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Mists of Pandaria. Post-mortem.
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Post by
Rankkor
***WARNING, INCOMING SUPER ULTRA EXTRA LONG POST INCOMING. WARNING***
Hello everyone, now that the expansion is finally over, and certain details about where the story goes next have been revealed, I wanted to share my impressions about this expansion, the good, the bad, the average, and how it compares to the other two expansions I’ve played (Namely WOTLK and CATA, I was only present for a very small portion of TBC back when it was current content)
Bear in mind that these are simply my personal opinions, I am in no way implying that this is the consensus or what “the majority” of the players think or feel, nope, just my 2 little cents, and I encourage others to either share their own opinions, or if they so desire, refute mine :P
Having said that, let us begin. (Warning, I said it already but this is gonna be a HUUUUUGE long post xD I’ve done my best to break it down in little pieces to make it easier to swallow, and cut much of what I later deemed to be just offtopic ramblings but the end result is still pretty long)
Player vs Player
I'll keep this brief. I'm not a pvper, I am terrible at it, and I fully admit I know almost nothing about it. I will give this expansion a good score on pvp though because it added new BGs, new arenas, and every major patch had some form of world pvp. From the node control in 5.1 to the pvp dailies in 5.2 to the barrens event in 5.3, to the bloody-coins in 5.4, so there's always something to keep the active pvp player engaged. I wont comment on class balance, or the many changes to resillience/gear/etc because as I said, I'm not an expert in pvp, or even remotely educated on the matter.
Leveling
Supreme. Masterful. Extraordinary. Just bravo blizzard, you made me regain my faith in you, after the disaster (no pun intended) that was cataclysm.
Every zone was amazing, and evoked plenty of emotions in me, from hysterical laughter during the Scout's report (Riko and Kyrin FTW) to sadness at the battle of the jade serpent, lighthearted joy at the valley of the four winds (Li Li is awesome!!!), downright buckets of tears when Dezco's wife died in krasarang, fistpump moment of awesome in stoneplow, and kun-lai, and genuine fear in the dread wastes, to rage and indignation during the Purge of Dalaran. This expansion has it all. it seems to have struck a balance between the different quest hubs mode of WOTLK, and the linear integrated story of cataclysm. With aplenty use of phasing, and spectacular narrative. Almost no plot holes, no cliffhangers, and ample background lore.
For all the disproportionate grief people seem to give to the pandaren, they are perhaps the most perfectly integrated race into the game, with an intrinsically crafted backstory, rich adaptation of real life legends, and a unique niche as a culture. I haven't seen a newcomer race so perfectly integrated to the game since the Vry'kul in WOTLK. But unlike those, we can actually play as these, so that's a bonus (Unlike the worgen, and draenei who are the worst integrated races in the game, the latter requiring multiple major retcons to explain how they even exist)
It wasn't perfect though, I have a couple of major complaints about this expansion. Which will be addressed later.
Raid content
Very Pleased. Beautiful designs, fun boss mechanics, good integration to the lore, and more. My only tiny gripe is that a lot of the fights are NOT melee-friendly, but that's something I've gotten used to. Nothing new to see here, every expansion is the same, and I was hoping this one would break the mold, it didn't, maybe next time it'll happen. I also am not that pleased with SoOs obsession of having nearly every boss battle shower us with adds. Come on, I want to fight the boss, stop putting a gazzillion adds to kill on every single fight.
Asides from those two very minor nitpicks, I've enjoyed a lot the raid content in this expansion. Boss mechanics are fun, engaging and unique, almost no "Patchwerk" type of fights that are just a blatant gear-check for the raid. Also very impressed at the difficulty tuning save for one or two bosses total, and I'm very glad to see the return of world bosses.
Content
This is probably the richest expansion in terms of content. Now, its irrelevant whether or not you LIKE the content, the point is that there's plenty of it, if you like it all, good for you, but all of it is sufficiently varied to please as much large a crowd as possible. 5mans, scenarios, proving grounds, farm, timeless isle, dailies, pet battles, raids, brawlers guild, rare hunting, treasure hunting, OMG.
While I didn't liked many of those activities, the fact that they're there shows me that blizzard isn't just focusing on catering to one demographic (*coughvanillaandtbccough*), but instead, trying to please as many players as they can, and that is something deserving of an applause for me.
Flex Raid
*cue "Ode to Joy"*
Hallelujah. A raid mode custom-tailored JUST for the type of players like me =D
All the practicality of LFR (can be done multiple times, at any time, pug-friendly, cross-realm possible, split in easier to swallow wings, lower difficulty than normals, personal loot, which avoids loot drama) with almost all the benefits of normal (Achievements can be earned, superior loot rewards than the garbage of LFR, the fights are actually challenging rather than faceroll, vanity rewards like pets and mounts,) and the one benefit neither Normals, nor LFRs will ever have: Group size can change, if for whatever reason X number of people can't join, you don't have to cancel the raid night, you just continue and difficulty is adjusted on the fly.
T_T Thank you blizzard, thank you for adding this to the game. God bless every single soul who worked into this feature =D
New Race
Love it. What can I say? I love pandas. If anything, I'm saddened that this level of detail isn't present on the other races, just looking at the incredibly wide level of facial expressions a pandaren can have, and then comparing them to the stiff faces of TBC or the blocky, horrendous faces of Vanilla makes me cringe. Honestly those new race models can't come soon enough, I’m glad blizzard is taking a break on the next expansion because rather than work on new races, they are taking this time to work on the old ones. The more the graphics of this game evolve, the more glaring the datedness of the old models shows. This is specially glaring on the human and orc models, which ironically, are the ones MOST used, since 99.99% of all the focus given to the alliance goes to the humans, and 70% of all the focus given to the horde goes to the orcs.
New Class
Impressed. The class is fun, its unique, has a HEAPLOAD of awesome visual candy, and most importantly, they didn't messed up the balancing this time. I play a DK as my main, and WOTLK was an exercise in frustration. My class was ridiculously OP during all of Beta, which led to everyone and their mother playing a DK at launch, and seeing DKs everywhere, which ranged from the bad to the atrocious, which in turn led to my class having a horrible reputation and finding invites a major pain (Which of course made me love the LFG tool even more. Do any of you have ANY IDEA of how hard it was to get an invite for a 5man in wrath if you non-tanking DKs?)
Then they tried to correct their mistake, but rather than lower the power of the Dks to a reasonable amount on par with the other classes, they just said "screw it" and nerfed it to hell to the point even normal non-elite mobs in Icecrown (the zone, not the raid) could kill me if I wasn't in blood spec. Rather than use the scalpel they used the chainsaw, and ruined up my class up and down. Death Strike went through FOUR major reworks before it went to how it works today. Scourge strike went through FIVE revamps before it went to how it looks today. Every major patch meant having to relearn my class from scratch as whole mechanics, features, or major CDs were either reworked, removed, or replaced. And then came the total revamp in cata.
Just horrible.
I'm very happy to see that the same has not happened for monks on this expansion. With the minor exception of healer monks but I don't heal so I don't care =D
Loved the little quests every 10 levels that teach you the fundamentals of your class such as interrupts, rolls, etc. IMO, every class should have these quests every 10 levels to learn important mechanics. And the feel of the class was very authentic and fitting to the setting.
Gameplay Complaints
My biggest gripe against this expac however (From the gameplay perspective) is the gearing system for alts, and its dreadful implementations of dailies, and this is coming from someone who got the Crusader title twice in WOTLK, and the Flamebreaker title twice in cata. AKA, a daily junkie, and as a proud daily junkie, I can say without hesitation that 90% of the dailies in MoP SUCK.
For all the horrors of cataclysm (the expansion that actually made me quit the game for over a year, something I've never done before or since) it had a pretty solid and neat gearing system for alts. Buy the newest hottest gear with VP, buy the older obsolete gear with JP. When a new tier rolls out, the new loot is bought with VP, and the now obsolete one with JP. It worked wonders. Rep gear was there too, but it was optional and if you didn't wanted it, you could simply skip the dailies and just level the one you needed for your helmet&Shoulder enchants.
Therazane was ridiculously easy to level, as just doing deepholm would get you to revered, and after that, slap a tabard on, and 8 5mans later you're exalted. The others weren't that harder either. The rest of the Rep gear was completely optional as if you were a casual you could simply wait until the next tier content, and then buy epics with JP. It was great.
Not so much in this expansion. JP was useless for 95% of the expansion, being used to buy useless blues (WTH was up with that stuff? the initial blue rewards for JP in cata was of equal worth as 5man loot, but in MoP the blue rewards were even worse than 5man loot. WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THEM BEING THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?) And the purple stuff, required a painfully slow grind to get to them. Not only you had to grind rep, you had to grind VP. That is NOT cool. But as if that wasn't enough, you also had to grind 2 reps to revered to unlock the other two. And then to top it all off, the dailies gave a paltry sum of rep, making the grind ultra slow and ultra painful.
Let us do a prayer together, that blizzard NEVER AGAIN repeats this mistake. I don't like how they approached a solution in 5.4 or in WoD either "So you hate dailies? we won’t include any, instead kill a trillion mobs to reach exalted"
I hated the timbermaw grind, and I hate the shaohao grind. Dailies can be fun as long as they're not required for progression (AKA: Make VP gear completely separated from Rep requirements) and they dont include 16-quest long hubs. Keep it short, at most 7 quests per faction. Pepper it with nice story progression along the way like they did with Dominance/shieldwall. And that, THAT is how you make dailies, fun and engaging. But please, please for the love of god, never again the horrors of the 5.0 grind.
Lore and Story Complaints
I also have 2 major complaints about the lore and plot of the expansion.
The first is the treatment given to the horde and alliance.
The former get all the attention, sure, but its negative attention. This is an expansion where the horde gets nothing but slaps in the face and kicks in the gut. We lose one of our most beloved minor characters (Nazgrim T_T) we lose YET ANOTHER FRIGGING GUNSHIP (for the love of god blizzard, STOP KILLING OFF OUR AIR-FORCE) we get a massive civil war where we have to fight our own people (I joined the horde to kill alliance, not to kill other horde) we have to invade our own lands (again, I joined the horde so I could storm enemy cities, not invade my own) at the end we are only alive because our enemy chose to have mercy on us, rather than our own strength sustaining us, and we get major defeats EVERYWHERE. And before any alliance player says "but in cata the horde won all the time and the alliance only lost" HOLD IT RIGHT THERE. Sure the horde won a lot in cata, but so did the alliance. They won in northwatch, Honor Stand, against the Shatterspear in darkshore, etc. They lost more, but they at least had the satisfaction of giving almost as good as they got. Compare to the horde in this expansion were we just lost, and lost, and lost, and lost, and lost. Not a single victory against the alliance. Not one. The few victorious moments we had were against ourselves. NOT COOL.
I tremendously disliked how the horde was treated in this expansion and I expect many moments of awesome to be given to us in future expansions (Mind you, they don't necessarily have to come at the expense of the alliance)
The alliance didn't got off scott free either. Because while they got victory after victory against the horde, they received very little focus on the expansion, and to make matters worse, it seems that the alliance is only humans. If you look at the many horde storylines you get plenty for the orcs, for the blood elves, the trolls, and even a bit for the goblins and taurens (The forsaken had very little developments, but given how much attention they had in cata, this is a good thing) Now look at the alliance, and you could be forgiven for thinking that it disbanded and its made up of humans only. The night elves act like reckless leeroy jenkins just so the humans can bail them, the dwarves bicker among themselves just so the humans can unite them, the gnomes worgen and draenei are NOWHERE to be seen (there is a grand total of ONE semi-important draenei NPC in the expansion, Mishka, and she only shows up for a grand total of THREE quests)
For christ sakes just look at the ending cinematics. Horde one gets to show ALL of the leaders of the horde, and while it focuses mainly on Thrall and Vol'jin, everyone else also shows up at least for a fraction of a second. Alliance cinematic? exclusively Varian and Jaina with a micro cameo of Anduin. You could be very easily forgiven for thinking none of the other leaders were present. The alliance may have won the war, and every battle, but they had too little focus, and what little focus they received, was given to the humans. Everyone else doesn't matter.
My second gripe with the lore, is how this expansion treated women. This may as well be called "The Great Estrogen Purge of Azeroth". -_- don't look at me like that, I'm dead serious here.
Varian was a major JERK in WOTLK, but blizzard was dead set on making him the messiah of the alliance, so what do they do? why easy, they transplanted EVERY SINGLE ONE of his unlikable characteristics to female characters. His impulsive, brash, hot headed stupidity to channel leeroy Jenkins? lets put that into Tyrande, and lets have Varian school HER on the most basics of troop leadership, even though she's been a sentinel general since before Varian's great great great great great great great great great grandfather was even born and led the defense of this world against not one but TWO Burning Legion invasions. His racist bigoted views on every horde race? lets put those into jaina and make her a complete racist hag. His genocidal "kill every single one of them" mentality regarding said races of the horde? lets put that in Admiral Rogers.
In order to finally make varian a character that is likeable for his nobility rather than his jerkiness, they transplanted everything bad about him onto women. And that is NOT cool with me. Not one bit.
The women of the horde didn't fared better. Warlord Zaela was without a doubt my favorite character of cataclysm, and her questchain was the only bit of lore that not only I deeply enjoyed, but also made me proud to be horde (Something that hasn't happened often as of late. Most lore moments of the horde just make me cover my face in shame). Here was a youthful and idealistic young woman, who descended from a tribe that in the past committed heinous unspeakable horrors upon the red dragonflight, and rather than continuing to perpetuate the dark legacy of her forefathers, she chose to break the cycle, and lead her people into a new bright future, by deposing her tyrannical and corrupt dictator, and chart a new prosperous reign for her tribe.
So what does she do in the new expansion? why of course do a 180° and support a new Tyrannical Dictator, and simply redo all the crimes of her tribe all over again. Which means all her character development, all her progress, all the redemption that the Dragonmaw received in cataclysm meant squat. Thanks blizzard. Seriously, -_- I hope you're proud.
Barring these two major gripes I have, I actually enjoyed the story of MoP far more than most other expansions, and for this reason, the lore gets a massive score for me.
Ending impression
For me, the ranking of the expansions would be: MoP = WOTLK > TBC > Vanilla > Cata.
WOTLK was pure awesome. The leveling was great, the zones were great, the storylines were awesome, the lore was awesome, the raids were awesome (Ulduar FTW) but the one things that holds it back is its REALLY lackluster ending. That was one piece of crap ending with a plot twist that came out of nowhere. "There must always be a lich king" NONSENSE.
The scourge existed for less than 15 years, its not even frigging 100 years old. Azeroth was just fine without a lich king for the past 20k years, now that we've dismantled the cult of the damned, and razed the icecrown glacier, and later the icecrown citadel to its knees, we're supposed to instate a new lich king? from a story perspective this makes absolutely zero sense, and it’s just a lazy way of blizzard to reuse the lich king for a later expansion and we just KNOW he's gonna go evil in a later expansion. It made all our war, all our struggles, all our losses, meaningless because in the end, the lich king wasn't destroyed, he was just delayed. Very underwhelming end to an expansion. At least in TBC, sure we didn't killed kil'jaeden, but we prevented him from entering azeroth, we stopped the legion invasion dead on its tracks, we scored a victory.
in WOTLK? Scourge is still there, cult of the damned is still there, lich king is still there. We brought them to their knees, and then rather than finish them off, we just....... backed off.
And now, sadly, history repeats itself here. Rather than let us finally be rid of garrosh and be done with him, we have to endure his antics for yet another expansion (seriously blizzard, as a devoted Horde player, I've had to put up with that moron for six years. Enough is enough, for the love of god, KILL HIM OFF ALREADY)
All our struggles are pretty much for nothing, he wrecked the horde, wrecked pandaria, caused untold damage and desolation in his wake, ruined a previously pristine paradise, and
punched a panda in the face D=
And in the end….. he just gets away to do it all again, tainting what was once a pure orc culture with his filth and his hatred. I barely recognize this “Iron Horde” as the traditional orcish clans of the draenor of old, we're getting a repeat of the xenophobic imperialistic True Horde from MoP, this “Rinse&Repeat” ISN'T FUNNY. Having to face the same enemy AGAIN is (at least for me) not enjoyable in the least. I'm dearly hoping this expansion truly marks the ends of his antics because if he's gonna be a recurring antagonist, my enjoyment of this game will drastically decrease.
This.... feels like a hollow victory for me, what did we (the horde) gained in this expansion? the tyrannical oppressor that was practically enslaving our faction gets away to do everything again, and we're left with a tattered and severely wounded horde. The alliance at least gets the satisfaction of delivering a crushing blow to the horde, which at the moment is just not in any conditions to actually survive should the alliance reconsider and decide to wipe them out.
Final Words
As a conclusion, this expansion has been a mixed bag, while not perfect (no expansion or game ever is) I can honestly say I enjoyed the trip. The many emotions evoked by the story, the many memorable side characters, the FANTASTIC way the lore was exposed to us, the complete lack of any sort of plot hole, or unfinished businesses, made it a thought provoking trip. And despite my many complaints, what really matters in a story was accomplished here very thoroughly.
The overriding goal of all storytelling is to get a reaction from the audience — a laugh, a tear, a desire to change, or maybe a desire to kill the storyteller.
There is nothing more saddening than a story that gets an apathetic reaction. A story should influence and affect us. The storyteller wants to see their audience pay attention, hang on their words, and applaud with a standing ovation when it is all done. It doesn't matter if the story was happy or sad, and despite how gloomy things looked I liked the overall plot of this expansion. Because art isn't about making you feel good. It's about making you
feel
. And in that regard, blizzard did their job just fine as far as I'm concerned.
On the gameplay side, with so many activities to choose from, I just cant complain, I like how busy this expansion kept me, whereas in Cataclysm I leveled 10 characters to 85 and even geared many of them in quite a lot of decent gear to the point half of them didn’t needed to replace a single item in pandaria till mid kun-lai, here, I was barely able to keep up in 4 alts. And only 1 of them is decently geared.
Awesome job blizzard. Awesome awesome job.
Post by
Tamardia
LFR (can be done multiple times, at any time, pug-friendly
LFR pug-friendly
No. Just no. No. LFR and LFD have -never- been pug-friendly. Not because of the mechanics, the bosses, the length... Because of the remaining 4 or 24 people.
Post by
Eccentrica
Very, very nice writeup Rank. I agree with you on many points, and as a fellow mid-BC baby agree entirely on your ranking of the expansions.
Post by
Rankkor
LFR (can be done multiple times, at any time, pug-friendly
LFR pug-friendly
No. Just no. No. LFR and LFD have -never- been pug-friendly. Not because of the mechanics, the bosses, the length... Because of the remaining 4 or 24 people.
I think you didn't quite understood what I said.
By pug-friendly I meant the cross-realm participation. Normal raids are not very pug friendly because you're very restricted on what sort of people can you invite. It needs to be from the same realm and same faction.
LFR is more "friendly" to pugs in the sense that it can be done with anyone from any server, and this was applied to flex. In more practical terms, LFR is really a nightmare if you don't bring along a few friends, because sadly too few people wish to work together, or even work at all (A lot of people just do enough DPS to give the impression that they participated in the fight, and then either go AFK or get killed on purpose.)
Post by
Izichial
Good post, Rank.
Player vs Player
*snip*
Just expanding on this, as best I can, since there's so few people who do rated PvP on Wowhead.
Not sure how it was on US but EU PvPers weren't too happy about things for large parts of MoP. Class balance, world of instantcraft, Russian wintraders dominating RBG ladders (characters with zero previous PvP experience showed up on ladder in top50 wearing quest gear and Blizzard just goes "we'll investigate anything suspicious reported to us np" - nothing happens), DDOSing, people walking free with glad titles when there's recorded skype calls / IM screens / whisper screens of them admitting to wintrading, gear scaling was out of control for certain classes even with baseline resilience adjustments (particularly for weapons), Blizzard still refuses to remove the bonus CP crutch for RBGs, swifty macros, TCCY was retarded and everyone hated it... I could go on, but yeah, I haven't played high level arena in MoP either, I just keep in touch with people who do.
Holinka has been
fairly well received
but few people believe he has enough pull at Blizzard to actually make PvP-centric changes to the game that will impact other areas happen. Several seasons are considered to have had the
potential
to be good seasons, but crucial details that weren't fixed in time have thrown them off.
As for the story, I just feel no one wins from it's direction. Alliance complain it's Horde focused, but it's not a focus that does the Horde any favours. It provided some character development (at, as you already pointed out, costs to other characters that were stupid and unnecessary - Lor'themar's time in the spotlight was a refreshing exception, though), a lot of cringeworthy moments and an anticlimactic ending.
The raids were good this expansion. The first ones were probably slightly overtuned, but it wasn't a huge issue. Flex was a good addition.
Monks were a fairly well designed class, but were terribly balanced at various points. I still think Dematerialize is one of the dumbest additions to the game from a PvP perspective to be added since the original Desecration. If you've put yourself in a bad position and get hit with a stun you should be punished for it, not be handed a get out of jail card for free.
Post by
Tamardia
LFR (can be done multiple times, at any time, pug-friendly
LFR pug-friendly
No. Just no. No. LFR and LFD have -never- been pug-friendly. Not because of the mechanics, the bosses, the length... Because of the remaining 4 or 24 people.
I think you didn't quite understood what I said.
By pug-friendly I meant the cross-realm participation. Normal raids are not very pug friendly because you're very restricted on what sort of people can you invite. It needs to be from the same realm and same faction.
LFR is more "friendly" to pugs in the sense that it can be done with anyone from any server, and this was applied to flex. In more practical terms, LFR is really a nightmare if you don't bring along a few friends, because sadly too few people wish to work together, or even work at all (A lot of people just do enough DPS to give the impression that they participated in the fight, and then either go AFK or get killed on purpose.)
I understood what you meant, luckily, I just needed to bring that point up that most of the times, you can and will be upset with at least one other player, unless it's one of those runs when none even says hello or asks for tactics on bosses.
Post by
Wombat62
Nice write up rank . I also really enjoyed this expansion .
personally tho I don't see garrosh and his followers as horde ,so I don't think it was so much a civil war as a fight by the horde for survival against traitors. Those that chose to follow garrosh gave up their right to be part of the horde , a pity tho for you horde players that some of them were your favourite NPCs .
Flex raiding saved my guild . We had two good teams at the end of cata but lost a heap of them for various reasons during the first month of MoP and we never recovered the numbers even for 1 team ( this is a realm problem as well - at the start of 5.4 only 79 out of the thousands of guilds on the realm had killed a raid boss in the expansion as a guild group )
All up a very good expansion
Post by
Rankkor
As for the story, I just feel no one wins from it's direction. Alliance complain it's Horde focused, but it's not a focus that does the Horde any favours.
Hammer >>>>> Nail.
This right here sums up the main problem almost everyone has with the story. Alliance players (very fairly) complain that they had very little focus, most of it was on the horde, but horde players (also very fairly) complain that said focus STINKS, it was the worst type of attention.
This along with the derailment inflicted on most female characters (Moira non-withstanding for now) and the ending are the things I disliked about the plot.
However, when rating a story I need to take into consideration the whole picture, all the good, and all the bad, and weight them against one another. And in the grand scheme of things, I still find that I deeply enjoyed pandarian lore, the stories each zone told, the many characters I met along the way, and the many moments that deeply moved me, or enraged me, or made me laugh, or even made me shed a tear or two (seriously, Dezco's story is so sad D= poor bull needs a hug)
As for cringe-worthy moments, oddly enough I didn't had any. Then again, after the cringe-fest that was the "Elemental Bonds" questline, almost everything else looks like Oscar material by comparison.
Post by
Izichial
As for cringe-worthy moments, oddly enough I didn't had any.
Every single time Taran Zhu shows up, seemingly, for the sole purpose of whining at us and telling us how bad we are. Meanwhile we're essentially doing his job for him while he's either getting in the way, hanging back or rushing in only to get his arse handed to him and needing to be rescued.
Who, after spending the entire expansion insisting that Pandaria is better off without "outsiders" and that the Shado-Pan has everything under control (demonstrating in person how true that is by being possessed by the Sha of Hatred) attempts to take on the Sha of Pride by himself, almost gets killed by the trash and while being rescued by Lorewalker Cho keeps on insisting that everything it's the "outsider's fault" immediately followed by aforementioned outsiders waltzing past him to take out the Sha of Pride.
Should have let Shan Bu kill him so they could get someone competent like Taoshi in charge. Admittedly, talking some sense into Lor'themar and Jaina just after we rescue him from Shan Bu was like the one good thing he did during the entire expansion.
Not to mention that by insisting on a trial in Pandaria for Garrosh ("the Pandaren have suffered more than anyone"... yeah, no) he basically sets the stage for Garrosh escaping and causing the whole Warlords of Draenor shenanigans.
Post by
Alkony
(Taran Zhu) attempts to take on the Sha of Pride by himself, almost gets killed by the trash and while being rescued by Lorewalker Cho keeps on insisting that everything it's the "outsider's fault" immediately followed by aforementioned outsiders waltzing past him to take out the Sha of Pride.
Actually, considering he had been impaled by Garrosh and was still bleeding from the gut, it looked to me like Garrosh had dumped him down the hole after he had put in Y'shaarj's heart and Zhu had gotten trapped behind the door Norushen was guarding.
Thanks for the write up Rankkor. I agree with you on most parts, and I am in total agreement on the frustration of the way the majority of female characters were treated (having to take out Zaela like that broke my heart).
My biggest gripe about PVP is the Bloody coins thing, because I DO NOT like to pvp and got ganked multiple times because my spells kept flagging me without me noticing. Blizzard fobbing it off as "world pvp happened" didn't help matters much.
Post by
Rankkor
Ohh I almost forgot, I didn't added my review of the legendary quest.
Well, now is as good a time as any :P
Legendary Quest
I have mixed feelings about this one too.
The Good: I applaud blizzard for wanting variety, the formula had gone stale, and they wanted to take a different aproach, something that SPECIALLY in the videogame industry is a big risk, but they did it anyways. I applaud bravery like that, rather than sit on your laurels and just milk the tried&tested formula.
One of the most common player complaints with previous legendary iterations is what class does it goes to. Things like "its the turn of the tanks" or "Another caster weapon? what about melee?" or "A legendary just for one class? that's not fair" often pop up. Fangs of the Father was perhaps the most controversial legendary ever made, because it was exclusive to one class (Which in turn led to this class having a brutally unfair advantage over others both in PVE and SPECIALLY in PVP) and it was actually pretty easy to obtain considering how overwhelmingly powerful it was.
So I was glad that for this expansion they decided to simply go ahead and give everyone a legendary. Up to here, we're good. I'm also in awe at how epic in scale the quest felt, because it was an overarching story that went hand-in-hand with the current events of the narrative, and had plenty of awesome moments to behold, superb voiceacting from nearly everyone involved, and made us feel like we were just as important (if not more so) as the major lore figures such as Varian or Vol'jin.
So, to recap, I loved that they wanted to take a different approach to the old formula, I liked how available this quest was to everyone regardless of class, while we're at it, I also love that even casual players who can't raid and can only do LFR were still able to partake in this awesome journey, and I liked how epic, cathartic, and massive this quest felt. Right at the end, it really felt like the conclusion to a long journey, that changed us along the way, as we changed the world around us too.
The Bad: however, the actual tangible rewards of this quest were disappointing to say the least.
There are 2 major reasons people often do legendary quests, or grinds legendary items even if they're obsolete. The first reason is of course how powerful the item in question is, and in this regard, MoPs legendary accomplished its mission, its a VERY powerful cape and meta gem that greatly boost your performance regardless of role, but the other reason people often farmed legendaries is for the visual appeal.
Legendary weapons often feature outlandish, unique, and awe-inspiring designs, and include a lot of visual bragging rights with them. Don't deny it, if you are a melee class you'd LOVE to stroll around your capital brandishing the Warglaives of Azzinoth, because they look frigging awesome. Players grind Dragon's Wrath because not only the staff looks great, the ability to transform into a blue dragon is great. Players grind Shadowmourne not only because the axe looks fantastic, but also because it comes with a nice array of unique toys, tabards, and mounts.
When it comes to visual candy, what does Wrathion's epic journey offers us? A legendary gem with 500 stats that we cannot see. A legendary prismatic socket for our 5.0 and 5.2 weapons that we also cannot see. A legendary meta-gem for our helmets from 5.2 and 5.4 that we also cannot see. And a legendary cloak, that while we can see, its still a cloak and its undeniable that enough players dislike cloaks and often have it disabled.
A piece of cloth on your back is just not as awe-inspiring as a weapon is. I'm sorry, but that's how it is. No matter how unique its design, its still a piece of cloth (that in wow graphics often looks like a tapestry rug) and the rest of the rewards are invisible. There's the wings that pop on our backs, but they only do so during a proc, or randomly, so its not a constant visual enhancement of our characters.
What I am trying to get at here, is that while I certainly applaud them for making a risky move, in the end...... I just prefer my legendaries to be weapons. And I prefer them even more when they come with a cosmetic reward to keep them desirable after their stats stop being relevant. Plus, a cape is not really a weapon unless you're Voldemort I guess, so us becoming stronger for equipping a cape, just doesn't feel as "right" as us becoming stronger by getting a legendary fabled ancient weapon.
Post by
TickleMeThrall
Arena:
Rock, Paper, Arms Warrior rawrrrrrrr
Post by
yzq85
As for cringe-worthy moments, oddly enough I didn't had any.
Every single time Taran Zhu shows up, seemingly, for the sole purpose of whining at us and telling us how bad we are. Meanwhile we're essentially doing his job for him while he's either getting in the way, hanging back or rushing in only to get his arse handed to him and needing to be rescued.
Who, after spending the entire expansion insisting that Pandaria is better off without "outsiders" and that the Shado-Pan has everything under control (demonstrating in person how true that is by being possessed by the Sha of Hatred) attempts to take on the Sha of Pride by himself, almost gets killed by the trash and while being rescued by Lorewalker Cho keeps on insisting that everything it's the "outsider's fault" immediately followed by aforementioned outsiders waltzing past him to take out the Sha of Pride.
Should have let Shan Bu kill him so they could get someone competent like Taoshi in charge. Admittedly, talking some sense into Lor'themar and Jaina just after we rescue him from Shan Bu was like the one good thing he did during the entire expansion.
Not to mention that by insisting on a trial in Pandaria for Garrosh ("the Pandaren have suffered more than anyone"... yeah, no) he basically sets the stage for Garrosh escaping and causing the whole Warlords of Draenor shenanigans.
First of all, Taran's job was VERY simple before the arrival of the Alliance + Horde. His job back then, much like that of his predecessors since the disappearance of Shaohao donkey years ago, was akin to a village police chief. The Shadopan only had to deal with minor disturbances from the Sha, and generally, life was good. There was no major incidents; the mantid had not yet swarmed for his generation, the yaungol were still in Townlong, minding their business, and the hozen-jinyu conflict was not on his watch list. Then, the conflict began, and he saw stuff his predecessors couldn't have imagined.
Also, the Pandaren had suffered not just from the war raging on their soil, but also from the shock of having to integrate into a world which their beloved Emperor had isolated them from due to his pride for f-ing 10,000 years. There is disorientation, and the realisation that the pandaren cannot truly go back to the days of the Mists. It's like them relearning their language after Lei Shen: It would never be the same again.
Garrosh's non-execution was endorsed by Varian as well. Thrall wanted to execute him, but he will not allow Garrosh to be tried by the Alliance. The Shadopan taking him into custody is the only option both sides can agree on.
As for the lore concerning women, the sudden switch for Tyrande to become hot-headed is a bit jarring. Then again, with the Horde beating down on Ashenvale since Cata, she is desperate to get back somehow. She is, after all, willing to allow logging in other parts of Kalimdor in exchange for the Horde leaving their ancient homeland of Ashenvale. The hot-head next to Varian's new-found coolness, which then brings me to Jaina...
In short, I had never liked her stance on anything. She is a mage, not a politician, and it shines like a bloody beacon. She advocated peace when peace is not viable, and then war when war is not viable. Come Warlords of Draenor, maybe she (or Dalaran) can have a taste of the Iron Horde's might. Up to now, the only thing in my book which she had absolutely done right was to sail to Kalimdor on Medivh's advice back in WC 3.
On the rest of Rank's post: Totally agreed with your views on JP. I entered MoP in 5.1 (avoiding the launch crunch), didn't get very serious in gearing up until 5.4 (at the point where JP got more useful, and I don't like the randomness of TI gear).
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