Blizzard are piloting a new technology letting them roll out the Mists of Pandaria expansion for World of Warcraft without players even needing to log out of the game.
Details after the break.
Over on their forums, Blizzard have detailed what players should expect at midnight as the Mists of Pandaria expansion launches:
- A yellow System Message will appear in your Chat Log telling you to visit Orgrimmar or Stormwind to start your travels.
- Level-85 characters will receive a new quest, no matter where they are in the world, which will guide them to Varian or Garrosh for further orders. If you’re online at midnight you will receive the quest even if your Quest Log is full — or you can visit Varian or Garrosh to get started on your journey to Pandaria.
- Level-85 players will notice their experience bar automatically change so that experience can once again be earned.
- Players who are at the Character Creation screen at midnight will notice the button to create a pandaren character will be enabled. (Reminder: This also applies to players who don’t have a Mists of Pandaria license, asall races are now included with a base copy of World of Warcraft.)
- Players who are at the Character Creation screen at midnight will notice the button to create a monk character will be enabled.
With over 10 million people all logging on to the same servers at once hiccups are to be expected, so if Blizzard manage to pull this seamless launch of Pandaria that will be a pretty awesome badge for their brownie sash.