Mists of Pandaria: A Postmortem

[Deleted]

Class balancing in MOP was a Nightmare.

[jadedfuture]

Pros:
- Decent leveling the first time 'round.
- Sick raids (post patch 5.1).
- Decent art-style.
- Thunder Island

Cons:
- 5 mans sucked ass.
- Still lacking content that gets you out and does things. Thunder Isle was one of my favorite things about this expansion.
- Legendary questline weren't challenging, you just needed an assload of time to complete them.
- Too much niche/first-time-around content (questing, scenarios, challenge modes)
- Filler expansion lacking so much in lore.
- PVP balancing still sucks.
- Flying around Shrine gets boring after awhile.'

MoP was alright. Everyone says 'it's the best xpac' because it had the most content. Yeah, I'd prefer quality over quantity.

And so the Blizzard pendulum swings..

[Zarc]

Since Mists of Pandaria caused me to unsubscribe for the first time since vanilla my grading of it will obviously not be very high. I recently re-subbed for a month after a 6+ month hiatus as a build-up for BlizzCon. I kind of like the state of PvP right now, something I haven't really been doing a lot since vanilla, having been a PvE player and raider the vast majority of my tenure in WoW.

To me WoW is reusing too much content with various modes/difficulty levels, which ruins the mystery and feeling of epicness in the game with regard to the highest endgame content. And as LFR is mostly a mindless run requiring no more focus than that of a zombie to complete for your average tag-along I don't really see the point of it. It's not really raiding. But that is to be expected, as you cannot expect 25 randomly put together people to co-operate on any kind of sophisticated level. Which raiding is ultimately all about, which again leads me to say that I don't see the point of forcing people into these fake-raids. Although I do know the point, and that is that Blizzard wants to make sure that all the work they put into making these new environments and models for their raids and boss encounters is seen by as many of their subscribers as possible. The problem is that they didn't have to create this whole system of difficulty levels and pretend-raids to achieve that. What they should do is focus on adding more 5-man dungeon content for casuals. The 5-player format is small enough that 5 randomly put together people can actually be expected to actually co-operate on some sophisticated level, meaning that you can actually design the content to require team work and a bit of communication, and not be something that you can simply blaze through as a mindless zombie. With the new scaling technology what they should be doing is have all dungeons in the entire game be available at max level with max level loot, and make 4 new dungeons out of the previous tiers raid every time they release a new tier of content, as well as add a new dungeon with the theme of the current tier. That way the content they create will, eventually, be seen by everyone and also re-visited far more also in the future, compared with the current design, while actual raids will remain actual raids. I also miss having the currently last boss in the game be somewhat unreachable, as it adds a feeling of endlessness to the game that has been lost with the current design philosophy. Raiding is not casual content, and that can be seen as LFR is not raiding. So they shouldn't try to force something that isn't meant to be. And as I suggested there are more than the current way of making sure the content Blizzard creates isn't wasted by being seen only by 1% of the player base.

[goblingirl]

I'm probably about 4 of 5 stars.

Things I liked:

- the music was great
- the architectural style was very nice (Although I am tired of it now. I feel like I've been trapped in the China pavilion at Epcot for a year, and damn it I can see England across the lagoon.)
- landscape detailing was better than ever in Pandaria zones - grass, plants, trees, water were amazing
- lots of enjoyable, low stress end game non-raid content (Tillers, Anglers, cooking, questing, scenarios, rare hunting, etc.)
- the patch pace was pretty good, including the pace of raid releases
- flex raiding is good, and the fact that it's cross realm is great
- Isle of Thunder and Timeless Isle (although Isle of Thunder doesn't hold up to very many repeats, I've taken 3 toons to exalted with Kirin Tor and am sick of the place now)
- Dino isle and warbringers/warscouts, spent many happy hours farming both, collecting mounts, pets and rep tokens for alts
- Pet battles (I didn't think I would like it at first - although I am more of a collector than a serious battle-er)
- Lots of mounts to collect
- Raiding with Leashes achievements = fun reason to go faceroll old content
- Wrathion as a character was quite good. His cutscenes and voice-acting were truly superb, head and shoulders above most of the voice-acting in the game to date.
- That some effort was put into Anduin Wrynn's development was nice, although some of it stretched credulity, particularly his interactions with Varian.
- Proving Grounds and Brawlers Guild were nice additions, although once you've done them they are over with.

Things I didn't like:

- The rep/daily grind in 5.0 and 5.1 was far too much. Golden Lotus in particular took too much time and too much content and storyline was gated behind it.
- I did not like having separate faction "homes", although I understand why it was necessary for the Pandaria storyline to segregate Horde and Alliance. The reason it was unfortunate was that it contributed to the game feeling "empty". Honestly until Timeless Isle opened I hadn't seen horde players out and about on my realm in months - I didn't even know any still played on my realm. When combined with the overall falling populations on most servers due to falling subs and char transfers, the game felt flat out deserted in a way it never did on the slowest day at 4am in Shattrath or Dalaran. There's a lot to be said for /emote smack talking the opposite faction...
- The storyline focused too much on Horde (again). More specifically, too much on an orc (again). This game is not named World of Orc-craft, and there are many other races and storylines that desperately need attention.
- The Alliance were once more an also-ran, as the story centered on the Horde and furthered Orcs far more than any other. Alliance was just along as a witness to events.
- LFR needs tweaks. It's too susceptible to griefing, trolling, and mooching, and requires too much knowledge on the part of entry-level tanks and too little knowledge from everyone else.
- Four ilvls in 5.4 is way too much.
- Normal and Heroic current tier raids should support cross-realm groups.
- Justice points were completely useless for almost the entire release. Valor points are nearly useless in 5.4. It was far better in past releases when there were viable outlets for those, such as BoE epic bracers and crafting items.
- Other than Varian, Vol'jin and Garrosh, faction leaders were almost universally ignored or got utterly ridiculous personality transplants (Tyrande, I'm looking at you).
- Home base didn't have enough fun. Dalaran was a blast... the crowd at the portal to Wintergrasp right before a battle began, fishing in the coin fountain, rat fishing in the sewers, cooking quests that took place within the city, just always reasons to run around doing things and seeing all the people while /ruding the opposite faction. The Vale shrine was just a building housing a bank and a bunch of portals, a boring waygate with nothing to do except camp in queue for instanced content. I sincerely hope we get a Dalaran-style town next xpac. It does a lot to make the game feel more like a populated community.
- Dungeons were pointless after you got into your first raid gear, even if it was just LFR.

[Laorenshu]

Talent system should have been an addition to the old (not cata) system.

Y'know, I'm not entirely satisfied with the new talent system, but it's got a great theory behind it. This is such a simple solution and it never even crossed my mind.

[hablix]

The Good

-Flex mode. Honestly, Flex should have been added to the game instead of LFR, and/or the Wrath raiding model should not have been nixed in Cata. I'm not letting Blizzard off the hook for that. But better four million lost subscribers later than never.
-Return of the main. More to do at 90 and alts don't automatically get everything for free.
-Semi-return of the world. Less travel-by-loading screen portals. Still more portals than I like; Flex ought to have been a meeting stone and enter feature, not another queue and port. If there are "hard", pre-made only heroic 5 mans in the next expansion as has been hinted at/suggested, please Blizz DO NOT make them another thing you queue for.
-The environments and music all throughout have been superb, in the world and in raids and the limited small-group content offered. Questing experience refined to a science, but might have felt better spread over 10 levels (less treadmill effect).
-Timeless Isle and Battlefield: Barrens were hugely successful experiments in my view. I'd imagine also that Blizzard can turn out a Timeless Isle in less time than an Isle of Thunder. Patches may be coming out quicker than ever, but using Timeless Isle and Battlefield: Barrens as a template could potentially mean even faster non-raid content patches.

The Bad

-Flex is an infuriating reminder of what the game lost when Blizz borked the Wrath raiding model. I can't believe I've been doing LFR so long and had even been tricked into supporting it, having lost sight of what it was like to be in a real F&F raid.
-Base resilience is a good change, but at this point PvP Power needs to be eliminated and gear needs to be normalized across PvP and PvE. Everyone has access to the same quality of gear based on their skill level, they just play the way they want to get it. (E.g., rated Valor gear has same ilvl and stats as Normal raiding gear, with different skins.)
-In Wrath, you could run heroic 5-mans to gear up for 10-man raids. In MoP heroic 5-man gear has been worthless from the start and you need to run LFR to gear up for Flex mode, often running the same raid. Small group content has been poorly integrated into the endgame experience overall and this needs to be addressed going forward. (A good model for a reward structure might be heroic scenarios, which offered gear halfway between LFR and Normal but being randomly itemized is not often BiS.)

The Ugly

-In contrast to Flex, SoO LFR is truly an abomination. The game would be better off if LFR were retooled (e.g. into a zerg mode) or removed completely and organized, challenging raiding took place where it belongs: Flex and above. The players who rely on LFR for endgame content and have not yet done Flex do not know what torture they are subjecting themselves to in the erroneous belief that LFR is a better option for people who have time constraints or whatever the case may be. The game would be better off today if instead of LFR, Cata added an easier, cross-realm raiding mode like Flex with a cross-realm group finding tool like oQueue. It will take some bold moves, but right now the LFR experience is a net negative on all dimensions.

[George Costanza]

Dailies never was a Con just that the rep was required for you to get valor upgrades at the start of MoP, which sucked, Anyone that says otherwise doesn't have a fucking clue about anything related to dailies and is probably just a basement dwelling nerd. Had they had Dailies Tied to vanity rewards, they would have been done much better.

[Daedius]

My pet hate about the game now, the incredible homogenization of classes... There's nothing unique about them now.

Heck, stamina buff used to be given by priests... now the one off locks is superior [stamina +10% spell power]...

[Sul]

the good
- flex , wonderful feature , saved my guild
-quests
-scenarios
-raids
-brawlers guild
-dailies
-timeless isle
-world bosses
-the farm
-challenge mode
-overall art work
-talents , especially the flexability of them ,changing talents almost every boss which you couldn't do before .they are now useful
-isle of thunder
-professions
-legendary questline

Cons
-having my pve abilities nerfed every second because of pvp . Please bliz give PvP a separate spec/talent tier
-not enough 5 mans
-lfr - not in the sense of we shouldn't have it but more in the way of how people behaved in there

over all I really enjoyed the whole expansion and will continue to enjoy it till the next one arrives

[Deleted]

Pros:
- Art Work

Cons:
- Boring theme
- Boring raids (yes i killed every hc boss till 5.4)
- Boring 5 mans too easy too fast
- Scenarios gives better rewards then 5 man dungeon
- LFR and + flex = having 4 difficulties with same content is just wrong
- Game is overall too casual and MMORPG aspects are too simple (talenta, glyphs, crafting)
- Game feels more like single player game then MMORPG with so many instances (LFD, LFR, Scnarios, Flex) it is just press one buttong and wait for game to done everything for you
- Very boring Q and Daily Q compared to Cataclysm
- Too high numbers
- PvP is in horrible state
- Classe lost indentiti
- Gear is everywhere for free
- My class (mage) becom boring thanks to RNG in fire so i was force to paly specs what i ddint like in early state of the game
- Legedary item without single challenge? No thank you


For me worst expansion so far 3/10.

[eschatological]

The first tier was nowhere near as good as t13,

What? I mean, honestly, what? T13? Dragon Soul? Are you mistaking it for something else? Dragon Soul is generally considered the 2nd worst tier EVER, after Trial of the Crusader, which came between the immensely popular Ulduar and ICC.

Pros:
1) Hands down the best raiding expansion Blizzard has put out. From T14, to tier 16, the quality was pretty good. Number of bosses, excellent. Consistency with pushing out new raids? Great.

2) Livelier world. I cannot stress this enough. With the new rare system both in Pandaria and then expanded upon in TI, being in the world was actually fun. I mean, some nights, I just farmed rares for consumable mats. Speaking of which, I need to harvest my farms...

3) ...farms. As a raider, I thought this would be stupid as hell. But I can get all my raid mats for a week off one farm. That's a godsend. Plus, for the every-day type of player like me, it's been very, very lucrative on my alts.

4) Story. I'm not a huge lore nerd, but I liked both how the story was delivered in MoP, and the story itself. Very much what was promised, a peaceful land beset by negative emotions manifesting as evil spirits. Valley of the Four Winds (which for some reason people seem to hate) was a perfect centerpiece of that theme: you start with all these seemingly innocous problems of farmers in the eastern part of the zone, only to find out that the major problems have been held at bay by a giant wall they built, which is now under constant siege and being broken through by nasty, evil bugs controlled by the Sha of Fear's lackey, the Empress.

5) Flex, great addition. Feels like I can raid on my alts without wanting to kill a puppy irl because of LFR.

Neutral:

1) Pet Battles. I liked the very few of them that I did, but I didn't get swallowed up by them. I just don't have the time, and when I do something, I do it correct. My guildie has 40 level 25 pets or something, but doesn't farm. You make your trade offs.

2) Dailies. I don't mind dailies, but there certainly were a lot/too many at the beginning of the expansion. And if you didn't belong to an organized raiding guild, having certain things locked (enchants/leg armors, etc) behind reps until you could level your alt sucked. Min-maxing at the beginning of the expansion involved a couple weeks of 40+ dailies a day. Even though that's not "required" for the casual raider, it's basic gaming psychology that every team-based player wants to feel like they're doing their best to contribute to their team, and if you weren't doing ALL your dailies, you weren't. Cloud Serpent trainers, totally unnecessary rep. Still did it, after all the "raiding" reps. Ugh. Double rep on alts was a good solution, I suppose, it just front loads all the dailies onto your main, which is where I suppose you want the "experience" of dailies to be.

3) Legendary questline. Didn't feel legendary, but again, I came from a guild setting that had easy access to legendaries in WotLK/Cata. Better than the random-drop-chance legendaries of TBC and Vanilla, still, but shouldn't have been available in LFR. Maybe only Flex and above, from now on. Not too fussed since it got me my first legendary ever (hunter who didn't get Thori'dal in TBC), but it being a cloak was meh. I still hide my cloak, and hiding a legendary seems kinda lousy.

Cons:

1) PvP. I've never had less interest in doing PvP in an expansion, and I play a Beast Mastery hunter! It really has been relegated to mini-game status at this point, imo. Most of the changes they've done this xpac have been so confusing as to put me right off from PvP.

2) LFR. The quality has just gone straight downhill, while the expectations of those who play it exclusively have continued to climb. I'm generally a good guy, but I can't tank in LFR any more. If I go, I go on my healer to actually have a challenge (sometimes I find healing LFR more difficult than healing normals and some of the easier heroics), or DPS if I'm watching a show in the background and I can just afk for 40 minutes while I wait for the queue.
2a) Something needs to be done about queues. I shouldn't feel forced to play resto shaman even though enhance is the spec I love just because I can't be asked to sit in a 40 minute queue versus a 4 minute queue.

3) Leveling alts was a serious problem in the beginning of the expansion. Totally fixed now with the XP nerfs in Pandaria and the Timeless Isle, but it was such a pain in the ass to keep an alt anywhere near geared. Ugh, I still shudder at the first week of the expansion where I was trying to get my main + my raiding alt to level cap. Even with normals not being open for a week, it was still a huge pain in the ass.

4) VP capping was a huge pain in the ass until the introduction of heroic scenarios (and h-scen are a cop out, at that). Raiders who are doing a full clear every week should be valor capped by the end of it. End of story. Heroic scenarios should offer somewhere between the amoutn scenarios and dungeons give, and dungeons should give a lot more than they do. And there should be more dungeons (minor con for me, really). And Valor of the Ancients should apply across servers...please, for the love of god.

[Orcbert]

Disagree with your assessment of scenarios. I found them fun to do random and with a small group of friends to kill time. Since you can queue for them in addition to dungeons and LFR they are something to do while you wait for your turn on those. I'm not sure what you mean about "waiting in line" for it since it's not role specific and the queue's are damn near instant no matter who you are.

Their inclusion into single player games were also a nice way to show some story smoothly on large scale for one person.

Some were better then others but I feel like they were by and large a success and something to build on.

The only huge downside this expansion was the initial daily grind for rep to spend your valor. That was pretty awful. I'm not happy with timeless isle either. I was bored after a few weeks. I took a fresh 90 there the other day and was geared up and done with the place (unless I want to face pound grind for burdens) in about 5 hours.

[Einsz]

Pros:
- pet battles
- the zones of pandaria are quite fun (killed by timeless isle though)
- leveling doesn't seem so boring with few grinding spots allowing you to get 85-90 in 3h with lvl 90 friend/2nd acc
- i found out t14 to be really great

Cons:
- free legendary with 0 efford for everyone rather than rewarding raiders with it
- worst? 5 man dungeons ever released with expansion
- lfr/flex
- 20 item boss loot tables
- ToT, i hate everything troll related not to mention RPPM, tf gear making bad players look good because of insane rng
- not doing anything about warlocks being 10% ahead of everyone else
- talents
- lack of epicness of lore
- annoying music in lot of zones

Overall turns out it was a bad expansion for me. I still somehow enjoyed few things which kept me playing but I didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed TBC/WOTLK

[Not Againnn]

one word to describe mop from both a pve and pvp mage point of view

rocky.

[Deleted]

I've yet to see a 5/5 expansion, so this gets a 3/5 from me.

Pros:
-A lot of stuff to do at end game.
-SoO
-MSV
-PvP (yes, carry on about hunters and warriors all day. Every expansion has op classes, and always will)
-Storytelling mechanisms used. Even if you don't like the lore going on now, how it's being told in game is better than past efforts.
-Timeless Isle and IoT, even if their benefits were rather temporary.
-World bosses and various rares in general.
-Flex mode is good, I see it's queuing tech being adapted for normal mode eventually.
-Legendary quest was good. I see them taking the 'very long quest chain' approach again, probably with a big more variety next time.

Cons:
-Very on rails questing. This is the second 5 level expansion, and both have been an absolute failure in this regard, especially on replay. More levels = more zones = more variance on replay.
-An excessive amount of tween content. Hozen and vermin immediately come to mind.
-Hiding plot lines behind rep gain. The cut scenes that unfolded throughout the 5.1 dailies were fairly crucial to events that unfolded, and probably should have been more directly accessible.
-The barrens event was... ok, not as good as it could have been.
-Pet battles.
-5 man dungeons across the board were a HUGE letdown, easily the worst of any expansion. I look at something like Stormstout, and then I look back at something like BRD, and I wonder what happened to this shell of a company in terms of creativity and detail.
-Artwork. Detail on armor and weapons was good, and the artwork is crisper than ever, but very little stylistically impressed me in terms of armor sets and weapons in this expansion.


Summary:
Not great, but good. Whatever comes next really does need to be great.

Have to say I almost completely agree with everything here, but with just a few changes and additions

Pros
- Pet battles were a success, so I'd mention that as a pro.
- Questing mechanics themselves are great in Pandaria.
- There's something to "discover" in Pandaria, like Boa items and stuff.
- The storytelling mechanics are absolutely amazing. I loved how after killing Garrosh we get a "conclusion" to the pandaria story with Lorewalker Cho. It actually felt like and ending.

Cons:

- While the storytelling mechanics are amazing, best they've done so far in fact, the story itself just is not interesting. I personally couldn't care less about emperor tao tao or some talking crane. Not to mention those stone draenei or fish night elves. They are just not interesting at all and feel completely irrelevent to the prior storytelling.
- Pvp. In this expansion they tried to bring pvp and pve closer together so you could do both, but instead they made it so that they are further apart than ever. The amount of insane grinding you need to get pvp gear is just so tidious. They should either dramatically increase the amount of conquest pts gained from an arena win, or go back to 10 games a week for pts. Maybe they should even add an lfr style solution for 2vs2 arena so you could just get pts from it. Right now you absolutely need to choose which you want to do, pvp or pve.
- Scenarios. Awful, awful, awful.

Rest of the stuff I agree with you.

[Totaltotemic]

Professions:

Farm is great, but Golden Lotus should have been more accessible in the world.
Spirits of Harmony suck, why weren't they ever BoA?
Leg armors behind the Golden Lotus rep wall was annoying, and screw Exalted with August Celestials for Royal Satchels
Cooking and Fish stuff was generally amazing.

Leveling:

Spec split made some classes extremely awkward to level (hello Monk getting no new abilities from level 3 until level 10)
Talents every 15 levels only also makes leveling feel grindy, some specs stayed the same for 20+ levels whereas before a new game-changing talent was every 10 levels.
Wandering Isle was fun the first time, but was irritatingly long for an intro zone, could have used a lot less mandatory RP.
Pandaria had the same problem as the Wandering Isle, things like the entire Kun-Lai Summit zone past the Shado-Pan parts (those god-damned Grummels...) and most of Krasarang Wilds were just plain boring, making leveling through Pandaria again a chore. Dread Wastes was the pinnacle of the questing experience.
Jade Forest and Dread Wastes hub options were amazing, not sure why Valley had to be so damn linear (Townlong was a story, I get that).
Overall, not the best leveling expansion continent.

System changes:

Bonus rolls, max level talent system, glyphs, and expertise counting as Hit for casters were all very sound designs.
Flex mode, "forged" gear, and item upgrades were all great, but the item level gap and constant attempts to push normal raiders into LFR were extremely problematic.
Legendary quest was awesome and very cool for lore as well as the challenges, but Meta gem/Cloak were extremely destructive to normal play patterns (among healers especially) and the game would probably be better with a more simple reward like the weapon gems.
Challenge modes were cool at first but ultimately not very challenging with the leaderboard dominated by FotM classes pre-nerfs. Proving Grounds has the same problem.
Vengeance has been a problem all expansion for raids dealing with tanks that only care about doing damage. It increased the population of tanks, but with quite a few worse ones.

Raiding:

Yay finally long tiers that give a sense of working through and accomplishment.... oh wait we're going to release them super fast on everyone. Seriously, could they not hold 5.2 and 5.4 1-2 months longer so we don't end up in SoO for a year like ICC and DS?
Some extremely fun fights (Spoils, Elegon, heroic Sha of Fear come to mind), but some extremely poorly designed fights too (damage tuning on heroic Empress, Ra-den practically being broken, Paragons being completely broken, heroic Lei Shen requiring stupidly specific strats that call for 2 DKs and half the raid with immunities or 90% damage reductions).
Raid locations were some of the best in any expansion, especially the underground of Orgrimmar.
As mentioned before, item level scaling, why is a heroic WF item 31 ilvls higher than a heroic TF item? Blizz plz.

PvP:

Catch-up system and not requiring teams both overdue and good changes.
Talents exacerbated the CC arms race far more than ever, allowing 100% CC chains even in 2s.
Gear has been... awkward... all expansion

Monks:

Leveling makes no sense, no TEB and RSK for WW until 56, literally Jab/TP/BoK for 53 levels.
Peak of Serenity seems underused, hoped for more of a Moonglade or Archerus vibe, instead got daily exp buff and port back place.
Brewmaster is insanely fun and well balanced (aside from damage issues and needs a cap on Stagger percentage)
Windwalker took some patches to have the right tools, although Mastery is still pretty screwed up. TEB might be the most fun class mechanic in the game though.
Mistweaver should have been themed off Chi-Ji if he was the healing celestial, and butchering the heal-via-DPS paradigm in 5.2 was totally unnecessary. Mastery has been ignored (not even adjusted for class rotation changes) and ultimately forgotten in a pit of uselessness. My favorite healing spec ever was turned into a joke and gutted to become a melee Resto Druid with less utility.

Other:

Pet battles are neat but ultimately much worse than Pokemon in terms of actual combat, especially the ridiculous levels of RNG and NPCs having better pets than you can possibly ever own, forcing cheese strategies to win.
Pandaria/Panderans worked out pretty well, however I had hoped to see more Taran Zhu-like characters and less of Chen Stormstout being a bumbling idiot.
Overall story and theme is probably better than any expansion so far.
IoT and Timeless Isle were both shining examples of what level 90 questing content should be. Barrens event and 5.0/5.1 dailies were not.
Easy/Hard world boss dynamic didn't truly work out until 5.4 when the devs realized that open world bosses cannot be difficult unless extremely bad players are limited access.



Overall it's likely the best expansion WoW has seen, but there's still a lot of room for improvement.

[Shipu]

MoP is the BEST WoW expansion!

Pros:

- the lore and the how the storytelling was told, especially the 5.1 and 5.2 content
- Challange Mode - great end-game feature (and the CM gear )
- Pandaria itself - interesting and beautiful continent, its so interesting and fun to explore and discover the new things about it
- Scenarios and Hearoic Scenarios
- Flex Raiding
- Pandaren lore as a Race! You feel like a hero, you have a past - the rest of the races do not feel that way..(all the pre-cata races)
- the Graphic improve...The beauty of Pandaria simply impressive! It's tired of playing the game with trees that look like paper folding! pre-MoP it would seem that way..
- World Bosses!
- Bonus rolls!
- Treasures / chests and all of the Pandaria "outdoor" items - great idea!
- Pandaria Scrolls of lore (and the lorewalkers) - AMAZING!
- Quests Design, even daily quests, the faction and their progress, I personally really liked!
- Expansion Feature (the farm/pet / bonus rep and more...)
- ISLE OF THUNDER! - BEST place EVER! - the quests, the scenarios, mutual progress of the server, the stages and the lore progress! F*CKING AMAZING! - PLEASE give us more things like that!
- Brawlers Guild and Proving Grounds
- the Monks - dynamic class, fun and very different from the other classes!

Cons:

-Timeless Isle - I did not like the concept, I think the concept of the IOT much, much more relevant and good for WOW.
In IOT found a great way to show us the lore and show progress and give us a feeling that we are part of it!
In addition, we had a reason and a desire to come in and do quests each day and week to find out more parts on the isle.
It will be interesting to see the combination of Isle of Thunder and The Timeless Isle

- 5.3 was just lacking content and interesting, you could do it much, much more.

[rpdrichard]

Definitely not my favorite expansion but it's thousand times better than the abomination that was cataclysm

Pros

- The storytelling, the way to tell the story is really good
- A whole landmass not zones scattered trough the world
- World bosses and timeless isle rare mobs (tag sharing for both factions)
- Legendary for everyone that took the time to complete the quest chain and it being actually usefull for the current expansion
- Flex raiding
- Thunder isle
- Cooking leveling catch up, all the profesions could use a similar system
- PvP resilience changes

Cons

- Rehasing and butchering of classic dungeons, and even this ones are better that the pandaria ones
- Lame and really few new dungeons, I would black list siege of niuzao temple and gate of the setting sun if I could
- Scenarios replacing dungeons, they proved to be an effective and really good way of storytelling but they should never replace dungeons
- Toxic enviroment of LFR
- LFR replacing dungeons as a gearing up step, Hour of Twilight dungeons were the right difficulty and the right pre raid gearing way
- The most alt unfriendly expansion
- VP farming
- Pet battles
- First 2 tier linear raids with brick walls on the first bosses (Horridon)
- Rep gating and dailies gating
- BoP apirits of harmony
- Only 1 kind of new bag rep gated
- Leveling in pandaria, it was fine the 1st time deadly boring after that even after the exp nerf
- The lore, couldn't care less about the pandas
- The "lessons of pandaria" have been taught previously by Jaina, pre Green Jesus Thrall and other characters without all the nagging (Tharan Zhu)
- Fat male panda models ressembling Kung Fu Panda, the WC 3 Frozen Throne pandaren where bulky not fat
- Craftable items being near to useless, god forbid someone that doesn't raid to own a decent weapon
- PvP balance ruining PvE
- Horde biased lore a second expansion in a row

[miffy23]

Pros:
- All 3 Raiding Tiers
- Timeless Isle
- Lore and the how the storytelling was done, especially the 5.1 content
- Flex raiding
- Legendary chain
- Challange modes
- Scenarios overall

Cons
- The rep grind at release was just horrific
- Lack of 5mans
- Healing specs not balanced
- Dread Wastes, atleast when I leveled my first toon to 90 I truley hated the zone.
- The first 8 bosses in SoO was quite badly tuned

Uh what? They were easy, as they were supposed to be. Compare to ToT or some 5.0 bosses early on that casuals quit over, much better tuning in SoO. The final 6 bosses are a notch above, as it should be.

MoP:
The best expansion to date. While the "feel" was not as epic as seeing many beloved Warcraft environments and characters for the first time in past expansions, it was new, it was fresh. It had some of the best orchestral scoring yet, and that's saying something for Blizzard. The production was amazing, the visuals stunning. If you showed Jade Forest on Ultra along with soundtrack to someone playing Vanilla 10 years ago, their jaws would drop. Which goes to show what great work they've done with the engine they have. The best raids since probably Ulduar/ICC. Revolutionary new game modes like Challenge Mode and Flex Raids that have been a resounding success with the intended audience.

I feel like I've just about had my fill of Pandaria now. It was amazing while it lasted, and I will look back fondly. But it feels right to move on to something different now, the satisfaction is starting to wear off.

I will think back to the times we had with the Pandaren while i'm busy zapping Draenei on my Orc shaman.
Enough resting on this island, BLOOD AND THUNDER.
FOR THE HORDE!

[-Superman-]

My take is, MoP isn't over. A post-mortem is a bit prematurem