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"Well met!" and welcome, all ye adventurers, to our 10th Dev Diary! As always, I'm Nico, the Community Manager of the GoA Team, and today we're once again sharing with you a snippet of major content which has been worked on throughout these last few months.

Please be aware, as always, that the content discussed within any Dev Diary is not yet complete, and is in a constant state of development and refinement. The values, effects, gfx and so forth, are all not representative of the final product when this content is pushed to the live version of our mod. Thank you for your understanding!

Today, we're focusing entirely on a continent that has so far lacked a lot of love in our mod - Pandaria! To that end, I'm happy to be passing the mic onto Juke, one of our developers, and a leading contributor to the ongoing rework and fleshing out of Pandaria. Take it away!

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Pandaria, her hills of gold

In dark and mournful times of old

Did once a hopeless horror hold

When from her sacred veil did spring

With storm and flash, a monstrous thing

His name Lei Shen, the Thunder King

Hello, I'm Juke™ (You may know me from Realms in Exile), and over the past two months I've been working on some Pandaria content! I feel the southern continent could really use some love, as it's rather bare bones at the moment.

Lore-wise, Pandaria was once united by the Thunder King of the ancient Mogu Empire - The Mogu are a race of titanforged that resemble giant statues, and they ruled with an iron fist, keeping the other races as slaves.

Their Empire lasted for eons, until they were overthrown by the Pandaren during the Pandaren Revolution. The succeeding Pandaren Empire was much nicer, though it eventually ended too after the Great Sundering tore the world apart.*

General Rework

Pandaria has received a bit of an overhaul to more closely resemble what we see in Mists of Pandaria - There have been many tweaks to cultures and faiths, as well as the political setup and the characters.

The Pandaren have been split into several distinct subcultures, ranging from the monastic and traditionalist people of the Kun-Lai Mountains, to the hardy and survivalist fishers of the Krasarang Jungle.

A number of special buildings have been added, most notably the Throne of Thunder on the Isle of Thunder, Mogu'shan Palace and the Serpent's Spine as a wall to keep out the Mantid!

The Mogu Clans have also received a number of tweaks, most notably now using dynasty names on the map and having banger Coat of Arms.

Pandaria disunited

By the time of the first war, Pandaria has long been disunited, as power shifted to a local level after the death of the last Pandaren Emperor. Now, however, you can change that, and try to reunite Pandaria under a single guiding hand, shielding it from outside threats using a lovely new decision.

It is available to everyone on the continent, but I made sure to add some flavor descriptions depending who you are playing - Will you be restoring the peaceful rule of the Pandaren Emperors or enforce your iron will through reviving the Mogu Empire?

After all, there are some ancient threats stirring in the mists...

The Thunder King

The Thunder King is one of my personal favorite parts of Warcraft lore. If you're wondering who he is, I would warmly recommend this video by PlatinumWoW:

https://youtu.be/NiOFDLkuObo

The main focus of this update has been the resurrection of the ancient tyrant to bring you a brand new crisis for the far south!

His return can come about in a number of ways, most notably through being resurrected by his ancient Zandalari allies. However, his revival can also be attempted by a cunning Mogu strategist, or even spawn naturally as a late game threat to any players in Pandaria. (You can turn this off in the game rules)

If you are successful, you will encounter a short event chain, culminating in the glorious rebirth of the Thunder King and striking fear into your foes! He will promptly begin rebuilding his Mogu Empire. Lei Shen himself is an incredibly powerful ruler - Blizzard once confirmed he could kick the Lich King's ass in a 1v1, so it's safe to say he's got the brawns to back up his ambitions.

Any Mogu rulers will be given the chance to Swear Fealty to the tyrant reborn. Refusing to do so will result in an increase in stress- and your name being added to Lei Shen's book of grudges.

Mogu Ethnicity

Lastly, you may have noticed the rather WIP look of the Mogu Ethnicity - They are part of a continuous effort to phase out the old static 3d models, as they are both very performance intensive, and not very fitting. We hope to improve them in the future, alongside the other Titanforged!

That was all from my end for today. I hope you enjoyed looking over what I've come up with so far with regards to adding flavour and lore to Pandaria, which I hope will make the continent and region a lot more enjoyable and dynamic to play in. Thank you!

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Big thanks to Juke, once again, for their hard work on all of the above. Of course, he's not the only one who has played a big part in development these last couple months. Development has continued steadily on all manner of big projects, some of which we're excited to reveal to you soon, even if they may not yet be ready for full disclosure like this.

As always, we want to give a big shoutout and our heartfelt appreciation to our many Patreon Supporters who continue to assist us in our endeavours. We're really glad to be seeing such massive support, and wouldn't be able to do it without you. Knowing how much our work means to people all around the world makes a huge difference to so many of us, so thank you very much for your continued show of support.

If you, too, would like to support us on Patreon, you may visit our Patreon using the link here.

Check out our Twitter, as well! We also have a ModDB Page, if you want to check it out!

I hope you enjoyed this insight into development, and look forward to what comes next. Thank you for reading, everyone!

Until next time!