What is Mists of Pandaria?

The goal is to combine new gameplay with most fun parts of the past.
The plan is to get people back into the world, instead of having players roam around Stormwind and Orgrimmar all the time once they reach max level.
Developers want you to do what you want to do to progress your character. They really want you to feel like you have a menu of content where you can pick whatever you want to do, and you shouldn't feel forced to do something to progress your character. For example, daily quests will reward you with valor points but it will still be faster if you raid of course.
Character builds are going to be entirely revamped. Talents were still too cookie cutter, so the developers want to give players more choices in their talents.


Pandaria

5 New leveling zones to explore
Single, unified continent
Influenced by Asian landscapes
AH, Bank, and Central Questing Hub
No flying until max level
There's 5 leveling zones but they are very large zones, and you won't have your flying mount.


Lore of Pandaria

A long, storied history.
Magically hidden since The Sundering
A new land to explore....
Pandaria was discovered during the cataclysm, a naval battle between horde and alliance was taking place close to it.


Pandaren starting zone

It's a turtle! It left Pandaria 10 000 years ago and never came back. Pandarens who wanted to discover the world left on that turtle.
Story focused with simple mechanics
Cross faction, choose Horde/Alliance at level 10.


Creatures of Pandaria

The Jinyu are fish-like creatures and will be in a wide number of zones.
The Hozu are a monkey-like race, they stand up on their legs and can walk around. They play tons of pranks on the local pandarens and are also in a lot of zones.
Verming are ... new kobolds, they kinda look like evil bunnies.
Mantid: Whole raids and dungeons around this race. Insect race that has been there since the beginning of ages. They have been seperated by a giant wall. They are starting to go crazy and are going through the wall
Mogu: Ancient race, original race on pandaria. The mogu want the island back from the pandaren, they are really mad. You will see them in dungeons.
Sha: Manifestation of the evil energies that flow through the earth. If there is any sort of battle these guys pop up.


The Jade Forest

This is where Alliance and Horde will be landing. The horde is washing up on the north side, the alliance on the south side. There will be one unified start zone and Alliance/Horde will end up meeting up in the middle.
Lush rainforests and stone spires
The Alliance will try to become friend with the Hozu, and the Horde with the Jinyu and will try to turn them against each other.
Temple of the Jade Serpent will be the dungeon of this zone. It will be your 85-86 Dungeon, it has been taken over by Sha


Valley of the Four Winds

Two zones for the price of one! This zone is huge, the whole north side of the zone is pandaren farmlands, the south is a coastal jungle.
You will get to choose between the north side and the south side when you arrive. You can go back and switch side if you want the other quests.
The dungeon of this zone is Stormstout Brewery.
This is where you will have your first interaction with the Mantids, they broke through the wall and are now attacking pandarens villages.
This is a level 86-87 zone


New Features

The pandarens are the new race.
The female model isn't done yet.
At level 10, you will get to choose between horde and alliance.
Pandaren Classes: Hunter, Mage, Monk, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warrior
Racial - Epicurean - Increase the stat benefits from food by 100%
Racial - Gourmand - Cooking skill increased by 15.
Racial - Inner Peace - Your rested experience bonus lasts twice as long.
Racial - Bouncy - You take 50% less falling damage.
Racial - Quaking Palm - You touch a secret pressure point on an enemy target, putting it to sleep for 3 sec.


Monk New Class

Brewmaster - Tank spec
Mistweaver - Healer, a healer who can stand up in melee and will let players experience a "new healing style"
Windwalker - Melee DPS
This is not a hero class, and it will start at level 1
The class is very martial-arts based
Lots of monk-only animations, the healer and tanks will have different stances they can stand in, etc ...
Monk Races - All of them except Goblin and Worgens


Monk Equipment

Leather Armor (Agility or Intellect)
They hit a lot with hands and feet
They will need weapons for some finishers: Staves, Fist Weapons
They will also be able to use 1H Axe and maces, swords
Healers will get off-hands, they don't want healers to use shields.


Monk Resources

Chi (energy) slowly regenerates and is only used for your Jab and Roll abilities.
Jab generates Light and Dark force, which are used for everything else. Some finishing move uses dark force, some use the light force.
No auto attack! Devs want you to have this street fighter feel where you punch a lot


Cataclysm Talents / Talent 2.0
Cataclysm Talents

Pro - The level 10 specs were really nice and gave you a role early in the game, definitely a keeper.
Pro - Removing junk from the talent trees was also a very good move.
Pro - Having some kind of choices for optional skills/subspecs worked out pretty well.
Con - You had a risk of "skipping" important talents
Con - There wasn't enough junk removed
Con - There wasn't enough choices, you might have a different final talent point than another combat rogue but it just wasn't enough. The cookie cutter build still persists.
Con - No enough customization, no true hybridization (Using a little bit of 2 different trees)
Con - Players got grumpy


Talent System 2.0[*]The talent system is gone! Ok, not really, but it's greatly changed.[*]You now have your class abilities, your spec abilities, and your talents.[*]You still choose your spec at level 10, and you get a spec ability at level 10. You will get additional spec abilities later. There are anything that you really need to function, they will just be given to you to make sure you have all the tools you need to have.

Example - Prot Paladin

LVL 10 - Avenger's Shield
LVL 20 - Hammer of the Righteous (Prot and Ret)
LVL 30 - Judgement of the Just (Passive)


Talents

There is not talent points or ranks.
There is one talent pree per class.
You earn talents every 15 levels.
You get to choose 1 out of 3 every time you get a new point, you can only pick one of them and can't go back to get the other ones.
There will be no mandatory talent.
You can now change talents as easily as you change glyphs.

Stranglethorn Diamond Mines - Payload style gameplay.
Valley of Power - Murderball
Azshara Crater - DOTA
New Arena - Tol'vir Proving Grounds