World of Warcraft Gets Pandas and Pokemon
World of Warcraft’s new expansion Mists of Pandaria adds the long awaited Panderan as a playable race and introduces a Pokemon-esque battle system featuring previously docile companion characters.
The Panderan are a race of pandas that actually live on the back of a giant turtle and the location is heavily influenced by East China. Picturesque temples on moutaintops, terraced rice fields and serene waterfalls will highlight the area. Our fluffy friends will be martial artists and mostly use hand based weapons. In addition a drastically new feature will be available for the Pandaren: neutrality. At the start they haven’t picked either the Alliance or Horde so at level ten they will be asked to do so. Blizzard has never attempted this before and it will be interesting to see how it plays out. They also bring a new class to the table in the monk. The monk will have three different skill trees. The Brewmaster (tanking), Mistwarriors (healing and Windwalker (melee DPS). Monks don’t come with an auto attack so the action is fast and furious using chi (similar to Rogues energy) to use attacks and build up a meter toward light or dark and unleash more powerful attacks. The class won’t be exclusive to the Panderan either all races but Worgen and Goblins can be karate chopping their way through Azeroth.
In addition to the new class and race a new feature using companion characters. That’s right those little guys that used to just follow you around blindly can now be used in pet battles. Essentially Pokemon, WoW style, you can assign three abilities to your pets as they go into a turn based battle. New pets can be tamed out in the wild and will appear in certain locations and at certain times.
Of course no idea on a release date but knowing Blizzard we probably won’t see it out until sometime next Holiday is my guess. In the meantime take solace in the fact that soon you can truly act out your fantasies of playing Po in World of Warcraft.