Big changes to classes in World of Warcraft arrive with Mists of Pandaria

I read 5 Important Mists of Pandaria Changes, a terrific article at Ten Ton Hammer.

Some pretty earth-shaking, never the likes of seen before kind of changes are bring made to World of Warcraft with the introduction of Mists of Pandaria expansion and the WoW 5.0 game client.

While they are not exactly terrible, they do have a slight jaw-dropping effect on long time players of the game, at least this player.

The mana pool size is apparently going to be fixed based on the character, not based on the character's gear.  The spec, in particular the role of the spec, can affect how much mana a player gets.  But no longer will the amount of Intellect the character has alter their Maximum Mana value.

I am pretty shocked.  This is not as big a change as when the hunter class went from using Mana & Spirit to using Focus & Haste for power and power regeneration.  However, it is still pretty big, and it affects a lot more than just one class.

From reading the article, though, this new approach to mana kind of levels the playing field for healers, so to speak.  It does, however, seem to make Intellect less of a "wonder stat" for casters, particularly healers.  I look forward to learning how Spirit works in WoW 5 and then MoP with respect to mana regeneration.

If I cannot up my mana pool size with Intellect, or for that matter, anything else anymore — then I am going to look to not only continue to magnify the power of my casting — still done with Intellect — but also ensure my mana regeneration rate is very, very good.

In general, that is how we have been playing healers for a long time.  I was pretty well with how well it has been working on my healers and casters in Cataclysm.  I hope this new nerf is not too painful a blow.

Early in the morning, my characters were still available via the WoW mobile client, and they showed the old character profile.  Now, they have become unavailable in it; server is not responding to connection requests.

Speaking of things being down for maintenance, the WowWiki.com web site seems to be operating normally this morning but the WowPedia.org web site is showing signs of some kind of overhaul, with images apparently moving or going inaccessible and the server sometimes not responding.

There are other sites that will no doubt be unaffected by WoW's restructuring and simply continue to report on it.  I expect that will be the case with WowInsider (wow.joystiq.com).  They published a good article several months ago describing What has Changed with MoP's introduction.  It sounds like there is a tab in the spell book for each player now that describes how their class has changed.

Speaking of changes, WoW Insider published another article that speaks of some other changes in the game.

One change is the removal of the limit on daily quests.  Personally, I have a passel of characters, and even when I focus on one character for a day, I rarely got much more than half of the 25 that have been the daily limit for a long time.  But some people are very into doing daily quests, and doing them each day.  I hope they do not become to busy to reply to whispers, or breathe!

One change that sounds kind of interesting is the addition of a farm.  Yes, you will be able to run a simulated farm of your own in the game.

As someone who played "sims" (simulation games) off and on for the past 20 years, albeit mostly off fo r sure, this sounds kind of neat.

WoW is getting a lot of games within its master MMO RPG; games that are somewhat farmville, plants vs. zombies, and pokimon-like.

For a company whose main business line until decades ago was water, there is nothing watered down about the gaming in WoW. If anything, with additions like these, Blizzard and its overarching owner, Vivendi, are concentrating the gaming offerings, adding more diverse games into the mix for some alternative flavors.