Thursday, December 27, 2012

Mist of Pandaria: Likes and dislikes

My first post for Mists of Pandaria is going to be submitted for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival. I highly recommend Cold's blog for WoW related content, particularly if you are into making gold in WoW.  (I goofed about what I thought the topic was to be for January...WHOOPS!! guess it'll be my 2nd MoP blog post for the carnival, LOL)

Unlike a lot of folks out there that were complaining about MoP being a ripoff of the 3D Jack Black Kung Fu Panda movie, I never thought so. Blizzard has a great track record of providing rich, engaging story-lines with WoW in which you can immerse yourself in many ways with the huge variety of races and classes available to players.

One thing I am REALLY enjoying in MoP is the incredibly rich lore they have created for Pandaria. I am   impressed that they have done a great job of showing that Pandaria was connected to the rest of Azeroth with things like the inclusion of Zandalari Trolls and the story of how Pandaria was separated from the Azerothian mainland at the time of the sundering.. I must admit that I am not a deep scholar of all the lore of Pandaria, with just a single level 90 toon.  As can be expected, I have a lot of questions with Pandaria having seemingly been part of the original mega-continent of Azeroth, but that in no way distracts from the rich lore they have created within Pandaria.

Now for the 'not so much' stuff.
The early levels and zones for 85 and 85 are super easy for the most part. I remember (maybe not exactly fondly, hehe) that the stuff in Hellfire Peninsula and Zangarmarsh, at least right after BC launched, had mobs at 61 and 61 that deserved a significant amount of respect sue tho the (then) massive amount of damage they dished out. I don'tr recall Wrath or Cataclysm being AS drastic, but to a certain extent it was there since you never really went into a new area with most of the mobs there being at a level BELOW the previous expansions max level. You HAD to respect the mobs, even if they were at your level (anyone remember the Nerubians just outside of Warsong Hold in Borean Tundra, they could and did teach you to respect them very quickly, if for no other reason than they could get a gang on you rather quickly. But the next irksome thing I am discovering is that the difficulty level seems to grow exponentially once you start doing quests at 87 and into 88. You get accustomed to a certain level of difficulty from what you encounter at lower level then start getting into questing areas where you can get your ass handed to you over and over again - and get overwhelmed VERY quickly by too many mobs in too tight an area. I've run into quests that are supposed to be for level 87 that I have shied away from doing on certain toons.

That gets into a parallel gripe that some classes are just gonna have a hard time leveling by doing quests in an area FOR their level. There are things in KunLai Summit and Townlong Steppes that seem atrocious for the alleged levels for which they're 'designed.' A lot of stuff seems better suited for tackling only after you've hit level 90 and have a minimum item level of 450 or better, preferably better. I've never considered my druid or my rogue to be particularly squishy until I started trying to do some of the quests in those zones at levels 87 and 88. I'm finding that my warlock is able to take on some very amazing challenges that I could NEVER duplicate with my druid, rogue or warrior (though to be fair, I haven't gotten my warrior up all that high yet in this expansion ever since discovering my prot pally has amazing survivability and usefulness in gather leather from big pulls and from herbing nearly anywhere she wants.

The nice thing is there is a lot more life left in Mists of Pandaria and I am looking forward to everything I haven't gotten to yet that is already out, and for things yet to come.

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