The WoW expansion Mists of Pandaria, released in 2011, built on the factions and regions of Azeroth that had been part of Warcraft since 2003. This expansion is definitely one of my favorite expansions in terms of the pure change it brought to the game, and now Blizzard has announced a limited-time event called WoW Remix: And now Blizzard has announced a limited-time event called WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria" is in development.

The remix idea is part of Blizzard's commitment to "evolve" the way WoW is updated, the most recent example being the battle royale mode Plunderstorm (which was generally very well received by players.) Mists of Pandaria" is playable in the current WoW, and this remix is a reworked version of it, essentially allowing players to create new characters and zoom through the whole thing at an accelerated pace. But that's only the beginning.

Leveling will be faster, new items and a new progression system will be added. Valuable transmog items and mounts will be easier to acquire, some of them with fancy new looks. Everything you acquire (including characters) will carry over to Dragonflight and future expansions of The War Within.

But to sum up the whole vibe here, "We know you guys have played this before, so we're going to make it actually worth replaying."

Remixes will power up characters absurdly and intentionally. A large amount of gear and gems will be added to the game. The best example of this is the Cloak of Infinite Possibilities (after the legendary cloak originally available in the expansion), an artifact that upgrades based on play and works across characters. Finally, Blizzard is adding a new currency: bronze. Bronze can be obtained by sacrificing unwanted items and can be used to purchase various hard-to-get pandaria items.

Certainly, this would be an attractive option for players looking to level up a stable of new characters, but practical considerations aside, the Pandaria remix is deeply strange. In some ways it is a condensed version of the WoW classic (we haven't reached the Mists of Pandaria expansion yet, and won't for a while), and there are no doubt players who are unhappy with the ease of bringing transmog into the War Within It will be. Most oddly, it would replace Plunderstorm.

Blizzard lists the main points of the Pandaria Remix as:

The most impressive thing about the Pandaria Remix is that it is a mini-WoW within WoW, designed to give players the best parts of the expansion in a focused way before launching into the next expansion Warcraft GM John Hight recently told PC Gamer that Plunderstorm "was our first experiment, and we've been working on it for a while. For that reason, we are limiting it to a limited time. We want to make something similar to this, but with different gameplay. So we're super excited about it."

The Pandaria remix will also be limited in time, although Blizzard has not stated when it will end, indicating that the developers are getting a little bolder in breaking away from the established trend of WoW expansions and updates. These days, I'm more of an occasional dabbler in MMOs, rather than the full-on immersion I was in my younger days. The idea of returning to Pandaria and blasting off into the night in an overpowered Panda Death Knight is a charming twist on the nostalgia that the classic already offers.

Who knows where such experiments will lead WoW in the future, but with Plunderstorm and now this, one of the industry's best MMOs already seems much more vibrant and varied than it did a few years ago. Of course, all could go wrong, but this seems like pandamonium at its best.