So speculate how long until MOP? June, August, October, December or ?

[chaos5061]

Patch 5.0.4 on Live Servers This Week
The Mists of Pandaria systems patch will be going live this week and it brings a lot of changes! Make sure your Background Downloader has downloaded the files so you aren't stuck waiting.

• New Talent System - Now has 3 talents per tier, with 6 tiers.
• Class Changes - List of class changes and short overview guides.
• New Ability Animations - So shiny!
• Experience Required to Level Changed - Reduced amount of XP to level to 85.
• 11th Character Slot - Unclear if it is coming in 5.0.4, but it will be for sure in Mists of Pandaria.
• AoE Looting - Loot all of the corpses in an area around you with one click!
• Scarlet Monastery and Scholomance Revamp - New lower level versions of the dungeons.
• Dungeon and Raid Valor Reward Changes and Currency Conversion
• Account Wide Achievements, Mounts, and Pets
• Simplified Buff and Debuff System
• Item and Stats Changes - Changes to expertise, Spell resistance, Resilience, and the stats on items.
• New Druid Forms - Armored forms for Incarnation and a new Travel Form.
• New Warlock Pets and Emotes
• Cross-Realm Zones - Play with friends on other realms, no more empty world!
• Interface Changes - New and easier to use interfaces, loot history, and more.
• Graphical Changes - Upgraded graphics slowing you down? Stop by the Computer Forum and talk about upgrades!
• Updated Addons - Find Patch 5.0.4 addons on Curse.

New Talent System
One of the biggest changes in this patch is the new talent system. This system removed the illusion of choice that was part of the old talent system by taking all of the mandatory talents and giving them to your class or specialization. Get your build ready with our new Talent Calculator on WoWDB!

[chaos5061]

Class Changes
Take a look at the updated skills on WoWDB, as well as the talents on our new Talent Calculator. Several of the forum members and mods have put together brief guides to help ease the transition to the new patch, so a big thanks to them!

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Death Knight

• Skills
• Talent Calculator
• General changes

Druid

• Skills
• Talent Calculator
• General changes

Hunter

• Skills
• Talent Calculator
• General changes
• All Changes

Mage

• Skills
• Talent Calculator
• General changes

Paladin

• Skills
• Talent Calculator
• Holy changes
• Retribution changes
• Protection changes

Priest

• Skills
• Talent Calculator
• Discipline changes
• Shadow changes

Rogue

• Skills
• Talent Calculator

Shaman

• Skills
• Talent Calculator
• General changes
• Restoration changes

Warlock

• Skills
• Talent Calculator
• Affliction changes
• Demonolgy changes
• Destruction changes

Warrior

• Skills
• Talent Calculator
• Arms changes
• Fury changes

[chaos5061]

Wowpedia has compiled a nice long list of the changes made to each class in this patch. Be sure to check it out if you want to know every single change made to your class!

[chaos5061]

New Ability Animations
Many classes also got new ability animations! Note that these videos include all of the spells that had changed at the time, including Mists of Pandaria spells.

[chaos5061]

Experience Required to Level Changed
The experience required to level has been reduced for some levels, making it a good time to level up alts before Mists of Pandaria is released.

1-9	Old	Same
10-39?	Old	(-20%)
40-82	Old	Same
82-83	4,004,000	2,669,000 (-33%)
83-84	5,203,400	3,469,000 (-33%)
84-85	9,165,100	4,583,000 (-50%)

[chaos5061]

Additional Character Slot
Patch 5.0.4 or the Mists of Pandaria release will add an 11th character slot!

[chaos5061]

AoE Looting
You will now be able to loot all of the corpses in an area around you with one click!

http://AoE Looting You will now be a...ith one click!

[chaos5061]

Scarlet Monastery Revamp
While we are waiting for the new level 90 Heroic versions of Scarlet Monastery, you can go and run the revamped lower level version! There are small new mechanics, changes, and new art that make the dungeon a much nicer experience than before.

Scholomance Revamp
While we are waiting for the new level 90 Heroic version of Scholomance, you can go and run the revamped lower level version! There are small new mechanics, changes, and new art that make the dungeon a much nicer experience than before.

Dungeon and Raid Valor Reward Changes

Raid Finder (Dragon Soul)	250 x	250 x
Random Heroic Dungeon (Hour of Twilight / Cataclysm)	150 x	150 x
Random Dungeon (Cataclysm)	140 x	150 x
Random Dungeon (Mists of Pandaria)	N/A	60 x

[chaos5061]

The currency conversion coming with Mists of Pandaria is going to happen in three stages, and this is how we plan for it to progress:

With Patch 5.0.4 on August 28
Valor points will be converted to Justice points, and Conquest points will be converted to Honor points.
At this time, you will not be able to earn Justice points or Honor points if the conversion puts your total above the cap of 4000 per type.
The current Arena season will end.
Players will no longer be able to earn Valor or Conquest points (bosses will drop Justice, Arenas will be closed).
Items formerly purchasable for Valor/Conquest will be available for Justice/Honor.

Approximately two weeks after Patch 5.0.4
All Justice and Honor points that exceed the 4000 point caps will be converted to gold at the rate of 35 silver per Honor point and 47 silver per Justice point.
The cap of 4000 points per type will remain in-effect.

[chaos5061]

Most achievements are account-wide

This means you only earn the points once. If you have earned an achievement on one character, you can see it on all your characters. However, and this is important, you will still see the achievement toast (the pop-up notification) if a second or subsequent character completes the achievement. We think it’s still important to recognize milestones like reaching level 80, maxing out a profession, or killing a raid boss for the first time. It's fun to have everyone congratulate you when you get the toast. Nonetheless, this will just be a new character of yours completing the achievement that you’ve already earned on your account. You won’t double up on points.

Most criteria are not account-wide

If you start an achievement on one character, you can't then finish the achievement on another (there are exceptions, so please keep reading). We didn't think it made sense for one character to get level 60 and another to get level 20 and then see the "level 80" achievement toast. If you start to explore Thousand Needles on one character, you’ll probably want to finish that achievement on the same character.

Some achievements are "meta achievements."

These are achievements that require you to get other specific achievements. An infamous example is "What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been." These achievements generally ARE account-wide. If one character earned Noble Gardener and another character earned The Flame Warden, then your account would get Long Strange Trip. (Otherwise it would be weird: it would look as if you had the sub-achievements, but you wouldn't have the meta-achievement). Even though you need Explore Thousand Needles on one character, all of your characters can contribute to Explore Kalimdor.

A very few achievements are account-only.

There are two categories of account-only achievements. One is achievements that are not possible to earn on one character. If we made an achievement to level every class to level 90, it would be account-only. (I'm not sure we will, but it's a good example.) The other category are achievements that are just brutal to complete on one character (and you’d never want to do for multiples), such as 2500 daily quests or 250K honorable kills. In these cases, the cumulative work of all your characters on those criteria will count.

[chaos5061]

Account Wide Mounts
Many mounts are now account wide! This means you can use the mount on any character on your Battle.net account. If the last time you read about this was this blue post, fear not, all of those mounts were made account wide.

• Reins of the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth
• Reins of the Grand Expedition Yak
• Mechano-Hog
• Mekgineer's Chopper
• Vial of the Sands

• Reins of the Grand Ice Mammoth
• Reins of the Ice Mammoth
• Jeweled Onyx Panther (all color variants)
• Cloud Serpents (all color variants)

The major exceptions to the rule now are mounts that are restricted to your class or earned through rated PvP. Faction specific mounts are account wide, but you can only use them on characters with the correct faction.

If you are curious about a specific mount, take a look at that mount's tooltip over on WoWDB!

[chaos5061]

When Patch 5.0.4 goes live in the next week, we will be implementing systems that prepare characters for the Pet Battles system that is coming with World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, and bringing account-wide non-combat pets to the game. During the patching process, non-combat pets will be migrated among your characters, with the final result being all of your non-combat pets available to all of your characters. This initial adjustment to your catalog of pets includes several changes that are worth noting. Caging and trading caged pets are Mists of Pandaria functions. You'll see some mention of it after the 5.0.4 patch, but you won't be doing it until the expansion.

1. There will be a limit of 500 pets, per player, that can be carried going forward.
Players will be allowed to go over the 500 pet cap during the 5.0.4 migration.
The migration will not convert more than a total of 1500 pets for a player.
Unique pets will be merged, so there will not be more than one unique pet on an account.

2. Pets that can only be used by characters of the other faction will be greyed out.
Such pets can only be summoned by characters of the proper faction.
Examples include: Balloons, Moonkin Hatchlings.
There are certain pets that will not be account-wide. Examples include: Guild Page, Guild Herald, Argent Squire, Argent Gruntling.

3. Players should not see more than one of any unique pets. Examles include: Lil' KT, Murky, and Frosty.

4. All standard pets will be merged, with a limit of three per type. Players who currently have more than three of the same pet across their characters will see a total of three after the migration. Examples of standard pets: Orange Tabby Cat, Brown Prairie Dog, Crimson Whelpling.

Also that makes we wonder why they are going to do with the vanity PETS we have NOW in the guild bank, are they going to auto be caged or put in our spell book and once again if we have more than 3 of something we are going to lose them?
The key is to differentiate between pets that your characters have learned, and potential pets that you have as items in bags or banks or in the mail or on the AH.

Pets that your characters have learned are going to be merged, and will be account-wide thereafter. Pets that are items will be unaffected.

Will the pets really be merged across all of Battle.net as the press releases state or is it actually just within each individual license?
Yes. All of the characters on all three licenses will share all of the pets in that Battle.net Account.

Only one player per Battle.net account can be in a Pet Battle at a time. Any other players on that account who are logged-in will be able to summon the shared pets as companions, but will not be able to enter Pet Battles.

Will we each still be able to each do the quest lines and dailies? Using the same pets? Will we be able to level and battle with pets all at the same time in different parts of the world?
Yes and no. Daily Quests that are specific to Pet Battles will be limited to once per account. Other sorts of dailies will be unlimited, and there is no 25-daily-quest cap anymore.

I am on the verge of separating my licenses onto different battle.net accounts to make sure that we can participate fully. My son will be devastated if we can't battle each other!
You will have to separate licenses for two players on the same Battle.net account to enter into Pet Battles at the same time.

[chaos5061]

We recently released an update to the Mists of Pandaria talent tree. Since the expansion is still in development, these updates represent a snapshot of where we are at any given moment and not a final design where we step back and say “Ladies and gentlemen, we have achieved perfection. Let us not change a thing.” If you’ve been playing the game for a while, you’ve probably realized by now that we never think we’ll hit perfection, and we probably never will.

One design that we haven’t focused on much yet is the plan for various group buffs and debuffs. Some specs have their buffs in place and some do not. Rather than trying to describe each omission, we thought we’d just dump the whole design on you here. As with the rest of the expansion’s systems, we’re not even in beta yet, so there’s plenty of time for things to change.

First, some underlying design goals, so you might understand where we’re coming from. Our main goals for group buffs are:

Make you feel more powerful when grouped with other players.
Give you lots of freedom to invite whom you want. This gets to be a problem when there are too many mandatory buffs spread out among too many specs. . .
…But not offer too many incentives to class stack. If you can achieve every buff with, say, only three players, then there might be a tendency to fill all of the other slots with whoever is best for a particular situation. Some class stacking is inevitable at the cutting-edge level, but to some extent, the players on the cutting edge of raiding enjoy extreme min-maxing. For the rest of us, we try to make sure you can finish all of the encounters without feeling like you need a huge roster of folks waiting in the wings for their one fight.
We tend to be more generous to DPS specs, since groups -- especially raids -- already have ample reasons to bring tanks and healers.
We generally don’t want a DPS spec to have to switch to a different spec in the same role just to bring a different buff. An example would be a Combat rogue who has to go Assassination just for a buff. In our experience, players are less likely to switch from a ranged to a melee DPS spec just for a buff, so DPS shaman and DPS druids might bring different buffs.

And finally some notes on the categories below:

The list only includes what we consider “traditional” buffs, such as Prayer of Fortitude. It doesn’t include utility like being great at snaring, battle rez, knock backs, high DPS while moving, and other mechanics. Those ultimately all factor into a raid or Battleground comp as well.
The matrix is a little more complex than it appears. A paladin, for example, can only offer one Blessing at a time, while a warrior can only do one shout at a time. You can’t assume one character can cover every buff or debuff listed below at the same time.
Some of these are active (you must cast them, like Prayer of Fortitude) while others are passive. Note that totems no longer bring passive buffs as a rule.
You’ll see several categories consolidated or gone. Bleeds no longer made sense, since everyone who cared about bleeds already buffed themselves. Magical resistance we just removed from the game, though there are some abilities that provide magical damage reduction.
We are still likely to use the design that hunters, especially Beastmaster hunters, can fill in for missing buffs or debuffs by using certain pets.

[chaos5061]

Buffs

Attack Power:

• Death Knight - Horn of Winter
• Hunter - Trueshot Aura
• Warrior - Battle Shout

Crit Chance:

• Druid(Feral, Guardian) - Leader of the Pack
• Mage - Arcane Brilliance
• Monk(Windwalker) - Legacy of the White Tiger

Mastery:

• Paladin - Blessing of Might
• Shaman - Grace of Air

[chaos5061]

Melee/Ranged Attack Speed:

• Death Knight(Frost, Unholy) - Unholy Aura
• Rogue - Swiftblade's Cunning
• Shaman(Enhancement) - Unleashed Rage

Raid-Haste-Cooldown:

• Mage - Time Warp
• Shaman - Bloodlust

Spell Haste:

• Druid(Balance) - Moonkin Form
• Priest(Shadow) - Shadowform
• Shaman(Elemental) - Elemental Oath