So, what didn't work this expansion?

[threads]

Uninteresting theme, not alt friendly, and no way to catch up in pve without LFR rng. Yea, I wonder what happened...

[Shampro]

I like how this thread is already 12 sites long and he "What worked" not even 1

People like to hate and to critizize. More news at 11.

[SL1200]

I like how this thread is already 12 sites long and he "What worked" not even 1

To be fair, the "what worked" thread is much newer.

[KCguy]

The expansion wasn't alt friendly when it was released and IMO, the theme is very hit or miss with many. I really do think if it is the Burning Legion next expansion, that will garner a fair amount of interest, even with older players. JMO.

[Olrox]

I don't feel I'm 100% qualified to evaluate how successful MoP was or wasn't; I'm not a designer and as a player, I rarely have anything to complain about in WoW - I've been at this game, mostly on but sometimes off, for eight years and I haven't really been dissatisfied with it in all that time.

I play two nights a week - just to raid with my guildmates and I'll pop on for another hour at some other part of the week to get my lesser charms/flasks/etc.. - my guild does heroic raids but we're never the first or even the tenth guild on the server to blow up the end boss of the current raid on heroic; we're usually the thirtieth or so and I'm fine with that - we do it on a six hour per week schedule and we're all good friends.

I don't have alts - I've never had alts aside from the fact that I had a capped Paladin in Vanilla that I bailed on to make a Warrior at BC's launch and then never played it again (Paladin is still sitting in his R14 Honor System gear from Vanilla) and I made a DK when Wrath came out and left my warrior behind; I don't consider them alts though, I've never capped either of them to any given expansion. I feel like alts are part of how people play the game frequently because there hasn't been enough stuff to do on your "main" character alone since BC I'd say and even then it ran out eventually.

I am not really unhappy with anything about MoP other than the gating of gear through reputation and the amount of VP you get from raid bosses as it is now significantly lower than it used to be. I don't like daily quests and I don't like faction reps that are required for me to get adequately prepared to bring a solid character to my raids. That said, I still did dailies and got the rep but I didn't enjoy it as much as I probably would've if they were done via a tabard - you can always at least find SOME use for JP that you'll inevitably get from grinding rep.

I liked Challenge modes - I hope they're here to stay and I really liked the whole concept of the Sha and the Isle of Thunder - I thought Pandaria was a cool continent and the whole "adventure" theme was a nice break from "ROMG X IS GOING TO THREATEN ALL LIFE AND DESTROY THE PLANET!!111" that we've had the last two expansions.

So I'm probably a bit too infrequent a player to comment because I do somewhat serious raiding but I don't play alts and rarely log on other than raid nights - I'm too old nowadays I think (WoW released when I was still in high school and now I'm through grad school and married) so I'm perfectly content paying my sub and only playing as much as I do - I think this game is still wonderful.

[williedabull]

Also, maybe do a cross between Wrath and MoP style of rep, the first character can do dailes up to revered then, and then at revered you can buy a BOA tabard that gives you rep in dungeons.

This could be the best Idea in this thread.

[Okacz]

Well, seeing how people get so nostalgic about the original WoW, I kinda start realising where they are coming from. As well as the reason some aspects of MoP don't really work out.

There is one thing that won't be recovered at all. The mystery of WoW, the sense of discovery, the feeling of slowly grasping the game. It is gone forever, and there is nothing to do about it. For those who play for a long time this is obvious, but the same happens to the newer players. Even without taking into account the training elements in WoW, the guiding and so on (and there is not even a lot of tutorial in the game), WoW has sprouted so many addons, sites and forums its difficult to just walk by. No player starting to play WoW would suck as we sucked back in Vanilla, no player would feel lost or confused.

The thing is... still, the sense of discovery comes from one more thing - the pace. And we all gotta admit, in the expansion where the theme tells you to slow down, it's ironic that the game itself rushes you all the time. You are simply no longer allowed to discover, to slowly delight yourself with the game. I'm not being unfriendly to the speed of content releasing - I think it's a good thing to keep the game updated like that. However - just check out how fast the game wants you to be.

First, leveling. Back in vanilla, leveling up was a thing. When you saw the glowy flashy effect you didn't immidiately check your log to see if the quests aren't getting green, or whether or not is it time to get to a new zone, or queue for another dungeon. This was the time when you knew you reached another level of your adventure, and allowed yourself to take the rewards from leveling up. All sorts of rewards. It was the time you gained new talent point to spend. It was the time you ventured back to your city to get new ranks of the spells, slowly feeling more powerfull. Maybe the quests weren't so enjoyable as today, making you spend countless hours just getting around (and don't say "immersion" and "discovery" now, the num lock key got jammed in vanilla). But, with the leveling being a logistical challenge itself, you couldn't help but to enjoy every second of it. Something missed from the current rush to the top level, where even reaching another expansion brackets can go unnoticed.

Same thing is with the end game content. Since I'm not really a PvP player, I'm talking only about PvE, but for sure PvP got the same treatment. The rush in end game content is sometimes scary. After you finally ding 90, the rush does not stop. You are gearing for the raids now. The catch up mechanics in the game are so many that you can reach the level of raiding normal modes in not even a week after level 90. And it's not like in BC or Wrath, where there was always a way to gear up really quickly for desperate players, but why the hell do that: the game now flat out tells you that raiding is the only thing that you can do in this game to be worth a damn, so you better raid, and raid now. Raid LFR, with poor gear, being carried by the group, don't even look at what you're doing or who you are playing with, but still raid.

For those who don't believe thats the case - look at your orange quest. The legendary quest is pretty much a timer, or "player meter". You just dinged 90? Well, turn the timer on. And go, go, go, get legendary things as soon as possible! Or you will have to wait another week to get them! Quickly, go MSV, HoF, ToES, because you need those sigils now! You didn't do your MSV this week? Fool! Your legendaries are even further now! Never make the same mistake again, go, run those LFRs, doesn't matter you don't feel ready yet!

The game needs to do, what every Pandaren tells it to do - to slow down. To allow players who dinged 90 to take a deep breath and enjoy themselves, explore their new powers, slowly run some smaller group content before they themselves decide they are Ready for Raiding. And the same works in leveling. It's a major part of the game, and by the pace of it it feels like it's your purgatory you need to suffer in before the real game.

[Deja Thoris]

I like the expansion very much. If I have to pick out things that could improve:

1) Too many dailies at the start and all tied to shit rep grinds.
2) The difficulty curve of raids was terrible. Stone guards was a bad boss to start MV with. elegon was a cock block for many. ditto for garalon. Adding a cherry on top, ToES, a simple raid was gated behind HoF. They didn't seem to learn too much in tier 15 which suffered the same problem.
3) I dislike LFR being the only meaningful gearing alternative for alts. Many may disagree but hey, its my opinion!

[Flaks]

Which is of course what they tried to address in Mists. Well it didn't work. People still unsub and sub around patches and the cost of all of this is that casuals aren't engaged.

No they didn't. They did the exact opposite of addressing it in MoP. They made it worse, MUCH worse. Scenarios replacing longer heroics isn't going to keep people playing. LFR over pugged raids isn't going to keep people playing. Absolutely terrible loot systems in BOTH scenarios and LFR hasn't kept players playing. There's more "casual-friendly" end game content than ever before. The problem is most casuals didn't even want the game to be "casual-friendly". Most were happy working their way up to where the so called hardcores were over a much longer period of time. But now that the casual folks can see most of what the hardcore players are seeing, getting loot that looks and behaves just like it they really don't care for progressing.

[Calaba]

I'm sure these have all already been mentioned, but i'll put them here anyway - the things I find terrible about this expac:
1) Dead servers. This has been an issue since the end of Wrath, and has been rapidly getting worse. I was starting to think that Bliz were making too much from PCTs to fix it, but hopefully it'll be sorted soon.
2) Normal mode 10 man difficulties. Hello Garalon! Really, they got the difficulty SPOT on in DS - only 8 bosses and yet the difficulty curve was perfect. Not only did they put Garalon as the 3rd boss in HoF, but to THEN make the SAME MISTAKE with Horridon (pre-nerf)? Come on! Hopefully this sort of issue will be addressed by Flex mode. These early bosses should be pugable to help new guilds / gear alts, not set to a difficulty requiring min/maxed dps.
3) LFR. Boring, and SLOW boring at that. They need to remove the tier loot from these ASAP. Or nerf set bonuses or something. In DS it was fine - 2 wings, 8 bosses, done in an hour, PERFECT for gearing an army of alts. But somehow 4 wings with 12 bosses it takes all night.
4) Gated Rep Grinds / dailies. Repetative, slow and boring. Dailies for rep. Dailies for VP gear. Dailies for cooking mats. Dailies for stupid coins. And DAILIES TO UNLOCK MORE DAILIES!! Which fool came up with that? Worst was there being no other way to get rep. They mostly fixed this now but it made the start of the expac a pain.
5) All of which mean gearing an alt is a nightmare.

[Flaks]

Casual guilds were given raid content? Um, not yet.

It's called LFR. Firelands was also made puggable pretty quickly. Flex raids is going to attempt to bring pugging back but will more than likely fail miserably because anyone who wanted to raid is getting their fix through LFR which in and of itself completely kills any chance of people wanting to find out what actual raiding is like because it's such a bastardization of raid content.

[Shampro]

snip.

I agree with a lot of your points, but look at some of the individuals here, they apperantly dont want to slow down, the leveling process in mists was apperantly too slow for some people, they want everything in a silver plater. Its combination of effort and enjoyment while takein your time, I agree with the point that mmo's really arent meant to be rushed, but for example look at Glorious leader posts, as an example of someone who just wants to be handed and not have a journey, the NOW NOW NOW NOW crowd, is pretty much the thing in nowdays playerbase sadly.

[Tyrgannus]

My favorite LFR was Dragon Soul because it was only 6 ilvls above the current 5 mans. It was objectively better gear, and you could grind weeks and weeks if you wanted to get it all, but if you wanted to have meh gear you could do it really quick with 5 mans. I miss 5 mans. I've had fun with them since reg RFC in 1.0

[Calaba]

It's called LFR. Firelands was also made puggable pretty quickly. Flex raids is going to attempt to bring pugging back but will more than likely fail miserably because anyone who wanted to raid is getting their fix through LFR which in and of itself completely kills any chance of people wanting to find out what actual raiding is like because it's such a bastardization of raid content.

Ok, let's be clear about this - LFR IS NOT FOR CASUAL GUILDS. If anything it's done more to kill casual guilds than anything else in WoW ever. LFR is STRICTLY solo content. Like doing dailies, or farming mats. No guild required!

[Osmeric]

It's called LFR.

That is not guild content, particularly for guilds raiding in 10 man (which is 90+% of them).

[Frogged]

I think continuing to render casual guilds irrelevant was a huge mistake. Go hardcore or go solo, that's the philosophy of this expansion.

In what way? This is the first expansion to have all it's raid content available in LFR. Your opinion of the expansion is the opposite of what I've experienced and I'm curious how you came to the conclusion that you did.

Edit: After reading your later posts, is it that you found 10 man Normal to be too difficult? I'd love to hear what went wrong.

[Jamie081]

LFR. I mean... I use it, but with the introduction of Flex raiding soon I don't see the point in it. Flex is what LFR should have been.

[serenka]

for me, how unfriendly it is to alts.

way too much time to catch up with reps, bring back the tabard system. make it so when you get exalted on one char your alts can buy the tabard and get rep that way.
catching up in PVE takes ages! first gotta farm loads of HCs to get enough ilvl for the first raid finder, then go through each of those, fine of the first character or early in the expac, but dinging 90 late in the expansion its just painful catching up. need to go back to cata justice/valor points imo.
in MoP justice points are useless, totally useless. need to make it so valor points buy the current tier gear and justice points buy the previous tier gear, would help greatly with catching up alts.
that is really my only complaint.

my Shaman just hit 90, its my 5th 90 and i wanted to do some LFR on it, but it takes such a ridiculously long time to gear up this late i gave up.

these are problems i want to see addressed in the next expansion.


2 - LFR difficulty.


i know LFR is suppose to be easier than normal raiding, but i feel its too easy. when a group of 25randoms can one shot a boss on the first day its out, it's not right. I am not syaing they need to be really hard where 25 randoms could never do it, but the fights needing a bit of tactics and communication would be nice.

[glowpipe]

5 mans didnt work at all. they made some rather shitty 5 mans and then went over to 3 man scenarios.

No new 5 mans in the entire expansion ? bitch please

[Osmeric]

In what way? This is the first expansion to have all it's raid content available in LFR.

LFR is 25 people soloing together.

Your opinion of the expansion is the opposite of what I've experienced and I'm curious how you came to the conclusion that you did.

Non-solo content would be what raiding was in Wrath: where you get together with people week after week, building social capital (there was some pugging, but even that requires some building of connections.)

The important distinction is that an individual who is playing "solo" can stop and restart his subscription with no repercussions to the social connections that would otherwise be enabling him to play end game content. Given the lower cost of stopping, is it any wonder more people do so?