World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria (MOP) is regularly considered one of the best expansions in Warcraft’s history. But it wasn’t always that way. When first announced, MOP was quickly considered a joke expansion, through its peaceful-looking continent of Pandaria and the introduction of the Pandaren race.
Every vibe shown from announcement to release didn’t match the current tone of WoW, particularly following the destruction of Cataclysm. A great story, fun new class, and excellent raids changed most players’ minds quite quickly. And soon, we will get to relive that experience fresh.
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We got to sit down with Claire Cullen, Senior Software Engineer, and Linny Cooke Saverline, Classic Game Producer, to chat about the upcoming Mists of Pandaria Classic release. During our conversation, we discussed the improvements made to the overall MOP experience and the surprises encountered during the redevelopment of the expansion. And most impactfully, what pressures there were to work on such a beloved expansion that was also revisited so recently via Remix.
The Classic experiment has always tried to stay true to that original experience. The one players had when first booting the game up on day 1 of that expansion’s launch. But they also have added more modern and player-friendly features to the game, like implementation of Battle.net, and more.
Why forget about what resources are available now that will only improve the overall enjoyment? And that’s where our conversation kicked off. What’s new that players can look forward to when Mists of Pandaria Classic launches?
Mists of Pandaria is a great point to discuss changes in WoW Classic.
Cullen kicked it off with a focus on their regular tagline of Classic, #SomeChanges. This time, that saying has evolved to #SomeMoreChanges. “We had #NoChanges for Vanilla Classic, and then we had #SomeChanges for Cataclysm. And now we’re doing #SomeMoreChanges. And part of that will be aiding in the alt leveling experience.”
She went into more detail about how the alt, or alternate character from your main, will be modernized in this version of MOP. “When your main character reaches max level, level 90, you’ll be able to unlock flying not only for that character, but for every other character on your account. We’re also going to do commendations for reputation.”
Cullen continued, explaining how reputations have evolved further beyond commendations. “So earning reputation past your first character is going to become 100% easier on every subsequent character from that first one. And then we’re also going to have rolling caps for valor and conquest, so that no matter what point you make a new character or jump into the expansion, you’re always going to feel like it’s a very smooth experience.”
Alts were a main pain point during the original launch of MOP, whether through gearing them up or through the constant reputation grind that was required to get better equipment, crafting recipes, or even highly anticipated features. With these changes, the overall feel of “daily checklists” will be much more manageable and expedited for the better. Saverline had a different feature she’s excited for, Celestial Dungeons.
Celestial Dungeons are something to get excited about in Mists of Pandaria Classic.
Saverline explained, “We had the Titan rune dungeons in Wrath [of the Lich King Classic]. We had the Elemental rune dungeons in Cataclysm [Classic], and now we have Celestial dungeons. It adds to the replayability of the dungeons that are already really cool in the expansion, but it adds some additional fantasy to it. So you’ll be able to go into the dungeon, you’ll receive a blessing from one of the August Celestials.”
She continued, by talking about how the new enhanced dungeon system will incorporate more raid mechanics to get players familiar earlier with the end-game fights. “we’re going to have raid bosses from the current tier kind of jump in and do one of their mechanics during the different boss fights, so that you’ll get the chance to learn the mechanics before you go into the raid”.
Changes like this are why I personally love the Classic experience, similarly to Season of Discovery. It stays true to that original feel, while adding new challenges for those who already know what to expect. These higher difficulty versions of dungeons also serve as a great alternative way to gear up for end-game beyond the normal means without infringing on original gearing methods. A mix of old and new is what drives players, like me, to check out each expansion’s re-launch and find new ways to have fun with such beloved content.
Speaking of beloved, we moved on to discussing what it was like developing an expansion that was recently revisited via MOP Remix, before The War Within launched. How particularly if there was difficulty preparing for this launch with that recent familiarity, along with the general fondness when older players think back on the original expansion’s launch. Cullen stated that they didn’t shy away from that excitement and recency; they leaned into it.
World of Warcraft developers dive into balancing challenges and excitement with the new launch.
Cullen detailed this further, “I think we’ve just leaned into the excitement. I think the tone of MOP is so specific. It’s a little silly. It’s got so many fun elements to it, and we think that that’s part of what’s made it so beloved: the music, the serenity, just the beautiful zones. You hear the music from MOP constantly played in the WoW team meetings, because everybody loves it so much. So every decision that we made, and especially if we made any changes, it was all done very carefully and with a lot of input from the community as well.”
She continued by going into a regular starting point for Classic experiences, where they start the expansion based on the expansion’s final patch balancing. “So for MOP that was 5.4.8, we start with the data in that state, because we want to have things how it ended. If there was any tuning made, any tweaks, any bug fixes, we want our first patch to start with all of that already in it.”
But there is an issue with starting from that point with this expansion in particular. The Vale of Eternal Blossom, the central serene zone of Pandaria where the Horde and Alliance capital cities are located was destroyed by Garrosh at this point in the lead up to the Siege of Orgrimmar raid. And starting off at the beginning of MOP, that can’t be the case.
Cullen added, “But what that meant for MOP was that the Vale of Eternal Blossoms was in a destroyed state, which was not something that we wanted to launch with. That is such a nostalgic area and one that is loved so much that we actually put in a lot of engineering effort to recover those maps and ensure that we could see the Vale in the pristine state as it was in the beginning. And then, as well as see it evolve through that kind of destruction, we wanted to make sure it wasn’t just the destroyed state.”
MOP Classic is embracing the excitement behind opening the Kun Lai Summit doors.
This is one aspect of MOP Classic that excited me the most when learning about it. In Retail WoW, there is no real way to see the Vale in its original state. The N’zoth invasion version of the Vale introduced during Battle for Azeroth has the look, but not the original feel. It’s only seen along with Black Empire enemies in portions of the zone, and only accessible after unlocking the invasions.
You can’t really experience the celestials opening the Kun Lai Summit doors to the Vale and seeing the awe and beauty of the zone like back from launch through 5.4. Hopefully, this recreation can be introduced to Retail for players playing through Chromie Time or via Zidormi, an NPC that transfers players between different versions of a zone, allowing it to live on in the main version of the game.
Additional changes that enhance the player’s experience at launch include improvements to reputation handling. As mentioned earlier, commendations, a system introduced in 5.1.1 to improve reputation gains for alts, will be available at launch.
Saverline added that reputations gated by other reputations have also been made independent of each other. “We’ve removed all of the gating on that so that players can immediately just jump into whichever ones [reputations] they’re most interested in. I think we’ve also adjusted some of the reputation requirements for the items that players want to purchase. So instead of having to grind a large amount of reputation and get the currency for it, they’ll be able to access it a little bit earlier”.
MOP Classic is improving on the past while still honoring it just the same.
So far, every change discussed has been a significant quality of life improvement that enhances the overall MOP experience for both old and new players. To conclude our conversation, we took a step back to discuss how the development team limits itself when preparing for a new Classic launch. Saverline kicked things off by discussing the team’s core values.
Saverline started, “We’re emphatic about creating a social environment. We want to create a space where players will interact with each other in the world, quest together, form guilds, and really go out and create their own relationships together. So that’s something that with each thing that we add and put in classic we really want to encourage that social aspect. And as far as like adding changes, we also just really want to be respectful of our players time.”
She continued, “We want to be able to catch all of the fun nostalgia, but recognize that maybe they don’t have as much time to put in it as they did in the original one. So let’s make sure that they can still experience everything they want.”
Cullen added on, going into minute detail that players may not recognize right away, instant quest text. “MOP is the first expansion where instant quest text is off by default, and you wouldn’t think that that would start a giant conversation on the team. But it really did, about what it means to be playing a classic expansion, what we want that to feel like. There was quite a lot of back and forth about something that seems so simple, just because we do want to consider anything that will mess with the feeling of playing a classic game.”
Mists of Pandaria is such a beloved expansion for so many players, old and new. Its beauty and music are still thought so highly of even to this day. And being able to re-experience all like what we did back in 2012 is very exciting. Most enticing of all about this is the care and detail the development team took upon themselves to make sure that original launch experience is consistent with re-implementing the original Vale of Eternal Blossom, while adding several time-saving features to improve an already great time even more.
Mists of Pandaria Classic takes us back to Pandaria on July 21st on PC and Mac.
