Mists of Pandaria - Part 2

I have previously gave my opinions and a brief overview of Blizzards newest expansion for World of Warcraft, Mists of Pandaria.
In this post Ill be going over some of the finer details and go in-depth about the new features that will be available in the upcoming expansion.

Pandaren:
The Pandaren are the new race available in World of Warcraft, Blizzard has wrote some lore to help implement them into the World of Warcraft.
As I'm sure many of you know, the Pandaren will be available as both Alliance and Horde, they have stated that players will choose who to side with in the starting area.
The Pandaren have very interesting Racial Traits, they have +15 cooking, take 50% less falling damage, have rested experience last twice as long and a 3 second CC. All very powerful compared to the Vanilla and BC races Racial Traits.
The Monk (Pandaren exclusive), Mage, Hunter, Priest, Rogue, Shaman and Warrior are all available to the Pandaren as classes.

The Monk:
The Pandaren have access to a race exclusive class, the Monk. From what it sounds like the Monk is a hybrid (Tank, DPS and Heal) with instant cast abilities that uses "Chi" as energy.
The Monk will use Cloth or Leather armor and all 1H weapons, Polearms and Staves.

Challenge Modes:
Challenge Modes are basically a time-trial added to 5-man dungeons that will reward you and your group with rewards depending on how fast you completed the instance.
Depending on how fast you finish you will either get a: Gold, Silver, Bronze .. or if you really bad maybe nothing medal.
The rewards for completing Challenge Modes include: armor sets, mounts, titles etc.

Pet Battle System:
Basically to sum it up, Pokemon in WoW.
In Mists of Pandaria, your vanity non-combat pets which you have collected over the years can be used to battle other players non-combat pets.
It looks like more of a time-killing casual thing, but I really dont see the point in this feature and it seems to be fairly unpopular with the WoW community.


Talent Calculator:
Mists of Pandaria will bring yet again, another talent system to WoW. The new talent system looks to be somewhat simplified, with 6 main talents you will choose 1-90. Obviously the simplification of something like the talent system causes quite a bit of QQing, particularly from the "Hardcore" community but I guess Blizzard knows what they're doing?

Scenarios:
(No information released yet)

New Zones:
Mists of Pandaria will have 6 new zones for us players to explore.
The Wandering Isle, The Jade Forest, Valley of The Four Winds, Kun-Lai Summit, Townlong Steppes and the Vale of Eternal Blossums.


Obviously the whole Monk/Pandas theme is all very Chinese/Oriental themed. The Monk which is essentially a Kung Fu fighter, Pandas which = China and the new zones in particular which represent China's landscape.
It will be interesting to see how Mists of Pandaria is released in China, I believe Wrath of The Lich King was only released last year - but obviously Mists of Pandaria looks to be full of Asia stereotypes.

Regardless of what I think, Mists of Pandaria seems to be adding quite a bit of new content to WoW, one thing I am worried about is the lack of discussion regarding raids and PVP, which has led some to dub this the "casual expansion".