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[Column] World of Warcraft: Looking Back at Mists of Pandaria
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The Tourist is our way of revisiting favorites of the past, recent and otherwise. In our latest column, we take a look at World of Warcraft's Mist of Pandaria expansion and what it brought to the game. Read on and the leave your memories of Pandaria in the comments.
WoW was my first true MMO love. I remember being awed by everything when I made my first character, captured in the wonder of what lay ahead and the mystery of all around. It was scary, and thrilling, and extremely fun. I bought a cheap laptop just so I could play during my breaks at college. When I discovered instances, I called a friend who was also new and gushed. He logged right on and joined me in the Deadmines. I won the blue mage staff from the last boss and believed that I'd found something so rare that I was in the money. Shortly after, I was scouring the internet trying to figure out how to un-soulbind an item. This was the mystery, the adventure, and the compelling thread that drew me through the next three years.
Read more of Chris Coke's The Tourist: Looking Back at Mists of Pandaria.
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Comments
It was more enjoyable that Cata, but so is pretty much anything ever. That's about the only nice thing I can say about. Timeless Isle was a disaster imo, I'm glad they won't be forcing another one of those down our throats with WoD.
I look forward to WoD only because of the promise of relevant small group content being included in the game again for the first time since Wrath.
I'll be much happier with the game without some weird Asian theme going on too.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
I just bought MoP from the Blizzard store for $10. I'll probably buy a month of game time for Christmas vacation. Hopefully it's better than Cataclysm. I don't think that's asking too much.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
hehe looking back?
i just got a timecard this past month -to play this expac.
i was a little impressed with myself how much im enjoying it.
scenarios- looking for raid-timeless isle...all good stuff.
the graphics are a little better than last expac...my only gripe with it , this just feels like the wow world landed in anothe rgame altogether..feels like characters took a vacation to another game.
all in all its a nice expac. much improvements from 2 years ago. i hope their character reskins will do the game justice.
I would say it's a lot better than Cataclysm, but as you said, that wouldn't be hard to do
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
Time isle and looking for raid, it what actually kept me playing so far...
scenarios too..
way better than cataclysm dailies.
I do LFR quite frequently. LFR is a good feature for sure, it works around my schedule. Scenarios aren't the kind of small group content I had in mind really, but those aren't bad either.
I was done with Timeless Isle in about 2 hours, I realized it was much less of a grind to gear up through raids /scenarios. The entire purpose of the Island is a catch up mechanism, but it seems to blockade you from catching up at every opportunity through poor RNG.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
Played-Everything
Playing-LoL
Played: MCO - EQ/EQ2 - WoW - VG - WAR - AoC - LoTRO - DDO - GW/GW2 - Eve - Rift - FE - TSW - TSO - WS - ESO - AA - BD
Playing: Sims 3 & 4, Diablo3 and PoE
Waiting on: Lost Ark
Who's going to make a Cyberpunk MMO?
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
Currently playing:
Rift
Played:
SWToR, Aion,EQ, Dark Age of Camelot
World of Warcraft, AoC
Even though Cataclysm was generally a horrible expansion, i think the undersea zone and the subterranean one are two of the best of the entire game.
Until you cancel your subscription, you are only helping to continue the cycle of mediocrity.
My order of greatness: Wotlk > BC > classic > Cata > MoP.
MoP failed on so many levels. No new dungeons after the initial launch, and only raids. Dailies, more dailies, and even more dailies, which required gated content, to even unlock more dailies. Then Timeless Isle came and failed hard. It was claimed to be "dynamic", but they were literally just mob pinatas.
Wrath of the Lich King was brilliantly done, and quite entertaining. I did not like Cata at all, that was a flop for me, I think primarily because it felt as though they did not want to put much effort into it. Despite that, there are parts of Cata I thought were interesting but not necessarily attention grabbing: The underwater area and Deepholm are the two areas that come to mind. I have enjoyed MoP for the most part. I have been playing since launch and have all of the Collector's Editions including vanilla and after testing other games, fairly consistently, I always want to come back and goof off on WoW and this expansion is no different, though I did not spend too much time in BC or Cata. I do play other games though and I am definitely looking forward to the half dozen sandbox games being built, bout time!
I enjoyed the farming part of MoP, that was entertaining and creative so I look forward to the next expansion with the garrison building idea they have. I am not sure it won't look like Cata where they remade the areas saying everything is different when in fact very little changed, so, it's questionable to me whether the land will be interesting, but I hope they make up for it with new concepts. Oh and I enjoyed the pet battle stuff, that is pretty cool too.
I hope they decide to add mounts that can both fly and swim quickly. Swim animations for all mounts. Maybe even mounts with special abilities that are just cool. Anyway, I don't want to get into it as I could easily write 50 pages on WoW pro's and con's.
I hated that outside of raids all we had was crappy LFR and scenarios, outside of raiding I don't want to do a watered down version of the same raid I do all week, and I don't want to do 3 man content that requires zero group dynamics that have made up WoW for years. Not to mention the crap ton of dailies on release. It was just a bad idea all around to not have any new dungeons outside of release.
I am pretty much done with WoW for the time being. The only thing that kept me playing (raiding) is even boring now for me, and I highly doubt I will be purchasing WoD with all these interesting and promising MMOs coming out in the future. They don't even have to be amazing for me, they just have to be different than the same thing I've been playing for 10 years at this point and actually have content, and they will be worth it to me.
The sole reason for the Kung Fu Panda theme was to hopefully stop the slide in Asian subs - revenue is king.
For me, vanilla was about the journey something I enjoyed greatly. It had communities that by their closed nature created behavioral responsibilities. It was also simple - level your character, run dungeons for your blue dungeon set and then raid all while leveling your trades and WORKING for your mount etc. PvP was also simple and I loved that people were so determined to win back in that day that I could go out to the beach and retrun to the same AV hours later. Beating the other faction was the priority.
Today, the game consists of mini runs to end game and then repetitive grind. Sure there may be new people joining but the leveling experience has changed so much that there really isn't any journey to experience. Since the company has moved to cash cow status it has been operating by keeping its sub the same and reducing costs thru reduction in quality. Today the experience consists of:
The addition of scenarios, pet battles, farms etc is merely a cheap time sync.
Personally I think its about time they increase the sub cost so they can produce more quality content after all the $15/4 per week is a pittance - I spend more than that on coffee a day. That way they can concentrate on keeping it an MMO and let the facebookers go play candy crush or pet rescue saga to their hearts content rather than bring that rubbish to an MMO.
I never started playing MMO's to collect pets.
because having to click my mouse to mix poison is fun?