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With the release of the new WoW xpac, there has been lots of hipe and what not, do you think its lived up to it? What do you like about it? What doy uo dislike about it?

I for one LOVE the new xpac and everything about it, questing is a lot better, gives more feel of adventure, the pvp system is really good at the moment, I dont want to say balanced but improved, and lets face, NO mmorpg can ever make a balanced pvp system it just cant work that way. The PvE system is a lot more interesting now with challenges and scenerioes. The Panda race is a really cool, interesting looking race with fun lore and a good starting base. The Monk is also fun, a little OP if you ask me (something like 9 damage reduction cooldowns) but other then that, a fun class.

The only thing that was anyoing was the up in graphics (though this is a good thing) it lead me from playing at something like 80 FPS anywhere I was to playing at 30-40 in open enviorments. But I don't mind spending 100 bucks on a new stick a ram, I'm 1gb under the reccomened so yea.

I'm starting to sound like a fan boy, I probaley am, been playing this game since its release and I always find my self going back to it.

What do you guys think?

The Alliance intro into Pandaria is amazing.

The music is just beyond awesome.

10/10 Blizzard business as usual, still love WoW

Please don't spam the thread with unrelated pics - MDS

I think that sums it up.

This is nice and all, but any opinions on Monk and/or Pandarans? No one played either?

I've got a level 11 pandaran monk, there starting zone is killer nice, the quests are good and they a got a few cinamatics here and there.

I'm not high enough level on my Monk to have a good opinion though sorry.

Please don't spam the thread with unrelated pics - MDS

On a slightly more serious note I'm just starting to get the feeling that Blizzard's kinda scrapping at the bottom of the idea bucket.

"Feck! We lit the world on fire! Now what!?"
"Uh... uh... pandas! Who are also monks"
"....isn't that the plot of Kung Fu panda as well as being an incredible stereotype?"
"Yes"
"Greenlit"

The first thing I thought of when I saw the commercial was:

Please don't spam the thread with unrelated pics - MDS

To be fair, they came up with the panda/monk idea long before kung fu panda came out. Unfortunately, the movie sort of ruined the idea of them except for those die hard warcraft 3 players.

Monks are one of those classes that can do anything. They heal, they tank, they deal damage. I ran stratholme on my lvl 46 druid the other day with four monks. There were so many whirlwinds going...all...the...time...it was awesome.

I dropped the game a few months after Cataclysm was released. This certainly hasn't given me any incentive to pick it back up. Even back in Warcraft 3 I thought the idea was dumb. Not to mention they pokemon minigame they have in there now....

The OP was asking about your experiences in game good or bad, not an excuse for the some of the same old faces to come in and bemoan a game they have way too much of a flaming torch for.

As I have said before, some folks really need to step back and look at the anger they have towards towards a game setting, and before folks rush back to say how they don't care. You wouldn't have posted if that was the case, unless of course you where looking to get a reaction from those who like the game?

Please stay on topic, and don't use threads you don't like the content of as an excuse to post spam pics.


As to my own thoughts.

First night lag was expected, the login servers died again, however this time Blizz had arranged a 'flip the switch' style start to the expansion so if you where already in you didn't require logging back out and in, which is what melted the login servers during the Cata launch.
Sadly some folks where getting kicked randomly, and a hell of a lot of people turned up near the midnight launch, so problems where occurring for most of the first night. However a lot better than the Cata launch so 6 out of 10.

Lag was bad in the Jade forest on my own server at the very least, we partially expected that, but it still seems Blizz isn't getting the influx of players a new expansion brings. Our own guild went from a average of five to six players of an evening during the tail end of Cata, to twenty plus the last three nights running.
The starting zone for the Jade Forest was amazing, but the initial start was such a lag fest, I didn't really notice, other than the 'yah war!' theme they where running with, but yeah the lag was bad.

For the rest of the Jade Forest once you where off the playground ride themed intro, it was pretty good, lag was minimal and it was typical first week mob sniping. So apart from the teething issues of the landing zone noted above, it was pretty smooth, so 7 out of 10.

Setting wise the visuals of the new zones are beautiful, some of best work Blizzard has done, the new mobs are also excellent, any Hunters will be getting their cats from Pandaria after this launch as they have totally surpassed anything previously out there,. par maybe the spirit beasts. Quests have been fun and the story running through has been interesting. The first dungeon is also pretty fun, if simple and in general the boosts many of the class specs got during the 5.04 patch still apply, and few folks are having difficulty leveling.
That is also perhaps a downside as its feel like you are walking through the zone. An actual downer was the leveling of certain professions, some are still quite tough, Enchanting for one, but others have been way to easy. The realm first for Leather working for example went in three hours, where with Cata it took to the second or third day of someone constantly grinding. Although as a bonus our guild regaining realm first fishing master, so thats two out of the last three expansions, the cata lag costing us last time. Still even with all that, I'd still rate it as a lot of fun, and give it 9 out of 10.

The biggest thing so far has been the pet battles, which are frankly amazing. If you have never got Pokemon, you probably wouldn't get this either, but if you have played Pokemon in the past, the memories and fun come flooding back. The only thing I'd advise is to anyone getting into it, is go to Wowinterface and download the addon Pet Battle Quality Glow, yes that is the name. As without that addon you need to cross reference the healths of the pets to have a chance of telling if a pet is Uncommon or Rare quality, where with this addon the pets have a colour ring that lets you see the rarity right from the start of the battle. Not really sure why that wasn't in the set up from the off, but the addon solves that annoyance, so no worries.
Once we everything has settled down from leveling and seeking out the new zones, I foresee pet battling being a big thing in our guild, with leagues and competitions to play out for a long time to come. Easily 10 out of 10.

Apart from that, its only three days in, so plenty to discover yet.

Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne introduced Pandaren in 2003.
Kung Fun Panda came out in 2008.

Next you guys will be telling me that Warhammer rips off Starcraft and WoW. Get your facts straight and stop being sheeple.

The depiction of Pandarens in 2003 was radically different than the one in Mists of Panderia. China even cried fowl cause there was artwork of a Panderan is samurai armor. And now they look... Like Po... Then instead of Brewmasters they made the new class monks (and don't get me started on the cinematic trailer).

At the least Blizzard is aware Kung Fu Panda exists and wanted to do some similar work when revamping the fighting pandas to boost appeal.

Brewmasters are still there, just not playable, I could see a Hero class at some point perhaps.

As to the look, aye I agree, they had a mixed origin previously, but obviously that would cause them issues in China. Tbh, as a fan of the Three Kingdoms era, I'm not entirely devastated by the change.

Legend of the five Rings does the whole China/Japan mixed look for me quite happily, so it being focused wholly on China is a boon in my opinion. Other folks millage may vary of course.

Hell, Aurelia got a Polearm this morning that looks like Black Dragon (aka Gaun Yu's weapon from the three Kingdoms era) and it looks amazing. Just a shame my Hunter main doesn't have a CC weapon anymore, other wise that would have been it via transmog.

As to the Kung Panda connection, also personally not bothered, I'm actually a fan of both films and very happy they intend for there to be six in total.

Oh and just to earn some groans, I've already encountered Po references in the speech, and a arrow to the knee joke.

Found it OK so far - my opinion has been tempered by the usual crap that goes on during an expansion release so I expect my outlook will start being a bit more positive in the weeks ahead. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to play much since I have the misfortune to be on a very high population server; when I get home from work I have a small window of a couple of hours to play; at the moment this has been getting swallowed by the log in queues - usually takes an hour or more just to get in. I hope the queues settle down a bit in the weeks to come.

Yeah I've seen comments about some of the larger servers have been having issues, so much so I see Blizz opened up some free transfer migrations to smaller realms for some of the largest, so it must be bad out there.


On a side note, I was in error, it seems Blizz has clarified one of the Monk sub-classes as the Brewmaster. Its basically the Monk Tank option.
A pity, but I suppose they are going on the idea all Pandaren not matter the class know martial arts in some form.

My main hit 88 last night, and have really enjoyed the first three zones, Valley of the Four Winds especially.

Never liked the look of World of Warcraft, the goofy style, mediocre graphics, weird-ass storylines and (probably) large amounts of lonely Korean teens with not much better to do rather puts me off.

When I saw the TV advert for this...It did not improve my outlook on it.

I highly doubt I'll be picking this one up. But then MMORPGs have never appealed to me. They usually involve joining and routinely being pulverized by hackers or sad people who spend way to much time on them and take them FAR too seriously.

Which is why I was horrified when I heard Skyrim was going online (another problem to add to the large pile, including dull story, incredibly drab and muted visuals that manage to make fire and magicy things look dull, confusing landscape, incredibly boring and awkward combat, and the GODDAMN WOLVES).

I'm guessing you've never actually played an MMORPG then..

Umm...Yeah. Basically.

I should probably give one a try, and chances are when I do try out the Skyrim Online I will love it, but as for WOW...Nah.

I could recommend several good free to play ones. That way you don't have to pay a dime to try them out.

For example, there's the DnD and Lord of the Rings MMOs, Champions Online and the DCU mmo, and the Guild Wars gmes don't charge you monthly so it's just a flat fee to purchase.

Thanks, I shall check them out.

Thanks guys for all the posts, great to here a lot of you are enjoying the expansion.

For the not so useful posts; I only asked for opinions on gameplay, not a bunch of useless pics. I don't mind if you don't like the game and have quit it in the past, that's fine but let the other 12,000,000 of us get on with our game.

Another thing I gotta point out in the xpac is the loot system, not much has changed, but the way blizz has changed the look of it is quite well done and neat, quite simple and nice to look at.

The Pet battle system is so friggen fun, I've got a little mini World Destroyer pet thats level 20 and its great fun.

My useless pic was my opinion on the gameplay.

It was a picture of a bed with three Zs on it.

 Melissia wrote:
My useless pic was my opinion on the gameplay.

It was a picture of a bed with three Zs on it.

Any multiplayer game is as good as the people you are playing with, if you try to play WoW like a single player game you will find it a snore fest, but if you make friends and try to be social it's really fun.

I don't like WoW, its too streamlined. Every quest is like go kill x amount of this/go get y amount of this from x and bring it back to me. Its extremely boring.

 Alexzandvar wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
My useless pic was my opinion on the gameplay.

It was a picture of a bed with three Zs on it.

Any multiplayer game is as good as the people you are playing with, if you try to play WoW like a single player game you will find it a snore fest, but if you make friends and try to be social it's really fun.

I was in a fairly active guild (same people who were pushing me to get WoW, in fact). It was not fun for me when playing it either way.

I was bored with the lore, I hated the graphics, and I disliked the gameplay as too static compared to what I was used to with other MMOs (esp. City of Heroes, which WoW was entirely inferior to).

 Melissia wrote:
I could recommend several good free to play ones. That way you don't have to pay a dime to try them out.

For example, there's the DnD and Lord of the Rings MMOs, Champions Online and the DCU mmo, and the Guild Wars gmes don't charge you monthly so it's just a flat fee to purchase.

Ive actually been eyeing the GW2 game pretty hard. The problem is, Id need to upgrade my graphics card because my current one is a steamer that came with my PC. But I found a pretty good card that would work on my PC for around 120ish. But I dunno, thats one of those plans thats a ways down the road

I'd say don't worry too much about it. GW2 is still fresh out, and they're doing bug patches still. So when you do get the card and the game, you'll end up having a more stable, less buggy game to play than those of us that preordered it anyway

You'll also have guildmates that can support you instead of almost everyone still trying to level up characters and crafting.

I've hit 90 as of Saturday, and have also fallen back to pet battles as I knew I would. I have around 280 individual pets as of this morning. (Although I had 188 before MoP went live.)

In general I am really enjoying the expansion, the swarms of dailies, now with removed cap, means I can do some, all or mix and match when I want.
The fact they also give 5 valor points a time, means in time I know I can have the odd piece of really good gear to help me back into dungeons and raiding.

Talking of dungeons have done four now, all of them have been excellent, better than anything I experienced in Cataclysm and I am actually looking forward to the idea of raiding again, something I've not been bothered about since Wrath of the Lich King.

The tillers quests and storyline has been a lot of fun, and tbh I had not been expecting that, its basically got me into a lesser kind of farmville, the shame.

The style, music and theme however still bring a smile to my face whenever I log in, its one I can see myself being happy with for a long time to come yet.

I'm a Raider, we downed two bosses in the Mogushu Vaults last night, and got 40 people together to kill the Sha of Anger! Was amazing!

I'm loving MoP. They should have boosted normal BoA To lvl 85 though.