Let's talk Mists of Pandaria

[Boxy Brown]

Impressions?

I'm almost 88 on my priest and loving the new content. The new PvE is pretty interactive and a lot less reminiscent of the old kill 10 mobs, gather 10 branches and report back to me. There's still a bunch of filler quests, but you don't really notice. I'm also invested in the story line of an MMO for the first time in a long time. What can I say, the story is good.

As for the PvP, this expansion is AMAZING. If I could describe the world PvP in the mists it would be Mordred where half of the server is in your guild. Since it's such a small space you run into enemy faction players all the time. People assjam you when you're doing encounters or turning in quests, it's awesome. Constant need to be on your toes. Plus there are plenty of WoW carebears around to gank. Weirdly, I haven't seen any 90s ganking so far. I expected to see a lot of that in the 85-87 zones, but so far I haven't fought a single 90. Anyway, I haven't done any BGs or Arenas or anything like that, but just the world PvP is keeping me entertained. If that's your thing, I highly recommend it.

I was a little apprehensive about the new talents, but I gotta say they nailed it. You unlock a new tier of three abilities to choose from every 15 levels starting at level 15. You can choose 1 ability per tier, and all three are usually powerful options. Most of the old talents have been incorporated into baseline/specialization class abilities and glyphs. Some of the new glyphs are pretty cool. For example, I have a glyph that lets me cast certain healing spells while in shadow form.

The only thing I'm not digging is the dungeons. I've done 2 so far and I'm not impressed at all. I remember either wrath or cata when it first came out (before they nerfed the dungeon difficulty) and no one knew how to do any of the encounters, me and my friends would wipe all the time until we figured out what each boss did and how to survive it. Pandaria has none of that. It's like they implemented deadly boss mods into the game itself. Sometimes it literally tells you what's about the happen in a fight. Not a fan of that in the least.

[Draconian]

[Boxy Brown]

Yeah I know I guess people just don't like WoW as much as I do.

[VKhaun]

I think my highest on WoW was only around Lv18, but that expansion still made me raise an eyebrow. It's so randumb and silly-stupid. Then they tried to pull up at the last second and make pandas look badass and quick in the trailer.

I have a feeling that in a year or two the WoW community will see this as their ToA.

[Zoobi]

I have a feeling that in a year or two the WoW community will see this as their ToA.

Naw, ToA broke what DAOC rvr was. If you didn't have the artifacts and/or toa bonuses and were simply using a standard crafted template then you lost super hard(granted the people you were playing against knew what they were doing.)

Mists of Pandaria is just another expansion along the route of samey expansions that has been WoW since TBC came out.

[Ziel]

I played WoW at launch. I came back for Burning Crusade. I came back for Wrath. I came back for Cataclysm. The game's gotten a little slicker and a little more feature-rich with each one, but it's essentially been the same experience every time and while that experience was enjoyable enough for me to do four times, the prospect of doing it again just isn't appealing to me this time round.

I think my highest on WoW was only around Lv18, but that expansion still made me raise an eyebrow. It's so randumb and silly-stupid. Then they tried to pull up at the last second and make pandas look badass and quick in the trailer.

Pandaren have been badass since Warcraft 3, it's just that they've always been a novelty race.

[VKhaun]

Naw, ToA broke what DAOC rvr was. If you didn't have the artifacts and/or toa bonuses and were simply using a standard crafted template then you lost super hard(granted the people you were playing against knew what they were doing.)

Mists of Pandaria is just another expansion along the route of samey expansions that has been WoW since TBC came out.

I don't think so. You can nitpick ToA all you like, but at the end of the day it was very simple: The community was based on templating, testing, and RvR'ing, and with one expansion they threw all three into chaos for every person in the community. The whole game was unbalanced. Even if ToA had been executed perfectly, it still would have been the end of DAoC with it's feature list because it just pulled the rug out from under everyone playing and all the reasons they had to attract new players. Instead of 'X is awesome!' you got 'X is fucked up now!'.

WoW was never built on testing, templating, or RvR'ing. It had no RvR, everything was straight foward, and you got your gear in sets. It was built on accessibility, marketability, and PvE content with a side of battlegrounds. It uses cross-game subs, had free trials before anything else did, and it has run a series of successful commercials. Hyping up and releasing something this dumb and pretending it's cool is the exact same thing as ToA:AoC. They are undermining their own community. It'll taint their commercials into laugh-at instead of laugh-with, and hurt the wide but consistent 'casual' demographic they managed to attract and addict.

[Andile™]

Thanks to my kids, I have watched parts of Kung Fu Panda. Sorry, once was enough.

[Boxy Brown]

Thanks to my kids, I have watched parts of Kung Fu Panda. Sorry, once was enough.

Excuse me? I went to the midnight showing of Kung Fu Panda, re-watched it numerous times on HBO, and would buy the god damn DVD if I ever bought DVDs. Jack Black, Jackie Chan, Dustin Hoffman, Seth Rogen, Angelina Jolie, Lucy Liu, and Michael Clark motherfucking Duncan don't do it for you?

[Bragi]

Naw, ToA broke what DAOC rvr was. If you didn't have the artifacts and/or toa bonuses and were simply using a standard crafted template then you lost super hard(granted the people you were playing against knew what they were doing.)

Port to Emain

Run to MG

Lag

Lag

Lag

Sea of Mushrooms

/release

Good times

Good times

As for Mists of Pandaria... I'm glad you like it Boxy, a buddy of mine loves the shit out of it. I have no interest in WoW, whatsoever. Anyone hear anything on that "next-gen" MMO Blizzard is supposed to be working in?