Beta getaway: A nabcake's first visit to MoP

SPOILER ALERT! This post includes screenshots and talk of Mists of Pandaria. Only from my nubish point of view, though.

In my first ever blog post on GGNica, I said I'd write about MoP beta stuff. I've had my beta key for ages now, but have only visited the character creation window. My first turn-off was when I tried to copy my main character Nicasia to the beta server via the link on the beta account page, it said the MoP beta account wasn't an option for that.

Anyway, recently I've had pretty crappy times on WoW, including various disappointments in people, so I thought I'd go check out the panda beta to take my mind off of that stuff for a moment. I ended up creating a level 85 beta shaman called Nicasia. Here's what I came across in the Mists.

Since my last visit, the login screen had been updated from Cataclysm to Pandaria style. The main theme was also the new one. Theme songs mean the world to me, and I must say that the panda one was a positive surprise. What can I say, I like dramatic-sounding things. Also, thumbs up for remaining so true to the original piece. Wrath of the Lich King one is still my favorite though, because of what it brings to my mind, the memories and personal preference.

Click the screenshots to see bigger versions of them.

Having just two item slots in the bottom looked strange. We appear to have a faction tag in our tooltips.

I checked out my talent tree and chose my talents. It took a couple of minutes to go through it, a few more to actually decide what I'd go with. I couldn't yet be bothered to find or bind any of my abilities. I'm looking forward to one particular cooldown.

Firepowaaaaa!!!!1111

A place called Pearlfin Village in the Jade Forest reminded me an awful lot of the elf thing starting zone in a Perfect World Entertainment game called Forsaken World. My framerate, which I so very much obsess about, scaled from a ground-facing 60 (which is what I generally have) to a laggy below 20 with the same graphics settings as I have in Cataclysm. I've had my PC for about six months and I bought it for WoW in particular. I think I'll have to buy a tabletop one pretty soon. For the sake of exploring, I ended up reducing my graphics, and the good thing was that with all the greenness, things still looked pretty!

Full graphics.

 vs.

Everything low except liquid and view distance.

Fish men with night elf body movements. /shiver

'Ere dere be talbuks.

I suddenly felt very barbarian as I encountered the Great Wall of Pandaria, protecting secrets from my curious eyes.

Bug people killed me. Because I am lazy, I reincarnated and they killed me again.

Spirit healer sounds always remind me of the times spent in Ratchett with my first character ever, a level 3-5 night elf warrior. And as you could guess, yeah, I spent a lot of time at the spirit healer because I foolishly tried to kill level 14 lions and giraffes.

A bunch of friendly Shaghorns in the background.

I killed a Longfang Patriarch, because I am a feminist. Ha ha.

After passing through three areas, I decided to call it a night. So, what do I think? I think Pandaria is bloody beautiful. I'm never going to forget what I saw during this short beta exploration. And the zones are HUGE! You actually feel like you're exploring a prairie. I can't wait to actually level and do stuff there!
Feline models and colours seem pretty and things have very scary aggro sounds.

Here are some other screenshots I took.

Salad and a warlock, who just wouldn't move out of my shot.