Adventures of the Hex Machine: The omega in the beta

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

Due to having purchased the annual pass, I've had access to the Mists of Pandaria beta for ages now, but it was only recently that I actually paid it a visit. This is what my second trip to MoP beta was like. You can read about my first trip here!

I began my journey by creating a level 1 human monk, Merppuli.

Click the screenshots to see bigger versions of them.

At the gates of Stormwind I encountered some dueling ascendant shamans; elemental and restoration ones.

A monk's jade serpent statue.

NOOOOOO!!!!!!!111 Not like this!

Pandas, turtles and all that kind of stuff.

Some graphical details I really liked.

I don't actually want to level on the beta server, because I tend to get fond of the characters I work on. Even if their name was Merppuli, I'd catch an arrow in my heart the day the beta is closed. I've even felt bad about deleting my banker called Fghfghfghj. I understand that me hanging about in Stormwind wouldn't make a very interesting blog post - therefore a night elf druid named Simsaario and I went for a little exploration trip in Pandaria. Simsaario became a restoration druid, which could be a future alt of mine, considering how much fun the resto boomshrooms seem to be.

On the map of Pandaria, I saw something that, based on the name, I wanted to see. Vale of Eternal Blossoms. Of course I have to suck at reading maps, even on WoW, so first of all I came across tons and tons of places where one can fall to their death. Second, after all that I went through I hadn't even got close to where I thought I might get to the Valley of Eternal Blossoms. Instead I found myself in Waxwood.

Yeah, it was possible to fall on it.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that I was taking the back door. I ventured into the camp of monkey men, who group ganked me with their tigers.

I don't really want to talk about it.

/sigh

After a lot of swimming - and rediscovering the druid aquatic form halfway through the journey - I finally found a place with no god damn mountains that allowed me to get on ground again. There I found a Zandalari troll encampment.

Pandaren: Trolls = bads?

Thank goodness I finally died (to falling), so I could resurrect at the graveyard. I ended up at Shado-Pan Monastery. Somehow the place reminded me of Skyrim, but the graphics were really amazing. It appeared to be a dungeon, which I couldn't enter, because I wasn't level 87.

You could actually hear these flags in the wind. Very cool. The following view reminded me of a series which I really, really liked, but I can't remember its name. Battle for something county something something. I liked this area a lot. The cold atmosphere and sound of wind pleased me.

The Sha of Anger scared me with his yells earlier. Voice acting could have been cooler. As a silvery level ??, I'm not sure if he's a world boss, a quest objective or what.

This bunch I found down there.

A cool cowboy twig ball thing that moved in the wind.

Again the Great Wall of Pandaria blocked me out, but I found a way to climb on it. It wasn't too difficult, really. And there it was, the Vale of Eternal Blossoms! I had finally reached it!

Yeah, cool. Falling and then that guy. Now who is responsible for that model? Those things were bloody everywhere! This place was extremely scary - and high level.

So disgustingly romantic.

Pandaren and mogu.

I found the login screen place.

And so I felt content for the night. Although, there was still something I wanted to check out. As I finally got an awesome axe from Blackwing Lair, my plan was to change my paladin's holy spec to retribution in Mists. However, in the beta it appears that abilities such as Crusader Strike and Divine Storm no longer have the same animations, which really disappoints me. Death knights, however, seemed to fight the same way as before. But if I don't start liking those new ways of hitting things, Raleigh might remain holy after all.

I can also tell for sure that at least for now I do not like the fact that perma-seals have replaced auras.