Opening ceremony and the big WoW announcement is, as expected, the next expansion. And, also as expected, its the Mists of Panderia, with Pandaren as a playable race.
Immediately, a lot of players boo-hooed this as the death of the game and claimed that they were not going to play a game with pandas.
My first question is, why are pandaren any worse than werewolves? Are there a lot of closet Twilight fans out there that really liked werewolves? Would this announcement have been better with sparkly vampires instead of pandas?
Anyway, on to serious impressions. I think this could be a good thing.
The past few expansions have been leading more and more to WoW being a pure endgame treadmill. They follow a similar pattern…
- expansion comes out, people powerlevel as fast as they can to level cap
- jump into endgame, where most bosses are the target of complaints that they are either rehashes of old bosses, or too gimmicky
- stay in endgame for two years until burnout ensues
- next expansion, start over
This model cannot continue. I think that repeating the same ideas for another expansion would have been much worse. Since this expansion doesn’t have a big-name end boss, I am hoping that the pattern will be different this time around.
We need more things to do when not raiding. We need a reason to leave Stormwind/Orgimmar. We need more interaction between players. Whatever may come of this expansion, if its not all endgame-focused then I have hope that Blizzard is ready to try and break the mold. Perhaps it will keep my interest for another few years.
The above post is an honest outlook and I totally respect it. The biggest thing I really want to agree/emphasize on is getting people to get the hell out of the 2 main capitols. That to me was the hugest mistake. As a world PVPer I miss the days where storming any of the Cities was a challenge and you could walk into at least the main 4 (Ogrim, SW, UC, and IF) and catch some action. Actually even Darnassus had some decent action. I do wish there were more opportunities for world pvp. There are no serious choke points anymore in the main world. Getting more stuff to do in game at the end levels making toons travel a lot would be a huge help. wpvp may even come back to a degree. I remember when Southshore was a serious major hub of fighting due to the locality of both horde and Alliance. This died. Cata compartmentalized it so it wasnt fun to roam anymore. Anyways, good post!
I appreciate the sentiment too. My main problem with the upcoming expansion is the fact that all the major announcements so far have been gimmicks: panda’s, pokemon pet battling, updated talent trees etc. This seems very much like a patch and fairly content light for an x-pac.
Where is the nemesis casting a deadly shadow over Azeroth?
I have been excited about every expansion announcement in wow until this one. Maybe it’s just burnout on my part but none of these new announcements excite me at all.
So did you miss the part where there’s an entire new continent on the scale of Outland and Northrend? That was the biggest overall complaint about Cataclysm–no new vast world to explore. We get that in MoP.
I think that this expansion will excited the people who play the game in all of its various methods, but will turn off those who play just to raid.
With no big epic bad guy to kill, the outlook for raiding seems like it will be much less intense. However, new zones and races and classes appeal to those who enjoy questing, exploring, and leveling. Since those players are the silent majority, I can easily see this expansion being successful.
New race, new class, brave new world. I really like this. The new talents, those actually seem more situational. Almost none of that old “pick this or you are bad”, for the most part you can actually pick talents that you enjoy. Instead of the big Bond villains bent on taking over the world it’s more about Red vs. Blue, Horde vs. the Alliance. Bringing back the War in Warcraft. I’m all for it.
I do have a minor complaint about the Rogue talents, though. Preparation, Shadowstep and the newcomer Burst of Speed on the same tier… ShS and BoS I get, they are both mobility tools. Prep, however, it’s also a DPS tool. It does too much, it’s too powerful. It’s not a choice of Utility vs. Utility, it’s the old DPS vs. Utility and we all know which side wins that one, every single time. Preparation needs to go, or we will be balanced around one talent for a 3rd expansion.
All in all though, I really like how Panda is looking to be. Raid encounters should work out well, long as the fights are interesting. It’s gonna be a great expansion.