Mists of Pandaria Leaks You Won’t Believe (Cause they’re LIES!)

Hello and welcome! I am, of course, the distinguished and honored Professor Gnomey, an acclaimed expert on truthism and internetology at Gnomeregan Gnuniveristy.  Professor Billy could not be here today due to some… uh… legal troubles.  Something about him forging his credentials or some such.  Anyway, I am here to discuss the fabulous and fantastical Mists of Pandaria beta.  Or namely, to address some HORRIBLE rumors being tossed around the ‘Tweetor’.  You seem, some rascally hooligans thought it would be fun to make up things about the new WoW expansion on the internet.  Thus breaking the delicate and carefully maintained balance of everything on the internet being true.  Which it has. Completely.  I trusted every word I read on there until these trouble makers decided to start flat out LYING to the whole world.  But I one upped them all. I took notes. I wrote them aaaaall down.  And now I’m gonna to expose them for the dirty little liars they all are.  These are just some of the lies I saw perpetrated under the extremely deceptive hashtag of #FakeMoPBetaLeaks!

@Vrykerion

• In order to combat perceived Horde bias, Alliance quests will get extra love & have twice as many pop culture references.
• The Horde wins, all players get free faction transfers, Alliance becomes a neutral faction of NPCs
• To make Pandaria easier to traverse without flying, a gnomish train system dubbed ‘The Panda Express’ has been added.
• A level 88 quest hints that the reason we fight Garrosh is he ate Thrall’s cookie that was clearly labeled ‘Do Not Eat’
• Shaman receive a class quest at level 90 that after mastering all four elements will receive the “Thrall State” stance
• In a quest to restablish Varian as a good leader, players will be his ‘wingman’ to help him ‘score’ at a Pandaren bar.
• To correct the ‘indignity’ of some classes wearing “skirts” or “dresses”, now all class sets have skirts or dresses!
• The Mogu are NOT related to the Mogwai.
• Morfeeus, a new goblin NPC added to the start zone, will remind goblins that they do NOT know Kung Fu.
• Players will face off against the elusive Warriors of Virtue in a new dungeon and learn a lesson about peer-pressure.
• To foster camaraderie among the Alliance, King Varian will now address all NPCs and players as “bro” regardless of gender.
• To match the Asian theme and tone of the expansion, item levels will be renamed ‘power level’
• Complete combat system overhauled designed around card games confirmed. Spells and abilities replaced with trading cards.
• In order to promote players to get out in the world, Warlock summoning spells will now also kill the caster and clickers
• Female armor does not contain any chain mail or plate bikinis. All pants are ass-less though.
• Mists will introduce a new PvE stat “NotSuck” that will boost all damage and healing in Dungeon & Raid Finder groups.
• In memorial of Theramore, Goth Jaina builds the new Linkon Park.
• Worgen Druids will receive exclusive out-of-combat ‘Human Form’.
• Several Lorekeeper NPCs added to world to remind players that monks are not ninjas, and China is not the same as Japan.
• Demonology Warlocks will be tanks.
• New Legendary Revealed! First Shield Legendary! In order to make sure it’s rare, it will be +Agility.
• Hidden across Pandaria are 7 magical orbs that, if gathered, will summon a dragon and grant your class a buff.
• Pandaren start zone quests include “Wax the Car” and “Paint the Fence”
• The origins of the Sha revealed! They are what happens when you leave Pandaren ice cream out in the sun too long.
• Hunters can tame anything for a variable length depending on the level of their new “Training” skill, even players!
• In a Horde specific scenario, players will face the Horde’s ancient and deadliest foe: BEES. And the Alliance will have a parallel scenario where they face their long time enemy: POOR PEOPLE.
• Tirion Fordring confirmed as faction leader for the Pandaren.
• The Argent Crusade will have a presence in Heroic Scholo. They don’t actually do anything, but they are standing there.
• Along with raising and maintaining a farm, players will also have to defend their land by launching birds at felboars.
• With Monks now in game, Paladins will be losing their tank and healing specs in favor of new abilities that make sparkles.
• Warlocks are getting a glyph that gives them a taunt, Mages will be receiving a new healing AND tanking spec.
• Players will receive a shocking twist at level 90 when a quest line reveals that a pandaren is just 3 gnomes in a suit.

@San_Lear

• The expansion ends with a tearful public service announcement from Garrosh on the dangers of steroid abuse.
• Thrall is forced by Aggra to move into the Cleft of Shadows after being caught trying to “get his Proudmoore on.”
• “Chow Yun Fat-Free” is a BOE cooking recipe.
• Everyone is thrown for a loop when the real villain of Pandaria is revealed to be Shepard from Mass Effect 3.
• The “Harrison Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Item” questline doesn’t go over as well as hoped.
• Druids are given animal forms of the rest of the classes. The Donkey Death Knight is scrapped as “too depressing.”
• Accused of Horde bias, the band “Level 90 Elite Tauren Chieftain” renames itself “Level 100 Uber Human Dude.”
• Battlegrounds get sponsors, such as “Alterac Valley, brought to you by McDonalds.” The winner gets a McSword or McShield.
• Alementals abilities are datamined. Beer Goggles: +85 inflation to ego. Debuff: Waking up the next morning.
• Players will discover the hard way that the Pandaren do, in fact, have a Kung Fu grip.
• Tirion gives one of Arthas’ twins to a moisture farmer to raise in Tanaris.
• Blizzard begins the “Pandaren, at least they’re not Ewoks” ad campaign.
• The real reason the Forsaken destroyed Southshore is retconned as the cancellation of the Alliance’s “Jersey Southshore.”

@Druidis4fite

• Hidden Continent of Pandaria was under Crusader’s Coliseum all this time.
• Warlock taunt only works on non-boss level mobs and mages
• Hidden continent of Panderia was inside you all along
• Stormwind Library adds several progressive volumes about Orientalism.

Other Awesome People

• New Race added. Trolls! no really please will someone play one of these, We’re bored of Blood elves – @DanRyyu
• Large styled belts are now limited to one per server, players can only challenge for these belts AT WRESTLEMAINA! – @DanRyyu
• All PvP players who refuse to fight near the objective will be permabanned after three BGs. – @CosmicLaurel
• Tier 14 Monk Armor revealed to be a yellow tracksuit with black striping. – @WalksTweets
• Monks surprisingly cannot use the /flirt or /hug commands and cannot enter Goldshire due to vows of chastity.  – @WalksTweets
• Completing 1000 Pandaren cooking dailies will reward the player with a pair of legendary chopsticks – @RogueDarren
• Arcane mages get 3rd DPS ability, makes arcane rotation 33% more difficult – @Leodartbok
• New Death Kinght ability: Furry of Frostmourne – 3 sec cast, turns your enemies into Pandas. – @Leodartbok
• Aggra is carrying Velen’s love child – @Atanae
• The Aspects are re-granted their original powers after eating the magical Sensu beans from the Pandaren. – @Katana_Angel
• Garrosh is discovered to be Thrall’s evil clone, created by the Royal Apothecary Society to destroy the horde from within. – @Katana_Angel
• Everyone can eat and drink at the same time. If you’re a Pandaren, you can eat, drink, and brew beer at the same time. – @WoWCynwise
• Just discovered! In MoP, BM Hunters get 2 min CD Bestial Xform – change into a twin of their active pet for 15 secs! – @BigBearButt
• Pet Battle System only way to earn Trinkets. – @Melofedge
• Genn Greymane gets rabies, bites and infects Jaina Proudmoore, and then sends players on a poop quest in Lordaeron. – @Druidleaves
• Pandaran cooking profession now include a recipe for Sweetfire Chicken sponsored by Panda Express, home of the flying wok. – @KneeDough

((A huge thank you to all the awesome folks that joined in the fun on twitter.  I love to see what people come up with.  To those who aren’t already, I would highly recommend following all these amazing tweeps.  They are an amazingly fun bunch!))

The Great Raid Nerf of 4.2

ATTENTION: This post is a not-for-profit fan based parody. Please support the official QQ.

Ladies and gentlemen, our very way of life is under attack.  From ruthless and heartless developers who feel that just because content is no longer in its prime, fallen behind the blazing trail of progression, and simply isn’t as relevant as the newer shiny toy that just got delivered, that we should simply open the flood gates and let any and all riff raff of the general gaming populous view said content.

They want us to believe that not everyone can afford the $12 dollar ticket to see the movie in the real theater and that if they wait long enough that they can see the same movie in some cheapo dollar theater over in some strip mall, and enjoy the same film at a fraction of the cost and effort! Well I am here to say, that’s not how it works in the real world, Blizzard!

Just because one model of car is one, two or even 20 years older, it does not mean you pay less to own it than you would a brand new model.  No sir.  Maybe in fairy land where things just manifest out of pixie dust, but not in the real world. In this world, no one has a free pass.  And honestly Blizzard, I am shocked.  Shocked, I say.  This comes completely out of left field.

Why I was riding around on my level 40 epic mount thinking about how before this announcement, I thought you had integrity.  That you believed in your product enough that you could leave the exclusive club that I originally fell in love with.  Now you want to make sure that everybody, regardless of putting in the time and effort, to see the content that otherwise would probably go ignored in favor of random heroics.

I am flabbergasted, Blizz.  I really am.  So to finish this protest, I would like to turn this post over to the department chair of the raid boss psychology department at Zangarmarsh Community College – Professor Billy T. Ogre.  Billy?

Thank you, Billy.

Who’s That Companion Pet?

Who doesn’t like Mini Pets?  They’re cute, they do adorable things, and they appeal to every WoW players inner Pokemon player.  But what about for those out there who want their game to make coherent sense?  I know at least one person spoke up during my discussion of Sparkle Pony Lore that they had issues with the RP aspect of the mount and how generally a lot about it just didn’t work.  Well, if the Sparkle Pony is causing canon conflict, you can bet your disgusting oozeling that these little critters are bound to cause some issues!  So what can you do?  Well, you can continue reading this post for one, as I share my personal “lore” for some of Blizzard’s more ‘out there’ companion pets.

It’s Mini Tyrael and Diablo!

If you ever wondered why you shouldn’t ever cross the streams, this is why.  Of all the things to cross over from the Diablo universe, it would have to be an Archangel and the Lord of Terror himself.  Albeit shrunken in size, how did these two pint sized colossi of the Diablo franchise end up in Azeroth?  Well, this one actually isn’t that hard to explain since Azeroth has its own equivalents that these two figures can easily be attributed to.  Mini Diablo (The Lord of Terror) obviously once dwelt deep within the black heart of the Twisting Nether amongst his Burning Legions comrades.  Deterred from the constant mocking about his diminutive size, Mini Diablo (The Lord of Terror) decided to embark on a journey to the mortal plane of Azeroth, to destroy the world personally!  But when Mini Diablo (The Lord of Terror) arrived, the citizens of Azeroth found him to be just too cute and no matter how many Mini Diablo (The Lord of Terror) erupted fireballs at them, he could not get any respect.  So he unfortunately became a pet, secretly awaiting the day he can rise up and destroy all life!

Sensing this dark, sinister and adorable plan, the Light dispatched one of its own to aid in the fight!  A cousin to the Spirit Healers found in the realm of the dead, he is a fierce defender of the light! He is only 12 inches tall, and NOT in that way.  He is the pint sized defender of the Light sent here to stomp out the devious (and adorable) workings of Mini Diablo (The Lord of Terror)!  He is Mini Tyrael! Enemy to demons, Friend to worshippers of the light, patron mini guardian of paladins everywhere!  He is often seen defending good and noble souls from the darkness of the Burning Legion and especially the machinations of Mini Diablo (The Lord of Terror).

It’s Grunty, Mini Thor and the Zergling!

This are perhaps is the easiest of them all, after all StarCraft is science fiction and what is science fiction without its vast array of plot hole filling goodies (Don’t believe me? Ask a Trekkie what a Heisenberg Compensator is.  Now ask them how it works.)  All 3 of these could be easily written off with wormholes, time travel or something like that.  But how about we find something slightly less science fiction-y to explain these three, I’m sure someone will appreciate the effort.  The first and probably easiest is the Zergling.  Like Mini Diablo (The Lord of Terror) the Zergling is probably an abberation of the Burning Crusade that has found its way into employ of the mortals similar to the felhunters and imps of the Warlocks.  It’s not hard to see it as a fleshy deviant cousin of the Felhunters actually (Fun Fact Kids!  Felhunters are hunters of a fel origin, they do not hunt other fel demons.  Yes, it’s bad naming. That’s why warlocks call them fel puppies).

However, Grunty and Mini Thor are a bit harder to explain.  Where do you find a machine gun toting, power armor wearing murloc and a robot with a tons of guns? Ah, I see you think what I’m thinking:  Gnomeregan.  Yes, Thermaplugg is starting to feel the pressure with constant intrusions into his city. He’s having to turn out stranger and more powerful constructs to do his bidding.  Riskier machines with dangerous amounts of weapons.  Thus he began to design his newest weapon of destruction, the Tank-based Humanoid Offensive Robot.  However, due to lack of resources he could only scrounge enough parts to make miniaturized versions of his original design.  Thus the Mini T.H.O.R. was born.  Of course a bunch of no good adventurer types keeping breaking in and stealing the prototypes.

But that’s not the only sinister project that Thermaplugg has up his sleeve.  Oh no.  You see, on top of machines, he’s begun to experiment on organic life as well.  Finding ways to reinforce his own True Sons of Gnomeregan, the vile leper gnomes, he has begun to test fusing weaponry and armor to innocent little murlocs in horrific experiments to create half machine/half murloc soldiers.  However, only having murloc intelligence, they are not the brightest little things (Bright enough to know to use that gun of theirs against demons like the Zergling though).  Fortunately, the forces of DEHTA have descended into the Gnomeregan labs and freed many of this little critters and have begun delivering them to um…  “safer” homes.

It’s the Spirit and Essence of Competition!

These two were very tricky for me.  I mean, honestly, there are no other dragons like these two in the world.  None of the flights have the appearance of this serpent like whelps.  However, there are many skeletons from around Azeroth that bear a distinct similarity to these creatures.  From the lake beds of Ashenvale, to off the coast of Stranglethorn large skeletal serpents are buried in the sand.  Could these little guys be descended from these large serpents?  If so, where have they been all this time?  Well, there’s only been one place that no one in Azeroth has been to in all these years.  One place where a dragon like these could be easily be bred as pets with out seeming out of place at all: Pandaria, the homeland of the Pandaren Empire.  Is it that shocking?  These pets are styled after Japanese dragons (Fun Fact, Kids! Japanese dragons are drawn with 3 toes, Chinese dragons are depicted with 4 or 5 toes) so it wouldn’t be out of the question that these dragons came from the heavily Asian inspired Pandaria (Chinese pandas wearing Japanese samurai armor).  What?  I can’t be alone on this.

It’s Deathy and Murkimus!

Murlocs sure do a lot don’t they?  I put these two on here because quite honestly, I see the explanation for both them being the same: Goblins.  Deathy really is the biggest stretch, but follow me here.  Deathwing isn’t the type of dragon to just go through an elaborate procedure like having his body bound together by giant plates of adamantite without having a few guinea pigs try it out first.  Enter the murlocs.  By exposing them directly to the demon soul, their bodies would become wracked with the same destruction as Deathwing himself, allowing this charred and molten murlocs to be test subjects for the procedure at the hands of Deathwing’s entourage of goblin scientists, thus creating the Deathies, demented and broken murlocs who know eternal suffering of being burnt alive constantly from the inside and kept alive only by the power they were blessed with by being exposed to the Demon Soul.  Now with the Shattering and the return of Deathwing, the Deathies have made it back to the surface and into your mail boxes.  Let’s just hope they don’t go insane and try to kill us all.

Murkimus requires far less explanation in my opinion.  Goblins like to make money, goblins run the arenas, an easy way to make money? Put murlocs into tiny arenas and sell tickets! Seriously, people love murlocs.  Those tickets will be sold out faster than you can yell “I AM MURKIMUS!” at the Emperor.  But when Murkimus is retired, what will happen to him?  Well, he’ll be adopted probably.  Maybe by you!

It’s Lil’ KT and XT!

I’m going to address Lil’ XT first, simply because he’s probably the easier of the two.  Namely because Lil’ XT is the embodiment of gnomish reverse engineering.  After the destruction of XT and the doors of Ulduar breached, the gnomes that worked with Brann got to collecting the various parts and pieces and doing what gnomes do – Tinker!  Well they were able to create a smaller version of XT from examining the parts and pieces left by those who had ventured into the darkness of Ulduar.  Now with their tiny version perfected, they can send it out to whomever! Right through the mailbox! With gnomish ingenuity!

As for Lil’ KT, well the only thing I can really say is that it may actually be part of Kel’Thuzad.  A smaller, not fully regenerated one, mind you.  If your curious how that happens, the first time we killed Kel’Thuzad back at level 60, he dropped his phylactery which we turned over to be destroyed by the Argent Dawn.  However, due to some ‘accidental’ filing errors, the phylactery was never destroyed and thus Kel’Thuzad was resurrected.  Well, if you note when we kill Big KT at level 80, we don’t destroy his phylactery then either.  So Lil KT may in fact be a part of Kel’Thuzad’s soul regenerating to his full lich form.  It should take him about 20 levels to do so, so no worries about your little lich to go insane and try to kill you.  For now, he’ll just siphon the life off the rats.

It’s the Perky Pug!

Probably the hardest thing to explain in the game is the perky pug.  No, I’m not joking.  We’re talking about a world where until this little thing came along “dogs” were just domesticated worgs.  So where did it come from?  Well, historically pugs came from breeding animals for cuteness and size, so the creature is the result of some old school genetic engineering.  Well, when I think genetic engineered animals, there is only one person in all of Azeroth that I can think of.  Mei F-ing Francis.  This woman has an endless supply of albino drakes,  celestial steeds, and mounts of every color of the rainbow.  She’s made more of a mess of the field of genetics than a Michael Crichton novel in a blender.  Is it that hard to think that amongst all her freakish experiments she isn’t breeding adorable puppies for sale?  Sounds like the thing she would do.

Well there you go, Oddcraft’s list of semi-canonical explanations for some of the oddest mini pets out there!

The Implications of Holy Power

Well, since I plan on rolling a paladin of the large cow variety when Cataclysm drops, I’ve actually been keeping an eye on what the developers have been doing with the paladin class.  Oddly enough, I have paid no attention to any of the classes that I actually play at the moment (Something about Death Knight’s being less OP and more OP at the same time? I think?  Maybe?), but what caught my attention was this weird little secondary resources that the paladins are getting called ‘Holy Power’ and it’s apparently the star of the masquerade. But between the velvet lies, there’s a truth that’s hard as steel. Paladin’s getting Holy Power has far ranging implications.

Namely, what the heck does this say about Priests?  You know, the original holy rollers?  Is this meant to be some kind of shun from the Holy Light for some of them choosing to dip their fingers in the pudding of shadow magic?  The simple fact is that the paladins, a militant class of light worshippers that have just as much of a tendency to smash your head with a hammer as bless you with a heal, (Lawful Good, my ass) are being given preference in the Church of the Holy Light.   What does that say about the Light’s preference in worshippers?

Not exactly shocking consider some of the speculation surrounding the naaru and their teachings about the Light in Shattrath.  How about the Light worshipping arrakoa that were “redeemed” by the naaru and spout stuff like “Those who have not given themselves over to the Light are mere servants of evil.” Meanwhile, the priests who choose to use holy magic to heal others and shadow magic to damage others are getting boned.  You would immediately think that obviously since they are using shadow magic and not the given blessings of the Holy Light, that must be why they are getting shafted, but what about the Tauren?  They don’t worship the Holy Light at all.  They are sun worshippers.  While you could surely argue a potato-potahto argument here about how they actually are worshipping the Holy Light and they just think it’s the sun, I would like to see you pull that point off and try to tell the night elves that Elune is also the Holy Light just under another name and then watch as Tyrande feeds you to her tiger (those backwards thinking kal’dorei).

If you want to take that line of thought further, the Naaru (physical embodiments of holy energy mind you) are big promoters of the idea of a duality of light and dark.  That as long as one exists, so must the other and that without each other, their opposite would cease to exist. Of course, this is utter semantic hogwash.  If there was no darkness, there would only be light. We just wouldn’t need words for them because they wouldn’t need to be differentiated as one didn’t exist. Confused? Think of the movie, ‘The Invention of Lying’ where everyone always tells the truth. They have no word for ‘lying’ or ‘truth’ because those concepts don’t exist.  Same idea.

So based on that line of thought, using Shadow magic is still promoting the dichotomy and thus reinforcing the existence of both light and dark and can still technically be viewed as worshiping the Holy Light in some fashion.  So why in the world are the paladins the one’s getting preferential treatment from their deity of choice?  Well, isn’t obvious?

Paladins are OP. Duh.

A (Trendy) Chat About Gender

There’s been a big buzz across the interwebs about gender in WoW. Be it how different genders are treated, or how you choose to play toons of a different gender. All the bloggers are weighing in on this hot issue, be it Windsoar over at Jaded Alt, BoF’s Zal, or Evensong to name a few. And they all raise amazingly interesting points. So I thought it would only be appropriate to attempt to cash in offer my own opinion on this hot topic, but I really don’t have much to contribute.  So I decided to call up an old colleague of mine who is the head of Gender Studies at Outland University and see if he would like to offer some insight.  I turn this post over to Professor Billy the Ogre:

Thank you for that vast insight into this heated issue, Billy. Wasn’t that interesting, folks?

…Fine fine fine, I’ll get back to writing the Stormwind Tour. /wanders off