Cephas

That's actually not a terrible question because the VP system is apparently going to change quite a bit.

Oh, comments system, you so crazy!

The initial wave of invites was apparently quite small, and it's true that fansites were given Beta keys, but I definitely have heard from some Annual Pass players who got in.

It's mostly Chinese or Chinese-inspired. Warcraft 3's Pandaren Brewmaster originally appeared to be wearing a Samurai outfit, but for whatever reason (possibly sensitivity to Chinese culture, though that may be apocryphal) it was changed to Chinese-style clothing. Then again, I'm not exactly an expert on Chinese architecture and aesthetics, so I could be way off on this.

It's mostly Chinese or Chinese-inspired. Warcraft 3's Pandaren Brewmaster originally appeared to be wearing a Samurai outfit, but for whatever reason (possibly sensitivity to Chinese culture, though that may be apocryphal) it was changed to Chinese-style clothing. Then again, I'm not exactly an expert on Chinese architecture and aesthetics, so I could be way off on this.

If you think grinding for skill points is bad you should try grinding for an actual rare artifact. All I want is the Tol'vir mount and pet! (Seriously, it's rediculous how many common Night Elf artifacts you have to burn through just to get the privelige of being able to dig in Uldum and have your soul crushed yet again by another common Tol'vir artifact)

I'm pretty sure they're talking about one of the Orgrimmar zeppelin towers, which aren't that tall. I don't think you can die running off of them. Where you really need to watch out is the cliff you end up running off if you don't realize you need to take an elevator down from the zeppelin area.

They got rid of realm first achievements for races, but not classes. So probably yes for Monk, no for Pandaren.

1. Early Beta - we're still in that stage where Blizzard's top priority is making sure everything works, i.e. is it fundamentally functional? Tuning the abilities to make sure they aren't over or underpowered is part of very late Beta.

2. Brand new class - If we were talking about rogues here, who are changing relatively little, it wouldn't be quite so unreasonable to expect things to be well tuned, but Monks are a whole new class. A level 15 Mistweaver could easily end up almost completely different between now and after launch.

Here are some relevant quotes from the article A Night in Mists of Pandaria on the main WoW site: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/4637611

"The changes to Archaeology are pretty great so maybe I can mix in some dig sites as I go. I actually got a chance to teleport to a different dig site last night after finding an artifact, which really helped, along with now being able to dig more times at a single site."

"I could go hit the cooking, fishing, and archaeology faction dailies and level those professions that way too."

IMO, the worst part about trying to do Tol'vir archaeology is all the freaking Night Elf (and Fossil and Troll) sites I end up having to clear instead. Pandaria should be better in that regard if only because Pandaren and Mogu will be the only two kinds of digsites on the continent.