Is Mists of Pandaria the greatest PvE expansion ever created?

[Durandro]

In BC we had strong lore tied to raids. In MoP we have none.

Utter nonsense.

1/ MSV is full of lore about the Mogu, complete with a LOREWALKER guiding us through it. Also explains that the Mogu were creations of the Titans.

2/ HoF was set up by the Dread Wastes questchain, and is a continuation of everything the Klaxxi told us about the Queen's corruption and madness at the hands of the Sha of Fear.

3/ ToES is a continuation from HoF, finishing off the Sha of Fear before it can do more damage and fighting (and freeing) creatures ensnared by its corruption.

4/ ToT was set up during the Kun-Lai questline, with the search for the remains of the Thunder King and the return of the Zandalari and the Mogu's return in general. And then its set up even further by the questchain on the Isle of Thunder.

Need I even explain Seige of Ogrimmar's basis in lore? Let's compare that to Burning Crusade shall we?

1/ Karazhan. Zero explaination given to why we need to go back to Azeroth to clear the place out when we should be fighting Illidan. The internal lore is interesting, but isn't linked to TBC at all (other then the final boss being an Eredar - which is never explained).

2/ Zul'Aman. Again going back to Azeroth for no particular reason, with the breadcrumb quest essentially being "there's loads of loot over there, go get it!" Sure, Zul'jin was a threat to Silvermoon, but its not at all linked to the overall story of TBC.

3/ Magtheridon's Lair. The first raid actually linked to TBC's story, removing the source of Illidan's Fel Orc infusions by defeating the Pit Lord he captured in Frozen Throne.

4/ Gruul's Lair. Attacking a former ally who was little threat to the Horde or Alliance so you can free Ogres who weren't even friendly towards you in the first place? Huh, okay.

5/ Mount Hyjal. Completely disconnected from TBC.

Serpentshrine Cavern, Tempest Keep, Black Temple and Sunwell are all perfectly in line with TBC's lore. Combine that with Maggy and that's five raids following the story and four that are disconnected.

Which is much worse then Mists of Pandaria's track record for lore relevence in its raids.

[Mukki]

ToT is better, a lot better, but still suffers from a 1-dimensional color palette. Everything in ToT is blue, blue-ish and blue-zy. The fights are a lot better though.

I know! Especially Dark Animus, Primordius, and Ra-Den, right? So blue!

[Squirl]

MoP is my favorite expansion period. Only PvP has been shitty this time around, but I only do that casually.

As far as raids, every single one has been awesome. SoO looks like it will continue the trend.

[Flaks]

I think we can all agree that Wrath was the king of 5 man content, yeah?

That said, I have enjoyed WoW more in MoP than I have in three years. I think its more of how I can shift in and out of whatever content I want without any fuss.

tBC was the king of 5 man content with how there was dungeon tiering from the day the expansion launched with some heroic 5 mans being tougher, some NORMAL mode 5 mans being pretty tough and other heroic 5 mans being ridiculously hard while also having a pretty big roster of introductory easy and then medium difficulty dungeons as well.

For me personally MoP has been the worst in every regard since I enjoy PvP and dungeons the most and loved pugging raids back in WotLK. PvP in MoP is nearly as bad as vanilla, dungeons in the worst state since beta of vanilla WoW and LFR is a complete bastardization of the raiding scene and has completely killed most players' drive for raiding content.

[Murtagh]

Personally i like 5 men. I really don't like how 5 men is abandonned in MoP.

[Deadhank]

<snip>

Thank you! I was about to write a comment on this subject, seeing the amount of people complaining about MoP having no lore. It has AWESOME lore, ffs!

And ToT's lore is incredible, imho. I think Lei Shen even had the potential to be a final boss (xpac-wise). People that don't understand ToT lore definetely skipped the Kun-Lai questline with the Zandalari trolls ressurecting Lei Shen and maybe even forgot about MSV and it's build-up to future Mogu/Troll storyline. As much as I didn't like MSV that much (bosswise, not lorewise), it was essential to understand the new lore and the mogu origins.

People tend to think it has no lore because it's new stuff, I guess... Specially because lore is usually known as "background story" and not plain Warcraft story.


NOW GO DO PANDARIA LOREMASTER FFS. lol

[LocNess]

It is a good expansion, and a very good set of PvE content, however it is good, not great or exceptional. I had a lot more fun in the raiding environment of WotLK, and I enjoyed Cata Heroics more (despite how much I always speak against them).

[Buxton McGraff]

Imho it's worse than Cataclysm PVE wise. The only thing I hated in Cata was Dragon Soul and that was just one raid. I haven't enjoyed a SINGLE raid from MoP, and on top of that there's no heroics to keep me busy because those are useless.

I really enjoyed Blackwing Decent, Throne of the Four Winds, and Firelands. Bastion of Twilight was fun but I hated the scenery.

I miss the times when I actually KNEW every boss by name and what they did. I honestly couldn't tell you a single boss name other than Elegon this expansion, because none of them truly stick out and are unique.

[Yakshamash]

In my opinion, it's worst PVE expansion ever (excluding raids).

[Symetree]

PVE also includes terrible heroics, broken challenge modes, boring scenarios and the horde of garbage dailies that were introduced. So no, it isn't the best PVE expansion.

BC is still the best PVE expansion.

This. This times a thousand million bajillion quadrillion. To me this is not even remotely up for debate. At all. Ever. TBC was the best pve expansion period, and Wrath was very close behind. Cata is self explanatory. Pandaria's current raid tier is a BIG improvement to me over the launch, which consisted of overly grindy, BORING dailies, boring raid tier, and an Asian theme which I don't care what ANYONE says does NOT fit WOW. The smartest thing they have done in a while is bringing the game back to Kalimdor for the next tier, which I think will heads and shoulders be the best tier of this expansion and a MUCH better finishing tier than Dragon Crap was in Cata. Im dragging this on too long. TBC and Wrath, best pve. Period.

[Deleted]

It's definitely the best raiding expansion since BC, but everything else has really taken a few steps back in quality, particularly alt content, catch-up mechanisms, and small group content.

- Scenarios are trash, will always be trash, and should be scrapped. Only reason people do them is for the fast valor and chance at good alt gear.
- Heroic Dungeons are completely faceroll, and no longer have a purpose. You can go directly from leveling greens to LFR/H Scens. No longer a source of pre-raid gear, no longer an efficient source of Valor, takes longer than a H Scenario and rewards are MUCH lower.
- Justice Points have been 100% useless for the entire expansion.
- Alt catch-up mechanism is essentially "grind LFR and hope you get lucky". It's frustrating and way too RNG-dependent, even with the huge drop rates in 5.0 LFRs.
- The daily quest debacle on launch. No explanation necessary.

Personally I think BC and probably Wrath as well were both better PvE expansions. BC because the raiding was the best, Wrath because the catch-up mechanisms and alt content were the best and the raiding was pretty good as well (Ulduar and ICC were both very good. Let's ignore ToC and Malygos.).

Pretty much what this guy says. If you simply rate the raids then yes, it's amazing. The rest is simply 'Farm dailies for cap then LFR and get lucky' for everything up to the legendary.

[Deleted]

For me its the best.
I've been playing since BC. Kara was cool, Grull/Mag were meh, SSC/TK was cool and Kael'thas was nice but he was a wall that my guild couldn't break.
After they removed the vials of eternity quests req. for entering t6 I was already burnt out so I left the game and didn't experience Sunwell.

Wrath: Naxx was Ok. Ulduar was amazing, TotGC was the worst thing ever and I quit the game again, didn't experience ICC.

Cata: the first raids were like a blur to me, such a boring place, with the same theme color, I don't even remember the name of the firsts raids, then firelands was cool but I have to move to another continent and stopped playing, Had to make another account and start from lvl1. the leveling revamp was awesome.

MoP: MSV, HoF, ToES are awesome, there's not a boring fight in there, ToT is also great. this is the first expansion that I haven't take any breaks from being bored with the game, there's a LOT of stuff to do: dailies, pet battles, raids. the legendary quest is very well done. I really, really like this expansion. and I haven't played my alts past lvl. 86, because I have no need from them to be honest. (I usually play my alts when I get bored and ran out of stuff to do on my main)

[xagonyx]

One of the huge factors behind Vanilla and BC success was the lore from WC3, i really enjoyed being part of the "history" when switching to WoW, aside from that, i think MoP is the best expansion so far, the problem is IMO, that gearing a lvl90 character is really easy and fast, the excitement of getting your first epics is lost, the game needs to offer a "sense of achievement", 5man heroic dungeons are crap, common, they have to be harder, heroic scenarios are fine, and getting to LFR needs to feel as a reward, not as a way of grinding stuff.

[Pum]

Imho it's worse than Cataclysm PVE wise. The only thing I hated in Cata was Dragon Soul and that was just one raid. I haven't enjoyed a SINGLE raid from MoP, and on top of that there's no heroics to keep me busy because those are useless.

I really enjoyed Blackwing Decent, Throne of the Four Winds, and Firelands. Bastion of Twilight was fun but I hated the scenery.

I miss the times when I actually KNEW every boss by name and what they did. I honestly couldn't tell you a single boss name other than Elegon this expansion, because none of them truly stick out and are unique.

Heroics haven't been difficult since BC, and even then with a half-decent group you could zerg the shit out of those. You can still do heroics, you're just choosing not to fr some bullshit reason it seems.

That's good that you enjoyed those raids, but honestly if you can't remember a single raid boss's name except Elegon, then I highly doubt you've spent any time at all actually raiding and not just smashing your face off the keyboard in LFR.

[slime]

It is pretty good, but I preferred WotLK.

I do enjoy MoP though - so far it has kept me pretty busy.

[Arbs]

My personal view on WoW Raiding from best to worse: MoP, TBC, Vanilla, Wrath, Cata

Do note if 5.4 isn't as great than MoP drops to 2nd, but 5.4 is as good as the last 2 tiers than it remains first.

[Deleted]

Ah yes, I forgot one thing: thunderforged items are a loot system nightmare. Drop that system, it's horrible.

- - - Updated - - -

I know! Especially Dark Animus, Primordius, and Ra-Den, right? So blue!

Or maybe like Jin'rokh, Horridon, the area surrounding Council, the cave where Tortos, Megaera and Ji-Kun are located, Durumu his lair, Iron Qon his advance, Twins room and Lei Shen his man cave.

Utterly bland and monochrome. But sure, those 3 exceptions turn the entire raid into a fascinating, vibrant, exciting and diverse environment.

[Deleted]

In my opinion, it's worst PVE expansion ever (excluding raids).

Care to elaborate why and how it would be better?

[Bling]

Honestly MoP is my least favorite expansion so far and I have been playing since Vanilla Beta.

My favorite would have to be Wrath.

MoP just feels like it is there because we needed something to do. I've never been more bored than I have been in MoP. Everything feels more bland, because nothing is really pulling me into it.

I used to be a hardcore raider during vanilla, TBC, and the first half of Wrath. When Ulduar came out I continued to raid, but stop devoting my life to the game like I did before. I would also like to add I am MAJOR LORE NERD. I own every novel, comic, and RPG book, and have pretty much memorized the wikis.

My order of preference would have to be Wrath>TBC=Cata>Vanilla>MoP.

Here's my views and reasonings:

Vanilla:
Was fresh and almost everything was new. We got to explore the world there was tons to learn about. The community has never been stronger than it was in Vanilla. Guilds were large and active. Raids truly felt freaking epic putting together 40 people to tackle the greatest threats on Azeroth. You weren't just a group, you were an army. Although the threats weren't quite as big until the later raids, you truly felt like you were fighting to save the world.

Raiding:
Molten Core was the only raid that really lacked any real lore or urgency when you started it. You knew Ragnaros was a threat, but he wasn't doing anything, we were pre-emptive striking before he had the chance. Onyxia had a massive quest chain linked to her attunement, laying out that she was on the verge of completely tearing apart the Alliance, just like Deathwing had done in the Day of the Dragon book that had came out before WoW. The Black Dragonflight had a history of controlling Azeroth's history from behind the scenes and we got to see it first hand. Blackwing Lair was one of my favorite raids of all time. We defeated Onyxia, but it turns out her brother was creating an even bigger threat and we had to stop him before his invincible army he was creating laid was to Southern Azeroth if not more than that. We saw in Blackrock Spire that he controlled not just the Black Dragonflight, but his own Horde army of Orcs, Trolls, and Ogres. This wasn't the new Horde it was the deadlier and eviler Old Horde. Ahn'Qiraj was awesome, the world event and questline to open the gates was epic for anyone who got to participate, I managed to finish it, but wasn't the first on my realm to When the gates finally opened, you really did feel like you were fighting to save Azeroth. Hundreds if not thousands of people were fighting in the zone and barely holding them back. Then we get to fight our way to C'thun, an Old God, the first we ever met and he was indeed a weapon of destruction, the first few weeks he was out he was unbeatable. Even though I had a top 25 US kill on him, he still felt unbeatable at first. Even blizzard agreed, as he wasn't killed except through exploiting until Blizzard finally fixed and nerfed him. It took hours just to get the opening pull coordinated properly to where he wouldn't one shot the raid upon entering the room. I really felt like we were fighting a God, and you told yourself thank freaking god this isn't a full powered Old God or this world would be toast. Then Naxx came out. Once again the world event brought the Scourge back into the picture, the force that wiped out half the Eastern Kingdoms was back and we had to stop it. This raid was a guild killer for one reason. In previous raids, 20 skilled players could carry 20 unskilled players, but in Naxx everyone had to be skilled or you weren't getting too far. The raid was completely unforgiving due to the lack of tools many classes had in vanilla. Only priests had an AoE heal, etc. Only certain classes could cleanse on certain bosses. Once again defeating Kel'thuzad made you feel like you really were saving the world.

PvP:
I really feel Vanilla was the best PvP has ever been in WoW. Everyone PvP'd. Everyone could PvP, because you didn't need PvP gear to be competitive. Personally, I really think PvP gear killed PvP for the general masses, and split the game into a PvP or PvE game, when before the two went together. It was great when PvP gear could be used for PvE and PvE gear could be used for PvP. The other thing that made PvP in Vanilla so great was the community, Battlegroups didn't show up until TBC, when you went into a battleground you knew who your opponents were, there was a friendly server rivalry. Realm forums came alive because of this. Because you didn't need 2 groups of gear to PvP and PvE, guilds were able to grow large and powerful and show both a strong PvE and PvP presence. Guilds competed against each other in PvE and PvP, the top guilds weren't just seeing who could clear a raid first, but also who could get more Grand Marshals or High Warlords. World PvP existed, attacking cities was worthwhile because you could get just as much honor as you could in a BG. Attacking Crossroads or Tarren Mill was a blast.

Other:
I really miss the 5 man end game of Vanilla the most. It didn't have heroics but it had a different progression we haven't seen since. You would actually "raid" the level 60 five mans with 10 people to gear up, or 15 for UBRS. I never had more fun in WoW than when I was raiding Scholo, Blackrock Spire, or Strat in WoW's early days. Once you geared up, the 5man's were more heroic difficulty and required a coordinated group to complete.

TBC:

Raids: Felt very disconnected with what was going on elsewhere. Zones showed little story leading up to the raids themselves. The raids themselves felt less epic than the Vanilla raids due to the smaller raid sizes, not less fun just less OMG we need an army. It really felt like we were raiding too just to kill the characters we had grown to love in Warcraft 3, because we were supposed to, not that there was some urgent need to stop this major threat. Illidan really seemed like he was just chilling in his keep and wanted to be left alone. I didn't really even feel like he was a threat to Outland, all he really seemed to want was to guarantee that the Legion wouldn't be a threat to the world and he wanted it to have a strong defense, he seemed to have zero interest in harming Azeroth. And there was no presence of Illidan at all hardly until the time came to kill him for whatever reason. Lady Vashj didn't seem like she was doing much of anything wrong, she caused less destruction to Outland than the Horde has to Azeroth. Just look at what the Goblins have done to Azshara, and Vashj doesn't compare. Kael'thas was the only boss in Outland that I really felt was up to evil things, and that just seemed to come out of no where. I really feel like we would have had a stronger story today if we had brought Illidan and Kael'thas back into our player's factions than if we had killed them just to kill them. Sunwell was pretty epic though, but felt kind of out of place with the rest of the xpac.

PvP:
TBC added a lot of new stuff to PvP, but in the end I really felt like it hurt it more than it helped it. I got Gladiator in Season 1, but I didn't enjoy it half as much as I did spending hours with my Grand Marshal team in vanilla doing anything we could to get more honor than the other people competing for GM. I also feel like the PvP community was split off from the rest of WoW due to the introduction of PvP gear. Unless you had no life you now had to chose either PvP or PvE. I truly believe PvP gear was what caused the death of world pvp.

Other:
Lore in TBC really felt forced. Not that I didn't like it, but the story telling just felt like it could have been so much better. Including the major raid characters in the zones would have added so much more to the expansion. I liked that they tried to make PvP happen in zones, but I feel that with the separation of gear kept it from becoming what it could have been. The introduction of the badge system did make having alts much more attractive, as having an alt in vanilla, it was almost impossible to have more than one character with epics.

WotLK:
Raids: I loved raids in WotLK. Actually having the lore and story of the game flow into raids actually made you want to get in there to complete the story. Although the return of Naxx as the exact same raid was disappointing, it was also some of the most fun I've had raiding during my time playing WoW. Ulduar was epic. TotC seemed forced in, and ICC was the raid the game was waiting for. I really feel like WotLK was the height of raiding in WoW and if you look at the numbers they agree, more people raided in WotLK than any other expansion to date. This is because for once guilds didn't have to be elitist jerks in order to finish the game. In vanilla and TBC, guilds knew that they would never be able to finish all the raid content unless they were complete sticklers, this separated friends and caused guilds to break apart. Although WotLK didn't allow total scrubs to compete, it allowed your average joe to finish the game. PuGs for raids would actually form up in trade and actually finish the raids instead of maybe 1 boss like previous expansions.

Other:
The 5 mans of WotLK added a new element to the game that I also felt truly added to the game. Although some people hated it, I loved doing 5 mans in WotLK, first you could actually use them to gear up. I would run tons of 5 mans in vanilla and TBC, and saw very little reward for it, in WotLK I could finally get something out of it. I never leveled alts to max level and tried to gear them in Vanilla and TBC, because to do so would be a massive undertaking. Yet in WotLK, I had 4 80s in full epics and had a freaking blast being able to play what I wanted.

Cata:

Raids: I found the opening raids of Cata to be some of the best to date, yet I found the increased difficulty of them over the WotLK generation to be a slap in the face to many of the guilds that rose up during WotLK. This caused many of my friends who were less skilled to quit raiding and quit the game because they knew they couldn't keep up and were holding us back. It created hostilities that caused better skilled players to leave their friends again to join other guilds just to be able to see content. Although the first few raids were good, there was something about Dragon Soul that was just wrong. Deathwing had a ton of lore going into Cataclysm to be the best villian to date in WoW, yet Blizzard completely dropped the ball with him. Then the raid itself felt like a major let down to just how epic it should have been. I almost felt like the final raid would have been so much better if instead of being at Wyrmrest temple it was Grim Batol>Twilight Bastion>Deathwing fight combined. The lore would have been freaking epic. This would have given Cho'gall the whole expansion to lead the Twilight Hammer and show him and Deathwing being evil masterminds. Probably could have been a raid to rival Ulduar. Seige into the city of Grim Batol where the Twilight Hammer is summoning in the Old God armies and creating Twilight Dragons. You could have both of the Faceless bosses from the first half of DS in here, perhaps with Sinestra as the last boss of the wing. Then we go into the heart which is the Bastion of Twilight, as this raid seemed to take place inside the mountain anyways. After Cho'galls defeat as the last boss of the raid, Deathwing shows up and blows up the mountain, turning it into a volcano like in the Night of the Dragons novel and we are saved at the last moment by the Aspects. We could then have the last half of the Dragon Soul raid take place, starting at the top of the mountain which is now a volcano and then chasing Deathwing to the final battle. Anyways....

Other:
Overall, I think Cataclysm had the potential to be the best xpac ever, yet Blizzard made too many bad choices. It almost felt like the xpac was already over upon release. Deathwing was never really shown as the character he had so much potential to be, the major villians in the 80-85 zones were completely defeated the first raid tier. Felt like they kind of had to force out Firelands and Dragon Soul. The new zones were awesome compared to the originals, yet unappreciated because most people want to play new content on their mains, and had no desire to go back and do old outleveled content on them.

MoP:

Raids:
Just felt so bland to me. Mogu'shan Vaults had nothing in it that related to the rest of the world. I really wish we would have had a dire reason to be there in the first place instead of just exploring. Heart of Fear had a good story, but I don't why but it was just my least favorite raid in all of WoW history, I actually enjoyed TotC more. While it was a challenge, I just didn't find it "Fun." ToES was alright, but I wish we would have learned more about it first. We just kind of find out this is where the Sha went and go there. At no time during this tier did I ever really feel like I was stopping a major threat for some reason. Maybe its because I stopped half the other Sha and Mogu either solo or in 5 mans. I almost feel like the first raid tier should have been heroics and the island of the thunder king the first raid tier. I did really like 5.2, one of the best patches in WoW history.

PvP: I really think PvP is finally coming back. I've noticed more people PvPing since the resilience change than i have in years. I really think if they made the change effect players 24/7 instead of just arena and battleground they could totally revive world pvp.

Other:
MoP has been a disappoint me for me for one reason. It seems more like an exploring expedition to me than a threat. Nothing seems to be world threatening in MoP. Even the Thunder King as powerful as he is, seems like he wants nothing more than to chill in Pandaria. Also I can't stand scenarios, they just seem like a waste of time to me. With 5 mans I feel like I was accomplishing something. The final tier of 5 mans in WotLK and Cata were some of my most favorite things in WoW. It seems like my favorite time burner has been replaced with LFR. Which I like LFR, yet it doesn't satisfy me the way the old heroics of WotLK and Cata did.

[Deleted]

Pve wise in general it's been solid, some bum notes like scenarios and dailies but all round pretty good. best ever? Doubtful.

Raid wise the difficulty curve has been off, raiding in MoP has been pretty shitty for most guilds trying it. it's not even the best raid system in the last 3 years of wow, never mind of any game ever.