Each of WoW’s expansions has had its big bad. Illidan, The Lich King, Deathwing: each a bigger threat to Azeroth than the last, each slain by players after a long campaign. Mists of Pandaria is the first major addition to WoW to lack a single overriding threat, and it’s reasonable to wonder where Azeroth’s adventurers will get their apocalyptic kicks in the world post-Deathwing.

Chris Metzen, Blizzard’s vice president of creative development, describes the new villain of World of Warcraft as “war itself” - but war has a face, and the arch-baddie that players will be working to take down post-Pandaria will be the Horde’s current warchief, Garrosh Hellscream.

Hellscream’s downfall will mark the culmination of the series of patches to follow Mists of Pandaria, working in much the same way as previous villains. As the war between the Alliance and Horde engulfs not only the new continent of Pandaria but Azeroth itself, it’s implied that fractures within the Horde will divide the faction.

“You're going to be dealing with what Garrosh has done, and Thrall's reaction to Garrosh” says John Lagrave, WoW’s producer. “Thrall is the world's most powerful shaman. Garrosh is that world's most powerful warchief. That warchief and his vision are diametrically opposed to what Thrall has done with the defeat of Deathwing.”

Chris Metzen says that removing Thrall from the warchief’s throne was unpopular with fans, but wouldn’t give away whether or not the shaman will be returning to that role after Hellscream’s defeat. He did however reveal that the climactic encounter with Garrosh for both factions will take place in a raid called the siege of Orgrimmar. That’s right: the Horde are going to sack their own capital city.

Mists of Pandaria’s launch date hasn’t been confirmed, but it’s planned for later this year. The timing on the post-release patches is still unknown, but the promise of an escalating war is exciting and reassuring news for anyone worried that Warcraft had run off with the pandas.

Blizzard released a lot of new info about World of Warcraft's next expansion today. But does it all mean? We walk you through all the changes, tell you what we think of them from our hands-on time with Mists of Pandaria, and break down what they mean for every aspect of the game: from questing to casual gameplay to release date.

The story
At BlizzCon, Chris Metzen told the crowd that the enemy in Mists of Pandaria is "war itself," referring to the fact that there's no huge monster threatening to destroy the world in this expansion. He elaborated on that thought when talking with press at a closed-doors event held at Blizzard last week, telling us that MoP is really about getting back to WoW's original theme: "the call to adventure." Metzen and the team want the focus to be back on the world and discovering the new cultures and threats that are indigenous to these new, unexplored parts of Azeroth. It's a more subtle call than "OMG A GIANT FIRE DRAGON WANTS TO KILL EVERYTHING YOU'VE EVER LOVED" and one that Blizzard hopes will resonate with the nostalgic and the hopeful.



But it's hardly a time of peace for Azeroth. As Blizzard revealed at BlizzCon a few months back, the Horde and Alliance will bring war to the zen-filled land of Pandaria, and Metzen explained further to us that both sides will go "to the brink" and have to look at what they've destroyed. He described it as a near-apocalypse scenario that both sides will have to step back from and do some soul-searching.

That's the end of the MoP storyline, and that whole story will wrap up inside of the game's launch content. Blizzard's mixing it up with MoP by having a full storyline in the "boxed content," which will lead players into the next story, told in the post-launch updates. That story revolves around assaulting Orgrimmar to take down Garrosh Hellscream and replace him with a new Warlord of the Horde. It sounds awesome (Vol'jin for the win!), and you can read our earlier post to get all the juicy details straight from Metzen's mouth.



The world of Pandaria
Pandaria, the new continent being added to Azeroth in the expansion, is broken up into seven zones (not including the 1-10 Pandaren content, which takes place on a giant floating turtle). Here's what we saw in each of them.

The Jade Forest: Level-85 Horde and Alliance playes will both land here in this lush jungle and make their way to the Temple of the Jade Serpent, with the help of the jinyu fish-people (Alliance) or the hozen (a species of juvenile monkey-people the Horde will arm with machine guns and rocket launchers). Once there, they'll make a huge war like total jerks and cause the Sha--an ancient evil the pandaren emperor trapped years ago--to erupt out of the gorgeous temple and ruin everything. Way to go, guys.
Valley of the Four Winds: If the Jade Forest is the pandaren in war, this is the pandaren in peace. Rolling green hills, lush pandaren farmland filled with gigantic vegetables. The local Tiller faction hosts a farmer's market that will offer always-changing daily quests.
Kun-Lai Summit: The tallest mountain in all of Azeroth tops this zone on the northern tip of the island, and houses the Shado-Pan, a sketchy group that "houses Pandaria's darkest secrets." The Yaungol, another group descended from the Tauren, have been pushed off the mountain and now fight for a new homeland in the plains below.
Townlong Steppes: A tremendous wall locks in the mantid, a ravenous, all-consuming insect species that threatens to consume the entire island.
Krasarang Wilds: Similar to Stranglethorn Vale, this is a dense jungle along the coast with a chain of islands. Also like STV, this jungle is infested with an ancient race that's pissed off they don't rule everything anymore. The Moghuu aren't trolls, though--they're more like a cross between Draenei and Worgen, which is absolutely terrifying because they'll be all over the island, trying to kill and enslave you.
Dread Wastes: The mantid homeland, now overrun by the Sha of Fear (thanks again for waking that guy up at the Temple of the Jade Serpent btw), has been corrupted into a horrifying wasteland of swamps and scorched earth. You'll have to fight your way into the lair of the mantid queen to take out the source of corruption.
Vale of Eternal Blossoms: This is the heart of Pandaria, and where most players will be hanging out during downtime. Each faction has a temple to hang out in, complete with giant statues of warrior Moghuu--and everything is contested area, so expect PvP to reign. This lush valley will also host rotating daily quests for level 90s to defend against the many threats facing this seat of power.

 

Female Pandaren
The females were fully animated in the build we got to play, and have cute little bushy tails that the images below don't show.


New mounts
In the Jade Forest, players will be able to purchase an egg of a Cloud Serpent (either blue, red, or black), that you can nurtur and grow into a flying mount for your character. The system works very similar to the Horde's Venomhide Ravasaur mount quest series in Un'goro Crater. At first, it's a minipet that will give you daily quests that revolve around feeding it and catering to its every whim. After a few days of that, it'll turn into a larger pet with new quests for you. After 20 days of doing dailies for your Cloud Serpent, it'll be fully grown and will be available as a flying mount.

Having the mount will also unlock unique content in the world, such as being able to participate in the Cloud Serpent race, sitting atop a bluff with bleachers stuffed with Pandaren fans cheering you on.

Questing
I jumped onto a level 85 Alliance-Pandaren Monk, who was in the middle of helping out the jinyu--those wise fish-people I mentioned earlier. The character was on the last quest in the camp, which was to take three of their warriors out to "show them how it's done" in combat. So I tried my best, playing this Monk for the first time ever. I ran around clumsily beating down 15 baddies conveniently located just outside the swampy camp's borders while trying to learn the Monks abilities. When I finally made my way back to the camp, I felt horribly guilty: if these fish people based their new combat style on my clumsy moves, they'd all be dead within the week--most likely from accidentally killing each other.

Nevertheless, the leader of the Jinyu praised my skills, boosted my reputation to exalted, and declared to the whole zone that his people were ready to ally with the Alliance now. Yay, me. But that's not why I came to Pandaria--I heard these panda people made some sweet booze. Thankfully, the next quest was exactly what I wanted: an order to sneak into a nearby monastery and steal a rival Pandaren's brew.



That booze was some heavy stuff. My lightweight self passed out almost instantly and I was woken by the clobbering of a chunky pandaren who decided I needed to learn the value of moderation and balance. I was sent to meditate under the nearby pagoda--my character automatically moved there as part of a mini-cutscene that never actually broke me out of the game world. New tech lets the devs design quests that move and animate your character in the live game world while you watch, but lead quest designer Dave Kosak assured me that the team is only using this sparingly because they know it can get frustrating if you're losing control of your character constantly.

The meditation itself was a fun minigame that involved trying to get a moving meter to land exactly in the middle by nudging it one way or the other, while it sporadically tended towards the outside edges. It was tricky, but I got it after a minute or so of panicked button mashing. It was fun enough and captured the pandaren zen mentality well.

Overall, the quests felt pretty similar to what we've come to expect from WoW--there's no revolutionary new technology looking to change the way we quest. At the end of the day, Kosak told me that quests need to mostly be about combat, because combat is fun. There did seem to be a few more mini-cinematics and minigames along the way, but the core is still finding crazy new creatures, beating them to a pulp, and using their internal organs for creative activities.

Raids
There will be three new raids at launch, but we really don't know anything about them at this point. The raid on Orgrimmar to take out Hellscream will happen in a later patch.



Changes to your class
Everyone's talking about Blizzard's changes to the Talent system, but let's get real: MoP changes way more than your talents. Every single class is different from what you're playing now. It was impossible to try out all of the classes extensively in the limited time I had with the game, but I'll talk about what I saw (mostly Monk and Warlock), and I'd encourage you to check out your class on Blizzard's official MoP talent calculator, if you haven't already.

One interesting thing I noticed while playing the Monk (which may or may not be carried over to other classes by the time MoP launches), is that I could fire my ranged abilities whether or not I was in range of my target. If you're out of range, the spell still goes off but doesn't hit anyone. We noted a couple weeks ago that Guild Wars 2 does this and we felt it added a nice level of skill to the combat. I hope this becomes more wide-spread in WoW as well.

The biggest change to how talents work at this event is that you'll be able to swap out individual talents at any time and any place. Swapping a single talent for another just costs a consumable, similar to how the Glyph system works now. And Glyphs! Oh my word, every one of 'em is changed and almost all of them are super interesting. Here are some of my favorites that I saw:

Warlock (minor): allows your Felguard to equip a random two-handed axe, sword, or polearm from your inventory whenever it's summoned.
Druid (minor): whenever you shift into a feral form, your hair style and color is changed randomly
Warlock (major): Demonic Fury no loner reduces damage dealt, and instead reduces damage taken. Also, your main demon form attack now taunts enemies. I used this for some pretty solid off-tanking in a dungeon run, but it's definitely not enough to make you a full tank.
Druid (minor): Lets you shift into tree form (visually) any time you want. I'm not entirely sure how this one works, but the guy behind me was freaking out and shouting about how much he loved it.
Warrior (minor): Whenever you crit, a small flock of doves shoots out from you, like a John Woo movie.
Monks didn't have access to glyphs in this build.

 


Changes to my class
Enough of that general class talk. Let's get into what really matters: how did they change my class? Most of the Warlock spells worked differently, but maintained the same theme as the existing spells (Corruption is a DoT, etc.), and every demon pet got massive plastic surgery, taking advantage of the game's newer high-res models. Your Imp is now a Fel Imp, and Singe Magic is now an AoE magic debuff removale for your group. Voidwalker's become a Voidlord who looks like a real tank now, with a disarm and a personal shield that keeps himself healthy. The felhunter pup has morphed into a floating eyeball-squid demon called an Observer, but maintains the Felhunter's spells. The succubus has retired as well, replaced by the less sexy Shivarra, with all the same spells. The old Felguard is now a Wrathguard, and looks to be available to all specs of warlock.

That brand new class: Monk
Awesome, warlocks will continue to rule. But let's talk a bit about the new Monk class, because it's pretty freakin' radical. Going into this event, I wasn't very excited about Monks, but I walked away from my time playing an 85 Windwalker (melee damage) Monk fairly impressed. The core mechanic of the Monk--build up Chi by spending energy on combo-builders to execute finishers--felt like a more focused version of the Rogue combo-point mechanic, with more options for how you want to spend the Chi points you build up and some very cool reactive elements.

If nothing else, Monks are incredibly fun to watch. I started most fights with a Flying Serpent Kick, which sent my pandaren flying through the air, leg outstretched in classic kung fu pose. I hit the button a second time to slam to the ground, damaging and slowing anything beneath me (the ability has a max range of about 40 yards), and started building up some Chi with some basic Clobber attacks. I unleashed the Chi with a Fist of Fury attack which sent my fists into a E. Honda-like blur in front of me that damaged and stunned all the hozen in front of me. The little monkey freaks were begging for more, so I busted out a Spinning Crane kick that sent my Monk into a swirling roundhouse kick tornado that lasted for 5 seconds. Once I land, all three enemies were pretty beaten up so I threw out some Blackout Kicks to finish them off.



That was my favorite AoE combo, but I was only using 1/10th of my abilities, so I started messing around with others. The craziest I found was Touch of Death, which will instantly kill any NPC that has less health than you. It's on a 1.5-minute cooldown and costs 4 chi, but still--that's insane!

Another cool mechanic: each monk spec is able to summon a giant statue that helps the Monk do his job. Windwalker Monks (melee DPS) create a tiger statue that sends a spirit tiger to charge your target and deal damage to it every time you use a certain amount of Force (Monk's energy). Mistweavers (healer) summon jade serpent statues that will toss small heals out everytime you deal damage and works like a Priest's Lightwell ability, letting groupmates click it to receive a HoT. Brewmasters (tank) throw down Black Ox statues that AoE slows enemies and can be clicked by groupmates for a shield that absorbs damage and boosts that Monk's heals on them.

Still not convinced you want to give Monk a shot? How about these awesome mechanics:

Monks now have an auto-attack.
Windwalker Monks have a Muscle Memory skill, which gives them a 1% critical chance buff every time they jab an enemy from behind, which stacks 100 times and lasts 30 seconds and gets totally wiped when you leave combat.
Windwalkers also get a passive called Afterlife that creates a healing orb on the ground anytime they kill an enemy that grants XP or honor, which looks like yellow mist and heals the first friendly player that runs through it.
Mistweavers' healing spells focus on bouncing between players and flowing all over the battlefield.
Mistweavers drink different types of tea for different benefits, like restoring mana or boosting heals
Brewmasters toss their best keg of brew at their enemies (like Gragas in League of Legends) with Drunken Haze. All enemies hit get drunk and have a 3% chance to hit themselves for 14k damage anytime they attack. The debuff stacks 3 times.
Brewmasters have tons of avoidance abilities like Shuffle, Guard, and Recoil to bypass damage for short windows of time and can divert damage from groupmates to themselves.
Best of all, Brewmasters can slip into the Stance of the Drunken Ox, which causes all incoming damage to Stagger: you take 50% immediately and 50% 3 seconds later.

 



Dungeons
Nine total new dungeons are being added: 6 entirely new ones in Pandaria with heroic and normal modes and 3 new heroics based on remakes of classic dungeons Scarley Monastery and Scholomance.

I got to play through the first two bosses of Temple of the Jade Serpent, a level 85 dungeon ready for you the second you step foot onto Pandaria--and they were tough! The first fight places you in a big room with a large pool of water and intricate stone pathways going through it. Wise Mari, a magical priest of some kind stands in the middle, completely protected while summoning large water elementals that take a beating and shatter into a corrosive pool and little water glob minions that hunt you down.

It's a challenge to take down these minions without dying and once you take out 5 of them, it's time for the real fight. Wise Mari starts spewing out a wall of water from her face and spins slowly around. Your team has to hop on the stone platforms in the water, constantly circling while attacking to stay in front of the wave of death chasing you. It took us about 10-15 circles to take down her health bar, and I had more than a few embarassing jumps into the damaging pool beneath us.

It was a fun fight that mirrored the difficulty of early Cataclysm dungeons, but instead of requiring you to constantly CC enemies, you're required you to pay attention to your environment and move to avoid hazards. The second boss, a lone pandaren monk in a dojo filled with dead pandaren required the same level of reaction skills when she periodically summoned four waves of fire, water, air, and (I think) earth from herself heading in different directions. She also threw forever-burning blue fire on the ground that slowly narrowed the fighting area and acted as a DPS gate.

The other level 85 dungeon, The Stormstout Brewery, looks totally ridiculous. A group of hozen (those immature monkeys the Horde aligned with) have taken it over, gotten totally drunk, and gone crazy. Knife fights and chandelier-hanging ensue as you fight your way through to free the brewery and score some epic booze. Some highlights we saw during our fly-through were jumping on rolling beer kegs and running on them to ride them around smashing hozen and a giant distorted bunny that ambushes you and spews out carrot-breath in a disgustingly orange spray.



Drunken brewmasters and Scenarios
Pandaren are best when they're drunk, which is why you'll find Brewmasters tucked all over Pandaria, who only show up from time to time. Whenever you find one, you can complete a scenario—one of the new gameplay types that are basically mini-instances, based on chunks of the open world, that can be run in small groups without a need for a specific lineup of tank, healer, DPS—to earn reputation with them. The scenario we saw, Lightning Lager, was only available while it was nighttime and raining in a certain area. First you had to repel invaders on the brewery camp, then push your way threw their lines to a temple at the bottom of the hill where a giant boss stood ready for a good bashing.

The developers have five scenarios "close to completion" at this point, and will add more before launch. The goal is to let them develop areas further than they could with regular questing, and allow you to queue up to find groups for the content--as opposed to open-world group quests, which they found most players just skipped because they couldn't find a group for them.

Pet battles
We didn't learn a whole lot of new things about pet battles, but we did get to see one in action. It was a very early version, but it looked a lot like a Final Fantasy game (Blizzard even ran the Final Fantasy music in the video as a joke), with a player and his three pets standing on each side of the screen, with one pet pushed towards the middle as the active combatant. On each turn, you can use one of the active pet's three abilities or swap to a different pet. It also looked like you had two general abilities that you could use once per game, but the video didn't show them in action.

You'll be able to name your pets, each will have 6 possible abilities that you can unlock and pick 3 from for each fight. Pets have four stats: health, attack, defense, and movement, which acts like an initiative roll, deciding who attacks first. Pets are leveled individually and you unlock pet slots by earning achievements in pet battles.

Blizzard reiterated their desire for Pet Battle to be extremely casual. No record of your losses will be kept, only a running total of your victories. You will not see other players' names or be able to chat at all during pet battles--the developers said that it "will feel more like a relatively intelligent AI than PvP."



Challenges
Don't fret, hardcore WoWers! I've got some good news for you too. Challenges are coming along really well. If you recall, Challenges are designed to be "competitive PVE content"—dungeons with ramped up difficulty and time limits and leaderboards. A new UI pane lists every dungeon challenge available to you and the highest medal you've earned in it, and a countdown timer on screen warns you how long you have to beat the dungeon before you drop down to the next tier of medal (gold, silver, or bronze).

Earning bronze in every dungeon will net you an achievement (and is something even relatively unskilled players should be able to do, according to the devs), but getting silver and gold will be much harder. In return for the challenge, silver will earn you an exclusive set of Pandaria-themed gear that doesn't have stats but can be used for transmogrification. The rogue armor set they showed had a flowing gold dragon draped across its shoulders and the devs told us that the armor has a special effect that lets the dragon breath fire every time you score a critical hit while wearing it.

The best of the best that cap out with all gold medals will earn an exclusive flying mount that looks like one of the famous Chinese guardian lion statues with a moghu head on it.

PvP
Two new battlegrounds (both 10v10) were announced at the event: Temple of Kotmogu and Silvershard Mines. The Temple plays similarly to Rift's Black Garden Warfront, and has a single artifact in the middle of a large temple grounds. When a player picks up that artifact, they will grow larger, deal more damage, and start earning points for his team. Unfortunately, they also get a stacking debuff that causes them to take increasingly more damage the longer they hold onto the artifact. The map is broken into three zones: an inner courtyard where you earn 5 points per tick, a plaza area that earns you 3 points per tick, and the rest of the zone, which is temple grounds and grassy terrain, earns you 1 point per tick.

The key difference here that makes me excited about the mode despite the mixed success of Rift's similar mode is that the damage debuff stacks per team, not per player--meaning that you can't just toss the artifact back and forth to negate the damage debuff.

Silvershard Mines is definitely inspired by Team Fortress 2's payload maps. In a diamond goblin mine underneath STV, three diamond carts spawn in a central location and start traveling towards an endpoint along the tracks. Players can stand next to a cart to capture it for their team, much like the capture points in the Eye of the Storm battleground. Whichever team controls the cart when it reaches the end of its line gets the points for it, and the first team to capture three carts wins.

There so much I love about this design. First, all three carts are moving at once forcing you to make quick decisions. Second, there are switches on the tracks that players can use to divert the carts' path and either buy themselves some time or sprint towards the end. The more players standing next to a cart, the faster it will move. I also love that it's not alternating attack/defense, leaving the potential for some epic last-minute switches that flip ownership of a cart right before it hits the endpoint and earns the other team full points for it.



New factions to befriend (or betray)
The developers put heavy emphasis on changing the way faction reputation grinds will work. Instead of simply moving the bar on the bottom of the screen to occasionally get new rewards at a vendor, leveling up a reputation will unlock access to new content--particularly scenarios--in addition to loot. One example given was that as you raise your reputation with The Golden Lotus (see below), they'll begin to trust you with more and more responsibilities, unlocking new parts of their headquarters in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms and giving you new tasks that involved bigger enemies and more critical locations in the valley.

The seven different factions on the island are summarized below in Blizzard's official descriptions:

The Shado-Pan: The bravest and most disciplined of pandaren fighters, the Shado-Pan were established by the last Pandaren emperor to act as guardians against the negative Sha energy that permeates the continent. Part of their duties also involves manning the mighty wall that protects the pandaren homeland from the dangerous mantid race. They welcome the assistance of any who have the bravery and skill to aid them in their sacred charge.
The August Celestials: Four powerful ancestor spirits have always watched over the lands of the pandaren: Yu’lon the Jade Serpent, Xuen the White Tiger, Chi Ji the Red Crane, and Niuzao the Black Ox. Each of their four temples will call on the service of bold adventurers.
The Golden Lotus: Nestled in the center of Pandaria is the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, an ancient place of great power that’s been around since the time of the Titans. The Vale and its magical waters were once used as a weapon by the Mogu, and after their overthrow it was decided to seal off the vale from any intruders. The Golden Lotus is an order of pandaren priests and fighters who defend and maintain this sacred land. Members are specifically chosen at a young age by one of the four August Celestials.
The Klaxxi: Keepers of the mantid culture, these stoic mantid lords have determined that their own queen has been corrupted and must be destroyed. Although wary of outsiders, it may be possible to earn the trust of the Klaxxi, gaining access to their unique arms and armor.
Order of the Cloud Serpent: This order of flying warriors was founded long ago, during the Zandalari wars. Gain their favor, and they’ll reveal the secrets of training a cloud serpent to become a loyal mount.
The Lorewalkers: This peaceful faction has been charged with safeguarding pandaren history and culture. Intrepid explorers can win their favor by collecting historical artifacts from around the world.
Artisans: Many Brewmasters have wandered the world in search of exotic ingredients to expand their craft, while the Tillers and Anglers are simple farmer and fisher folk, respectively. These three factions are the backbone of civilian life on Pandaria, and offering assistance to these artisans will reap great rewards.

 


FarmVille?
While the Tillers (those nice pandaren farmers that host daily vegetable exposés in The Valley of the Four Winds) aren't necessarily a reputation faction, there's still plenty to unlock with them. They'll introduce you to Farmer Yun, who owns a farm out in the valley and apparently sucks at his job. The place is overrun with weeds, stones, and crazy animals. If you help him out, he'll hand the farm over to you and you'll be able to use it as your own personal vegetable factory.

The developers were a bit shy with specific details, but they did say you'll be able to plant things, water them, and return later to harvest them--very similar to the timeline in FarmVille. Among the possible things you can work your green thumbs on are herbalism nodes, cooking ingredients, gifts for different NPCs that'll raise your reputation with their faction, and non-combat pets. Your farm can also support some animals like pigs.

The release date
Six of Pandaria's seven zones are already fully loaded with quests, according to lead quest designer Dave Kosak. I ran into a few bugs in the Temple of the Jade Serpent dungeon and a single phasing bug, but none of them were big--leaving me with the impression of a fairly polished game. At least four developers all stressed at different times during the day that they are much farther along in development than they think most players expect. They weren't ready to divulge a specific release date, but based on what I've seen, I'd put my money on a public beta before the end of April and a launch around mid/late Summer.

Turns out that Razer's Blade laptop – the one which promised to save PC gaming a while back – is more than just a concept device. It's been launched Stateside already and Anandtech has a review of it over here.

Unfortunately I won't be able to report my thoughts about the Blade, because Razer has told us that it won't be releasing the machine in Europe. For the time being, those of us on the east of the big sea will either have to emigrate or watch disconsolately as PC gaming dies out in our lands.

All joking aside, it is a shame that the Blade won't be heading this way. For a 17inch laptop it's very thin – lighter even than the equivalent MacBook Pro. At $2,800 it's also very pricey, mind you, moreso than the same Apple machine. You don't get a lot of gaming power for that either: there's just a low end GeForce GT 555M driving the graphics.

The appeal of the Blade, however, is the multitouch LCD panel and set of macro keys with individual displays that take up the space where the number pad used to be. These can display game specific readouts or action icons, as well as Windows stuff like performance details and softkeys. Anandtech reports some instability with the panel at the moment, but on the whole it works.

The downside of that screen is that it requires Razer's Synapse driver suite to run, which requires online registration just to use. That's just intrusive and amounts to little more than driver DRM as far as I can see.

On the other hand, I do still quite like the idea of the Blade, at least. It's easy to laugh at now because of its cost and the hubristic claims around its launch, but give it a couple of revisions and it might well become the obvious choice for a gaming laptop. Now is exactly the right time to be experimenting with multitouch controls in PC games, given the relative ubiquity of smartphones and tablets. The more experimentation with controller enhancements like this, the better.

An upgrade to Ivy Bridge graphics and an NVIDIA Kepler GPU – both of which have already been seen in the wild – will surely help too, and there seems little reason to buy the first generation Blade when it will be outdated in just a few weeks. Give it that upgrade and a bit of a price cut and Europe really might end up missing out.

Every week, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. This week, get your factor-50,000 sunscreen ready, because the post apocalyptic world is back with a vengeance and only the toughest even stand a chance.

Congratulations to Brian Fargo's Wasteland revival project. Wasteland was the predecessor to the much better known Fallout, and with over a million dollars in the bank, it's finally getting a chance to steal back some of that glory. But these aren't the only games that nuked the world to give themselves a sandpit to play in. In 1990, Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts unleashed the mutants in a very different kind of wasteland, but there's no Kickstarter project fighting to get a sequel to this one, is there?

...though honestly, that's probably for the best. It does after all star slimy mutant scum.





Bad Blood is an unusual game - a proto shooter/RPG hybrid of sorts, which wasn't actually released at a time when this kind of thing was an impossible dream, but would really like you to pretend it was. Take for example its graphics. By 1990 standards, they're honestly not bad. They're colourful, animated, and while primitive, with the kind of attention to detail that made Origin games so beautiful and worth slipping into. Cast your eyes at the border. Instead of a health bar, you have a giant bottle that drains as you take hits. Your world is bordered by a detailed TV, with the background shifting as time passes to give you an idea of what time of day it is without turning the whole play field into atmospheric darkness.

Neat, huh? It's all very pleasant, with just one teeny-weeny, minor drawback...



In all fairness, this isn't as big of a navigational problem as it might seem - or wasn't when the game came out. Like most games, Bad Blood came with supplementary information in the box, and one of those extras was a map showing all the settlements in the extremely small game world. Not being able to see properly is still massively frustrating when getting from A to B though, with little chance to dodge the enemies, no situational awareness, and constantly banging into the walls of its maze-like areas. You can find a satellite tracker on your travels that will give you your co-ordinates, along with binoculars to zoom out a bit, but only if you're lucky/know in advance where to look.

Who are you for this little jaunt? You're mutant scum. The slimy drippings of nuclear winter's anus. A festering pox upon the desert sands. A dribbling obscenity whose first words were "Daddy, why?!"

Sorry, I just don't like post-apocalyptic monsters very much.

Specifically, you're one of three mutants from the small village of Mardok - a place where men are green, women are slimy, and poor apostrophes are tortured in ways that would make the Spanish Inquisition hang up their racks. It's a place of dialogue like "Buzz is the humes're armin' up for a fight. Pretty soon, they'll be marchin' 'gainst all the mutes on the Plains," and for that, frankly, it should burn.

But letting it burn isn't an option. You're one of the few mutant "tuffs" with "smarts and muscles both", and it's your job to head out into the wasteland and find something that will persuade the human populations not to fulfil their manifest destiny and reclaim the gene pool for real people. The village leader isn't entirely sure what this magic solution to endless fighting and speciesism could be, but figures you'll probably work something out. This is what makes him a Leader.



You can choose between three poor, unfortunate bastards for the quest, despite not really being given any equipment or justification for just one of you heading out to die. Varigg is the toughest of the group, but as a full-bore mutant, can't pass himself off as a human. This is problematic when dealing with them, getting into their towns, and not being shot on sight. Jakka, the girl of the group, can supposedly pass, "if no one pilfs her patch". I have no idea what that means. I choose to retain my ignorance. Finally, there's Dekker, who's actually human and can blend in, but isn't very strong and can't take his radiation.

Of the three, he's probably the easiest start, thanks to a powerful close-up weapon. Despite being the strongest, Varigg only has his fists. Jakka on the other hand starts out with an eye-laser and oh thank god, they were talking about an eye-patch. For a moment, this threatened to get very dodgy.

"This is a bigwig job," you're told, whichever you pick. "Every mute's countin' on you to stop the humes from slaggin' us. We can't fight the humes, so we'll have to stop 'em with smarts."

"Have we not considered maybe yielding to natural selection?" you don't get to ask, sighing.



Bad Blood isn't the easiest game to get started with, though it's dirt simple compared to something like Wasteland or Fallout. All combat is action based, with characters able to move in four directions. The enemies have no real AI, but compensate by hitting incredibly hard and appearing out of nowhere on the microscopic playfield. Your primary weapon is always on hand, but there are limited-ammo alternatives lying all over the wasteland. At least, that's what you should say if any of the dead slavers' friends you run into ask why you're holding their buddy's 'sodoff' shotgun. Monsters you kill drop hearts that you can devour for health points like the slightly more civilised monster you are. You also have to keep as much food on you as possible, both to eat during the endless back and forth of the main quest and to trade for the bits and pieces you need to justify your presence in trouble spots around the wasteland.

Unfortunately, there are no pills to build tolerance to the endless lines of dialogue like "a bunch of 'em are too plokky to shiv it". I looked. Everywhere. And you have to wade through that crap, because talking to people is the only way you can find out where you need to go next. Bad Blood doesn't really offer RPG style chat, just very short dialogue trees with witty exchanges like

"How's the water in these parts?"

"No-one's died of it lately!"

As far as I can tell, this is the official wasteland joke. You can hear it hundreds of times.

Sigh. I know these peoples' world has been nuked to hell. I want to nuke it again.



The basic goal of the game turns out to be to forge peace between humans and mutants by rescuing a leader called - no kidding - "Equitus". This tells you everything you need to know about the quality of the plot. By far the best bit in the whole game is that when you die (and you'll die a lot!) your character looks up to the sky and screams a silent "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" before collapsing into skeletal dust.

I could watch this all day. In fact, I'm not entirely sure I didn't. And since the death of the hero means that the humans will have no trouble crushing the mutants beneath their feet, I judge that to be the Happy Ending. Huzzah! I am the best wasteland wanderer, and I'm glad the Earth got scorched.

Here's a video of someone a little more committed to hume/mutie relations at work.

http://youtu.be/XrcG98uiJiE

If you're in the mood for a slightly more satisfying narrative though, Bad Blood isn't the ideal game. Not much of interest happens, and the basic mechanics haven't aged well. Wasteland and Fallout have more depth. Fallout: New Vegas brought things into the modern day, and did so with style.

But what if you've played those already and still crave a little post-apocalyptic diversion?

Try this: Tales From The Afternow. It's an improvised internet series from... goodness, almost ten years ago now... about the adventures of a drifting librarian in a rather more active wasteland. The first couple of episodes are bad. There's no getting around this. The first is an endless screed about groups like the RIAA and how corporations will destroy the world. It's very political and very boring. When they start simply telling stories and building the future world though, they're captivating stuff - stories of Rachael's Mutt, of a travelling mechanical genius, of the monsters both human and other. Unfortunately it only lasted two seasons of note, and the second ended on a cliffhanger. There was a third, but it was set in the modern day, went back to the more political stuff, and when the plot finally kicked in, it was in the name of a very silly attempt to tie the far-future stuff into a horror novel about demons and cults and other nonsense. I remember listening to it with growing frustration, waiting for it to get to the point.

It never did. I don't recommend those episodes.

Give the main series a chance to get running though, and the wasteland episodes are gripping stuff. They're the perfect background for something like Fallout 3, and long enough to last you a good few walks or car trips. Just pretend the narrator got eaten by a radscorpion or something after recording the last one. There's been talk of a (short) Series 3 coming out since 2009, which was supposed to finally land last year with a big pack of movie related content, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

Unless you wake up to find the air full of radioactive dust. Then, might help. Can't hurt.

Come on in, bargain hunters! We’ve dug up the cheapest possible ways to waste the weekend. Dungeon Defenders, Battlefield 3, Arkham City, The Darkness II, and a ton of Ubisoft games have been temporarily encheapend.


STEAM
As expected, Steam has slashed the prices of a couple of games this weekend, including Dungeon Defenders, which is free to play and cheap to own until Monday:

 50% off Dungeon Defenders and all DLC
 40% off Anno 2070 - $29.99
 20% off All Zombies Must Die - $7.99
 50% off Rochard - $4.99

 
ORIGIN
It looks as if EA's Origin service has finally taken a page from Steam's flexible price plans and drastically reduced the cost of several kickass titles. Even better, they've got a deal going on where you can get Arkham City for $10 just by purchasing Mass Effect 3!

 50% off Battlefield 3 - $29.99
 50% off Battlefield 3 Back to Karkand - $7.49
 50% off Batman: Arkham City - $29.99
 50% off The Sims 3: Pets - $29.99
 50% off Saints Row: The Third - $24.99
 50% off Mass Effect 2 - $9.99
 50% off Crysis 2 - $19.99
 50% off Gotham City Imposters - $7.49
 50% off SimCity 4 Deluxe - $9.99
 BIG DEAL: Buy Mass Effect 3 and Get Batman: Arkham City for $10
 AMAZON
Amazon’s having a Buy 1, Get 1 Free sale on $5 DRM-free Ubisoft downloads. Titles include Far Cry, Splinter Cell, Assassin’s Creed, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Call of Juarez, Rainbow Six Vegas and more.

Buy 1, Get 1 Free $5 Ubisoft Sale

 
Also worthy of Amazon note, it looks as if the superstore has matched certain deals on Origin. Many post-2009 EA games purchased on Amazon, such as Battlefield 3, can be activated via Origin. Check the FAQ for more.

 50% off Battlefield 3 - $29.99
 50% off Battlefield 3 Back to Karkand - $7.49
 50% off Mass Effect - $9.99
 50% off Mass Effect 2 - $9.99
 65% off Dead Space 2 - $6.99

 
IMPULSE
Impulse has many of the same weekend deals listed elsewhere, and even more on top of that! This week's "King of Savings!" not only has The Darkness II at the lowest price anywhere, Impulse's offering the 2K Ultimate Bundle pack, which includes BioShock, Civilization III, IV, V, Mafia II, Duke Nukem Forever, Borderlands, the entire X-Com series and more for $69.99!

 50% off The Darkness II: Limited Edition - $24.99
 Over 75% off the 2K Ultimate Bundle - $69.99
 50% off Battlefield 3 - $29.99
 50% off Batman: Arkham City - $24.99
 75% off Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY - $9.99
 50% off Saints Row: The Third - $24.99
 75% off The Haunted: Hells Reach - $4.99
 50% off Dead Rising 2: Off the Record - $14.99
 66% off Alice: Madness Returns - $8.99
 75% off Dead Space 1 & 2 Bundle - $9.99

 

Know of any more game deals this weekend? Be a dear and add 'em in the comments.

According to a Claptrap-penned love letter to future Borderlands 2 PC players, the PC version will include support for higher resolutions, native multiplayer matchmaking, remappable keybindings, LAN support, and bunches of other improvements over the first game.

In Claptrap's words: "I'm makin' something brand new. It's called Borderlands 2, and it's just for you. Sure, I may be sharing it with those fine ladies on the 360 and PS3, but they don't have what we have. The passion. The sensuality. The improved native multiplayer matchmaking."

Click on through for the full list of promised Borderlands 2 PC features.




FOV slider
100% mouse usable menus/mouse wheel scrolling
Remappable keybindings for keyboard/mouse
PC-specific UI
Native multiplayer matchmaking
Push to talk
Logitech keyboard support
LAN support (including offline mode)
Control pad support
Integrated V-sync option
Support for higher resolutions
Mouse smoothing options (can be disabled completely)
Cloud save support
Achievement support
Friends list support
No port forwarding required



The Borderlands 2 release date is set for September 18 in the US and September 21 in the UK. Read the infamous robot's full letter here.

As we head into the last weekend before the MLG Winter Championship in Columbus next weekend (and hot on the heels of the IEM tournament) a small group of players are gathered at Full Sail University in Orlando for the Red Bull LAN. It's one part mini-camp, with high-level StarCraft players working on ways to improve their game and get ready for upcoming competitions, and one part exhibition tournament. Quantic's Kim "SaSe" Hammar and Johan "NaNiwa" Lucchesi will be there, along with Evil Geniuses' Lee "Puma" Ho Joon and Park "JYP" Jin Young and a number of other strong competitors. Sean "Day" Plott and Marcus "DjWHEAT" Graham will be there as well. You can read more about the Red Bull Lan over at Team Liquid, where Day gets into a little more detail.

I've never seen one of these, and I'm really interested in the "training camp" aspect of the Red Bull LAN. As I've watched more competitive gaming, what I find most impressive is the mental endurance and resilience on display at the highest levels of play. Playing brilliantly in a match is one thing, but having to sustain that over the course of a weekend and dozens of matches is another. I'm hoping the coverage coming out of the Red Bull LAN gets into that a bit.

Oh, and if you have some time to kill, why not watch the SC2 final from IEM last week, between MC and Puma, posted at the top.

NaNiwa Leaves the Penalty Box



Speaking of NaNiwa, the GSL gave him a Code S seed for the start of Season 2. Code S is the highest level of GSL competition, and it represents a second chance for the Protoss player.

NaNiwa was effectively dropped from Code S after throwing a match against one of his rivals, NesTea, at the 2011 Blizzard Cup. With both players eliminated from championship contention, NaNiwa ended the match by rushing his probes into NesTea's base, basically refusing to play. The GSL saw his conduct as disrespectful and contrary to the spirit of the sport, and dropped him from consideration for a Code 2 spot for Season 1. Now NaNiwa appears once again to be back in the GSL's good graces for Season 2.

Tough Love for CS:GO

Earlier this week, Tomi “lurppis” Kovanen, the former captain of the Evil Geniuses Counter-Strike team, had some harsh words about the current state of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Evan interviewed him to find out more about what bothers him about CS:GO.

It's a good write-up, and the whole incident neatly captures the challenge Valve faces as it attempt to reinvent a competitive shooter with a long history.

Kovanen made one remark that explains the stakes for CS:GO and the pro community. “I believe in eSports. And if there are a lot of people who enjoy the game like I have enjoyed CS 1.6 over the years, good for them. I’m sure there were people who disliked 1.6, yet it has played a big part in how the last seven years of my life, so I’d hope other people get to experience something similar in their lives. I hope it will be successful, but with the way the game currently is and how I believe it will end up without listening to us, I don’t think it can be successful. I wouldn’t be surprised if it got picked up for one or two years at most, and then FPS games got dropped out as a whole because of lack of CS:GO popularity. The ironic thing is all the pros would wanna help to try to make it a decent game because they all know there would be more money, more tournaments, and so on if it was a good game and everyone switched.”

Speaking of Counter-Strike, this would be a good time to watch the Final between ESC and Na`Vi from the IEM tournament last week.



As always, this is by no means comprehensive, and be sure to call out highlights from the week in the comments below. Any other events happening in the next week that you're excited about?

Spore showed the way. The thinking behind its sharing and viral propogation of user created content was near spot on.

Now we look to Valve, and the Steam Workshop, and realise that mods and user-created content is again at the heart of PC gaming.

Back up. Mods have always been important to PC gaming, but the scale of those mods has changed. The theory is that gamers’ expectations have risen along with technology: as our PCs become able to handle prettier and prettier landscapes, the amount of work required from an individual modder to create something comparable to a commercial product increases. So total conversions are near impossible to create. It’s much harder to make a Counterstrike, Dota or Quake Fortress today.

But modding isn’t just about the banner projects. It’s about the smaller items. Tweaks to balance. Cool new dungeons. A reskin. A new level.



In the eyes of deep communities games that arrive ‘finished’, are anything but. Given the right tools, players love to build upon what game developers have already created. The problem is proliferation and discovery.

I remember when I first started playing Quake Fortress. The download over a 56k modem from a fileserver at Barry’s World. The horrendous download. The weird arcane installation. Things aren't much better today: to mod WoW’s interface we have to drag and drop files into strange folders, or trust Curse’s client to do the job. For Oblivion mods, we’re fiddling with data files and the Nexus client.

I believe PC gaming should be for everyone. I think modding contains some of the best of PC gaming; it’s a strand of what we play that is so very, very special. But it’s obtuse, hard to understand, and kind of a bitch to use.



Spore, and the Steam Workshop show what can be achieved. Modders now have the ability to have their creations downloaded directly into the game after just a single click. That’s just the start. Creations are rated, tagged and filtered via the community; ensuring that the best rises to the top. Comments threads help creators respond to their subscribers. Community creators get to help players by picking collections and themes. Games get better. Everyone wins.

In the next year or so, I have high hopes that modding will become more important to us than it ever was. I sincerely hope that Valve introduce the Workshop, not just to Portal, but to Left 4 Dead, HL2DM, and Counter-Strike (in all its forms). I hope, too, that the Total War team, the GTA team, the ArmA team, and many others are watching what happens to Skyrim and Portal, and how modding extends the lifespan of the game, and creates unbelievable loyalty in the audience. I shiver in excitement at the possibilities of how Maxis could apply the Spore model of sharing creatures to SimCity: with a vast database of new buildings that can be seamlessly imported into the Glassbox engine.



But there’s an issue that as a community, PC gamers need to consider. With the Steam Workshop and Team Fortress 2, Valve have the billing mechanics that now allow modders to charge for their work. In TF2’s case, Valve told us that the best TF2 modelers are making hundreds of thousands of dollars from their work. Personally, I think that’s a great thing for us. I love the idea of modders supporting themselves making games better. But at some point, you may well be asked to pay to download a mod.

How will you feel when that happens?

Talked this week: the phenomenon of Kickstarter game funding, Baldur's Gate: Extended Edition, Mass Effect 3's ending, and what happens to your Steam account when you die?

PC Gamer US Podcast 309: The Achievements of the Father

Have a question, comment, complaint or observation? Leave a voicemail: 1-877-404-1337 ext 724 or email the mp3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com.

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Egad, humans have played 1,800 years of Mass Effect 3 in just 10 days. It still has an annoying bug, but hey, lord knows I've done my part. EA just released some numbers related to Mass Effect 3 multiplayer. Come inside for a full-screen image of the stats, and details on a "Challenge Weekend" in-game event BioWare is holding this weekend.

Click here for a full-screen image of the stats, which represent the aggregate worldwide data across all platforms. I'm surprised the class composition seems to be pretty even—I thought Soldier would be much more popular.

But hey, EA and BioWare aren't just releasing an horn-tooting infographic. Already underway is ME3's first multiplayer event, EA has announced. During the "N7 Challenge Weekend," which ends Monday 3/18 at 5 AM PST, you can unlock a unique supply pack, the Commendation Pack, by beating the Reapers (the hardest enemy group in the game right now, if you ask me) on Silver or harder. If the community kills 1 million Reaper Brutes collectively, everyone gets another unique pack. Here's EA's explanation:

"Any player who is part of a squad that beats the Reaper faction on Silver difficulty or better will unlock one Commendation Pack. This means that at least one member of the squad must be extracted at the end of the mission—this will earn all squad members the reward. Each player can earn a maximum of one pack and each pack contains a random N7 Arsenal Weapon. Originally only available as single-player weapons via the N7 Collector’s Edition, these multiplayer variants will be exceptionally rare and are NOT obtainable through regular purchasable Reinforcement Packs. The Commendation Packs will contain one of the following guns at random: (1) N7 Crusader Shotgun, (2) N7 Eagle Pistol, (3) N7 Hurricane SMG and (4) N7 Valiant Sniper Rifle."
"Destroy as many brutes as possible—if the multiplayer community kills a combined 1 MILLION brutes within the hours of the challenge, ALL players will receive a Victory Pack as a reward."

 


EA tells me that all rewards will unlock on Tuesday, 3/20 at 5PM PST. Hard instructions From the press release: "You must redeem (open) your packs in the multiplayer store menu within 7-days of receiving. If you do not redeem these packs within the allotted 7-days, the packs will expire and cannot be restored. To participate, all players must enable the data tracking option in the game (options online upload gameplay feedback make sure it’s “ON”). If this is set to “OFF” your completion and/or contribution to the challenges will not be tracked and you will not receive any unlocks."