-ball says "most likely". Man, that toy is kinda creepy.

WoW: The Pandas are Coming

I have dreaded this moment. It is probably a good thing I didn't attend Blizzcon as I probably would have just left after the expansion announcement. But is it really that bad? Are having pandas ... er ... pandaren really that devastating to the World of Warcraft? Is it really worth ragequitting the game because of this rather dubious addition to WoW lore? 


Actually, after the initial shock wore off and I managed to think about it,  the answer is no. 


Yes, the addition of the pandaren is a bit hard to swallow, and the lore behind their appearance in the game may seem forced, but it is definitely better than the draenei. A mist-ical (get it? wow, tough crowd) land shrouded in magic is definitely more acceptable than goat people crash landing their spaceship on Azeroth. But in the years since their introduction, they've become an accepted, and even a preferred, race for players. 

Panda or not, this is an awesome picture

Pandaren also serve another purpose; the World of Warcraft needs to stand on it's own. WoW has relied heavily on lore from the Warcraft RTS games and the story can stretch so far. As of 2011, Illidan has been killed, Kil'Jaeden locked from Azeroth, Arthas is dead and Deathwing is soon to follow. The list of threats stemming from the RTS lore is running low. 


That's not to say World of Warcraft was only keeping to lore born from the RTS games. The game has introduced a lot of lore it can claim as it's own and has been very successful (mostly) in making all that very immersive. Beloved and hated characters like Highlord Bolvar, Garrosh Hellscream are WoW inventions. The increasing insanity of Sylvannas, while not a WoW-born character, brings further depth and the promise of interesting events to come that will affect Azeroth. 

Pictured: Freshness

The lore additions of World of Warcraft has been weaved into, and expanded, the RTS lore and has been, for all intents and purposes, gradual. Mists of Pandaria takes a huge leap into lore of it's own making. An entirely new continent, new races, new stories not stemming from anything found in Warcraft of the past. The pandaren and Pandaria are a shot of freshness and are there to show there indeed are more stories to tell in Azeroth. It's Blizzard's way of showing that the World of Warcraft is more than just what we have already seen in previous games. 


Yes, they could have done an Emerald Dream expansion, and maybe it would have made more sense. Yes, they could have maybe sent us to bring the fight to the Burning Legion. But with the reveal of Pandaria, now we have to think "what else does Azeroth have to offer?". The last line in the reveal trailer said it quite nicely: "Azeroth's limits have yet to be revealed".  There is now confidence that there can be more after Pandaria. 


So I have accepted the pandaren as a good race for the World of Warcraft. The models look great and the environments shown look like they can be quite immersive. But why am I not convinced that I will play this expansion? 


Maybe I am not sure I will like this story arc. The promise of returning the focus to the horde/alliance war is nice, but I would have preferred fighting for lands already taken and lands to be conquered. Pandaria seems like a detour kind of like how Outland was. Perhaps it's because I don't know too much about it. After so many years, the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor do feel like a second home. I still feel badly for the loss of Southshore and I take my time to look over it during my archaeology runs. After Deathwing falls, it just makes sense to me to kick some Horde ass and take back some of what we've lost. Or, if Horde, press the offensive. 

Do I look like I snuggle?

Maybe there will be all that in Mists of Pandaria and maybe it will be awesome. With the information now though, I just don't know. With luck, maybe I can get into the beta and see for myself if I will purchase this expansion and snuggle with the fuzzy bear men.