World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria live now as Blizzard insiders share catch-up tricks, top dungeon & ‘incredible' feat

Scottish Sun

4 days ago

LEGENDARY video game World of Warcraft is getting a major update TODAY – and insiders have revealed its secrets to The Sun.
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Classic is finally here, and the game makers that worked on it shared tricks to catch up fast, details on when the best bits are coming out, and their favourite dungeon of the lot.
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World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Classic is out now
Credit: Activision Blizzard
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The game is a re-release of the iconic 2012 expansion pack for smash-hit video game World of Warcraft
Credit: Activision Blizzard
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World of Warcraft is developed by Activision Blizzard, which is now part of Xbox – and ultimately owned by Microsoft
Credit: Activision Blizzard
The game is a re-release of the original 2012 hit WoW expansion Mists of Pandaria.
It'll see players flocking to the mystical land of the Pandaren, exploring ancient long-hidden kingdoms packed with treasure.
There's a new Monk class to enjoy, and plenty of tweaks versus the original game to make it even better.
The Sun's tech editor Sean Keach spoke to lead software engineer Ana Resendez and game designer Aidan Moon, who both work for gaming giant Activision Blizzard, ahead of the expansion's July 21, 2025 release.
Read the The Sun's full interview with Activision Blizzard below as the game finally goes live at 11pm in London / 6pm in New York / 3pm in Los Angeles.
INSIDE WORLD OF WARCRAFT: MISTS OF PANDARIA CLASSIC – THE SUN INTERVIEW
Sean Keach (The Sun): It's been quite a long time since we were playing Mists. So can you sort of catch people up a little bit? Can you talk through where we're at in terms of the story and what's going on? The basics.
Ana Resendez (Blizzard): It first came out in 2012. So it's been 13 years since we have gone to these lands of Mists. This is where the original World of Warcraft progressed. We already have gone through the original expansion where you're going through Azeroth and exploring all those areas.
Then comes Burning Crusade – that's when the aliens started invading and then we needed to make sure that we survived. The whole of Azeroth was doing great. So that's when we explored Burning Crusade and we went to Outland.
Then coming back to Wrath of the Lich King, that's where the forces came from within. From Azeroth itself, we discovered a new continent, Northrend. That's where it was all focused about going against the Lich King and trying to keep his power at bay and getting all of that under control.
After the Lich King was defeated, that's when Deathwing came in and then the Cataclysm happened. It was a lot about revealing a place that you knew to your heart that was broken and getting back to Azeroth and living it through a new lens.
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This time around, when we're talking about Mists of Pandaria, something that I really like about this expansion is that it's a lot of joy and a lot of like, hey, let's go and focus on some more of the positives.
Of course, there's always a war in World of Warcraft, but this time around, this expansion is more lively and it's centered about you get to discover a new class where you can be able to be a Monk and you can also be a Pandaren.
So you get a little bit of the combo of either you can become a Monk with different races or you can become also a Pandaren of another class and explore through the lens and go through their history of how Pandaren existed in the World of Warcraft. Also, this is the first time in 13 years, you said, it's been 13 years, right?
This is the first time that you're going to be able to re-experience the Veil of Eternal Blossoms as it was during the original release of Mists of Pandaria. It went through different stages, maybe a little bit of spoilers coming up, but during the different stages of the expansion, the Veil of Eternal Blossoms really changed and started to become a little bit more... well, it got attacked and then it got destroyed in a certain sense, right?
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The original Mists of Pandaria expansion came out 13 years ago
Credit: Activision Blizzard
So this is the first time that you get to see it in all its glory before it was attacked. So we're really excited to be able to go back in time and relive it, right? You don't even get to experience that in the modern game, right? If you go to War Within right now and you go to the Veil of Eternal Blossoms, it's going to be in that state of destroyed.
So yeah, it's a little bit of story of the whole World of Warcraft so far in Classic, yeah.
Aidan Moon (Blizzard): I do want to add a little bit on there, but coming off of Cataclysm, which is about the whole world getting sundered to pieces, absolutely getting devastated by Deathwing, and then now it's almost complete opposite, almost like Pandaria is antithetical to what happened to Azeroth where it's just beautiful.
Even the Heart of Fear, which is supposed to be this place of evil with some Old God power leeching inside, it's still twisted and beautiful. And so Pandaria, basically across, it doesn't really have a zone that feels like it's desolate. It feels like it's just full of life, full of untouched, explored areas, and it's really shrouded by the mists of Pandaria.
Sean Keach: I feel like when people look back at Mists, it's pretty well received. Not all of the expansions can say that, but I feel like it has quite a special place in people's hearts. Generally people say it was a really good time for the game. What do you think it is that made it so popular? What's the magic to it?
Aidan Moon: So I think one of the things that I think about when it comes to game design is a lot of the things that brings players in is the visual and the potential for story, and then they stay for the systems, they stay for the gameplay.
And I think when Mists first came out, some people were like, oh pandas, I'm not quite sure about that.
But then when Mists actually hit the shelves and people started playing it and the expansion kept growing, people were like, oh this is actually like peak class design, this is peak PvP. So that's what people are coming into it knowing already with the Classic experiences.
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Blizzard has updated the game as part of its ongoing World of Warcraft Classic series, which sees early versions of WoW relaunched for modern players
Credit: Activision Blizzard
They're going to get peak PvP and PvE class design, and so that's why people are really excited. We know what this is going to be, we know how good this is going to be, even if they aren't coming in for the visual like you normally do for games is visual and story, they know that they're going to have a good time if they come in because they're going to stay for the gameplay.
Ana Resendez: This is also the first time that the talent system got a very big rework, and it looks very different even from War Within and from the other expansions of World of Warcraft Classic.
This time around, instead of having a tree where you get to choose the different areas that you want to focus on and give your power, you get to have fewer choices. So for some people that might be an easier way to get into World of Warcraft.
It's kind of like, okay, I open the game, I'm starting to play, and then it's like, okay, I only have a few options, I get some powers along the way, but it cannot, sometimes it can be daunting, right? So it also accommodates different gameplays too.
Aidan Moon: Yeah, I thought it was really interesting because when I first was on the other side of things when Original Mists of Pandaria came out, I looked at that system and I was like, why are they taking away these choices?
We used to have big talent trees but now that I've been able to talk to some designers who worked on it and also be on this side of it, and it's coming back, I'm like, oh yeah, people just, when you looked at talent trees in Cataclysm, you were like, I always take Hot Streak, I always take this talent, I always take Pyroblast. It's like, there really aren't choices, but you can make a wrong choice. You could not take that talent, right? It was considered the right choice to always take these ones.
So when it came to specializations, they were like, these are the spells you get. that used to be talents. You always get Hot Streak, you always get Pyroblast, you always get these things, and then we'll have you make these small choices in between how you want to specialise certain aspects, and usually not power-related, some of them are, but it's like utility-related on how you want to express your character.
So it felt like they were taking choice away. Well, what it really turns out they were doing is they were going, we don't want you to make a wrong choice, so we're going to give you these things by default. And I thought, looking back on it, that was actually a really interesting thing to do at that point in time for World of Warcraft, because people had been so attached to talent trees that I think it was a little jarring.
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World of Warcraft Classic kicked off in 2019, and is now on its fourth expansion pack
Credit: Activision Blizzard
But ultimately I think people coming back to it are more warmed up to the idea of, you can't make a wrong choice here.
Sean Keach: Has anything changed in terms of, are there any quality of life changes from the original, or any updates, or stuff that might feel unfamiliar?
Ana Resendez: Yeah, I mean, in general, the systems and some of the potential pain points that people experience in the first time, one of them is we really took a look at alts and how can we make it better for them and increase the quality of life.
One of the things is flying, right? So before, each specific character needed to go through the whole experience in order to be able to fly. But this time around, once you get it with one of your characters, then you can buy a tome and you can also get your alts with flying in Pandaria earlier on.
Also, another part was reputation, right? So, reputation is really important because it does enable you to get certain rewards, but it's like this time around when you go through the whole reputation gain, once you go to your alt, you are able to give them an option to be able to gain the reputation faster so that they don't have to go in and have the same barrier of entry to their rewards, right?
Another thing too that we're bringing from Cataclysm is the Valour and Conquest rolling. That's not that much for alts specifically, but just like a general quality of life increase is that no matter when you start in the expansion, you're gonna be able to catch up on the Conquest or the Valour points.
So instead of being like weekly, you get to gain maybe like 3200. This time around, if it's been like a few weeks since you started, you're gonna be able to earn as many times of the week once you get to that point. So, it kind of enables like no matter when you start in the season, you can always partake of these activities.
And there's also been a bunch of changes and look at into the combat and some of the abilities and how that plays. And I know that Aidan has a lot of details that he would like to share on that for sure.
Aidan Moon: Yeah, obviously we're playing on the final balance patch, which there's items and things that are transformative throughout the entire expansion.
So some classes were warped around those items. So we did revert some nerfs that happened later in the expansion to classes because we want people to be able to enjoy whatever spec they want right off the bat. So you don't have to wait for Affliction Warlock to scale up. You can play it right away. Same thing with like Destruction. So we really wanted people to be able to play the way that they want to right out the gate.
And what Anna was talking about there with systems, we're really looking at anything that was anti-late that was trying to make it so if you missed out, you were punished in some way, shape or form, or the player would feel punished that they didn't start at the beginning.
So like the rolling cap that Ana is talking about, where like every week you can only gain a thousand of a conquest and then it goes away. And if you missed a week, well week two, you can only gain a thousand. Now it's like, well, week two, you can gain 2000 and that's the cap. And everybody just keeps getting their cap increased every week.
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The main version of World of Warcraft has 10 expansions – so Classic is still far behind
Credit: Activision Blizzard
So yeah, joining late is not punished. We did the same thing with Valour, Conquest and Elder Charms of Good Fortune, which are for bonus roles, which who needs those the most, the players that are rolling late, they need, they need extra roles to gear up.
And we also introduced Celestial Dungeons, which is a way for five player content to give what used to be Looking for Raid Finder or Raid Finder gear so that you can get your alts geared up. There's ways for your main through Celestial Dungeons to fuel your alts and get them gear.
So we wanted it to feel as good for people to join as late as possible and not feel like they were punished. and also have people feel good when they're rolling alts and using their main to fuel them.
Sean Keach: What's the process like if you haven't played some of the Classic re-releases or like, even if you played, I don't know, say you played like the Wrath re-release, but then dropped off and you want to, you want to get into it now? Are there catch-up mechanics so that you can start playing MoP at, you know, sort of the, the, the, the beginning of max level? So you can level up, you know, do the MoP zones with everyone else? Or do you have to start from level one?
Aidan Moon: If you had played, so I'll go through both. You can start from level one. The leveling experience is always, every expansion is always made a little bit smoother through the older content. It gets a little bit faster. You can buy a boost from the store if you really want to. And that gets you up to right before Mists of Pandaria content. So if you do get one of those, you basically just go straight to Pandaria when it releases and you are level 85.
If you played a Wrath character, you're probably around level 80 and then you just have to go through Cataclysm content, which is five levels. So your old character can catch up pretty easily.
One of the beauties and some of the things that people don't like about expansions, you know, it is a double-edged sword is when an expansion comes out, the previous content is in some way, shape or form like pruned, where people are like, you don't have to go to Wrath of Lich King. Or if you miss Wrath of Lich King, your character in Pandaria that you just rolled, it's not punished.
You're not missing out on like some giant item that you needed. Or you have to go back and do content that you don't really want to do because it's not modern content at the time.
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Mists of Pandaria follows the events of Cataclysm, which saw Azeroth torn apart by big dragon baddie Deathwing
Credit: Activision Blizzard
So there isn't too much of an advantage at all to being somebody who played the entire time, but you have cosmetics, you have transmog, you have all these things you could have collected that show the prestige that you have played that long.
But we don't really want there to be a power discrepancy between people who joined late and people who joined at the beginning of the game.
Sean Keach: What is the pacing going to be like for the expansion in terms of when content comes out?
Ana Resendez: In general, we're going to be focusing on following the original pace. So when we looked at World of Warcraft Classic, during all the expansions, some of them, the timing, the original timing seemed like something that we wanted to look into and potentially change.
Like for example, Cataclysm, we moved a little bit faster throughout the patches. But when we look at Mists of Pandaria, there's so much content and so many different phases that we decided that looking at it, we want to go with a very similar approach to the original timing.
So after this, we're going to be coming up with the next patch soon, like a few months afterwards. But the general pacing is going to be very similar to the original Mists of Pandaria. But yeah, right now I cannot tell specific dates, but it's going to be very similar. So if you're familiar with it, then it's going to be like that.
Sean Keach: Which bits of the expansion are you both most excited for?
Aidan Moon: I'm really excited for Throne of Thunder, the second raid that releases, or I guess the second tier of raid that releases. There's just so many transformative things in that raid. And it's a pretty long raid too, there's a lot of bosses in it. And I think there's only one that you can do if you've done everything on the hardest difficulty.
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Mists of Pandaria sees players visit the lands of the Pandaren
Credit: Activision Blizzard
So there's kind of this extra aspect of Throne of Thunder and really, it's the transformative trinkets for me. I'm kind of an items guy on the inside, where I'm like, how crazy can these items get? And it really feels like there's some items like Unerring Vision of Lei Shen and Rune of Reorigination, which they just completely changed classes. It's just like, it changed the way you itemised, changed the way that you reforged your gear.
So these items were pretty big catalysts for some class changes that happened later, but also just very powerful and very fun. And people have really fond memories of them.
So I'm really excited for people to relive those memories, get these trinkets, then feel kind of how busted their character feels. Because honestly, at the end of the day, you want to make the game feel a little broken for you. So that's something I'm looking forward to.
Ana Resendez: For me, I think the original patch, I have very fond memories of when Mists of Pandaria first came out and I tried the Monk. And the healing Monk used to be able to heal by placing spheres of heal on the floor. And I really, really, really enjoyed that. It was kind of like a new skill to get in, right? Like kind of like adding a little bit of the 3D gaming into the World of Warcraft. So that was something that really excited me.
And at some point, the healing spheres were removed from the regular mechanics of the Monks. So that was a very sad day for me. So I'm really excited to relive that. That are going back to arenas potentially.
And I have very fond memories also about the Symbiosis, where if you play with a Druid, the Druid was able to give you one of their abilities. So I used to play a Priest and I would always try to get a Druid so that they a Feral Druid so that they could give me Cyclone.
So I felt like so powerful being a Priest, being able to Cyclone everyone. So I'm really excited about that too. Yeah, that was very fond memories for sure.
Sean Keach: Can you talk a little bit about the vision behind the Monk class and maybe some tips on the best ways to play, especially if you're, you know, for someone who maybe has never played Monk before, or is like coming into the expansion new?
Aidan Moon: Yeah, Monk was, when I look at the design, it's really designed to feel very fluid and not have too many buttons that you have to press at different times, especially as like a Windwalker Monk.
Brewmaster and Windwalker both have this field to them where they feel really fluid with their Chi points where you're spending energy, you have different you have a spender and you have a builder in terms of what you you do resource wise. You spend your energy to build your Chi and managing that and basically trying to, to, to find the best ways to spend them at every moment. Because to me, Windwalker feels very fluid, very mobile.
Brewmaster, the tank has the same kind of feel to it where it's a mobility tank, it's really good at just moving around and getting around and navigating on its own to like speed up dungeons challenge modes, they're considered extremely good tanks, you can't really go too wrong with them, they have good AoE threat.
And Mistweaver, I think is the one that at the end of the expansion, I think Mistweaver had gone through a lot of changes, a lot of ups and downs on what it should look like. And we did do a decent amount of changes to it to get it in a spot that we think feels kind of right for where Mistweaver should be.
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The game introduces a new humanoid panda race called the Pandaren
Credit: Activision Blizzard
They are a throughput focused class that deals damage at the same time as their healing. So they don't really have defensive cooldowns, they don't have things like a Discipline Priest where they're shielding people where they're giving a barrier to the raid, they don't have any of that. They are pure throughput. If you like numbers, then you're gonna like Mistweaver. They have numbers on the enemy and they have numbers on all their allies at the same time.
They like to heal and deal damage at the same time. And they really are the throughput healer, or at least we've made them the throughput healer, right next to things like Restoration Shaman, which has more defensive cooldowns at the same time.
But Mistweaver is basically pure throughput. So my advice is if people like numbers, you should play Mistweaver.
Ana Resendez: And in general, when we're thinking about Monks, it's something, as I mentioned earlier, that you can experience through not just a Pandaren, you don't necessarily need to be a Pandaren to be able to enjoy this. You can go through the different classes, different races that allow you to be a Monk, but you can also be a Pandaren being something else.
So when you think about also a Monk is, I would tell people it's very exciting to go in and choose to be a Pandaren because you also get to have your own starting zone that will really get you and prepare you to get out there. You get a special, kind of similar to the Death Knights where they have their own starting zone with the Pandaren. Also, you get to have your own training grounds, literally.
You get to start through some training grounds where you get to understand your first abilities and kind of slowly level up. Also, something really cool about Pandaren in general is that you don't really choose a faction until you're done through the starting zone. So yeah, correction, this is only for Pandaren that choose to be, for Pandaren in general.
If you choose to be a Monk and you're a different race, then you're not going to have the starting experience. So this is just for Pandaren. But you get to go through the whole starting zone experience and at the end of it, you get to choose whether if you want to go through the Horde or the Alliance, which is something really new to Mists of Pandaria, right?
Every other time from the get-go, you're like, okay, I just started playing the game. Quickly choose a faction and you're like, okay, I don't know, options. But this time around, you get to have a trial of like, okay, let me first look at my character and then let me get the choice whether if I want to join the Alliance or the Horde.
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The level cap for players rises from 85 to 90 in Mists of Pandaria
Credit: Activision Blizzard
Sean Keach: Wasn't there someone who leveled up by picking herbs and didn't end up getting a faction?
Aidan Moon: I think it's DoubleAgent. Yeah, because mining and herbing has experience to it. So I think he took like half a year to do it. Half a year of game time. I think it's like 180 days of game time just picking herbs in the island and never picking a side.
So yeah, an incredible feat, incredible feat. And that's the thing that we love about our players is they'll go out of their way to embrace the MMORPG aspect of things and try to break the systems in some way, shape or form, or play their character with a specific identity like DoubleAgent did.
Sean Keach: I wonder if it will happen again.
Aidan Moon: If he does it again, it's probably him.
Sean Keach: And is there sort of like a, in your opinion, like a most iconic dungeon? The one that is, you know, this is the best representation of the expansion. It's the one that's more different than what's been done before.
Aidan Moon: I gotta think a little bit because some of them are like reworks of older dungeons, like Scholomance and Scarlet Monastery and Scarlet Halls are ones that, you know, they were kind of like a revamp of it, but with like almost completely different things all throughout.
I personally think it's probably the Temple of the Jade Serpent for me. Just the aesthetic of the entire dungeon, the way it feels where you're, you're like traversing through it. It's a corrupted area that the influence of the Sha of Doubt is in there.
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A Monk class is also added to World of Warcraft for the first time in Mists of Pandaria
Credit: Activision Blizzard
And it really does encapsulate Pandaria for me where it's beautiful, but there's all this around it that you're trying to almost save the beauty from all this destruction and all of these almost like deadly sins that are happening.
Sean Keach: I'm excited to play now.
Aidan Moon: Good, good. Yeah. In Classic, we're always trying to deal in, you know, recapturing feelings for players. We're trying to make them almost have nostalgia. And if they didn't play, it's almost like nostalgia they didn't have before. We want to give them this new feeling.
And I kind of equated this to like where, you know, people talk about like, you know, flavours of things where people are like, oh, what's your favorite flavour of WoW? And they're like, oh, it's Vanilla. When it comes to like, you know, you go on an airplane flight, there's this study where like airplane food tastes different because of altitude and different aspects of like air pressure and all of that. So you'll have the same food, but it'll taste different.
WORLD OF WARCRAFT – THE ORIGINAL TIMELINE
Here's the timeline for the retail World of Warcraft series... World of Warcraft – November 23, 2004
The Burning Crusade – January 16, 2007
Wrath of the Lich King – November 13, 2008
Cataclysm – December 7, 2010
Mists of Pandaria – September 25, 2012
Warlords of Draenor – November 13, 2014
Legion – August 30, 2016
Battle for Azeroth – August August 13, 2018
Shadowlands – November 23, 2020
Dragonflight – November 28, 2022
The War Within – August 26, 2024
Picture Credit: Activision Blizzard
And on our side, what we're trying to do is we're trying to give you not the same food. We're trying to give you something that looks the same, but we're trying to make it taste the same in a different environment. So you might have to add a little extra salt to that in the airplane food. You might have to add a little extra pepper. You might have to spice it up a tiny bit.
So essentially, a lot of people be like, oh, Classic is just the same game over again. Well, for us, it's really what do we have to do to recapture the same feelings that people had when they first played the game in 2025 now? So there's different challenges with that where we really have to almost cater to players, figure out what they didn't like the first time around and fix that. Things like reputations, things like anti-late mechanics.
And so we want to give them that flavour and we want to give it to them in a different environment where if we had given them the exact same flavour again, it might not taste the same.
Sean Keach: Well, I thought it was interesting actually when you were talking about the anti-late mechanics – it sort of relieves the pressure almost because I can play it in a way that fits my life now when I have a busy job.
Aidan Moon: 100%. Our players have kids, our players, you know, have grown up. So there's so many things that we want to do to give them that feeling still, even though they might have a different environment themselves.
Like you're saying where the almost anti-late mechanics are like giving you too much FOMO to the point where you just go, I kind of am dropping off now. That's something that when we look at it, we're always like, this feels like I wouldn't even want to engage with this right now. I would be like, I missed a week because of life.
I took a vacation. Now I'm permanently behind a week. So that doesn't feel good. So we always want to look at those types of mechanics and be like, how can we make this feel as good as possible for a modern player?
Ana Resendez: Yeah. And also, you know, as Aidan was talking with the Celestial Dungeons, it's also a great way to, you know, come back into it and get some gear, right?
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The original game was generally well-received by players and critics
Credit: Activision Blizzard
Because this time that we're not having the Looking for Raid system, you are able to get all of the rewards through the dungeons, which is very different because if you want to go through the original system, you have to commit to potentially going through the whole raid and then it's way slower.
This time around, it's really what you want is also just to catch up. You can just spend a few days, you know, going through the different dungeons, experience them with the different blessings and kind of like have a lot of fun also, like reliving these dungeons with a different twist. But you also get to have this gear, right? That before was in a very specific system.
So this time around, it will really help people that, hey, I want to come back. I want to be able to raid. I want to be getting ready, right? And not just that, like also through these Celestial Dungeons, you're also going to be able to start trying out some of the boss mechanics because we did through a little bit of the boss mechanics from the different raid scenes.
So you get to practice a little bit also in the dungeons. So that's really exciting. But yeah, that's also just another way to catch up for sure.
Aidan Moon: Yeah, because original LFR gave you gear at a certain rate. And if you missed weeks and stuff, you couldn't make that up. Whereas with Celestial Dungeons, you can just play as much as you want. You can play to your heart's content.
You could honestly, if you really wanted to, you could gear your character up in a day. If you just played nonstop, you'd be able to get everything you wanted from the vendor and like essentially push your character to almost raid ready right away, even if you join late. So that's something that we're going to constantly do.
Every phase, we will be updating the vendors. We'll be updating them with the gear. that's previous Raid Finders here from whatever it currently is.
So the way that the cadence, you had talked about where you had asked what's the release look like? It's the raid will come out and then two weeks after, that's when the Celestial Dungeon loot will become available. And then you can grind Celestial Dungeons or play a bunch of Celestial Dungeons to get caught up if you're late. Or if you have parts of your gear where there's gaps in it, where there's holes in your gear.
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Blizzard sold millions of copies of the original Mists of Pandaria in the first week of release
Credit: Activision Blizzard
So yeah, we really think it's a good solution for people who might have come in a little bit late. And it also keeps five man dungeons alive throughout the entire expansion. Whereas in normally in WoW, when you get to like the last phases, they have to introduce like a new dungeon, like Magister's Terrace, or you have to do like the like Fort of Souls in Wrath of Lich King and get people back into five mans. Here it's going to be, well, we're just going to keep updating the loot.
So the loot will always keep getting better and players will have a reason to do five mans all throughout the expansion, which helps new players coming in because people are doing five mans still. So for us, that kind of felt like a almost a no-brainer of like, hey, let's get people into five mans. It's a great social interaction. It's not that intimidating.
People can get used to these five mans even through the heroic mode and not have to do the Celestial dungeon mode. And then they'll be ready to gear up and ready to get going.