World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria beta is available since around a month ago, all Annual Pass holders receiving their beta invite by now as we announced ina previous article.
Mists of Pandaria beta currently has the pandaren starting zone available (the big turtle), but not Pandaria (the level 85-90 zone), we can level up a pandaren up to level 10 and finish all the quests from this zone.
Players can choose to play a pandaren monk, hunter, rogue etc. There are some unavailable pandaren/class combinations as well as other races have.
The leveling process is very easy and enjoyable, it is linear like we had for level 80-85 in Cataclysm, meaning that you can’t just grind mobs or have multiple places from where you can pick quests.
Overall, the experience is not bad, only that the quests are like the old ones from the starting zones. Down 8 mobs, collect 5 wood branches etc.
Also, the quests don’t imply beer so much as many pandaren fans would have expected.
The level design was brought to another level. It feels new even though the technology is old. MoP works flawless just like the current version of World of Warcraft works, there will be no need for a PC upgrade.
The music is very beautiful, Asian themed, the main song being the one from the main Mists of Pandaria trailer when the game was unveiled at Blizzcon.
The Monk class. The class looks very funny right now, it has some fun abilities based of empty hand / fist weapons combat. Almost as rogues but more fun.
They have two resources, energy and runes, runes are gained from using basic attacks that cost energy. The system is not bad but will require an advanced UI (user interface) to be able to have knowledge when your abilities are ready to use or you have enough resources for them.
The pandaren animations are great and so are the emotes, probably the funniest in the game. Just try the /sleep or /kiss emotes, or the /wave for males. You will surely laugh.
The outfit, items, gear are looking decent so far, the pandaren belts looking like some karate belts, probably their most emblematic item that will make the difference compared to other races.
The premade characters feature from battle.net is active, you can create multiple characters, race/class combos but all will say “pending” and will not apppear once you log into the game. The same goes for the character copy feature, if you want to copy your characters from your Cataclysm account.
As a final thought, the game looks fine, Blizzard giving another example of how good MMO-RPG looks, the level design was brought to another level, there are some amazing landscapes and places in the pandaren starting zone.
Next week, Blizzard will probably announce that they will start to send invites for those without the Annual Pass.
We will be back with the second part of this overview, the one regarding the level 85-90 continent, Pandaria which is also available in the beta after talking to a pandaren NPC from Stormwind or Orgrimmar.
