With the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard continues a long tradition of excellent collector’s edition bundles. Each expansion (along with the highly sought-after original) featured a limited-run collector’s set, containing soundtracks, behind-the-scenes videos, and miscellaneous goodies such as art books and maps of Azeroth — as well as the highly coveted exclusive in-game pets and mounts.
Check out the gallery below for a full breakdown of the new collector’s edition:
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As always, the collector's edition is of very high quality. The super-sized game box also matches up with every other World of Warcraft collector's edition to keep symmetry among your collection.
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The collector's box slides off to reveal the set's creamy filling.
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The set unpacks nicely, and isn't a pain to put everything back where it goes for storage.
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Blizzard's collector's sets always include both a PC and Mac version of the game, which is convenient (there is only one game key, though).
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The Pandaria soundtrack. Listen to the game's music while playing the game! Wait, what?
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The Mists of Pandaria art book contains some nice pieces and concept art, but there's a lack of commentary from the dev team. What was the inspiration for a specific area or monster? They don't say, whereas most official game art books do (Udon's official design works series has been especially good at this).
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The Behind-the-Scenes DVD contains developer interviews, commentary, and in-game cinematics, including the CG opening. Although the dev team doesn't dive quite as deep into the making of the game as they do at, say, a BlizzCon panel, you do get the feeling that Blizzard is really just a bunch of geeks doing what they love and what they think is cool.
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The back of the DVD case details the various behind-the-scenes content.
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A nice Mists of Pandaria mouse pad. Not much else to say about it, but its inclusion is appreciated, so long as it didn't end up replacing something cooler (like a cloth map of Pandaria, for instance).
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Lastly, the bundle includes two World of Warcraft guest passes and one StarCraft II guest pass (no Diablo III). And yes, these specific codes are fully functional, so if you've made it all the way to the end of the gallery, have at 'em!
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Conclusion:
Even at double the price of a standard version of Mists of Pandaria, the Collector’s Edition is easily recommendable to anyone who plans on playing this game. From the high-quality packaging to bonus content and in-game items, it comes with so much added value that it’s an outright steal. I want to make a crack about the servers actually working the day of launch, but I’ll let Blizzard slide just this once since it sexed up this bundle so well.
