Mists of Pandaria
I’ve been playing to World of Warcraft on and off for six years.
I have fought in Azeroth against the Alliance; I have wandered the desolated Outland and plotted against Illidan; I have set sails to Northrend and battled the mighty Lich King; I have lived through the Sundering and will fight Azeroth’s greatest enemy.
Yet, as the years go by, I have found each new expansion less and less appealing. Vanilla WoW was a great game though it lacked many features I couldn’t play without nowadays.
Burning Crusade was, in my opinion, the greatest of the series, perfectly balanced difficulty-wise: it was hard to achieve greatness but the rewards felt pretty awesome.
Wrath of the Lich King has been a significant U-turn: it was easy to achieve greatness and the rewards felt bland.
Cataclysm is close to being the greatest if it wasn’t for the tasteless story.
This week, Blizzard has announced its next expansion to World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. I think it will be the best. Let’s see why.
Pandarens
Black and white, furry, cuddly and wise, the Pandarens will be the new playable race. While some think it’s a joke and pandarens should not be added to the game, I think it’s great and I’ve been dying to play them in World of Warcraft since I first played Chen Stormstout in Warcraft III.
The race being neutral and the player having to choose between the Horde and the Alliance is a good idea. I have always preferred the Alliance to the Horde, but I settled for the latter because PvE and PvP progress on the realms I played on was balanced towards the Horde. All my friends are Horde now, and although I really want to play a Pandaren, I would not leave my friends for it. It’s great that I don’t have to make the choice.
Everything that comes with the Pandaren people is great, too. Especially the architecture, the landscapes and the lore. As the developers remarked, we currently have almost all real-life cultures in game save for African and Asian. With Mists of Pandaria, we now have the Asian heritage and ancient culture.
I particularly enjoyed the sceneries from Pandaria that were unveiled last weekend at the Blizzcon. I’m sure it will feel great to venture in the lush Pandaria, especially after the rather gloomy last three expansions1.
Moreover, it brings a refreshing breeze to the musicality of the game, which I find was moving in circles.
Finally, the new pandaren model is thoroughly detailed and said to have ten times the number of bones of previous models. It doesn’t take more than watching the trailer to see the freedom it brings to the animators: the facial expressions of the Pandarens are stunning.
The Monk
While I was playing a few years back, I liked to stop and think about what class the developers could possibly add.
It was obvious a melee healer was a good candidate, however silly it sounded. I wasn’t too sure how it could work but I’m now happy to see that I wasn’t the only one having this crazy idea and that Blizzard seems to have figured this out.
However, I will probably not play the Mistweaver. You see, I’ve been playing my rogue for five years now. And despite the class being one of the least played and loved2, its gameplay appeals to me: shadowy, quick and agile melee combatant.
The Windwalker is very close to being a rogue, wearing leather and being a melee combatant too. He doesn’t use his weapons though, instead relying on his fists and feet to do the beating.
For the times when a tank is needed, I will play the Brewmaster. Inspired by the drunken style, the Brewmaster leans, swings, dodges and moves like he’s drunk. For whoever watched many Kung Fu movies, and especially the great “Drunken Master (1978)”, this will be like impersonating Jackie Chan and battling the many foes of China.
Overall, I’m pretty eager to play the monk. I think it’s a great addition to the game and its gameplay is well-thought and interesting.
Talents
I theorycraft since late Burning Crusade. I like to look for ways to optimize my characters. Talents have been the primer way to do it. But it quickly turned into having one or two cookie-cutter builds and lots of sub-optimal builds.
Cataclysm brought a change to the talents system by killing altogether the sub-optimal builds: now there are three cookie-cutter builds, one for each specialization. There is not much choice, and if any, it’s bland, savorless, lackluster.
Mists of Pandaria let go of the old system and brings a completely new one. There is one talent tree per class with six tiers each, allowing to choose between three talents per tier.
None of these talents are clear winner over their alternatives: it’s a matter of what’s best adapted to a situation. And I think it’s great.
Akin to Diablo III, the player can modify its talents at any time — for a modest sum of money. This too is great.
Scenarios and Challenges
Last interesting — to me at least — bit from the preview, these two features are Blizzard’s attempt at adding more endgame content.
I welcome these features since the game feels pretty boring once the max level is reached: dailies, raid, dailies, raid, dailies, battleground, raid… You see my point.
The challenges are especially welcomed since they add an even higher level of difficulty to the heroics — which are far too easy once a little bit of gear is acquired.
My only wish is that it will not stop Blizzard releasing new heroics: since patch 4.1 hit the live realms on April 26, everyone has been running the same two dungeons. Six months with two highly similar dungeons is an epic pain.
Conclusion
I’m really excited to play to Mists of Pandaria, to venture from the Wandering Isle to Pandaria with my Pandaren monk, Bambuu.