Thoughts on WoW MoP

If anyone who knows me well actually reads this thing, (ofcourse I am kidding.) you will know that I Play World of Warcraft, not obsessively like I used to, actually I play it very sparsely now, to avoid myself from getting bored with it, which is very easy for it to do.

I read MMO-Champion when the news about World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria was trademarked by Blizzard, and then was only hours late for the announcement of it actually becoming a reality.

My thoughts on Playing a Pandaren are as optimistic as they have ever been, being a person who played through the warcraft 3 campaign and got to know the Pandaren with their drinking and puns is something I always wanted to be a part of WoW, and the whole debate about playing Pandas being a silly idea is rubbish. Pro-tip, idiots of the wow fanbase, they were originally going to be added in expansion one, burning crusade, as an alliance race, and according to a dev chart made in 2004, they had them planned for expansion 3 originally, which cataclysm took over. It's not like its the first cute or alien race, remember Draenei? And theres Gnomes and Goblins for the players who want to play something adorable. Besides this fact Pandaren aren't snuggably cute, they weren't in WCIII either, they were more friendly and happy go lucky looking, but the world has changed over the years, and thus, so have the inhabitants.

The Pandaren are one of the characters I've always wanted to play, just like I've always wanted to play an Abomination.

There are, other changes, a lot of them good, but some need to be looked at.

Incentives for dungeons/raiders to run quests and do outdoor/daily kind of stuff. For example finishing a quest might give you a buff for the day, and maybe that buff will let you roll on a loot that only appears to people with that buff.

Okay, straight up, this is a fucking horrible idea, dailies to get loot, it disgusts me they would even hazard the possibility of such an outrageous and idiotic plan.

If there is one thing that I truly hate about wow, its dailies! I absolutely despise them with every fibre of my being, the only ones I will put up with is the 7 dungeon runs and holiday bosses.

Because atleast those are mildly interesting. You know how Spiral Knights decided limiting dungeon runs to how much myst energy you could buy / afford therefore making gear available only to people who had a lot of money or time? Well Blizzard saw this and cried "Three Rings will never out do US on bad design decisions, daily requirements on gear for everyone! You won't even be able to fucking SEE the loot under all those daily quests."

I wouldn't be so angry about this if they weren't trying to make it sound like a GOOD idea, because its a very BAD idea, and basically forces players who don't have the time or give a shit about dailies to actually have to participate in them.

I'd be okay if it was simply "Do this quest in this storyline, you always get to roll on that loot" THAT wouldn't be nearly as bad, for one you only have to do regular storyline quests once, and its something you'll likely end up doing anyway, either for achievements or because they are just enjoyable, much like a lot of quests in WoW since Cata.

However, no matter how fun quests are, it's still going to get annoying after the 50th fucking time.

Okay, now for another subject of contraversy.

Pet Battle System

This one is rather controversial, but in essence its basically like saying. "Yo dawg, I herd you liek games, so I put a Pokemon game in your WoW MMO so you can play while you play."

This is, likely the most Blatant ripoff of pokemon I've ever seen, if its fun and it is genuinely enjoyable though, I don't really care.

Pokemon games are basically dead now anyway, Pokemon Black and White were clearly a desperate attention grab. Mind you, so is this expansion.

Now we have this.

PvE Scenarios

• PvE Scenarios are a way to give new interesting content that doesn't make sense in a dungeon content.
• Scenarios are more about reusing parts of the world in interesting new ways, and introducing new types of PvE gameplay that we've never seen before like PvE battlegrounds.
• They are short instances for a few players, the amount of players can vary depending on the scenario, some of them can be for 3 players.
• You don't need the typical tank/heal/dps setup, you will just be able to enter and play your role no matter what it is.
• It will be a staged experience where you will try to accomplish some greater goal
• For example, a scenario might require you to kill 25 kobolds in stage 1, then find and return 4 goldshire children, and then kill the boss.
• Developers would like to do PvE battlegrounds, where you will have to slay 50 alliance/horde soldiers, destroy 6 towers and the barracks, and then defeat the enemy General.
• They could replace group quests.
• It uses the same queue system as the dungeon finder
• Since there is no role requirements, queues should be instant.

This is actually my most anticipated change, for those who didn't play warhammer online and didn't get to do a public quest, here is the basic overview.

It would take place on the open world, and  you would have stages, objectives were usually 2-4 minutes each, when you completed one, the next one would immeadiately initiate, once you did the final objective, usually killing a boss, you would be rewarded with phat lewts, and get a decent amount of influence in that area. (basically it was like rep for easy gear)

While some people disliked it, I found it an awesome thing to waste time on, especially since most of the regular quests in warhammer online were kill x, acquire x, or kill x and acquire y. There were a few fun ones, but Public quests were rather intense, and also made gearing up significantly less of a pain in the ass, especially in an MMO where the only active times were primetime. I honestly anticipate this change as much as playing a Pandaren

Monk Resources

• Chi (energy) slowly regenerates and is only used for your Jab and Roll abilities.
• Jab generates Light and Dark force, which are used for everything else. Some finishing move uses dark force, some use the light force.
• No auto attack! Devs want you to have this street fighter feel where you punch a lot

I'm fine with the Chi thing, that sounds interesting, however, dodge roll and jab sound a little less glorified, not because I don't encourage skill, but because of lag.

Imagine if I was fighting a sentient being in pvp, they went to attack me, and because their ping is only 105 (american) and mine was 564 (Australian, and it can get much more ridiculous) if they attack you with a fast projectile or punch, and I dodge roll to get out of it, their speed advantage and my lag disadvantage mean that even if I clicked when he went for me, I'd get hit mid roll. therefore making the skill only relevant if you are in close proximity to the server, and going by the fact the Oceanic server is in California, and not Australia, if I was the most skilled pvper in the world and dodgeing would usually be a piece of cake, it wouldn't matter. Granted, I could guess at when they would attack me and roll a second or so before they tried to lunge at me. But that is unreliable, and stupid.

The Dodge roll theory applies vice versa as well, meaning an american could dodge all of my attacks, and I couldn't hit him once.

In conclusion, this is another blatant ripoff, they are trying to go for the guild wars model, I believe. The thing is, their game isn't designed around dodge rolls. Most projectiles hit the player even if the idiot shooting is facing 45 degrees wrongwards. mage fireballs, warlock shadowbolts etc, home for the target, so this change is complete horseshit, the only things you will be able to possibly avoid is shockwave, dragon's breath, cone of cold, typhoon, and other frontal cone abilities. How many mages have avoided a shadow bolts damage because they blinked?

Exactly. The dodge roll is a complete waste of time.

Autoattacking not being a thing for monks is probably okay, though I can't say I fancy the idea of pressing key '2' every second.

Everything else sounds pretty good or like it won't have much impact on what I do in wow, if Blizzard does this right, and pulls out all the stumps to make this expansion fun and amazing, it will give them new life, should they fail however, I may have to question the lifespan of their game, in anycase, it certainly won't be finite if this expansion turns out anything like Diablo III.

Thats me done for the day.

-Bizarre Monkey out.