Ponder Pandas In This Mists Of Pandaria Footage

The chaps at Wowhead's coverage of a secret press peek at World Of Warcraft's Mists of Pandaria is 100% better than RPS's coverage. The trivial detail of us not actually seeing the game is only a technicality: touche, Wowhead. Our coverage of the Terrible Night Of Sleep expansion to Craig's Weekend is clearly better than yours, though: I was AFK for two hours, but after that spent 5 hours in a raid on Sleepless Dungeon.

Pandaria is the Warcraft joke made real: an Asian influenced continent that adds pandas as a playable race. What caught my eye: the pet battles, little turn-based mini-games where you set your companions to battle, seem cute and rather in depth: 100 of the critters, some of which can only be found at certain times of the day. The whole system seems super-cute and deadly serious at the same time.

I occasionally pop into WoW after years of not caring. It's a world I'm happy to explore, but don't really care for the mechanics. What's clear when I return is that I enjoy the new content a lot more than the existing stuff. You can clearly see the level designers coming to terms with the notion of 'fun' in their world. The glimpses of Pandaria below really only show the world they're building, but it does look pretty enough for me to dust off my WoW mage for a short holiday.

This is Valley of the Four Winds.

Kite flying in the Wandering Isle.

The Jade Forest is very green, and has balloons!

This one shows shows how the Scarlet Monastry and the Scholomance Dungeon will be rejigerred.

Via Wowhead.