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WoW 5.0: Mists of Pandaria BETA - First Impressions

WoW 5.0: Mists of Pandaria BETA - First Impressions By Mimiron My name is Stan, I am 19 years old. Currently I am studying at a University. I am the founder of the FB group which posted Cataclysm news since 8/23/09. I am playing WoW since the release of Burning Crusade. I like writing articles regarding Cataclysm. The most time I enjoyed playing was high-end TBC - Sunwell Plateau.

First of all I need to say "finally". I subscribed to the Annual Pass a few moments after the last wave of annual pass testers were granted access to the BETA. I really didn't have to wait that long.

I logged onto my Battle.net account and there it was. I already had the client pre-installed so that in case of invitation, I don't have to spend an eternity downloading the content.

Character copies take an eternity, because the last wave, 400,000 subscribers went in. Don't even bother to copy a premade. It may take up to a week. Rather copy over your character from live servers, which is almost instant.

To my confusion, I was unable to find the new leveling zones. Fortunately, the guys from the General channel were friendly enought to give me a hint...

Talk to Ku Pao... well alright!

This is Ku Pao, he is located somewhere in Stormwind (don't know where, I don't play Alliance, maybe you can figure it out yourself, when you look at the screenshot) and in Orgrimmar, right in front of Grommash Hold. He has a really strong aura, so it's hard to miss him.

After talking to him, the first location was Jade Forest. First of all, I had no idea where to go, because there were no quests available, then I searched the map and saw yellow exclamation marks...

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The very first quest "giver" in this area is this axe. There's plenty of monkeys, corpses, flame and chaos in the crashite area.

You need a total of 10,000,000 XP to get from 85 to 86. The level cap is 87 for the time being.

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You cannot do quests on a flying mount. This is a really nice addition, because it actually takes some time, until you hit your desired level. You'll learn flying in Pandaria, but automatically, at level 90 as a passive skill.

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The first thing I noticed were warlocks. Their new pets are really helpful for leveling.

Some quests are bugged, or require graphical settings on Fair and better.

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One of the bugged quest on the horde side, is Wisdom of the Ages, where you need to meditate at the Cairn Stone. This quest is bugged, because when two people enter, it automatically resets, thus nobody complets the quest, therefore, players are forming queues in order to complete the quest. Some claimed they've spent 3 hrs in the queue. Of course, there were people cutting the queue (including me).

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I've never seen something as strange as this in Warcraft. People are waiting in a line to complete a bugged quest one after one. And wait... that's not all... the queue is still incomplete... a part from it is missing, but wait for it!

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Here is the end of the queue. It's rather long.

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I'm now level 86. I quite enjoy the leveling, because Blizzard seems to fix things really fast, just hope there won't be any character wipes in the near future.

Now new adventures await in, the Valley of Four Winds!

 

Earlier Related Articles:

* WoW 5.0: Mists of Pandaria BETA - First Impressions
* WoW 5.0 Area Preview: Zandalari Island
* WoW 5.0: Kun-Lai Summit Zone Preview
* WoW 5.0: Ancient Mogu Crypt Scenario Preview
* WoW 5.0 Battleground Preview: Silvershard Mine
* WoW 5.0 Battleground Preview: Temple of Kotmogu
* WoW 5.0 Raid: Heart of Fear Preview
* WoW 5.0 Mounts: Jewelcrafting Panther Preview
* WoW 5.0 Zone: Vallery of Four Winds Preview
* WoW 5.0 Dungeon: Stormstout Brewery Preview, Achievements and Loots

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