Possibly the most exciting aspect of World Warcraft's next expansion is currently overshadowed by Pandaren Monks. War is coming back to Azeroth, and in this week's WoW Factor, we wonder how it will affect the game and whether it will be enough to draw in those who gave up on WoW long ago.

World of Warcraft may be getting old. But that doesn’t stop it from carrying the most relevance and weight in the industry, even well into its 7th year dominating the scene. It carries not only the most subscriptions, but is easily the highest selling western MMORPG of all time, and remains the most widely known game outside of our small sect of the videogame culture and fandom. So why then, as if I didn’t just state the answer, do we continue to knock it and act as though everything it has accomplished is terrible for the industry and the genre? I just can’t seem to wrap my head around this notion.

Read the rest of Bill Murphy's WoW Factor: The War Back in Warcraft.

yes! finally world pvp with awsome ganking squads with some sweet titles. 

This is the WoW I have been waiting for, The Alliance vs The Horde, as it should be.

Remember the good pvp days taking over Horde towns :)

This is good to hear. Been wanting more news about it. Can't wait to try it out.

meh...pandas.  Too bad they didn't have asian humans or something.  I really don't like playing animal characters. 

Dead for me sorry. Long since really when they got rid of the War in Warcraft in the first place. Knowing one of the main reasons they did so was because we kept breaking the servers, nearly nightly here in the EU no idea how it went in other parts of the world. I am assuming they have fixed that issue. But we did it back then for free, we didn't need titles to entice us to war.  Strange concept to some I know! Doing something for FUN or in the spirit of the game, it is WARcraft after all. They have dumbed down so many other aspects of the game, weapon skills, gathering, mount costs, not to mention extra guard spawns to prevent city raids, extra protections for flight masters, it hardly seems worth bothering with the game anymore. We didn't spend our time crying back then when someone killed our flight masters or our quest NPC's or our gate guards. We marched on their cities in retaliation. People won't do that now, they will get their titles and move on back to their BG's, dailies and their dungeons and not care about the world once more.  Even the rated battlegrounds which was the last thing I was drawn back for turned out to be a flop with resets and broken stats. Maybe they fixed that too who knows? If they implement real world pvp and that carries over into the other contested areas of the world  like it used to be I for one will be shocked. Wintergrasp had little effect in the end, I am sceptical how Pandas can achieve this. WoW has been World of Peacecraft in my mind for too many years now.  BUT I do wish it well! Maybe some of the beginning magic can wear off on newer people and they can finally understand why we enjoyed it back then.

I remember the old days in WoW with massive open world PvP battles that meant nothing... before honor, before BG's, there was not 'point' to it other than to kill your enemies and disrupt/harass their towns and cities.

It was glorious, but it also came with terrible server lag and crashes/reboots.

If they are truly bringing the WAR back into World of WARcraft, I really hope they'll put some considerable upgrades into the client, engine, and server architexture to be able to handle large scale open world PvP.

Unfortunately, their model of quest hubs runs counter to any kind of territorial control/capture in the open world.

Sacking cities/towns will be nothing but an inconvenience for questers without drastic changes to the organizational structure of the PvE content.

They have never really gotten the idea of open world capturable points right in WoW. From EPL to Halaa they just never pulled it off to the point players actually cared and tried to battle over these objectives in the open world.

Will wait and see. Played for 7 years so I'm very familiar with the game but the Panda stuff just turned me off. Still not sure how I feel about it. Monk class is very cool though. Dunno, GW2 has my attention right now and if its good will keep it. Horde vs Alliance was always where its at. Glad they are focusing on it

I've enjoyed many years of fun, adventure and yes, even plenty of frustruation with wow. Though it wasn't my first mmo love (wow was my 3rd), it was the game I played for the longest time. I made the best of friends and even met my lovely wife on wow. Since Cata, wow and I have followed different paths to the point that I sadly believe reconciliation is now impossible (MoP).

Though I will no longer be playing wow, I wish Blizzard, wow, and the wow community the very best of luck and all the success in the gaming world. I will be returning to GW and am greatly looking forward to Anet's GW's sequel, GW2!

P.S. My first mmo love was ROSE Online (korean f2p) and my second was the original GW. I'm looking forward to returning my to GW home :-)

It's true - too little, too late.  Not that WoW will be going anywhere anytime soon, but I would think any sort of PvP WoW can add will be over shadowed by what GW2, Arch Age, and PS2 will be offering for those interested in PvP.  

Love Blizzard as a company. But when i attended Blizzcon, it felt more like a disney franchise than a gaming convention. (perhaps MoP theme didnt help).that said, 

D3 does promise! and SC2 as well! i wont dismiss Blizzard anytime soon- or even WoW. but for now  my sights have expanded to more dynamic mmo's out there.

best luck to them and its community.

Blizzard has gotten good at over-promising and under-delivering. Anyone remember the "more content, faster" that was supposed to be in Cata?

Instead, we have been told repeatedly that they "don't have the resources for that" but they somehow find the resources to make a pet or mount to sell in their cash shop. Yes I know they're different development teams, fine, but which do they prioritize?

Now, for MoP, they've decided to throw the kitchen sink at it. They've added Pokemon, Harvest Moon, so-called "scenarios" that try to mimic GW2 dynamic events (except you cue for them like everything else), and of course the ever popular Pandas, supposedly based off of extensive lore yet really only coming from two sources: an NPC in a bonus campaign in WC3, and later an April Fool's joke.

Perhaps I will be wrong, and perhaps MoP will bring back to the game the things that made WoW great. But I have not yet seen anything that tells me how they are going to get people to leave their home cities and put them back in the world to create this epic PvP. I suspect that we will continue to see people sitting in Org doing LFD, LFR, LFS (or whatever they call the scenario one), cueing up for their PvP.

I think they are trying to find ANYTHING to appeal to newer, younger players who like to play simple, facebook-like games while chatting with their friends. WoW is becoming a glorified chat room.

Again, I freely admit that all this could change depending on how they plan to evolve the game. But based on what they've shown us of MoP I don't see it happening.

Originally posted by monarc333

Will wait and see. Played for 7 years so I'm very familiar with the game but the Panda stuff just turned me off. Still not sure how I feel about it. Monk class is very cool though. Dunno, GW2 has my attention right now and if its good will keep it. Horde vs Alliance was always where its at. Glad they are focusing on it

 

Completely agree. Cancelled my sub for the first time since it has launched. Heck, even kept it while i was playing other games. Pandas just really threw me off. I really like the idea of the monk class though and enjoy those hand to hand type of classes but will have to see. My attention has been on GW2 as of late but I do miss those epic South Shore/Tarren Mill battles. As another poster stated, there was no honor points or anything involved. Just good ol' fashioned fun. Back then we knew our enemies and developed certain rivalries. At this point (or the point I quit) every has became nameless and just other characters on screen.

I've disowned WoW since there are gonna be panada in it....just not for me

Pandas, dude. Pandas.

Originally posted by colddog04

Pandas, dude. Pandas.

 

I got to admit though, thinking the word Panada has got some meat to it. Gonna have to work that into a sentence today..."Holy crap, look at that Panada."

One step forward two steps back. Add to this also blizz is agian dumbing down the classes. Oh and the loot treadmill is back, oh and everythign you have seen post tbc. Cheer more thoughless restarting and neutering of the game sounds great.

Originally posted by Charlizzard

Blizzard has gotten good at over-promising and under-delivering. Anyone remember the "more content, faster" that was supposed to be in Cata?

Instead, we have been told repeatedly that they "don't have the resources for that" but they somehow find the resources to make a pet or mount to sell in their cash shop. Yes I know they're different development teams, fine, but which do they prioritize?

Now, for MoP, they've decided to throw the kitchen sink at it. They've added Pokemon, Harvest Moon, so-called "scenarios" that try to mimic GW2 dynamic events (except you cue for them like everything else), and of course the ever popular Pandas, supposedly based off of extensive lore yet really only coming from two sources: an NPC in a bonus campaign in WC3, and later an April Fool's joke.

Perhaps I will be wrong, and perhaps MoP will bring back to the game the things that made WoW great. But I have not yet seen anything that tells me how they are going to get people to leave their home cities and put them back in the world to create this epic PvP. I suspect that we will continue to see people sitting in Org doing LFD, LFR, LFS (or whatever they call the scenario one), cueing up for their PvP.

I think they are trying to find ANYTHING to appeal to newer, younger players who like to play simple, facebook-like games while chatting with their friends. WoW is becoming a glorified chat room.

Again, I freely admit that all this could change depending on how they plan to evolve the game. But based on what they've shown us of MoP I don't see it happening.

you mean like 10 year olds? They are scraping the bottom of the barrel, pathetic.

The title is misleading as hell. Learn to write dude.

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Editorial: The War Back in Warcraft

makes it sound like they put the war back in WOW when you actually meant something like

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Editorial: Please Put War Back in Warcraft!

Lol sorry I left because of the incoming Panda's. Yes I'm a pandist, sorry. On to LOTRO and Panda free lute playing.