We had a chance to speak with Blizzard ahead of the official release of World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, and sacrificed our resident WoW expert, Khel, to the lead encounter god, Ion Hazzikostas, for clarification on a number of hot topics among the MMO elite.

On 25-man raids, Khel asked what the process was moving forward as they tend to be thinning out.

"One small step that we’re taking in 5.0 is that 25 player raids, on both heroic and normal, will drop six pieces of loot per boss instead of five like they used to," Hazzikostas explains.

"So there’s a slightly better ratio of loot per person, getting six for 25 versus two for 10, when you go for the larger sized raid, so that’s one thing."

As for crafting an entirely new race from scratch, while bolstering existing lore, Hazzikostas reveals that it's not as easy as it looks

"I think that’s one of the great challenges, but also one of the great opportunities of this expansion, since we had something of a blank slate when it came to the continent of Pandaria itself," Hazzikostas says.

"Really I mean, I think what we’ve done there is try to weave together themes of exploration and discovery with the more familiar Warcraft material of Horde and Alliance and the conflict there."

Click here for the full interview which covers everything from Challenge Modes to luring players back to the world of Azeroth and much more.