World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Classic Delivers Significant Quality of Life Improvements

Summer is approaching. The days are getting longer, the trees greener, and soon we will be sailing to the hidden shores of World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria Classic. Okay, the classic expansion’s launch is not until August, but the pre-patch will bring Cataclysm Classic to a close and set the stage for our next classic adventure.

Mists of Pandaria Classic offers a wide range of new features and content for players to enjoy: new lands, new race, new class, and new systems, including a completely revamped talent system. You can even get your cozy on by tending your own farm. Along with the Pandaria-centric changes are quality of life improvements we still utilize in the modern game.

I reviewed the Mists of Pandaria patches and listed updates which moved the game much closer to the retail version of gameplay. These changes spanned the expansion’s patch cycle, but I expect Mists of Pandaria Classic to launch with all updates implemented, following previous classic game procedure.

There are not many general improvements in this expansion, but certainly several which stood the test of time and remain valued when playing World of Warcraft:

• The majority of your character’s Achievements, pets, and mounts will be shared with your other characters.
• Area of effect looting comes to World of Warcraft. After killing a group of enemies in close proximity, when you loot one of their corpses, the loot window will include items from all of the nearby corpses for which you have loot rights.
• Cross-Realm Zones
  • In some zones, players are now able to form a group with other players from a select pool of realms.
  • When a player is in a zone that is set as a “cross-realm zone”, in addition to seeing other players from their native realm, they’ll also seamlessly see (and be able to play with) players from other realms.
  • Players will always be able to group and quest as they normally would with players from their native realm.
• Players who have enabled their BattleTag will now be able to:
  • See BattleTag friends in your friends list. Add and remove BattleTag friends.
  • Send BattleTag invites to other players via right-click.
• New spells are now learned automatically. Class trainers are only needed to change talents, glyphs, class specialization, or to utilize the dual specialization feature.

• Head enchants removed
  • Enchants that modify the gear in your head slot have been removed from the game. This includes older head enchants of every type.
• Relics, ranged, and thrown items
  • The slot in which ranged, relics, and thrown items were previously equipped has been removed. All weapons should now be equipped in the weapon slot. Ranged weapons, including wands, have been adjusted to be more powerful. Wands are now equipped in the caster’s main hand slot and can be used together with an off-hand item instead of a melee weapon.
  • Ranged weapons no longer have a minimum range.

• Transmogrification rules have been broadened for several weapon types.
  • Two-handed axes, maces, and swords can be Transmogrified to each other. One-handed axes, maces, and swords can be Transmogrified to each other.
• The cap for daily quests has been removed.
• There is no longer a displayed count of daily quests completed.
• There is a new user interface for your mounts and pets.
• Character creation screens have been updated.
• Buffs have been consolidated in the UI.
• The PvE queue frames have been unified. You can now queue for dungeons, raids, and other queue-able content in one handy place.
• Vendors now offer item filtering.
• Spellbooks have been updated to reflect changes to core abilities, and now include a brief overview of specializations.
• The Dungeon Journal has been expanded with information on all pre-Cataclysm Dungeons.
• A new help system has been added to many frames. You can toggle this on and off by clicking the “i” button in the upper left corner of the frame.

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