World Of Warcraft Remix: Mists Of Pandaria Interview – Great For New Players, Solo Players, And Filled With Nostalgia For Longtime Players

World of Warcraft‘s latest foray into keeping players busy during the 20th anniversary of the MMORPG includes a special Remix event taking place within the popular Mists of Pandaria expansion. WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria is a timerunning journey that is live now for players to experience, but will only last until August 19, 2024. To spread the word about the exciting limited-time event, two of the developers behind the experience, Senior Test Analyst, Ciji Bambrick, and Senior Game Designer, Brian Dowling, recently sat down with Screen Rant to discuss what rewards and changes are happening to the world of Pandaria.

As the WoW community looks forward to the new expansion, The War Within, that is expected to be released this fall, this presents a perfect time for devs to play around with limited-time, sillier events such as Plunderstorm and now the Mists of Pandaria Remix. Anyone with a current subscription to World of Warcraft can experience this event featuring a redesigned version of the MoP expansion, or anyone can play to level 20 without paying anything. With new cosmetic rewards and an accelerated gameplay mechanic, the event will be a fun and nostalgic journey for longtime players, with many new features that make it accessible to solo play.

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Although the event is now live, this interview with WoW devs, Ciji Bambrick and Brian Dowling took place just prior to the launch of the Mists of Pandaria Remix, discussing what players can look forward to during the experience.

Mists Of Pandaria Remix Is Good For Long-Time WoW Players As Well As Those New To The Game

Prospective Players Shouldn’t Be Scared To Try It Out

Screen Rant: With the Remix, obviously a lot of long-time WoW players will be excited to jump in and try to get things they couldn’t get originally, get new stuff, etc, but how will this work for new players coming into the game? Would you recommend new players start with creating a new, level one character in regular, modern WoW, or try jumping into the Remix?

Brian Dowling, Senior Game Designer: “When we were initially thinking about the gameplay systems, we were thinking about existing and returning players as our first audience, and adding something new for them to experience with this existing content. That being said, one of the cool things about this kind of fresh start with everyone starting at the same time is that if you haven’t played and want to see that craziness that only MMOs can capture that of day one where you see tons of people, and it’s always a good experience, you know that is a good reason to jump in.

And, if you have a friend who maybe didn’t want to level alone,
this is a great time to level
. Or if you have a friend who isn’t familiar, you can be like ‘this is basically how you play WoW’ and you can be playing together and everything scales between lower levels and 70 depending on what zone it is. Everything goes to 70, so you can very easily get rewards for a higher level character while shepherding or mentoring less experienced players.

If you’ve never played World of Warcraft, we have the Exile’s Reach introduction, which is great for kind of explaining what Warcraft is. Remix is a twist. An accelerated, amped up version of World of Warcraft. The systems aren’t all front-loaded, so
you will have some time to digest and learn
‘oh that’s the cloak of infinite potential’ and you’ll know that that’s going to get more powerful. Or ‘oh that’s what a spell gem is’ and socket one, you don’t get 14 all at once, you will start with one and kind of learn those systems.

So, even if you’re a new player, we have tried to make the onboarding and pacing of things digestible, which is going to help for both new and existing players. I think that if you’re a new player, and you’re wanting to see what this new Remix event is, jump in, try it out, and
then if you want more context for Warcraft, then maybe jump into Exile’s Reach
. We do tell players this is an advanced way to play if you’re brand new, just to give them the head’s up.
We still think it’s a ton of fun no matter who you are
, but that’s kind of our thoughts there.”

Ciji Bambrick, Senior Test Analyst: “And
it is also accessible for players who haven’t played before
, like Brian mentioned with Exile’s Reach, there’s also the starter edition so you can participate in the event. It’s still capped at level 20 like Starter Edition already is, but you can still create a timerunner and participate in the Remix event if you want to at that level.”

Brian Dowling: “Yeah, for new players,
you can level all the way to 70 with just a subscription, you don’t need to make any further purchase
to level all the way to 70.”

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Cross-Faction Play And Familiar Guilds In The Event

Established Guilds Can Still Chat And Play Together

Screen Rant: Lately it seems like World of Warcraft, in general, has been trying to make more situations where Alliance and Horde can team up and do things together in instances and things like that. Will there be any kind of cross-faction things like that in Remix, or will it be more like traditional Mists of Pandaria where Alliance and Horde are separate?

Ciji Bambrick: Yes, so
anything that is cross-faction on Dragonflight is going to work the same way in the Mists of Pandaria Remix event
, so if you are in a cross-faction guild, cross-faction community, you will be able to do that. And not only that but you’ll also be able to join guilds of non-timerunners.

If you have a guild that you play with already on Live, and want to be able to be in that same guild on your timerunner character, you can do that and you’ll have a lot of avenues of communication and keep track of your friends. Anything that’s cross-faction should work the same way. I believe it’s like queuing for instances is unavailable cross-faction but walking into an instance together will be available.

Screen Rant: With the guilds, even though you are creating a new character for the Remix journey, you can still be in your regular guild and chat with guildies the same as if you were playing in Modern WoW.

Brian Dowling: Yes, so you’ll still be able to chat. Even though we have this kind of contained environment with wacky items that are really overpowered and might not necessarily work for the evergreen game,
we still want players to feel connected to each other
. The way you’ll know if someone is on a timerunner when they are in your guild or in chat is there’s going to be a little hourglass icon next to their name. It’s going to be very similar to like Diablo Seasonal characters who have that little leaf, that’s where we kind of took inspiration from. Like, ‘how do we let players know that this character is in a slightly different state’, but still have people be able to talk to each other and keep the social fabric strong.

Changes And New Features To WoW Remix: Mists Of Pandaria

Farming Is Out, But Gems Are In

Screen Rant: One of my favorite parts of Mists of Pandaria is the farm, and I understand that the farm has been removed [from Remix]. What was the thought behind why it was removed rather than just speeding it up, and are players still going to have any reputation with the Tillers?

Brian Dowling: Good question. Whenever we make anything, we have to think about what are we going to focus our effort on, how do we create the most cohesive experience? With Professions, we have completely redone itemization and all of it can kind of drop from anywhere. If you’re killing creatures, or quests, or bosses, all of it gives really great stuff. But we didn’t include Professions as a part of this event, and so much of the Tillers experience, which it’s still in the game, is about cooking. And since we knew cooking wasn’t going to be a part of this event, that’s why we focused our efforts on other things.

Screen Rant: You kind of started to mention the Meta Gems earlier, and all of that is, obviously, going to be new for the Remix. How will the Gems work both for during the Remix event where you can apply them to new items, but also how will they work after the event is over, and a character is converted to standard, modern WoW?

Ciji Bambrick: During the event, you’ll get like there is the Meta Gems, there’s Tinkerer, Cog Wheel, there are so many different ones, and all of those will apply to the slots that you have. They all have different spell powers, like the Cog Wheel ones will let you borrow an ability from another class. Or for my Tinker Gems, I like my Destruction Warlock, right? So I pick things that are fiery, but I also like to combine that with some Ice, so I have a really cool Warlock/Mage/Pandaren rolling around, so it makes it a really fun experience. Those Meta Gems have some really cool and unique spells attached to them. Like one of them, you can turn into Chi Chi and gain those powers. There’s a lot of really cool combinations you can do with that.

As far as what happens at the end, those kind of things stay contained with the event.
When the event ends, you’ll get converted to a normal character and get normal character gear for Dragonflight
but you don’t retain any of the gems or that power with you.

Brian Dowling: All the item level of the gear that happens after the conversion is based on the level of the timerunner and not necessarily what gear they had equipped. It will be an entirely new set of stuff that is much more like all the items that players are used to. There’s a full item conversion, and it will be depending on the level. If you’re level 50 then you’ll have level 50 gear. If you’re level 70 you’ll have gear that is very good for leveling in War Within but not quite as strong as like Season 4 Dragonflight stuff.

Screen Rant: Will the Gems be able to be switched around, removed and reinserted in items? Like, can you try a Gem and then pull it out and swap them around to test them out?

Ciji Bambrick: Yes, definitely, you get an ability like Extract Gem that allows you to pretty much do just that, and play around with whatever you want. You can decide if you want to try one out then you can extract it and put another one in. You will also find as you level, some of the pieces will have one Tinker Slot but then as you start to get better gear you might get two or three Tinker Slots.

You can kind of decide ‘oh wow, I originally had this one spell but I really like the synergy between these other ones’ and you can use the Extract ability to kind of mix and match and see what you really want your play style to be.’

Brian Dowling: Yeah, we wanted it to be nearly frictionless for you to try different combinations. Extract Gem has no cost, no cooldown, use it as much as you want. Change out your stats, change out your tinker gems, that’s definitely part of the fun of this event. We even made it so one of the things players can do is, when they get items if they don’t need that item anymore there is a spell called Unraveling Sands and you can turn that unwanted item into Bronze.

And
if you accidentally forget to pull your Gem out, it will just pop the Gem out so you won’t risk losing it
. If you try to socket a new Gem onto an existing one, it will also pop it out. We really want players to have fun experimenting and not be worried about if they should save things. That’s not a mentality that we feel players should need to have for this event. Try things, have fun, experiment, go crazy.

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Bronze Currency Will Be Specific To The WoW Remix: MoP Event

The Only Currency Needed For The Timerunning Journey

Screen Rant: You mentioned the Bronze currency, which obviously is also something that is new. How is the Bronze currency going to work exactly? You started to allude to how you break down items, but where did this idea come from and how does it work?

Brian Dowling: “We know that players are playing all sorts of different kind of World of Warcraft. You might be a Season of Discovery player, you might be a Cataclysm player, you might be a Season 4 player, and
so we want to have one currency that people can use for power, to get more spell gems, for all the cosmetics that don’t come from achievements
, like ‘let’s have one currency’, and you don’t even have to worry about gold. Transmog doesn’t cost any gold, there are no repairs. You just have to focus on Bronze.

We knew we wanted to have this one thing for players to focus on because it makes it all very easy for this event, which could be your main way of playing WoW for a while, but it may also be a secondary way that you’re bouncing back and forth.
It’s really easy to understand how to get Bronze, you literally do anything
. Bosses drop more, and a bunch from quests, and a little less from creatures, but it’s all Bronze.

That’s how we came up with this idea of just trying to make it easy for casual and hardcore players to understand how to feel about it. Having one focus currency was the right approach for this event.

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Ciji Bambrick: It’s also really cool because the Bronze is all spent all in one location, so you don’t have to remember where to go. We have these little Bazaar areas, one on every zone, so if you open the map you’ll see the icon for the Infinite Bazaar and that’s where all the Infinite Dragonflight are hanging out. That’s where you’ll go to spend your currency.

There are several vendors that sell different transmog appearances. There’s one that sells toys and mounts, as well as one that let’s you try your hand at getting a Gem
. If you know you want to spend a little bit of your Bronze to try to get a specific Gem that you heard about that’s really cool, you can do that and get a randomized Gem. So, there’s one central location where you can go to spend all your Bronze after you’ve earned an amount while you’re playing.

Brian Dowling: Head to your local Bazaar and you’ll be able to spend your Bronze. We also added little coupons, vouchers, that will send you to the nearest Bazaar.
There is even a return service so if you hit the little button that pops up, it will put you right back where you were
once you’re done upgrading and getting spell gems.

About the ability to get a random spell gem, there are some certain characters who will really be hunting to min/max that – you won’t see any duplicate spell gems. You are going to get the whole collection, probably even way before you’re level 70, because we want you to be able to play with that combination pretty early. But, if you want it even faster you can spend a little bit of Bronze to get a gem that you don’t have.

Screen Rant: With the Bazaar, are you able to get some of those items as drops in the open world, or are the items in the Bazaar only going to be able to be purchased with Bronze?

Brian Dowling: For the existing Pandaria raid sets or weapons, they are not at the Bazaar, they are only dropped from creatures in the world. Like, if you really want a Throne of Thunder weapon appearance – well, go do Throne of Thunder. That’s actually a way that players can think about how they want to spend their Bronze. If they know they are going to be doing a ton of outdoor world zone content, then maybe they focus on spending their Bronze on the raid sets they don’t have, or vice versa.

But yes, on one class, if you have enough Bronze, you can buy transmogs for all the different classes, so you can play multiple characters, and we think it would be fun to play multiple characters, but if you just want to play one then that is a fine way to earn the account-bound cosmetics.

For each zone, the armor that will just drop while you’re playing the game, has the appearances associated with that zone. So, the outdoor world will have the world appearances, the raid will have the raid appearances.
Players can easily understand what drops naturally and what they should spend their Bronze on so players have a lot of flexibility there.

Ciji Bambrick: We also have added a little Pandaria Remix tag to the items, so when you are at the Bazaar and you’re visiting the NPCs, it will say “Pandaria Remix” so
you will know if this is an item exclusive to this event
versus something that you could go onto your Dragonflight character and earn by just going back to a Mists of Pandaria raid. You can make that distinction and decide if you want to target the items just from this event or go after a transmog set that you weren’t able to finish.

New Transmogs, Pets, And More Rewards In Mists Of Pandaria Remix

Plus Plenty Of Nostalgia For Returning Players

Screen Rant: What are each of you most excited about for the Remix? Either for other people to see, or for you to experience yourself?

Ciji Bambrick: For me personally, I really like a lot of the new transmog appearances and a lot of the new pets. There’s a new little pet that comes from one of the achievements that is
a little baby Yak and it’s super cute
. So for me, personally, I’m going to start out with going after some of the zone achievements where I know some of those cool things come from. My other favorite is the Halfhill backpack that’s a little chicken backpack. So I’m going to be going after those things first, but I’m going to be doing as much of the experience as I can.

Brian Dowling: For me, the first thing I’m looking forward to seeing tons of players jump in and react. But, I’ll probably start playing a Paladin first because I like playing all the roles. I’ll definitely have multiple characters, I’ll be jumping around. I imagine I’ll try to be a completionist, I know I definitely want to kill Mythic Garrosh.

Mists of Pandaria was the last expansion I played before I worked for Blizzard and I was a raid leader and so I have the same kind of nostalgia around those encounters that a bunch of other players do so I’m really excited to go back.

Screen Rant: For a lot of people, I think it’s absolutely going to be the nostalgia. You mentioned the new transmogs. I know there are also a lot of recolored items from the original Mists of Pandaria. Can you tell me more about what people will be able to get? Or is that all still hush-hush?

Brian Dowling: We sort of have three different buckets of rewards. Three ways of thinking about it. We have the stuff that comes from achievements, which should be very easy to get, even if you’re playing casually on a few weekends leveling a new character. Those new cosmetics are attached to zone meta achievements, and we have given players a lot of flexibility.

You can either do group content or story content or repeatable, or just explore and kill rares. There is lots of flexibility in how you complete each zone. You don’t have to do 100%, although you can. One of those is just Level to 20. Another is finish a little bit of the Valley of the Four Winds. So that’s the first little bucket of rewards.

The second one is all those unreleased variations like you were talking about, with new cranes and new discs, some new iron juggernaut colors. That should take way less than the three months that the event is up to a player to earn all that.

Even if you look at real cool sets like the dark shaman set, the napkin math is that the last time I was doing dailies it took me about two hours to get about 5,000 Bronze. There’s a lot out there to earn. So, if you compare that with what we are asking for the unreleased variations that are exclusive to this event, we want it to be very reasonable for all players to get that stuff.

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The final bucket is stuff that is in the game right now. Things like the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent or the Tusks of Mannoroth. Those are more expensive, kind of for two reasons.
First, we want to respect the time that people in the past have potentially put in a long time earning those things and we want to acknowledge that
. But also, if people are having a blast playing Remix, if they are just really playing a bunch, we always want there to be something that they can earn for their account. So we don’t expect people to go from no cosmetics to suddenly everything that Pandaria had to offer, although we do expect it to be pretty easy to get the new stuff and the unreleased variations. But that third bucket is kind of the ‘oh there was one thing I really wanted and am missing’ or if you have a lot of extra Bronze that you are wanting to spend them.

Solo Players Will Enjoy The WoW Remix: Mists Of Pandaria Event Too

Plenty To Pick And Choose From For Any Style Of Player

Screen Rant: World of Warcraft, particularly with The War Within, there has been a heavier emphasis on things for solo players with the Delves and things like that. Is there anything new happening with the Remix which will cater more towards players who maybe don’t want to be part of a huge mythic raid group?

Brian Dowling: One of the reasons we chose Mists of Pandaria is that there is a ton of story and repeatable story content, and additionally, because you can get so powerful.
We have added ways and there are existing ways to do solo scenarios for solo dungeons, and you are going to get really strong
.

Some of the raids, because of specific mechanics, might require additional players, but even up to Heroic dungeons, if you are playing a bunch and getting really powerful, you’re going to be able to solo those things.
And besides the content that is normally thought of as group content, lots of stories, all the patch stories, tons of repeatable content, treasures to find, rares to hunt down, the Timeless Isles are all things for solo players
.

Those elites might be tough the first time you see them, but after you power up your cloak and your gems, maybe you can push them around.
We wanted to make sure that we are taking care of anyone who likes PvE
, there is going to be a lot of content for you to play in WoW Remix.

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Ciji Bambrick: And
you can also pick and choose how you want things to be challenging
. When you first start out, there is no time gating, everything is there and available to you. The only thing that locks anything is your player level, so if you unlock a new zone at level 25 you can decide if you want to go to that zone right then, but it might be difficult.

So, if you find you aren’t being challenged enough and things are too easy then you can hop into that new content as soon as it is unlocked. Otherwise, you can level up, level gear up, get more powerful, and then hop into that content. So i
t really allows you to kind of pick and choose where you want to go
.

There’s new quest beacons on the map that will show you when things have unlocked so you can hop over to another zone and finish that up, and then the one you were already in scales up to 70 so you can hop back over to there if you want. So it really gives players the agency to pick and choose the content they want to participate in.

Screen Rant: We are running out of time, so before we go, is there anything else that I haven’t asked that you two that you wanted to put out there, that you want to talk about?

Brian Dowling:
With WoW coming up to our 20th anniversary, we have had a ton of fun making these experimental game modes, trying these things, breaking the rules.
We really want players to tell us about what are they really liking, what do they want to see more of?

Because whenever we are brainstorming what to do in the future, the player feedback is a huge voice in the room. What players are responding to and what they really like, we want to make more of. The first 20 years is just the beginning.

Ciji Bambrick Looking forward to seeing players jump into the content. We will be keeping an eye out on how players are enjoying it and we are really excited to see that passion and how people are loving it once it is finally out there.

World of Warcraft

Released

November 23, 2004

Genre(s)

MMO

ESRB

T

How Long To Beat

5309h 48m

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