Adam's Adventures in the Pandaria Beta: Week 1

So, about a week ago I received the invite to the Pandaria Beta that was part of my perks for signing up for the World of Warcraft annual pass. I was excited to get in and check it out, if only because I've pretty much burned through the majority of the solo content in WoW, which is kind of the only thing I'm able to do anymore. As such, I installed it, crashed our router several times from all the bandwidth I was sucking down to do so, and jumped in to roll my monk. 

 Wax On, Wax off. 

The monk class has had the dark versus light chi mechanic they demonstrated at Blizzcon removed, replaced with something a bit more in line with what we've been experiencing with most of the other classes in the game right now: the addition of a secondary resource. In this case, you use energy much like the rogue or hunter for an ability called jab, which morphs to a different ability depending on which weapon you have equipped (I'm using a staff, so it's currently clobber). Every time you use jabclobber you gain one chi point, which is what powers your other attacks. I've leveled my monk to 11 at this point and currently have Tiger Palm, an attack to hit high health monsters, and blackout kick which is your finisher that delivers a Chuck Norris roundhouse. At 10 I elected to make my Monk a Brewmaster, the tanking spec, and as such I also can smash my keg into things as an AoE attack. I haven't had much chance to do more with it yet, however, for reasons that will shortly become apparent.

 Don't these Pandas do anything besides train?

My first impressions of the Wandering Island is that, well, this place is gorgeous. My system isn't exactly top end, but going around every corner I just found more and more scenic, beautiful terrain. Like this

or this

or this temple with a very Pandaish Bhudda.

All of this beauty, of course, pales before the simpler pleasures in life. And by this, I of course mean, the addition of a rocking ox cart to transport my panda butt around the Wandering Island.

They see me rollin', they hatin'...

 This, of course, all lead up to our meeting the Island itself and being tasked to deal with some of it's troubles, in this case involving the Horde and Alliance getting back into a dick measuring contest on his shell.

Seriously, can't these assholes just get over it?

 I'd love to report more of what happens there, but I took a short break to play and they decided to implement a new beta build which...well...things are a little broken now.

My God, it's the attack of the giant Jell-O molds.

These pink bastards are everywhere right now. The beta as of 10:00 on April 7th is borderline unplayable since you can't see anything more than a few feet away that isn't pink and quest items are currently not spawning. These bugs are pretty major, and demonstrate pretty clearly that Pandaria is still a way's off.

Some glitches, of course, are more amusing than others.

 I also took some time to play my Warlock this week, as that class is getting a pretty major overhaul. The changes to the classes is quite a bit more dramatic this time than I recall from Cataclysm, as this change to the talent system makes massive alterations to our playing styles. Spells like Shadowbolt, which was pretty much a staple filler in all the Warlock builds previously, isn't even available as an affliction lock. Instead, you utilize Malefic Grasp to tick your dots down more quickly. This is pretty exciting, but has led to a lot of adjustments and relearning how the class works. To be honest, I'm afraid I have almost too many buttons to push right now, so I can see where talents that provide a passive bonus rather than which require a user activation are going to be a priority, for me at least.

Also, I got new demons.

A Beholder! Fuck Yeah!

The advanced demons do more damage than the regular kind, but frankly I don't care. It's just neat having some new toys to play with. As such, Gothorc will probably be seeing quite a bit of playtime, once they get all these bugs sorted out. Until then, he'll just have to hide out and wait.

And hope that's a building, not a world boss.