Blizzard on Mists of Pandaria’s Post-launch Plans

Talking to PC Gamer at this year’s edition of BlizzCon, lead system designer Greg Street explained how Blizzard intends to handle the narrative and content evolution of the about-to-be-introduced area of Pandaria, and why they decided to go for something far less dramatic than the Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm expansions for the upcoming Mists of Pandaria. Here’s a couple of quotes:

(It’s more about just ramping up the conflict. When players get Pandaria the box or the digital download or whatever and they go in there there won’t be very strong Horde or Alliance influence in the continent. They’ll see a lot of Pandas, they’ll see a few Night Elves and Tauren and those but they won’t have big established bases or the kind of things we saw in Northrend,) says Street.

(Over time, say with our first major content patch, now both sides have established a bulwark and they’re starting to build up and then maybe in the second patch there’s a big open battleground where the Pandas are kind of caught in the middle of this big conflict between Horde and Alliance.)

(We did a little bit in Wrath of the Lich King where we introduced this whole new quest hub with the trial of the crusader and then again in Cataclysm with the molten front. It makes it feel like things are changing over time even though it’s not a gradual change, it’s just that the patch comes and then one day and now there’s all this new stuff there.)