Is Mists of Pandaria the greatest PvE expansion ever created?

[snaxattax]

it's way, way, way too hard to mainswitch in MOP. you need to be able to buy last patch tier from a valor vendor, and any sort of mundane 'legendary' like the one we had this expac needs to be account wide (and should also be a consistent thing not some stupid RNG - RNG is for rare/prestige/optional stuff, but if it's something classes are balanced around you should be able to know when you're going to get the stupid thing). same with charms/bonus rolls. lesser charms should be an account wide currency, as well.

blizzard says shit like 'this makes your main more meaningful' but they don't realize that people who actually raid at a high, but not 30 hour a week, level need to be able to change mains due to guild needs.

[Statix]

Wrath was awful, Naxx, ToGC and to a lesser extent icc were pretty lame imo

Were you braindead when you played those instances? Naxx and ICC are two of the greatest raids ever created.

Mists of Pandaria is far from the best PVE expansion. I never played The Burning Crusade much; started a few months before Wrath of the Lich King. WotLK is still the greatest expansion for me. It's all downhill from there. Mists of Pandaria is a huge improvement over Cataclysm, but honestly, the story isn't compelling. The Lich King was an awesome bad guy. Deathwing was a pushover. Mists of Pandaria has no bad guy.

[Brakthir]

Were you braindead when you played those instances? Naxx and ICC are two of the greatest raids ever created.

Mists of Pandaria is far from the best PVE expansion. I never played The Burning Crusade much; started a few months before Wrath of the Lich King. WotLK is still the greatest expansion for me. It's all downhill from there. Mists of Pandaria is a huge improvement over Cataclysm, but honestly, the story isn't compelling. The Lich King was an awesome bad guy. Deathwing was a pushover. Mists of Pandaria has no bad guy.

Wrath Naxx was one of their worst raids ever released. I'm not sure what you're talking about. It was full cleared in like, 2 days.

[Orkwuzhere]

Next, we have 5 mans. This is an issue that has been dealt with OVER AND OVER AND OVER. TBC hcs were too hard at the time, wrath were too easy (from posts back then). So what did blizz do, they created Cata heroics, which were TBC difficulty IF you had levelling/ heroic gear. What happened? People cried oceans, so about a flat out 30% nerf went out to all of them, cuz for the life of god, they didn;t know how to CC or dps. So what happened when DS or Firelands hit, people overgeared nerfed instances, and based on that hyperbole, started qqing they were too easy. Blizz not giving a shit, made MoP Heroics, quite intense if in beginning levelling gear, but got progressively insanely easier. But then what, for the collect few people who wanted a challenge, there were Challenge Modes. Everyone seems to think challenge modes are supposed to be Alone in the Darkness difficulty. Their difficulty at the beginning of the expansion is supposed to rival that of TBC heroics. And you know what.. they probably did. Nowadays, with gear with so many sockets, its sort of futile, but let's see you go into The Mechanar Heroic in sunwell gear and say you cant zerg it down. Yea exactly, stop bitching CM's provided their purpose, if you want its actual difficulty, stop buying it for gold from people who have gear, or just do it in full 463 dungeon blues, you know.. if you want a genuine experience.

Also, sorry to keep saying this, the same guy also mentioned that heroic mechanics are too forgiving. What? Im sorry did you not notice the heroic tag next to the difficulty marker. Am i supposed to hold your hand and tell how to not get your face blasted by a lightning orb? If you cant do it, dont bother heroic raiding, normal raiding might be better for you. MoP has accomodated for MANY MANY variations of skill levels this tier (ever more with flex raid). their new policy of gear progression is also excellent, they dont have to nerf the raids, however your valor lets you keep upgrading your gear so you keep making bosses easier by outgearing them.

There's a difference between a challenging heroic like Halls of Stone and Halls of Reflection and Heroics with dumb bullshit mechanics/obstacles like Pinnacle, Grim Batol, and Dead Mines. The Dead Mines obstacle course was complete bullshit due to the camera even if you knew how to move around it. I hate Heroic Ikiss from BC, but Grim Batol's 3rd boss was pretty awful on heroic.

[Txiv]

As someone who played since vanilla I defiantly enjoy this current patch the most. I think there are slight shortcomings in the narrative for raids ( HOF is only one that seemed to make sense as to why we are raiding) . But the bosses themselves are tremendous in design.

This expac really shines though in the other stuff available, hunting war scouts or rare elites. Working on good challenge modes . Even just working the farm. It's the small stuff like this that can keep an audience engaged when they feel a little worn from raiding ( which I'm sure any long term player has felt).

[Zonex]

There's a difference between a challenging heroic like Halls of Stone and Halls of Reflection and Heroics with dumb bullshit mechanics/obstacles like Pinnacle, Grim Batol, and Dead Mines. The Dead Mines obstacle course was complete bullshit due to the camera even if you knew how to move around it. I hate Heroic Ikiss from BC, but Grim Batol's 3rd boss was pretty awful on heroic.

You seem to have forgotten about Halls of origination, lost city, shadowfang keep, stonecore, BRC, throne of the tides, etc. These were basic non gimmicky mechanical knowledge checks. People couldnt burst it down in its intended gear level. They actually had to play, same as in TBC.

If that isn't enough, remember how difficult zulgurub and zulaman were when it first came out for the average player (not hc geared raiers).. ye... people started complaining and blizz nerfed. Now they make it easy, and give you a difficult mode as an option, and people still complain.

[Vigilant]

MoP is bland. The story sucks, the Chinese theme was terrible and the colors my god, I've never seen entire zones be one color. Half the zones are either all green or all black. Even the raids are that way, ToT is freaking all blue/dark blue.

Guess you've never been to Shadowmoon Valley, Netherstorm, or Icecrown. Honorable mentions to Hellfire Peninsula and Borean Tundra for being exceptionally bland starting zones.

[Kharli]

MoP might be the worst raiding expansion at least in my opinion.

1. Wrath (ulduar and ICC - amazing raids)
2. BC (karazhan, BT - amazing)
3. Cata (BWD, BoT, FL and even some DS all good or great raids)
4. Vanilla (I actually enjoyed the simplicity of the boss mechanics. Baron geddon still one of my all-time favorite fights. YOU ARE THE BOMB!)
5. MoP (MSV, HoF and ToES were all garbage in my opinion. I did like ToT though. If SoO turns out good, I might bump this above vanilla.)

yep.

If your going to count ALL OF the MoP raids, please count THE ALL OTHER RAIDS OF ALL TH OTHER EXPANSIONS.
Naxx, SSC, KT, etc.. till then null void point mate.

OT: honestly? the raiding was good, nice mechanics etc. it was better than wrath.. on TBC I have no say. no I don't count vanillas that was NO EXPANSION.
Cata compared to MoP..well atm Cata beats it sadly ;/
ToT was hellish for a 10m group in the start(unless you were server top) due to horridon being retardly not inline with 10m..and was actully not tuned for 10m at all..

admitly compared to Firelands i'd say ToT is more fun, even tho sometimes(dorumunud) it' was like hitting your face into a wall.. Hof Vs Bastion well..i didn't like Bastion at all cause it was horribly for melee during certain fights, but so was BWD as well, Compared to say MSV and Toes..and well throne? i'd honestly rather Count Baradin hold as a raid than throne of the four winds in this case..ToTfW was a horrible horrible mess..yes it had no trash but that just made it even more boring.

[asharia]

nah

nothing can top BC

it's not bad though

[Isadora985]

Personally, I thought BC was great. The stat increase on items wasn't so dramatic that it was either a huge dps increase or a loss; The smallest increase in stat was a dps increase and you needed it. Heroics were long and difficult but that's what made them fun. BC is when I met some of my good friends and guild mates and we've been playing together since. The raids were challenging too. Positioning on some fights were key, few fights you had to farm gear for tanks for resistances and the raid. Unlike with the xpacs to follow, BC was fun from beginning to end. I really miss attunements because there wasn't a gear level requirement, you had to actually earn the right to do content, meaning you actually had to do other content and not skip it.

[zoomgpally]

Wrath Naxx was one of their worst raids ever released. I'm not sure what you're talking about. It was full cleared in like, 2 days.

So what?
It was fun, who cares how long it took to clear it

[Brakthir]

So what?
It was fun, who cares how long it took to clear it

How was no challenge fun? I don't know about you, but I like raiding for a multitude of reasons, difficulty being one of them. No one I know or raid with likes easy bosses. That's no fun.

[zephid]

I think TBC is the best in terms of raiding, MoP is actually not that far off imo. It all depends on this final tier. If SoO is good I might place MoP above TBC.

I always wonder if the people who say BC was the best raiding expansion actually played it.

Hyjal was godawful.

I agree, Hyjal was awful, at least the trash. The bosses were actually pretty good.

Magtheridon was terrible, had to mega-stack classes for that bitch.

No you didn't.

SSC was very average

I totally disagree, SSC was good.

TK was pretty cool

TK was decent, not as good as SSC imo.

Black Temple was decent

BT was good. The only bad part were the fact that I cleared it like 50 times before Sunwell was released.

Sunwell was just hard, not really good. Just hard.

Sunwell was really good imo. For me hard is good. It's not fun to play an easy instance.

Karazhan is the only stand out, and even that had its issues.

KZ was pretty good, the bad thing about KZ was the fact that you already had access to better gear from crafting. As a mage I crafted my head, legs, chest, belt and gloves.

[SinisterAsc]

Maybe i'm in the minority, I hated SSC and Hyjal. Grull / Mag were average and BT was out for too long.

Just my opinion, I prefer MoP.

[kamikaze148]

Is MoP the best PvE expansion?...yes...and no.

Yes in that for the first time, the entire community has got to experience all the content the game has to offer. LFR has effectively transformed the game from an ilvl harsh grind to a baseline requirement in order to progress through current content. and the content itself has been great. Throne of Thunder in terms of raid design is amazing, vast and expansive. Interesting bosses with repeat value.

No in that the game does not feel very personal anymore. LFR does not need any communication between players really, PvE really has become PLAYER versus ENVIRONMENT. and not a group of players versus the environment.

[wordup]

As someone who harkens TBC to my favourite days of WoW, I'm not stupid enough to forget that Hyjal was horrible, BT was long and arduous with some retardedly long trash packs smattered with really awesome stuff, Karazhan was just trash city with some plot here and there and some woeful zone design elsewhere (because hey, everyone else said it was good so it must be right) in a tier that contained Gruul the funkiller and Magtheridon the Irritating. SSC had some of the worst trash ever imagined before it was nerfed (that literally took longer to kill than bosses) and TK was awesome AFTER they changed solarian from being a stupid arcane res check with near no mechanics otherwise. In fact, just going back to SSC, it was one of the most hated raids I have ever seen in terms of community response, that trash was stupid and the bosses really had so little link between them, I wonder if people saying it was great actually played then, I'd be very, very surprised.

In raiding terms, I had huge amounts of fun in TBC, but that was way more because of the community and my guild than the quality of the content. T15 crushes pretty much all of TBC (arguably sunwell was close because those encounters were swish for their time), and I'm still baffled as to how T11, probably the best designed tier yet gets so little attention. Probably because people were too busy getting their panties in a twist over heroics or some crap. Basically, people are far too involved in their own opinion/being butthurt/hating the game for some arbitrary reason/hating themselves for failing to keep up with the curve in PvE (what I believe is the largest, because there was a whole lot more bobby big balls raiders 4 years ago than there is now, and a whole lot more 'wahhh content is X' now than there was then).

[hashtags]

What I liked about MOP:
1). Liked the new talent system and the ability to swap talents based on encounters was pretty cool.
2). T14 and T15 were amazing. I enjoyed MSV and HoF. Both were exceptional raids. ToT may be too linear for my taste but the boss fights were very very nice.
3). Pandaria is beautiful.
4). Challenge Modes were good fun.
5). Loved the new Mounts.
6). Content speed is nice. But when new content is dailies, it's really hard to get excited for.

What I hated about MOP
1). Dailies, Dailies and More Dailies.
2). Alt Unfriendly.
3). Leveling has become a chore. I don't know why. I levelled 8 toons in Cata to 85. MoP only 4 and even then I only log in to 2. The zones although beautiful, they didn't really had any meaningful stories compare to WOTLK or BC or even Cata.
4). Although i think charms were a good idea. Most of the time the reward actually sucks.
5). Garrosh story could've been flushed out more. Garrosh needed to come out as more evil.
6). There is no proper catch up mechanic. I keep hearing LFR is the catch up mechanic. It's really not. LFR for the current tier drop rates are so much dependent on luck that u might not get anything for weeks. Sure once the next tier comes out the previous lfr drop rates get improved but at that stage not many non-casual raiding guilds will be willing to take a person with 502 or 510 ilvl to raiding SoO. This is just my opinion based on what I have seen. Back in Cata when DS came out it came with dungeons that dropped 378 ilvl gear same ilvl as FL Normal. Not optimal sure but it got the job done for getting you upto speed to do DS normal. My other big issue with MOP is why Blizzard didnt move previous tier gear to JP. I mean what's the point of jp these days? I think Heroic Scenarios is a step in the right direction but I still think not having heroic dungeons is not a good move going forward.

In a nutshell MOP only got one thing right. Which was Raids. Apart from that in my opinion MOP was a step backwards to what people were expecting after a mediocre expansion called Cata.
(Sorry English is not my first language.)

[Essem]

Fun factor in MoP PvE is really bad atleast for me. Any meaningful 5 man dungeons are non existent. Raiding is also not so fun, I just don't get the feeling that the raids are epic enough, they just don't give me anything. Maybe its the architecture/layout or lore of the raids I don't know. Raids are on par with Cata fun-wise.

TBC had some of my personal all time favorites. Karazhan - SSC - BT. And Wrath had Ulduar which is without a doubt the best raid instance WoW has yet. It was magnificent in lore, layout, architecture, size and boss mechanics.

[Kintner]

I always wonder if the people who say BC was the best raiding expansion actually played it.

Hyjal was godawful.
Magtheridon was terrible, had to mega-stack classes for that bitch.
SSC was very average
TK was pretty cool
Black Temple was decent
Sunwell was just hard, not really good. Just hard.

Karazhan is the only stand out, and even that had its issues.

Karazhan was great.

What classes did you have to stack on Mag? I think you 'needed' a few warlocks for banish, but it wasn't terrible. My guild raided with 3 (myself included) and we had no problems.

The only class I remember us stacking was shaman late in the expac for bloodlust. Especially on fights like Brutallus where the DPS check was massive.

SSC had a few average fights, but I loved the opportunity to tank on Leotheras. Vashj was insane till you learned the fight.

Tempest Keep had the easiest boss in the tier with Loot Reaver/Solarian and probably one of the more difficult fights until late Sunwell with Kael'Thas. When he was current, that fight was huge. Plus having the ability to pick up the legendaries from the add bosses was fun.

Black Temple was awesome. Loved the atmosphere and the feeling of finally taking down Illidan. Only fight I really thought that was lame was Supremus.

Sunwell was fun, we loved messing with a feral druid in the guild. Guy couldn't run vent and WoW at the same time, but was always high up on logs. Raid leader would do calls in vent and an officer would hit a macro for middle, north, or south. Would call the complete wrong button so many times and then we'd laugh at him as he charged away from the guild.

The rest of the instance was pretty fun till we got to M'uru. The Entropus section was nasty. I remember a druid healer and priest healer both switching to shaman healers just for the chain heals + 2 extra bloodlusts. We tried so hard to down him before the WotLK pre-patch with the new talents that would trivialize much of the encounters but ultimately called it sub 5% the last week. 1 shot him after the new talents and then noone wanted to raid anymore.

Didn't raid in LK, but had already done most of Naxx, so didn't really miss anything there. Missed Ulduar (regretfully) and remember hearing the complaints about ICC, but most people just seemed like 'eh'.

Cata was bad. Raided everything but 4 Winds.

Pandaria has been fun so far -- would put it behind BC in terms of the big memorable fights and the ones that just seem to be a massive block, but ahead of Cata by far.

[Tyrgannus]

Well, let me try to get a fairly systematic approach at this as opposed to just spewing what my gut feels. Bias will obviously still be present, but I will attempt to be logical about it.

Classic

Dungeons: When it comes to end game, there were no Heroics, but the older dungeons pretty much felt Heroic in difficulty admittedly. It, like most ALL of Vanilla, relied on tuning for difficulty but wasn't too intensive on mechanics. However, the selection SUCKED. You had UD Strat, Living Strat, Scholomance, LBRS, UBRS, 3 wings in DM, and BRD. That is "technically" 9 dungeons, but that's admittedly counting all wings and many people didn't run BRD too much at 60 leaving you with 8 wings between 4 different dungeons.

Raids: Clunky. Low amount of mechanics. High amount of resists. Too much trash. Overblown. Overlong. Just atrocious really. Yes, I raided at level 60 back in the day, and it was a terrible chore of farming for weeks or even months for resist gear just to shit on your dos and artificially make bosses take far longer, and the bosses were rarely interesting. Hard? Sure, but hard doesn't mean interesting especially when hard is 90% only based on tuning and resists. WORST RAIDING EVER.


The Burning Crusade

Dungeons Heroics exist, rejoice! Tuning is quite tricky and with 16 heroics in all, there is FAR more end game 5 man content to gorge your teeth on. Due to "wing" dungeons, it suffered from repetitive areas, especially Auchindoun which looked like 4 replica dungeons with different mobs, but this was a HUGE step in the right direction.

Raids Some of the raids here are simply PERFECT and some of them suck more than the Oreck challenge's 8 lb vacuum. Consistency was a big issue and is seldom addressed by people wearing nostalgia shades on. Karazhan? Too easy maybe, but this is the best themed raid in WoW too this day in my personal opinion. Black Temple? Great music, great mechanics, and a very smooth learning curve (Bosses start easy and end more punishing, but no boss was a ridiculous gap from the next though some guilds argue Gorefiend was). Sunwell? Too much trash before Kalecgos maybe, but this raid was beautiful, hard, and rewarding in many ways. I just wish it had a couple more bosses. Zul'Aman? I know a lot of people aren't a big fan of troll raids, but I really enjoyed ZA back in the day and getting the gear to successfully farm bear runs. Basically ANY other raid? Meh. Honestly, meh. Heck, Hyjal actually was terrible, it doesn't deserve meh. Some of the best and worst raids in history imo.


Wrath of the Lich King

Dungeons They worked to not make dungeons in the same hub look to similar, at least worked harder than in BC. Still, there were a few dungeons that looked similar to others, specifically AN and OK. The dungeons were FAR too easy, admittedly, but the mechanics were usually more interesting for 5 mans, not that you adhered to them since it was so under tuned you could spam heal. Shame really, there were some nice ideas here. Also, the ICC 5 mans, specifically Pit of Saron, were really quite good and haunting. I was a big fan of them, and HoR was even tuned nicely.

Raids Too this day THIS seems to be the big controversy between the WoW community that played Wrath. Either you seem to hate it or love it and I can understand the reasons either way. Some people argue the raids were face roll and thus they hate them. Some people argue the lore was the best and thus they love them. Suffice it so say, some of the easiest and hardest raid fights existed in this expansion, though people tend to remember the easy ones more. Sarth 3 10 man pre 3.1, Yogg-0, Tribute to Immortality 25, and H25 LK WRECKED PEOPLE. These fights WRECKED people. However, more than half of the fights in this xpac were easy enough for very casual people to down them. When it comes to ideas, lore, and mechanics WLK is my favorite xpac, but even I fully admit that they had some very tangible tuning issues and it was literally all across the board. Vehicle fights sucked.


Cataclysm

Dungeons Less dungeons now, less variety, troll queues had only 2, and hour of twilight was a separate queue, but at least the dungeons felt interesting and none of them looked like each other really. I really liked the difficulty, but I didn't like how the separate queues were handled later as you brain turned to mush doing the same 2 or 3 dungeons until you got your gear, farmed your jp, capped your vp, whatever. Mixed feelings.

Raids Heh. Cataclsym raids were a lot like The Burning Crusade raids in the sense that some of them were AWESOME and some of them just sucked. They all had a decent threshold of difficulty for the most part, though DS was too easy (funny as it was the end raid). The fights tended to have pretty good mechanics for the most part, though some FIrelands mechanics felt wonky like the ENTIRE fight of rhyloth. The artwork was very hit or miss with DS being boring (it made sense to the story they were join for though), BoT being boring, yet To4W looked pretty sweet and I liked Firelands for the most part. It was very hit or miss for me, but not necessarily bad. Least amount of raid bosses of ANY expansion though, and I will note that.


Mists of Pandaria

Dungeons No. I am sorely disappointed. No. No.

Raids Well, this expansion seems to get better raid wise as it goes, which is the opposite of something like Cataclysm. I am really not a big fan of Tier 14...at all really. Tier 15 is pretty good and mechanically it's quite good, but it feels strange that a mogul raid of 12 (or 13 bosses on Heroic) has only 3 mogul fights. This was so obviously written with LFR wings in mind that the theming feels VERY forced. Tier 16 however is looking pretty good! If I were a lead developer, I would make the first 4 bosses a separate raid in the same tier (like SSC and TK) and have Galakras - Garrosh be the Siege of Orgrimmar raid. The 2 parts seem too different to me, though all the fights look fun and I can honestly say I'm looking forward to smacking Pride down. All in all pretty positive raid wise, but a disappointment non raid wise.


All in all Wrath is probably my favorite though it has obviously flaws. The others had many strong points, maybe my favorite raid or fight, but the ENTIRE package didn't feel quite as good. Oh, and classic sucked.