Today's Post is by Guest Blogger Matt Roberts.
As
you no doubt already know, Mists of Pandaria is the next WoW expansion. Because
I'm like the rest of you, I tried to sift through the new features to find a
gold-making opportunity. Looks like pets will be one (Shockmaister covered this
immediately after the announcement right here on JMTC - http://www.justmytwocopper.org/2011/10/mists-of-pandaria.html), but pets don't really excited me all
that much. Surely there's something else....
*Insert inner dialogue*
Oh
wait.
Seriously?
SERIOUSLY?!?!
No
way this goes live the way I think it might... but if it does....
/drool
*End inner dialogue*
What
was I so geeked about? Pandaren will start
off Neutral.
This means that they could be the absolute most wonderful cross-faction mules
ever. The question, of course, is what type of mail access (if any) do Pandaren
have before they declare allegiance to the Alliance or Horde?
If
starting area Pandaren have mail access similar to the other races' other
starting areas (usually beginning in the level 5 quest hub), we may be able to
move goods across factions without the requirement of a second account. This
assumes, of course, that you'll have at least one perma-lowbie Panda acting as
a postmaster on the Wandering Isle (which if you haven't seen yet, you totally
need to check out IGN's fly-through video from Blizzcon - http://www.ign.com/videos/2011/10/21/world-of-warcraft-mists-of-pandaria-wandering-isle-fly-through). If you'll remember, low level
mailboxes were added to low level zones with Patch 4.0.3a, so characters could
get access to heirlooms faster. Using that logic, there's no reason to think
that Blizzard won't provide access to mailboxes in low level Pandaria as well.
Except,
of course, that it has never allowed cross-faction trading directly.
Honestly,
I don't think there's any way that Blizzard allows low level Pandaren to have
access to mail before they declare for the Horde or Alliance. They can use the
lore excuse of, "well, these Pandaren are on the back of a giant floating
turtle, so they don't actually get mail." Weirder things have happened,
though. It will be a while, but keep an eye out for this little gem once we get
some beta info (which will be quite a while from now, I'm sure).
9 comments: on "Mists of Pandaria - A New Paradigm in Cross-Faction Trading?"
Anonymous said... October 30, 2011 at 9:25 AM
I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't send anything to a pandaren that hasn't left the Wandering Isle yet, apart from maybe heirlooms.
Another way they could restrict this is through allowing a pandaren to access mail, but not send any until they leave; in theory you could still use that for cross-faction trading, although you'd have to level a pandaren off the island every time you had items to send across. Depending on how many times you'd be willing to do that, it could still present a limit as to how much it could be used; I don't think I could handle leveling a pandaren to 10 a dozen times or so.
Again, it's all rampant speculation at this point, but I'm thinking more along the lines of the former rather than the latter. I don't see Blizzard's philosophy on cross-faction trading changing anytime soon, but stranger things have happened.
Anonymous said... October 30, 2011 at 10:15 AM
Blizzard already said that Pandaren won't be able to leave their island until level ten; when they are forced to choose a faction to move on. So this will not be possible.
Anonymous said... October 30, 2011 at 10:22 AM
Blizzard has stated that you won't be able to add other Pandaren to your friends list, until after you choose sides. This is to prevent cross faction talking.
I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't allow trading until then, either.
Anonymous said... October 30, 2011 at 11:19 AM
"If starting area Pandaren have mail access similar to the other races' other starting areas (usually beginning in the level 5 quest hub)"
You are about 1 year behind in the game, ALL starting areas have a mailbox jumping in your face right when you first login with your character.
Nyks said... October 30, 2011 at 12:08 PM
Blizz already said in a panel, that cross-faction-trading wint be able with Pandas.
Either startarea wont have mailboxes, or lowlevel-chars wont be able the receive mail (except accountbound).
Anonymous said... October 30, 2011 at 12:50 PM
As everyone's already said, Blizz already made it abundantly clear that you won't be able to use a low level panda for cross faction trading. Perhaps the author should do his homework. Of course, all of the articles on here are complete fluff, so I am not surprised. Removing JMTC from my news feed. The quality of articles here is simply non-existent.
Matt said... October 30, 2011 at 2:03 PM
Hey guys... Matt here. This article was written and submitted on the Monday after Blizzcon. As you can imagine, we've learned quite a bit since then. I don't think Markco could slot me in until today.
Chris said... October 31, 2011 at 2:45 PM
Great, well written article Matt. That, as mentioned, should have been posted when it was actually current. The comments are more directed at Markco, who, as editor, should spend 5 minutes figuring out if an article submitted a week ago is still current before setting up to go live. That would take... 5 minutes?
Wish this had been posted last week, because, even though we'd all know it couldn't happen by now, we would at least have had a few days to dream big :)
Anonymous said... October 31, 2011 at 4:08 PM
Sorry, but I can guarantee you Pandarens will have mailboxes, but the only thing you can send them is BoAs. This is the exact setup if I make an Alliance toon on a server with a horde main. I can send BoAs to that toon, but nothing else.
The mechanisms are already coded into the game, which makes it a certainty it will get implemented for neutral toons as well.
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