During the World of Warcraft: Intro to Mists of Pandaria panel, WoW Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton introduced the discussion about the Creatures of Pandaria.
Creatures of Pandaria – Transcript
Cory Stockton: Next up, let’s talk a little bit about what we are going to be killing here. It’s not all going to be a happy land. You got to have stuff to kill.
First off the race of fish-like creatures: The Jinyu. They kind of look as the wisemen of Pandaria. They can stick their staff in the river and hear what the land is saying. It’s literally talking to them.
You’re going to see them across a wide number of zones. They will play into your story the whole way through. Here’s a concept piece of how they look like.
Next up we’ve got the Hozu. The Hozu are a monkey-like race. They stand up on their behind-legs. They are known to be really mischievous. You’ll see them in dungeons as well as the zones outside. Here’s a concept art of how they look like.
Next up is the Verming. The Verming are a take on … we really wanted to make a new Kobold. It’s a classic creature. Whenever you see them you want to take them out. You can fight them in droves.
They aren’t too strong, so you can fight a bunch of these guys at one time. They are a bit of a nuisance. Here’s a look at the these guys (crowd breaks into laughter).
We saw a concept art, and we were like ‘we have to build that. Right now! And he needs this whatever this crazy knife-fork weapon thing going on.”
But the Pandaren have a lot of farmland, and these are the guys that are going to kinda like — these kind of guys have dug tunnels under the farmland and they’re stuck in the vegetables down underneath into their tunnels from below so that’s part of the storyline, the stuff you’re going to get with these guys.
Next up we have one of our killer races: The Mantid. We’re going to have whole raids based around them, dungeons. They really play a big role. The kind of over-arcing story. They are an insect race that’s been on the island for a long time, for milennia.
They’ve laid next to the Pandaren the whole time but have been kind of separated from the rest of the continent by a giant wall.
They’re starting to go a little crazy and they’re coming through the wall in places. You’ve to end up dealing with that.
Here’s a look at them. Now different than our other insect races that we’ve had before, like the silithid. These are able to dress themselves, they have their own houses. They have looks. They’re more of a creature that you can expect to be intelligent and use weapons. We really wanted to play up a different aspect.
Next up we have the Mogu. The Mogu are another ancient race. The Mogu are actually the original race in the land of Pandaria. They were the first race before the Pandaren overthrew them ten thousand years ago, and took the island for themselves. And what’s happening now is — the Mogu want it back so that plays another part of this big storyline. In raids you’ll see them in dungeons. We really wanted to have a lot of villains for players to fight. Like Chris Metzen mentioned, we don’t necessarily always have to have one big bad guy that’s causing all the badness in the expansion.
We kind of wanted to spread it out and have a number of things that players are dealing with. Here’s a look at these guys. You can se they’re kind of big and hulky.
And finally, we’ve got the Sha. The Sha is really unique. What it is, it is the manifestation of negative energy on Pandaria. If you imagine whenever anything bad — someone gets killed, a fight happens — you know something like that on an island — any sort of battle, especially what’s happening with the Alliance and the Horde once they get here, releases Sha energy into the land.
It’s kind of a shadow form creature, and you are going to see them all over the place. Here’s a look of how we think these guys can feel. Super aggressive.
Something you definitely want to take out. You can fight this guy at the raid box for sure. That’s a quick look at some of what you can expect from the creatures of Pandaria.
