War, and more War.
Mists of Pandaria is, in part, about the war between the Horde and the Alliance.
Landfall turns that up a notch. It brings the Krasarang Wilds battlefield, where both factions will be able to slaughter each other, especially on PvP servers. New quest hubs and new scenarios in that area will insure that Horde and Alliance are in each other’s faces, constantly. If you’re on a PvP server and not yet 90 you should get there soon and get into some PvP gear ASAP.
Will guilds be forming groups to clear the opposing factions from their areas? They already seem to be doing just that in places. If you’re on an RP server then this should be a pretty good excuse to play up the war. PvE servers will be a lot lower stress. 😉
Factions
The Alliance’s Operation Shieldwall and the Horde’s Dominance Offensive are looking for skilled operatives, you and your associates, to inconvenience (Ok, OK… slaughter) the other side. RPers can play up Garrosh Hellscream’s destruction of Theramore and the Alliance’s response to same.
Players will be able to kill NPCs, important ones, as well as other players. Commendations can be earned from this and they can be used to upgrade your base. Other rewards will have similar faction enhancing value. This does bring up the question of how well this will work on highly imbalanced servers…
Brawler’s Guild
No one talks about the Brawler’s Guild. It’s really just a myth to scare young adventurers, but if you happen to find yourself with an invitation…
More Patch Details
The Bliz patch notes are here. In this post I’ll include things that stand out for me. MMO-CHampion has some 5.1 hotfixes, for Nov. 29.
Gear upgrades – for 1,500 honor/conquest/justice/valor points you will be able to upgrade superior or epic gear by a maximum of 8 item levels. The gear has to be a minimum of iLevel 458. This will give you an excuse to keep raiding/PvPing after you have your desired gear set.
Brawler’ s guild? What Brawler’s guild? You mean the one that lets you test your ability against tough monsters and NPCs? That lets you win bragging rights, rewards, and additional activities? The one that you have to receive or find an invitation to be able to attend? Never heard of it.
Class Abilities have undergone the usual collection of buffs, nerfs, and adjustments. All the classes received at least a tweak (and for once DKs do not head the list of “most fixes.” Maybe they’re about where Bliz wants them to be?) Check the patch notes page for details, there’s some important stuff there.
Spirits of Harmony can be purchased for 600 Conquest points from the Conquest quartermaster. These are needed by crafters for most of their high end stuff. Currently it doesn’t look like they can be bought elsewhere. So your crafter, if she wants to make the good stuff, will either have to grind the motes, hope you get a spirit from a daily quest reward, or do enough rated PvP to buy them.
Enchants: if you’re into understanding exactly how things are calculated then note that the Dancing Steel, Jade Spirit, Colossus, and River’s Song enchantments now use the Real PPM system utilized by Windsong and Elemental Force.
Pet battles – There are a lot of battle-pet notes, see the patch notes for details. Some of those notes are for bug fixes, others for increased availability of acquiring pets, and so on. Here are some high points:
- You can upgrade your battle pets with Battle Stones. These come in two types and two qualities: General stones upgrade any pet and Specific stones will upgrade a pet within one particular pet family. Stones can be either polished or flawless, the former upgrades your pet to Uncommon, the latter to Rare.
- General purpose Polished Battle-stones can be purchased for 1000 Justice Points. There are other ways to obtain stones.
- Players can now keep up to 650 pets.
- Several classic Raid bosses now have a chance to drop new Battle Pets. The new pets can be obtained from bosses in Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Ahn’Qiraj, and Naxxramas.
Miscelleneous
- Raid groups are no longer necessary to enter pre-Mists of Pandara raid dungeons. If you’ve been taking your 90 through the old raids you will no longer have to beg your guild to find someone willing to team with you.
- 90s will be able to smash face in Tol Barad and Wintergrasp.
- A new banner will appear when a player is subjected to an effect that causes them to lose control of their character. The effect that caused the loss of control and remaining duration will be displayed. (Video below)
5.1 Patch Notes Video Overview
Loss of Control
This new feature lets everyone know when they’ve lost some or all control of their character (roots, silences, etc.) and how much time remains. This has some of the functionality of the popular PvP addon: LoseControl
You can change some of the settings or disable the thing in your interface panel.
X-elerated Leveling
To get into those juicy dailies and PvP/PvE events as quickly as possible.