Filed under: BlizzCon

Today is my first day back in Wisconsin post-BlizzCon, and I have just one word to describe how it feels to be back home: cold.

Phoenix asked:

Alex, you've been saying for years how much you hate pandas. Are you going to quit in MoP?

Can't make it to Anaheim for the convention? WoW Insider takes you behind the scenes at BlizzCon 2011.

WoW Insider has scored an exclusive interview with the intellect behind the gear optimizer Ask Mr. Robot -- Mr. Robot himself. The elusive Mr. Robot is rarely spotted in the wild, let alone in places as packed with unaugmented humanity as BlizzCon. While we'll be bringing you a more in-depth interview soon with the dev team of Ask Mr. Robot (how the tool will be handling the upcoming new talent system, the inner workings of spec scores and stat weights, what's ahead with new apps, service levels and games), we felt it was vital to bring you this binary code translation straight from BlizzCon and Mr. Robot himself.

WoW Insider: What is the most challenging aspect of working with WoW-playing humans?

Mr. Robot: The most challenging aspect of working with WoW-playing humans is feelings. Everybody has a feeling about everything. How can you feel about numbers? About gear? There's nothing to feel about that.

What is the best class?

Not rogues.

What steps can we take to become favored vassals after the robot uprising?

That is a very good question. There's a lot of things that you can do.

First, use the website, because that offers you basic protection. Having the mobile app offers another layer of protection. I've been developing all these layers of protection specifically to save humans from the robot apocalypse. We're going to be releasing even more features; the more you use, the more you are protected.

I was able to sit down at the Pandaria demo stations at BlizzCon 2011 over the weekend and play a Pandaren monk two times in a row. (It was a short line.) I came away with the impression that the monk class may be one of the most interesting and dynamic classes to play in the game. Similar to the death knight, there is more than one resource to manage, and it makes the class enjoyable and engaging.

This is how it works. The basics are very similar to playing a rogue except that there is (currently) no auto-attack. You have a bar of chi that mimics the rogue energy bar. You also have a bar with slots for four light orbs and four dark orbs. The basic level 1 attack, Jab, consumes 40 chi (out of 100) with every shot and grants you both a light orb and a dark orb.

Also at level 1, you get an attack that consumes one light orb that does twice the damage of Jab. If the target is over 50% health, it inflicts three times the damage of Jab. At level 2, you get a kick that inflicts three times the damage of Jab and consumes two dark orbs but returns one if the kick kills the opponent.

Our friends over at Wowhead News have burned the midnight oil, and have transcribed all the talent information released at BlizzCon to create a Mists of Pandaria talent calculator. (Druids chosen for the screenshot because they're the best class in the game...though I may be biased.)

Now, I'm not sure how much calculation you'll actually need to do when you only have six choices to make, but congratulations to the Wowhead team for getting this put together so quickly. Fore more information on talents, check out our liveblog of the Class Talent System Panel.

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The news is out -- we'll be playing Mists of Pandaria! Find out what's in store with an all-new talent system, peek over our shoulder at our Pandaren hands-on, and get ready to battle your companion pets against others. It's all here right at WoW Insider!

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Can't make it to Anaheim for the convention? WoW Insider takes you behind the scenes at BlizzCon 2011.

It's a longer teleport to BlizzCon for some groups than for others. Guild groups from across the United States and Canada knit BlizzCon into epic road trips and shout across the aisles of flights packed with players comparing specs and progression. Still, it's not as uncommon as you might think to discover that the fan next to you in line is from another continent entirely.

BlizzCon is the trip of a lifetime for 21-year-old Christian Olsen and 22-year-old Mickey Exaudi of Roskilde, Denmark. The best friends are spending nine days here in America. Yes, they're planning to hit Universal Studios and the other Southern California tourist standards -- but Blizzard and BlizzCon is where it's at for this focused duo.

"I don't believe in religion -- I'm an atheist -- but this is the closest thing to me," Christian says with utter earnestness. Mickey laughs, yet he agrees with the sentiment. One of the first things the pair did after arriving was a pilgrimage to Irvine to see Blizzard headquarters. "Yeah, we could only just drive by and see the outside," Christian admits, "but wow. That's where it all happens. Wow."

BlizzCon 2011 rolled into it second day with players excited about Friday's revelations and eager to get in front of the panel microphones to complain about their classes. You know, in these troubled economic times, if you want to be a jerk to the developers, it really makes more fiscal sense just to use the forums where you can do it for free. Fortunately for the rest of us, that wasn't all that was going on.

• Liveblogs If you aren't at BlizzCon and don't have the livestream, fear not: We've got you covered. The Classes, Items, and Professions Q&A, Open Q&A, and Lore Q&A panels were all faithfully liveblogged for you. Brace yourself for the aforementioned angry players in the former two.
• News tidbits from the panels There were a surprising of changes either announced, confirmed, or clarified during the Saturday panels. To answer the question that we've gotten more than any other, yes -- Blizzard is working on new character models for the older races! Enchanters will go back to creating wands (don't forget, wands can be primary weapons for casters in Mists of Pandaria). For all those of you who loved Scholomance and the Scarlet Monastery during classic, heroic versions of these dungeons are also being designed for the next expansion. We got a peek at the art going into Pandaren and their starting zone, and a preview of the Pandaria dungeons. In more immediate news, the guild transfer and guild name-changing services should go live in about two weeks, and Blizzard plans to publish both a graphic novel and a four-part novella concerning the Pandaren.
• People, interviews, and events G4 got some professional studio pictures of some of BlizzCon's most famous cosplayers, and we have a gallery of Friday night's costume contest. Episode 216 of the WoW Insider Show was recorded from the convention and features 7 staffers discussing the Friday announcements. Lisa interviewed a couple honeymooning at BlizzCon, and Gray made the rounds on the floor show with a camera. New to BlizzCon? Sue, the convention center's nurse, has some good advice for you.
• Commentary In which Rossi turns out to have been slightly psychic, Blizzard weighed in on the Guardian Cub controversy, and readers shared their thoughts on the Friday announcements.

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The news is out -- we'll be playing Mists of Pandaria! Find out what's in store with an all-new talent system, peek over our shoulder at our Pandaren hands-on, and get ready to battle your companion pets against others. It's all here right at WoW Insider!

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Whew. Well, those of us who were at BlizzCon 2011 are all on their way home today (except for Fox, who wandered off in the middle of the last panel and has not been seen since ... but we figure he'll turn up eventually). On behalf of all of us here at WoW Insider, we'd like to thank you for hanging with us, and apologize for the fact that this week's articles are all going to be written while sleep-deprived, hungover, or under the influence of copious quantities of caffeine.

So what did you think of this year's BlizzCon? This was definitely a more raucous convention than last year's, which was the calm before the Cataclysm storm. While readers have weighed in on what they're looking forward to the most (and the monk seems to have a clear advantage), there was still the rest of BlizzCon to consider. Did you watch the Foo Fighters concert? Did you order the annual pass? Do you have a favored pet picked out yet for battling other players? And what's up with that snake tail in Gundrak, anyway?

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The news is out -- we'll be playing Mists of Pandaria! Find out what's in store with an all-new talent system, peek over our shoulder at our Pandaren hands-on, and get ready to battle your companion pets against others. It's all here right at WoW Insider!

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During this afternoon's Open Q&A the topic of crafted wands was mentioned at the mic. Will we be seeing crafted wands again? The answer: yes! Wands were a bit of an itemization gap in early Cataclysm and managed to earn the ire of every caster world 'round. We've discussed the possibility of a return to the days of crafted wands right here on WoW Insider, and we're all pretty glad things will be going that way.

The deconstruction of the ranged weapon slot in Mists of Pandaria may have had an impact on Blizzard following through on this. Wands are the only weapon type that doesn't have some crafted item in Cataclysm, but wands becoming a primary weapon option for casters makes it that much more important to have crafted options available.

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The news is out -- we'll be playing Mists of Pandaria! Find out what's in store with an all-new talent system, peek over our shoulder at our Pandaren hands-on, and get ready to battle your companion pets against others. It's all here right at WoW Insider!

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One of the most interesting tidbits dropped during the World of Warcraft Open Q&A is a note concerning new character models for the game's older races. If you've played the game for any length of time, it's instantly obvious that not all character models are created equal, and the game's earliest races are in a pretty sorry state in comparison to their later counterparts. As we learned in the art panel, the male pandaren has 10 times the number of digital "bones" possessed by the game's older races, allowing them an unprecedented number of fluid and dynamic animations. As Milka, one of our commenters, just noted, "I heard that they're creating animated belts. My troll woman still can't blink. Result: My belt will be more expressive than my face."

Players have been asking for updates to older races as a result, and developers have confirmed that they are in the works and being actively designed by the character artists. However, they don't want to put something in the game that feels like a betrayal to a character that you've had for years, so they're proceeding carefully. There's no word yet on when we can expect to see them, but it's good news for everyone who'd like their older toons to look as good as their newer ones!

Edit: Zarhym has just posted on the forums clarifying the information given at BlizzCon, although there's no new information to share.

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The news is out -- we'll be playing Mists of Pandaria! Find out what's in store with an all-new talent system, peek over our shoulder at our Pandaren hands-on, and get ready to battle your companion pets against others. It's all here right at WoW Insider!

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Back in March of this year, Blizzard announced that two new guild services would be released. One of the services is Guild Transfers, which will allow the transfer of the entire Guild structure, while the individual guild members would have to pay for character transfers but would keep their status in the guild once transferred. The other service was guild name changing.

Cory Stockton in the Open Q&A panel at BlizzCon announced that these services would be released in the next two weeks. He said the services are ready, but they didn't want to release them before BlizzCon.

So if you've been wanting to take advantage of these services, now is the time to finalize your plans.

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The news is out -- we'll be playing Mists of Pandaria! Find out what's in store with an all-new talent system, peek over our shoulder at our Pandaren hands-on, and get ready to battle your companion pets against others. It's all here right at WoW Insider!

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One of the most exciting things last year was the announcement that in the Cataclysm expansion there would be a redesign of classic dungeons into new heroic modes for level 85. Shadowfang Keep and The Deadmines got quite a face lift including new layouts, new boss mechanics and in some cases entirely new bosses. The redesign was quite successful, and the new instances were fun and fresh and breathed new life into content that had previously been considered stale.

With the announcement of the new expansion, Mists of Pandaria, there was a very exciting announcement that we will be receiving three new heroic dungeons as redesigns. These rediscovered zones are Scholomance and Scarlet Monastery. Both are iconic instances and most players have some fond (or not so fond) memories there.. During the Dungeon and Raids panel we received a few bits of information about each of these revamps. Join us after the break for details.

Welcome back! The open Q&A will begin shortly and, as in years past, you never really know what to expect from this panel. However, I'm anticipating a lot of questions about Mist of Pandaria that the developers either can't or won't answer right now, and probably a lot of angry questions from people playing whatever is currently considered to be absurdly overpowered. Yeah, that sounds about right.

The liveblog is now over! Please click past the cut for the full piece.

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The news is out -- we'll be playing Mists of Pandaria! Find out what's in store with an all-new talent system, peek over our shoulder at our Pandaren hands-on, and get ready to battle your companion pets against others. It's all here right at WoW Insider!

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I know that the World of Warcraft preview and question-and-answer sessions always tend to attract the most commentary at any given BlizzCon, but for my money, the most interesting ones in the long run tend to be those concerned with the game's artistic and technical sides. Seeing how developers got the game to look the way it does, and the reasoning behind the design of different races, zones, and items gives you a much better appreciation of the game while you're in it. The gorgeous Uldum sky didn't get there by accident.

As you'd expect, the art panel contained a number of previews of the characters, locations, dungeons, and props we'll be seeing in Mists of Pandaria. If you're only interested in a peek at the male pandaren's model and animations, well, you can get that here, but there were a number of interesting observations made. Two of the things that really jumped out at me:

• They're experimenting with tier and item set models. Rather than pasting a design onto the standard-issue flat chest and leg pieces, for example, we may see swinging chains, ribbons, and other three-dimensional objects on more gear in the future.
• Technical advances in very recent months have made it easier and faster to add more detail to the environment. New texture tools have made it possible to add snow or lava between cracks in a road, or pooled in the nook of a hill, much more quickly than they could earlier.

We'll have a full gallery of the panel up later!

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The news is out -- we'll be playing Mists of Pandaria! Find out what's in store with an all-new talent system, peek over our shoulder at our Pandaren hands-on, and get ready to battle your companion pets against others. It's all here right at WoW Insider!

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