World of WarCraft – MoP Update 5.2 Trailer Released

Mists of Pandaria, the highly successful expansion for World of WarCraft, will be seeing a major content update in the form of version 5.2, dubbed ‘Rise of the Thunder King’ and made available to subscribers in the near future. To give fans of the wildly popular MMORPG a taste of things to come, Blizzard Entertainment released the official trailer for The Thunder King.

The new update sees the release of the first major PvE and Raid content patch for Mists of Pandaria. There will be a new island, named the Isle of the Thunder King, which will be the central area to a new quest hub. In addition to the new areas, PvE elements and Raid, there will be tweaks made to various elements of the game, such as the incentives given to 25-player raid participation.

A new item level tier of gear, named Thunderforged, will become available and is not unique to 25-man raids but will drop more often within that game mode.

If you haven’t read it already, be sure to read Ethan Smith’s World of Warcraft Patch 5.2 Rise of the Thunder King Preview.

The trailer is 2 minutes and 41 seconds long and starts off with a voiceover informing the viewer that in dark and mournful times of old, an ancient evil gripped the land. Once, a monster named ‘Lei Shen’ was The Thunder King. He ruled Pandaria and any that were brave enough to stand in his way would be cut down under his army’s wrath. Referred to as the “iron tyrant” he is first seen for a few brief seconds armed with what appears to be a magic-infused chain whip.

The Thunder King lived in a grand palace, protected by giant walls, built off the backs of enslaved Pandaren. Eventually, as all mortals do, The Thunder King Lei Shen died and was laid to rest by his vast army. After a brief look at the funeral for The Thunder King, we overhear what is undeniably the voice of a Troll in a psuedo-Jamaican accent. It appears that a troll tribe has stolen the dead body of Lei Shen and resurrected him for some sinister purpose. The narrator then states that “He has awakened,” with the scene cut to an army on the march featuring a giant armored triceratops and some other armored behemoth creature.

At this point, heroes from both factions of the World of WarCraft universe are seen raiding the giant palace, with cut-scenes spliced in of what appears to be various boss monsters in the Raid, including what looks to be a giant “thunder infused giant troll” and various mega-sized monstrosities.

“Gather heroes, sound the drums, the Thunder King Comes… the Thunder Kings comes,” ends the video with the final Patch 5.2 logo fading to black.

Overall, another great trailer fueled by actual gameplay is released by the World of WarCraft team. At this point, MMORPG fans can consider Patch 5.2 eagerly anticipated by the PC gaming community!

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Sam Raimi Sheds Light On Why 'Spider-Man 4' And 'World of Warcraft' Didn't Happen

If you follow movie news, you know that pre-production is a revolving door of Actors, Writers, and Directors.  Originally, Robert Downey Jr. was going to star in Oz: The Great And Powerful.  Superman Returns went through practically half of Hollywood's directors before Bryan Singer came onboard.  And Sam Raimi left production on both Spider-Man 4 and a World of Warcraft film before jumping ship.  The reasons why are usually a mystery, but Raimi recently gave an interview where he explained his choices.

The interview was with Vulture, and it also covered what Raimi thought of The Avengers.

Vulture: When you were making the Spider-Man movies, you had pretty much the only superhero franchise around. That's obviously changed since. Have you kept up with the other comic-book movies?

Sam Raimi: I did see The Avengers, and I loved it. I thought it was brilliant. Joss Whedon is an extraordinarily talented filmmaker … and in fact, in 1994, I was making a western called The Quick and the Dead and having a script problem, and I came to the studio and said, "Can you find me a writer? I've shot this movie, and the end isn't quite working." And ultimately, the movie didn't quite work. But they suggested Joss Whedon, who was doing Buffy, so I met Joss and he saw the movie, and he helped me solve this ending in one afternoon. I thought, Damn, you're a good writer! I wish I could have had you rewrite the whole movie and save this picture! But I'll never forget how good he was, and how precise, so when I saw The Avengers, I was not surprised that his name was on it. It's a very hard job to take all those heroes and all those stories and know exactly what bits the audience needs and what they don't need.

V: I hope enough time has passed that you feel comfortable talking about Spider-Man 4, which was in preproduction and began casting but fell apart before shooting began. What happened there?

SR: It really was the most amicable and undramatic of breakups: It was simply that we had a deadline and I couldn't get the story to work on a level that I wanted it to work. I was very unhappy with Spider-Man 3, and I wanted to make Spider-Man 4 to end on a very high note, the best Spider-Man of them all. But I couldn't get the script together in time, due to my own failings, and I said to Sony, "I don't want to make a movie that is less than great, so I think we shouldn't make this picture. Go ahead with your reboot, which you've been planning anyway." And [Sony co-chairman] Amy Pascal said, "Thank you. Thank you for not wasting the studio's money, and I appreciate your candor." So we left on the best of terms, both of us trying to do the best thing for fans, the good name of Spider-Man, and Sony Studios.

V: I know you'd been pursuing Anne Hathaway to star in Spider-Man 4 … she was going to play Felicia Hardy, right?

SR: Yes.

Now onto WARCRAFT:

V: Duncan Jones is making it.

SR: I loved his movie Moon, and I think he's a strikingly talented director. I bet that if anyone can do a great job with it, it's him.

V: What was the biggest obstacle on that project?

SR: Robert Rodat was working on the script, and it was taking a long time. I think they were getting a little antsy at Legendary, the production company. Actually, what happened was even more complicated, so let me go back a little bit. First, they asked me if I wanted to make it, and I said, "Yes, I love World of Warcraft, and I think it would make a great picture." So I read a screenplay they had that was written by the guys at [Warcraft developer] Blizzard, and it didn't quite work for me. I told them I wanted to make my own original story with Robert, so we pitched it to Legendary and they accepted it, and then we pitched it to Blizzard, and they had reservations, but they accepted it. Then Robert wrote the screenplay, and only once he was done did we realize that Blizzard had veto power, and we didn't know that. And they had never quite approved the original story we pitched them. Those reservations were their way of saying, "We don't approve this story, and we want to go a different way," so after we had spent nine months working on this thing, we basically had to start over. And Robert did start over, but it was taking too long for the people at Blizzard, and their patience ran out. Honestly, I think it was mismanagement on their behalf, not to explain to us that the first story was vetoed long ago. Why did they let us keep working on it? Were they afraid to tell me?

Surprisingly candid.  Most people I've heard speculate that the Raimi/Fox split was bitter and harsh.  It's encouraging to see that wasn't the case.  Overall, it's a nice peek into the business side of a director's life.

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The Queue: The SimCity

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky (@adamholisky) will be your host today.

I said in the last Queue I wouldn't do it, but then things kept getting worse. So let me take three paragraphs and expunge about SimCity, Maxis, and EA for a moment. Briefly, there are major problems with SimCity, namely that no one is able to play much, if at all. Severs have been crashing, the client locks up at unexpected times, and any work you do can be lost in an instant. Not a good situation for a game series that helped define video games in the 1990s.

But wait, you ask, isn't that just like what happened with Diablo 3? No, it's not, I say. With D3 we had a game that didn't work well out of the starting gates too, but at no point along the way did Blizzard and their community reps try to say otherwise. It was obvious, and they acknowledged as much and kept everyone informed. While we were all still pissed, at least we knew what was happening and what was being done.

On the other hand you have EA, who initially put up tweets saying SimCity was live, up and running. Only thing was at the time, no one (literally no one) could access it because Origin wasn't letting people download the game. Only eventually through their personal Twitter and Reddit accounts did Maxis personnel start to give us insight into the problems caused by Origin and EA. And finally after an insanely long delay did any official word come out of EA. Where Blizzard had a unified, quick, and professional response, EA has a fractured, bumbling, and an entirely untimely response to a problem that is threatening to tank the entire franchise of one of the few games that rivals World of Warcraft in its fan's devotion.

The only saving grace for EA is that I hear it's quite easy to get a refund for SimCity if you ask nicely.

Demonreach asked:

Has anyone done any kind of study to see it you actually get the same amount of loot using group loot as compared to the old method of individually looting? To me it definitively seems less

Drop rates are tracked through Wowhead and the likes, and there's never been any sort of global decrease, no matter the source/reason. What you're experiencing is just a false connection of events, they actually don't have any causality associated with them.

Demonreach also asked:

My new toon is going to be a Warlock, do we know yet what mob drops Sealed Tome of the Lost Legion yet? Besides being level 90 do I have to be pretty well geared to be able to complete this?

Regarding gearing, you don't need to be terribly well geared, but I wouldn't go in there in quest greens. I'd suspect that anyone in dungeon blues would be fine, and certainly in 5.0 LFR gear. You most certainly do not need to have 5.2 gear.

As far as the drop goes, it has a chance to drop from any mob on the Isle of Thunder. Rare mobs have, reportedly, a much higher drop rate. My guess, and I don't have much to back this up other than the historical nature of WoW, is that you'll get it eventually if you just work on the dailies out there, and maybe kill a rare mob or two. My main is a warlock too, and I'm not worried about picking it up eventually.

Sethpat asked:

There was some emphasis on an unknown feature being released with 5.2. I have yet to figure out what exactly it was that the Devs were so excited about. Has anyone else?

When Ghostcrawler made the hint, he never specified it was for patch 5.2, just MoP in general. That doesn't mean we're not going to see it in 5.3 or something, but it's obviously not now.

And keep in mind that Ghostcrawler made a pretty far reaching statement with that (I'm sure he'd agree). When such long-term statements are made, there's a lot of room for things to change. Don't be mad if we don't get a surprise feature, and if it the aforementioned feature somehow gets worked into REDACTED, the next expansion.

Cgulliver asked:

when will your mobile site be fixed so we can view comments again? It has been almost a month..fix it already

If I had any power to fix things it would have been done already. Unfortunately Alex and I don't have the ability, so we're made the request elsewhere. Hopefully soon! Believe me, I want it fixed more then you -- I'm rather tired of getting emails and tweets about it.
 Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em! Filed under: Today in WoW

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