Was MoP mostly good or mostly terrible for you?

[DeadmanWalking]

The expansion was a nice breath of fresh air. It wasn't wall to wall imminent armageddon.

Anyone who hates panda's because they are silly should avoid playing a Native American Tauren running around the plains sleeping in teepees.

[Deleted]

I quit MoP after about two weeks and only returned recently to get used to the game again in time for WoD.

Basically, the expansion hit and I leveled up as usual, hitting 90 in a couple of days or whatever is normal for playing dedicated but not tryhard. I then started on heroic dungeons, which has normally been one of my favourite parts of each expansion -- learning the heroics, gearing up in them, getting good at them while they're still relevant content. It's the only time in an expansion's lifespan where you can realistically do meaningful and currently relevant progression without being in a raid guild.

However, the heroics of MoP were the worst dungeons in the history of WoW. Not only were they bad content by design, they were so easy that the entire joy of doing dungeons was missing completely. People were able to hit level 90 and immediately jump directly into heroics - even if they'd never seen the dungeons before - and speedrun them in the most mindless faceroll manner. It was a goddamn joke, an absolute farce. It felt like content designed for small children (perhaps it was).

So I did heroics just long enough to get the gear I needed there which, with the extreme ease and speed of doing them, took very little time. Then I went on to look what else I could do to progress my character before stepping into the endgame. I'm not a non-raider, but I like to cover the pre-raid content before I delve into the endgame. And in MoP, that was... dailies. Endless amounts of mindless, uninspiring dailies.

People would insist that they were optional, but in a game where the central goal is to improve one's character, you can't opt out of one of the main ways to do this. Dailies were no more optional than enchanting your gear is optional, and you had to do 45 dailies per week to keep up on charms -- more if you wanted to max your reps in a timely manner, but that part could be considered optional.

Even by daily quest standards, MoP's dailies are the worst I've ever seen. They're the most inane, primitive form of gameplay, and the surrounding content is miserable to play in. Boring, irritating, frustrating, and if you were on a high-population realm (and especially a PvP realm) then it would take ages because you were constantly hindered in one way or another by the presence of other players. I hated every minute of it and had to spend easily two hours per day doing it in order to feel like I was taking the opportunities for progression offered to me by the game.

On top of all this nonsense, the expansion was such a hamfisted cliché of Asian culture that it felt like satire. It's one thing to set it in Pandaria, an environment whose place in the Warcraft universe is as far-fetched as it can possibly get. I genuinely don't think they could have come up with a setting that belonged in the game any less than Pandaria does while still being remotely justifiable. It is at the very edge of what can be excused as the premise of an entire expansion and should have been used for a content patch instead. But even allowing for Pandaria to exist, they did not have to make it so violently Asian. It could have a comfortable oriental undertone, but they gave it a deafening Chinese cacophony that overshadowed everything and made every aspect of the expansion feel like some kind of product placement festival.

For me, MoP was the lowest point in the history of Word of Warcraft. I still can't quite believe they let the game sink so low.

[Deleted]

My history:
Vanilla: Hardcore raider
BC and WOTLK: Tried both for about a month or two, then quit because I didn't have anything to do being a casual scrub
Cata: Didn't play.

MOP: Made my comeback and have been playing constantly for > 1 year now.

It's been the only time for me I've been able to play constantly whilst not being a hardcore raider, there's lots of stuff to do for the casual and I like it. Between farming transmog, mounts and pet battles, as well as occasional timeless isle and LFR/Flex raids, there has always been lots of stuff for me to do and I appreciate it from Blizzard.

One thing I think the game has desperately been missing is just what I hope Ashran promises to be. A PVP place where you can always find something to do no matter how long you have to play or what time it is. Just what the old AV was but not in a BG. I have such high hopes for it. Oh and also the 5 man content in MOP was pretty bad. I didn't like any of the dungeons and they were all way too easy.

[Franzy]

I had fun, lots of optional achievements/novelty items/etc to do, which Cataclysm had very little of.

[XtremeC0der]

MoP was fantastic, the best expac so far imo (yes, including BC). the raids were quite good, especially ToT and SoO. regardless of dailies, I still rerolled once or twice per tier and never had problems as my guild's main tank.

vengeance was a lot of fun this xpac, but it had to change and i'm glad in 6.0 it will. I never felt like I was "grinding" dailies or rep. The only time I really felt like I was grinding was the weekly dungeon grind to finish up the valor cap.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

It was a step up from Cata, but the dailies didn't offer much variety and actually turned me off after long enough.

[Stormgnoef]

Mostly good until 1 year of soo that took the cake.I hardly even log in now waiting for wod.

[Xires]

I keep seeing heated discussions on the subjects in other threads, and I can't help but wonder - how many people actually consider the expansion a success, and how many would consider it a failure?

Personally? I'm leaning towards failure for all the generic reasons that were discussed a million times - dailies, grindiness, item level inflation, horrible pvp, etc. etc.. It wasn't -all- bad (Cross-realm raids / arenas finally mean I can play on RP server without feeling left out of pve/pvp) but the bad honestly outweighs the good for me.

What do you think?

It was ok. Good raiding but the last tier took way to long to end which leaves a slight bitter taste in my mouth about MoP that will take some time to wash away. I never much cared for the theme and I didn't like the questing all that much this x-pac.