Timerunning seems like a really cool idea.. But why Pandaria?

[Doffen]

again, had nothin to do with pandarin as race. I played a mistweaver for the entire first patch. the game just wasn't in a good state... Talent trees gone, all semblance of RPG were starting to go. Gear started to lose stats and by the end of the expansion gear had become an item level based system with little to no depth. Dailies were out of control, the one good raid was throne of thunder

It's one of the cases were the last half of the expansion was decent, so people forget the troubling start with heavily criticized dailiy system and the setting wasn't very popular. I also regard MoP as the bottom half, but for me it was the homogenization of classes where everyone had the same toolkit, you could log one caster after the other and they did the same things. For me that was a bad take, but from what I have read here on mmo-champ the last 7-8 years that was a good thing, because as proven by wow forums for almost 20 years, players want their class or spec to be as good as the others, toolkit and balance wise. I personally want classes and specs to be as different as they can be.

And blizzard had to do it that way because of the new talent trees. The same talent tree that has gotten a lot of flack after MoP here on mmo-champion and other forums, so people probably forgot that change happened in MoP, a pretty hefty change really. That's part of the setting as well, gameplay wise. Just see how much people think the change to old talent trees are awesome now.

Thing is, MoP from ToT was pretty straight forward, the daily problems were more or less dealt with, the setting was a bit darker, more focus on Horde and the Alliance and so on. What MoP did good was to keep players in from ToT and halfway into SoO.

In my experience I only played MoP now and then, it was pretty boring. And my old guild had disbanded, and my current guild had to merge with two others because so many people left. So it's funny to see those here that say you are wrong in your opinion. It is what it is, opinions. When people say there are proof that MoP was most popular it is far from the truth. Perhaps on MMO-Champion and some other forums. Those who disliked the expansion and quit during MoP isn't really here to vote are they now. So, posters anecdotal experience isn't better than yours.

And Mist of Pandaria was probably the most controversial expansion of them all from day 1 announcement.

[Shadowferal]

People saying they loved mop in hindsight is purely because it came just before the worst expansion ever created to date and against that it looked like a masterpiece.

Well, I'm not the person that loved MoP "in hindsight."
I did however have reservations at first. But the beginning part that had Taran Zhu denouncing the factions as nothing more than a race war and overall rejecting either side grabbed my writing sensibilities and made me damned curious, and the overall quality kept me going. Despite hitting level cap early, I just had to keep going through every zone. (Between mantids/Klaxxi and August Celestials, particularly "Xuen" it was easy)

[Zmagoslav]

I can see 3 reasons:
- Out of available expansions it's the one with most lore connections to the main actors of the next expansion
- Prior 3 expansions were just recently re-explored in "WoW:Classic"
- Out of available expansions it's the first one where the questing experience somewhat resembles a modern one

[Myradin]

Barely even fair to blame that on Cata itself instead of the internal issues Blizz had which made them take so goddamn long to release MoP, which is when the biggest drop happened.

But yeah Luthorite seems to have a Panda chip on their shoulder that defies any logic or objective facts.

I'm actually curious if there's an era of WoW Luthorite liked.

[xazrael]

Seriously could they have picked a worse expansion besides this?
Like why not TBC or Even Wrath...

But Pandaria? Really? The only expansions they could have picked that were worse is like... MAYBE WoD or BFA...

The only thing I can think of is because Pandaria has links to the old gods, and thus the void which is a big thing in TWW.... But even still....

I reserved judgement until I tried it out on PTR because I figured if it was maybe going to be different that would be kinda cool. But It's literally the same shit quests we had in pandaria.... Now I'm gonna have to slog through it for the rewards (yes I know I don't have to, but I want the rewards... doesn't mean I'm going to have fun with it).

Anyway I know this is supposed to be constructive so like, if you could pick a timerunning xpac what would you pick?

EDIT: Since when was MoP a fan favorite? Nobody I have ever known in 15 years of wow has ever said MoP was good... people avoid it like the plague when levelling new characters too. It's bonkers to me that people are saying it was good or that people loved it because I have literally 0 recollection of people enjoying it.... It was also when blizzard took away talent trees which was a universally HATED decision....

I legit have no idea how people could possibly say that when MoP was current, it was popular... it was literally one of the worst expansion they ever did lol.

EDIT 2: Yeah people in here just got selective memories, the expansion was almost universally canned at the time it existed. Can't believe you all legit think it was a popular or a good expac... There was literally almost nothing good about it.

My favorite xpac was MoP. I actually liked MoP more than Legion and I know Legion is known to be the best modern WoW expansion.

MoP was filled with a lot of fun elements, and even though it was disguised to be cartoony and for a younger audience, it handled the Alliance vs Horde hatred better than any other did.
It's raids were also fun and original and are still some of my favorite to date. Throne of Thunder was my favorite tier of all time. Heroic Durumu and Heroic Anima were some of the hardest raid roadblocks in the history of WoW.

It also introduced Battle Pets, which has a niche, but very popular fan base (including myself).

Lastly, always remember that nostalgia is usually the main reason someones expansion is their favorite, and out of all WoW xpacs, I played MoP the most, and cleared the end-game tier the entire xpac, and have the feats of strength to prove it.

If I did a tier list of xpacs here would be my order

MOP
WOTLK
BC
WOD
LEGION
DF
SL
BFA
CATA

[MackMaynee]

EDIT: Since when was MoP a fan favorite? Nobody I have ever known in 15 years of wow has ever said MoP was good... people avoid it like the plague when levelling new characters too. It's bonkers to me that people are saying it was good or that people loved it because I have literally 0 recollection of people enjoying it.... It was also when blizzard took away talent trees which was a universally HATED decision....

I legit have no idea how people could possibly say that when MoP was current, it was popular... it was literally one of the worst expansion they ever did lol.

EDIT 2: Yeah people in here just got selective memories, the expansion was almost universally canned at the time it existed. Can't believe you all legit think it was a popular or a good expac... There was literally almost nothing good about it.

This is factually incorrect and plagued with ridiculous self-assuring bias. There were (3) main issues that the community had with MoP:

(1): The levelling experience: It felt like a step back from Cataclysm and was redone again with WoD
(2): Catch-up for legendary progression on alts: This was also redone multiple times over future expansions
(3): The length of the final raid tier: This is WoW in general not just MoP.

MoP was incredibly well received - the arena PvP was better received and had better participation than the previous expansion - Challenge Modes were a phenomenal addition that many players loved and became the basis of what is now M+ - The first tier was 'good' but Throne of Thunder has widely been considered one of the greatest raids ever made. SoO was also a great raid, although it lasted a few months too long.

Now, if you want to argue about how people received the expansion at the time further I would say it all boils down to what circles you are in and where you played! If you played on a major prime-time server and did all of the content, I would find you hard pressed to think the game was bad. In terms of class design, it was probably the best the classes felt to play until modern WoW (in terms of fluidity) and again PvP was well received so if you and your friends did not like it (or you played on a dead server pre-squish) then I could understand your frustration.

If you want to argue about how MoP is looked at in remembrance - there is actually no coherent argument to be made that MoP was not well received or well liked. It is widely considered to be the 'best' expansion alongside WOTLK and Legion. You can personally feel it was a terrible expansion, but I don't think most people currently or historically would agree with you.

[xazrael]

Also, I think Blizzard doesn't intend to make a MoP classic, since MoP is where we deviated most to Retail WoW vs Classic.
So that is why they did timerunning for MoP and not the early xpacs.

If I had to guess, after Cata Classic, they will stop going further and just continue their seasons they are doing. Perhaps with original content that was never released in Retail.

It'll end up Retail = Casual/Collecting, Classic = Hardcore/Seasons

[Kalisandra]

Barely even fair to blame that on Cata itself instead of the internal issues Blizz had which made them take so goddamn long to release MoP, which is when the biggest drop happened.

But yeah Luthorite seems to have a Panda chip on their shoulder that defies any logic or objective facts.

MoP's drop after the initial 'new expac' surge was simply the same curve that Cata had started, but late MoP stopped the drop, and despite the length of time SoO was 'current' the numbers actually held steady over that long wait for WoD, so you could make a case that MoP stopped the decline that Cata started.

[Nightshade711]

It is because it’ll tie into the story of 10.2.7/TWW.

Xal’atath has been collecting essences(?) from remnants of each of the old gods. Y'shaarj is the last one remaining since she’s getting C’thun’s in SoD… and we deal directly with Y'shaarj‘s heart in SoO.