While many fans seem to be eagerly anticipating World of Warcraft: The War WIthin, Blizzard actually has a few surprises up its sleeve first. Fresh off the conclusion of Plunderstorm, the brand-new Mists of Pandaria Remix has launched. Over the course of three months, World of Warcraft players will get to experience everything Pandaria has to offer in this fast-paced PvE mode. Not only will they get to level new alts at an accelerated rate, but there is also a treasure trove of cosmetics and new content for them to delve into.

Leading up to the release of this mode, Game ZXC had the chance to sit down with senior game designer Brian Dowling and senior test analyst Ciji Bambrick to discuss everything that WoW Remix has to offer. We talked about how the mode came to be, the game-breaking effects players can expect, and the massive amounts of cosmetics waiting to be gathered. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.

WoW Mist of Pandaria MoP Remix Overview Alliance Cinematic Varian Wrynn
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Dowling and Bambrick Give a General Overview of WoW Remix

Q: Before we just jump into the details, I would just like to know a little bit more about you two, what you two do, and just a general overview of what Mists of Pandaria remix is.

Dowling: Yeah, so I'm Brian Dowling, senior game designer on the WoW team. I've been making WoW since Legion, so quite a while now. Most recently, I was the feature leader for WoW remix.

Bambrick: Yeah. I'm Ciji. I've been on the WoW team since the end of Warlords of Draenor as a senior test analyst, and I've been working throughout this project on MoP remix with Brian for the last couple of months.

Dowling: WoW remix is three things. It's all of Mists of Pandaria, all the existing quests and scenarios, dungeons and raids, and multiple difficulties. The only notable exception is the 25-person variations of some of the raids aren't there, but it's everything else. It's really an accelerated and amped-up version of Mists of Pandaria. It's a limited-time event that's going to be up for about three months, and we've completely redone itemization on everything. That's all the items the players are going to get, and we've added a bunch of really powerful items. One of them is called the Cloak of Infinite Potential, which is an artifact cloak you'll get very early on, that's just going to power up from doing anything while you're playing. You're going to gather threads of time, which add permanent stats to that cloak, and you'll see a little buff on your character to tell you how much you've earned.

Then, we have a whole bunch of spell gems. We have four gem types. We have some that add stats, we have some that add spells, all of your gear is going to have these sockets, and they all accept different gems. Most of them are going to be passives because we know, with the Dragonflight talent tree, there are tons of options for active buttons that players have. Your Meta Gem is going to be a powerful new ability, like a three-minute cooldown, and some of them transform you into Chi-Ji or turn you into a lightning ball that deals tons of damage. They're really kind of big moments in combat. Then we have Cogwheel Gems, which allow you to kind of take a utility ability from another class. You could be an Evoker with vanish, or you could be a warrior with blink, to come up with different combinations. However, most of them are passive, almost like trinkets, that you're socketing into your gear. We call these Tinker Gems.

They can kind of combine to become much greater than the sum of their parts. They could almost create their own little gameplay engine. Some of them, you know, trigger each other. As players are replaying through Mists of Pandaria, they're going to have all sorts of new gameplay options through this redone itemization, and since we're asking players to make new characters, we wanted to make sure that there are tons of rewards that they can earn for their whole account. If you only really care about your main, well, you can earn a lot of mounts and pets and transmog for them. You can unlock all the appearances from one character as they all have their own bronze costs, which I'm sure we'll talk about the bronze currency, which is a part of this event. But yeah, we wanted to make sure that there are a bunch of rewards, some new, some existing from Mists of Pandaria that the players can earn for their whole account. So yeah, Mists of Pandaria, all the content, shake up the gameplay, get a bunch of rewards.

Mists of Pandaria Cloud Serpent

Q: To build on that, you’ve almost started answering this question already, but where did the idea come from? Why are we doing Mists of Pandaria remix?

Dowling: Sometime around last year, we were talking as a team like, 'Okay, what's a really cool thing that we can give players towards the end of Dragonflight while they're waiting for the next expansion? What's going to be a cool, different way of playing WoW to both be a great way to level but also just kind of be its own cool thing on its own?' A lot of our friends, at the time when we were having these conversations, were actually really excited to play, I think Diablo 3. It was having like season 28 or 29. It's when they added the new talent tree. We were re like, 'People are really hyped, really excited, even just around us, to replay.' I know I jumped in. And then we were like, 'Hey, World of Warcraft has a ton of content, some of which players haven't seen for a really long time, and we have some ideas about how we can shake up gameplay. We should do that. It sounds like a great idea. We can make sure players have it in this timeframe and be able to jump in and have a really good time leveling a bunch of characters.' That was kind of the genesis of the idea.

We chose Mists of Pandaria specifically because it's one of the most beloved expansions. We know that players love it, we love it, and it's been a long enough time that it's possible players who are playing with us now never got to see Mists of Pandaria. It has that kind of freshness, even though it's legacy content, and it also has content for all different types of players. There's lots of repeatable daily content that is different from World Quests, which players are more familiar with. There are really cool stories, especially in the patch content, following the Mantid and the Shah, or Garrosh or Anduin. There are some really cool stories for people who really like story content, and then there are some of the most legendary raid encounters that the game has ever had, like heroic Lei Shen just ranks up there as one of the best fights. We're really excited to bring all that to players because Mists of Pandaria kind of has something for everyone, no matter what kind of player you are, and that's why we felt it was a really good fit for WoW remix.

Bambrick: Yeah, and while there are scenarios that are available in other expansions, scenarios are definitely something that were very big in Mists of Pandaria. It's definitely a really fun experience to go back and experience that content as well, and additionally, Mists of Pandaria is such a super beautiful landscape that it lends itself really well to being able to Dragonride there. Once you start at level 10, you can hop on your Dragonriding mount, and you can fly around in the zones that allow flying, of course, but you can fly around, you can collect the bronze currency. It's just a really cool mixing of the expansions where you can dragonride around and see all those beautiful zones from his Pandaria

Dowling and Bambrick Explore the Creation of WoW's Game Modes

Q: This is a very different optional game mode from Plunderstorm, but what lessons did you guys learn from it that you're taking over? If any.

Dowling: We're definitely still talking about and thinking, what did players really like about Plunderstorm? And how can we incorporate that and think about that? We knew that when we were developing both Plunderstorm and WoW remix that Plunderstorm was much more of a PvP event. There is some PvE in there, which is really cool to do that and gather a bunch of plunder that way, but its identity is more PvP. With WoW remix, the identity is PvE, to make sure we're serving that audience and have tons of stuff for them. It hasn't been that long since Plunderstorm finished, and obviously, WoW remix is just about to come out. So, we'll be listening to player feedback.

We're excited to experiment, to try new things, and we'll be really listening to what our players are saying, what are they reacting to? What did they really love? And making sure that, no matter what kind of player you are, we're making content for you. Maybe some events are more focused on the PvPer or the PvEer or the solo player or the Raider, but we want to have cool new things for all player types. World of Warcraft is in its 20th year, so we're looking forward to breaking the rules, trying new things, and giving players stuff that we know they'd like, but also surprising them and just hearing what the response is.

WoW Sha

Q: That sounds great. Is that primarily where these game modes came from? It's been 20 years; you want to mix it up a little bit? Or are there any other underlying reasons for their inclusion?

Dowling: I think, with the response to Dragonflight and the buzz around War Within going forward, the community is incredibly positive right now. It has been awesome. It makes making WoW even more fun, and the genesis of the game mode and events idea is we have ideas that we're excited to realize that wouldn't necessarily fit with the evergreen part of World of Warcraft. You know, even as we're making expansions, we're always inventing new gameplay like with Delves, or new systems like with Hero talents, and pushing up the fidelity of our art and pushing up the fidelity of all of our visuals and making our engine run better.

That's always going to be a part of the core mainline experience, but we also saw an opportunity to use all the cool stuff at our fingertips to make something different. You saw this with Plunderstorm, which is super different from regular World of Warcraft. WoW remix is more like the World of Warcraft that people are familiar with, but with a heavy difference kind of layered on top. We're still finding out what are the cool things that we could do that players will respond well to and the buzz around Remix has been awesome so far, so we're super excited for people to jump in there starting tomorrow. It's going to be awesome.

Dowling and Bambrick Discuss the Way Remix Breaks the Game

Q: Getting into the actual specifics of the gameplay now. What are some of your favorite turbo-charged effects and combinations you've discovered that you're like 'This is crazy, I can't wait for players to get a hold of this?"

Bambrick: Oh, there are a lot. There are a lot of really cool effects. I mean, one of the things that I really liked was when I first started playing, not specifically an effect, but when I first had a Tinker Gem. I was like, 'Oh, I really like this one, but I also think this one's cool.' It was really neat when I first got a better piece of gear that had extra Tinker slots, so then I was like, 'Oh, wow, I have this one. That's fiery, but this other one is also fiery. How do those proc off of each other? How is this going to work?' I play a Destro Warlock, so first I started going after all this fire stuff. Then I started seeing some other gems that were really interesting, like ice and lightning. I started picking some of those, and just the combination of all of those when they proc or they all hit at once, it's a really cool spell effect combination of things going off.

One of my other favorites is just the Cogwheel slot for your feet. The one that lets you kind of borrow a talent from another class or spell from another class. I would take roll. There are a lot of options, right? There's Heroic Leap, there's Blink, but I just thought it was really fun to just be able to roll as an Orc Warlock. There are a lot of favorites. I pretty much just like whatever explodes, whatever makes things look cool, whatever makes big cool effects go off.

Dowling: Yeah, Spell Gems needed to be two things. First, they needed to look cool. It needed to just look awesome. Explosive Barrage launches almost like a Gundam volley of just fire missiles, and it'll hit everything around you that looks cool, feels cool. One of my personal favorites just because it feels really good to press is called Thundering Orb. I like to go just gather as many monsters as I can and hit Thundering Orb and melt everything. It feels really good every time. I've been pushing that button for a long time now, it still feels good, but there are also some wacky metas in there too. You know, there's one that lets you take other people's damage for them or even turn you into Chi-Ji. You could turn into the red crane and get a whole subset of little abilities that really reward you. Running around like crazy, picking up the feathers, and blowing up on your enemies and allies to damage or heal things, respectively.

They had to feel cool and look cool for players who like to combine things in unique ways. We know about some of the combinations, so there are a bunch of gems that benefit from high crit chance or a bunch of gems that will kind of store up your damage to heal, or that your healing will actually do extra damage. It's role breaking a little bit so that you can really kind of customize how you want to shape your gameplay. Maybe you're a healer who only wants to focus on healing tons with extra healing gems, but maybe you want to do some extra damage to turn some of that healing into extra damage. That ability to chain things is something that I, as a player, also really like. I'm like 'What if I take all the things that damage me and I take all the damage for my allies, and then I have the Memory of Vengeance,' which is very reminiscent of the vengeance part of Mists of Pandaria.

Tanks used to actually get increased throughput during Mists when they suffered damage. Well, we have the Memory of Vengeance Tinker Gem that is very reminiscent of that. Normally, you don't want to take damage, but maybe you're a warlock or maybe you're a tank. Maybe players bring three tanks so they can turn that extra damage taken into more damage against the boss. You could probably hear from the way I'm talking about it, lots of cool ways to combine things, and we absolutely know players are going to surprise us. They're going to find overpowered combinations, and that's kind of the point, to become overpowered, to express your own gameplay preference, and to feel like you're breaking the game. There are some really tough bosses with huge health pools for you to use all that stuff against, and we're really excited to see just how strong people get and what wacky ways that they defeat all this content.

WoW Jade Forest

Q: Were there any effects that you really wanted to make happen that just didn't happen?

Dowling: One thing was, when we were finding what exactly the Cloak of Infinite Potential should be, we had a phase where we thought about three different artifacts. What if they all kind of gained benefits against damage or creatures, and ultimately, it just felt too mathy. It was kind of diluting that cool feeling. Every time you get a Thread of Time, and your cloak absorbs it, you'll see this bronze missile fly through the air and hit your character, you'll see the pop-up of the stat. Ultimately, that was just such a cleaner, better iteration than having three artifacts. That kind of progress just didn't hit, so that's something we left behind just because we feel we found something better.

I personally had a ton of fun making tons of Spell Gems. There's always going to be another idea. Ultimately, the ones we ended up with are like, 'Okay, these are our coolest ideas. Let's do these.' Some of them, like shapeshift, are kind of crazy, and it's a lot for one Spell Gem. We think it's cool, and when people are turning into a bird and they're turning into a red crane and running around the raid and actually doing really good healing, that's why it made it to the list. It feels different. It feels novel. And that was something we really focused on. We didn't just add things to add things. Things had an identity, you're like, 'Oh, this is the one that turns healing into damage, I understand searing, like, I get it.' We didn't want to muddy the waters there. It's a very creative team. There's always room for more ideas, but there are over 60 Spell Gems. So, we want to make sure that people can wrap their heads around all of it.

Dowling and Bambrick Talk About WoW Remix's New Items

Q: Can you just tell me a little bit more about the Cloak of Infinite Potential? How will it be used? And like, why did you choose to include something like this in the remix?

Dowling: While we were brainstorming the features of remix, one of the cool things from old-school RPGs is when you get a Seed of Agility or a Potion of Strength, and your strength goes up permanently by three. We were just thinking, 'Oh, we could do that.' This is like its own game event mode, we could capture that awesome feeling of seeing permanent stat increases in a way that usually doesn't make sense for WoW. That's kind of the origin, and we chose a cloak because the legendary cloak of the original Mists of Pandaria was such a core part of the identity there.

Your Cloak of Infinite Potential is going to start looking pretty plain, pretty basic, but as you gain power, its appearance is actually going to change. Eventually, it's going to look like those legendary cloaks from Pandaria. There's a bunch of achievements called Infinite Power, which you'll earn as you earn threads, and any other secondary character is going to start stronger. The cloak is making alt catch-up even easier, but the last one after you get 4200 threads is to have toys that actually give you the cosmetic wings that were part of the original cloak. Now you can wear the cloak appearance if you want, or you can transmog to something else and still have those cool wings. That was a combination of 'okay, what are we trying to do with these permanent stats so that we can make sure that it's always worth killing every creature, finishing every quest, and just like there's always good stuff for you to get.'

One of the really cool things that we saw during PTR and even internally reflecting on our own gameplay is sometimes you'll choose to just run past creatures because it’s not worth it. They're not going to drop anything good. In remix, everything can drop something good. Definitely collect your loot when you're playing because you could get permanent stat increases and you can get new Spell Gems. That was a big goal, make it always feel like something cool could drop for you, and the Cloak of Infinite Potential is a huge part of that.

Bambrick: Yeah, not just that, but the threads. They also get more powerful the higher you go. When you first start killing things, you might just get one thread and something that gives you just one stat bonus. But then, as you start getting higher, something might give you seven threads or 12 threads, right? So, they get more powerful as you go up. It's really cool to kind of see your progression. Speed is one of them, so it's really cool to start flying around at a faster running speed. The experience one is really great, too. That's one of the ones that caps at 65. It stops dropping at level 65. You can kind of focus on those last five levels getting more powerful ones, but it's really cool to start seeing as you're leveling your XP, it just starts gaining so much faster. When you turn in the quest, you start getting more and more XP. It's really cool kind of watching that player progression, as you level up to 70 through all the threads that you can get.

WoW Cloud Serpent

Q: It's pretty fast to get a lot of this stuff if you want it. Is that the main way you guys are combating FOMO here? Because FOMO is a big conversation with World of Warcraft, especially with these time-limited events. Are there any other ways you're tackling it in any fashion?

Dowling: Yeah, we knew this was a time-limited event, and we knew we had a ton of rewards. You're rolling a new character; we want to make sure you can get stuff for your whole account. You know, this is a great way to level a whole warband if you are going to stick with those new characters, but not every player will. When we looked at this event and we looked at all these rewards, it was super important for us that players could come in, play all the content that they wanted to play, get all the rewards that they wanted to get besides maybe those chase ones that are in the game and aren't going anywhere, and then leave happy. We wanted this event to run longer than we expected players to need to finish the content, especially the new things that are only associated here.

If you really want to see all those raids and you're playing a bunch, that's doable in less than a month. Now you might decide you want to do that on multiple characters because you're having a blast and like, awesome, great. But yeah, we didn't want players to feel like they didn't have enough time. That was super important to us.

Q: Is there anything that you have not shared about this event yet that you really want players to know for tomorrow, that you feel like they need to know this piece of information?

Dowling: You're going to get super overpowered, you probably already know that. As WoW is approaching its 20th anniversary, we're excited about these new game modes. We really want to hear player feedback, we want to see what they liked, what they want to see more of. The first 20 years of WoW is just the beginning. Jump into WoW remix. You're going to see we have some cool tricks up our sleeve that we're really excited to make for players.

Bambrick: What I would say is that, depending on what you want out of the experience, I would look through the achievements and kind of decide what you want your journey to look like. Some players might want to go after the achievements that will give you the jewelry accessories that you don't get through questing and doing dungeons. Those come from achievements and that'll be a necklace or ring, and they won't just come from the other caches that you open. If you really want to bump up your stats and fill those with Stat Gems, you might want to go after that content first.

But if you are a collector, you'd want to go after the mounts, you want to go after the pets that come from the achievements, then you might want to go after the zone ones. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go after that cute little baby yak pet. I definitely want that. I want the Halfhill chicken backpack transmog. I'm going to be going after those types of achievements first, so I guess it's kind of up to the player what they want to get out of it. For me, I would just look over the achievements and target what achievements you want to get based on the rewards that you want to go after.

Dowling: And the very last thing is to spend your bronze, don't hold on to it. It's going away. Use those rewards because after the conversion happens your bronze will also go, so make sure to use it all.

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