I don't see how MoP can't be the best expansion.

[Powerogue]

I don't consider it having done anything worse than previous expansions.

It just didn't innovate enough to keep my attention, I was getting burned out on WoW, and the expansions starting with cataclysm looked more and more alike.
BC - hey, it's an expansion, that's new!
WotLK - vehicles and phasing!
cata - the 1-60 revamp was pretty cool, but as far as endgame....
pandaria - umm....pet....battles?

[Celista]

I don't consider it having done anything worse than previous expansions.

It just didn't innovate enough to keep my attention, I was getting burned out on WoW, and the expansions starting with cataclysm looked more and more alike.
BC - hey, it's an expansion, that's new!
WotLK - vehicles and phasing!
cata - the 1-60 revamp was pretty cool, but as far as endgame....
pandaria - umm....pet....battles?

At least the raiding is good. Nothing really innovative about the raid encounters, but it's a much higher quality raid tier than Dragon Soul at least.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

Im really enjoying mop so far its better than cata and wotlk by a long shot imo, and im talking pvp here i really like how they are balancing pvp in 5.1. As for pve it is just too easy i was a full time pver and im done with pve, honestly it doesnt offer any challenge and i dont do hardmode raiding because i refuse to play a video game in a schedule, that will just never happen i have a life

[Kudos]

It is really good.

Just bummed that pvp is a disaster.

Pretty much this. There is a tonne to do, unfortunately there is much of it that just doesn't interest me, or I find is not enjoyable. Sadly, PVP is one area I just do not enjoy right now. That, and dailies.

[Kaleredar]

I like MoP a lot, but I do sorely wish they had kept in some "challenging casual" content... like the challenging heroics in Cataclysm. Those were perfect. I've grinded to exalted with all of the reps I care to grind to exalted with (don't really care enough about anglers,) and, aside from LFR for gear and random battlegrounds, I've almost completely run out of things to do that coincide with a casual play style.

A purely cosmetic tiff, but I also wish they had done Dread Wastes and Townlong Steppes differently... they just don't seem to "be" anywhere in particular, just sparse forest over oddly covered grassy plains. If I could redesign them, I'd make either Dread Wastes into a desert (reminiscent of the "hidden stair" area) or a dense, dark jungle, and turn Townlong Steppes into something more resembling the plains regions of Kun'Lai. But that's just me.

[Deleted]

1. PvP is a completel mess right now with some of the worst burst I who has played since TBC have ever seen up to now. And an insane ammount of CC and interrupts.

2. Daily Quests are annoying as hell. Couple it with rep requirement for acquiring gear. Exalted to get an 463 weapon, really?

3. Archaeology is nigh useless. They hardly even bothered with it. The one faction related to it doesn't need it, it rewards 3 blue items and every single last achievment now is an grind. 20x the same item? Great effort they underwent there.


In generally I don't see what's so great about MoP.

[Kaleredar]

2. Daily Quests are annoying as hell. Couple it with rep requirement for acquiring gear. Exalted to get an 463 weapon, really?

You can get a 463 weapon from heroic dungeons as well. If you want epic gear, you can do LFR, and if that's too random for you, you can do raids, or buy them off the AH, or get them crafted, or buy them off the Black Market Auction house... the ways to obtain gear have never been more expansive.

While some dailies are indeed grating (shado-pan and Nizuao temple august celestials come to mind,) arguing that they're "required" isn't really a valid concern.

[jmacphee9]

They tried so hard to make this a good expansion, but totally missed the mark. My guess is that they just weren't able to recover from the cripplingly bad theme.

based on what? from players themselves, this expac has been very very good i would say. there is way less bitching on the forums, seriously if you are regularly on forums think of how much less bitching you see now then in the past? MoP is doing stellar.

i personally havent noticed players leaving as fast as cata either, slowly my old guildies are coming back and staying it seems.

[Xerra]

I liked Wrath the most, it had a conclusion to a lot of WC3 build up. The only thing i would say bad about it was ToC and worgen in grizzly hills, they really didnt seem to have a purpose imo. But I thought everything else was good, I was never in the top raiding guilds to have seen Nax in vanilla so it was new content for me, but everything else was nice because it had a hint of old stories. Unfortunately for me MoP didn't have really those deep roots that made the story interesting, but I suppose they need to make more lore one way or another.

[Deleted]

My favorite will always be wrath, it had a great balance, but tbc yeah.. a lot of it is nostaligia imo. I loved it, it had it's moments... but i you think mop dailies are a pain? Try grinding rep for a tallbuk

I started in WotLK and i wanted that mount so bad.. eventually got it in cata, grind was soooooooooooo long

[reef]

i raided for 100 weeks straight in cata and enjoyed every moment of it. i just cant get into mop and pandaria as a whole, with its creatures, landscapes, architecture, etc, just couldn't be more uninteresting to me.

[Celista]

I liked Wrath the most, it had a conclusion to a lot of WC3 build up. The only thing i would say bad about it was ToC and worgen in grizzly hills, they really didnt seem to have a purpose imo. But I thought everything else was good, I was never in the top raiding guilds to have seen Nax in vanilla so it was new content for me, but everything else was nice because it had a hint of old stories. Unfortunately for me MoP didn't have really those deep roots that made the story interesting, but I suppose they need to make more lore one way or another.

I must be weird because I actually enjoyed ToC, just not running it 4x per toon per week.

[topitopi]

I completely agree with OP. Started with about 1/3rd left in BC and I enjoyed it but didn't fully experience it. Loved Wrath, hated Cata, Mists is my favorite

[Reyzzz]

It is really good.

Just bummed that pvp is a disaster.

First season of an expansion has always been unbalanced.

[lordjust]

Funny thing is...now that people got LOADS to do on their mains, the altoholics crawl out and complain how MoP is really alt-unfriendly...

Yes and the thing is that in classic people only played one character and with BC when most of the people had nothing to do because it was casual unfriendly they started playing alts so that they have something to do. Over the last expansion Blizzard didn't change it and people actually were complaining that there isn't enough content for their main. Now that there are tons of things to do the same people people that complained that there isn't enough to do for one character so that they are forced to play multiple ones complain that there is too much content so that they are forced to play just one character.

People will always complain. In WotLK and Cataclysm people complained that reputation was just a by-product from running dungeons and wasn't important enough. Now you can only get reputation by grinding dailies and people complain that reputation is too important and reputation rewards aren't good enough (only the things you can buy for gold). Same thing with dungeons. In BC people said they were too hard, in WotLK too easy, in Cataclysm again too hard and now in MoP the heroics are too easy and challenge mode gives no loot.

For me the best expansion was WotLK. Yes, dungeons and raids were easy and all but that is exactly the point. Even as a casual player you could log in and just run some dungeons or even pug raids to have fun and get some gear. When you wanted to have a greater challenge, just try to do the achievements in dungeons or raids. There was a lot to do and you had very little downtime. In classic you had to search for a long time a group for a dungeon or raid and then wait another long time until everybody was there. Same thing in BC with a little bit less long waiting times because everything was concentrated in Shattrath. In WotLK it was basically the same thing but because the content was so easy more people actually wanted to try new things because the risk of failure was very small.

[Alltat]

TBC added more things to do for the "semi-hardcore" crowd, who previously didn't have much to do - in between running PUG dungeons and 40 man raids, vanilla had no content. TBC added heroics (which were hard enough not to be PUG-able), ten man raiding, gems and sockets, justice points (called badges at the time), honor points (added in patch 2.0), arena PvP, random daily heroic (the first step towards LFD), the very idea of daily quests, a more structured system of reputation rewards, much improved itemization, vastly improved talent trees, most specs made reasonably viable, new stats (like haste), flying mounts, vehicle quests, much more craftable gear, much improved fishing (including Find Fish), daily profession quests (which later evolved into today's research), permanent portals between cities, etc.


MoP didn't add much new to the "core" game. It added lots of "side" elements, like farming and pet battles, but aside from the talent revamp and scenarios, the core gaming experience is essentially the same as in Cataclysm. Archaeology was added in Cataclysm, achievement hunting came with WotLK, mount farming has been around since vanilla (grinding exalted with home factions), world PvP was more alive in vanilla than it is now. You can do more in MoP than in any previous expansion, but that's because it builds on those, not because MoP itself adds much. TBC was by far the most radical expansion in terms of building up what we now consider to be WoW, which is why a lot of people look to that (and to a slightly lesser degree WotLK) as the greatest expansions. MoP is good largely because TBC and WotLK were great.

[Saiyoran]

I just don't understand the people that say "Achievements/Pet Battles/Mount Farming aren't fun because they are a waste of time."

I totally get it if you find any or all of those things boring and unenjoyable. But calling out Blizzard for creating a part of a video game that is a waste of time is ridiculous. You're playing a game that is made to waste your time. Raiding is a waste of time. PvP is a waste of time. Logging in is a waste of time. Me posting on this forum is a waste of time. The point is to have fun with what aspects you find enjoyable, because playing a game is wasting time in the first place (unless you're one of the few who make money off of this sort of thing, in which case I understand that said aspects take away from the aspects you need to focus on to profit) so why not ignore the parts you hate and just do the parts you enjoy? If there aren't any, unsub and leave it alone. Others may still enjoy it.

---------- Post added 2012-12-15 at 03:55 AM ----------

As for my personal OPINION, I think MoP is a close second behind TBC. I didn't reach max level in Vanilla, unfortunately, so I can't judge the endgame there. TBC's raids were hard, which some enjoy and some don't, but I personally enjoyed the challenge, even if I didn't really progress anywhere past Kara. The dailies I wasn't a fan of, and still am not, but dailies are dailies. I do think one major flaw in MoP is the valor gating behind dailies. I see where Blizz is coming from trying to avoid the whole "championing" concept to try and get people to stop sitting AFK waiting for queues all day, but I personally do not enjoy so many dailies. I know some people that love them though, so to each his own. PvP I can't really talk about balance-wise, but from what I've seen the first season of each xpac is a little rough. I suck at PvP and always have, so I'm still having the same amount of fun as always. TBC introduced a lot of new stuff (flying, it was the first xpac, the whole concept of heroic, etc.) and was pretty innovative. MoP is at a disadvantage in that way because it's really tough to add much that is meaningful to an already massive game, aside from basic content (zones, raids, quests, etc.). As far as new systems and parts of the game, the stuff they've come up with is fun for me at least (pet battles and the like) but I've always focused on raiding even though I'm not a hardcore player. I think the raids this tier are awesome. Maybe that's just the relief I feel from being out of DS though. Cata was the weakest for me because god damn I really never left Stormwind for half the expansion besides LFD, LFR, and being summoned to raids. I thought T11 and FL were solid, but I couldn't stand DS and Deathwing's fights were rather anticlimatic, lacking the challenge of BC and the story/emotional investment of WotLK. MSV, HoF, and Terrace are all solid raids, maybe not the best (personal favorite is still Ulduar), but definitely some good quality encounters in each one.

My 2 cents.

[Arbs]

It is really good.

Just bummed that pvp is a disaster.

PvP has always been a diaster, its the pvp community who ruined it themselves, They whined about classes being to Overpowered in Cataclysm and they continue until there class is the Overpowered one or they roll the Op class & think there pro. It one of the main reasons I don't bother to PvP until AV Weekend.

[Farora]

For me it's the least interesting expansion so far. Heavy dailies focus meh.

[Nitrax]

TBC was the best and will always be the best for nostalgic reasons that can't happen again.

What I dislike with new expansions (and also the new games from Blizz like D3 SC2) is that everything is perfected into something that feels like I can only play it in one way, otherwise I'm doing it wrong (because then I don't follow the perfect flow thought out by designers).

An example (that I always come back to) is paladin tanking in TBC. It was not intended that paladins would tank much different than warriors (or at all), but thanks to certain mechanics and high skill you could pull off some amazing stunts in some dungeons, like doing shattered halls in record time everyone AoEing like mad.

Boss mechanics were "buggy" enough that there was always some neat LoS or other trick that could be exploited by an experienced group to speed a dungeon up.

Just take the UBRS runs from vanilla... player skill really did matter there. If you didnt have at least a couple of skilled players you just never got through the dungeon. With skilled players it was quite fast. Stonecore was a bit like this but failed because the actual running distance was so far (compared to the loot - UBRS always had that UBR loot that never dropped for you). In general all cataclysm instances heroics at lauch were hard enough but maybe lacked in the buggy boss department. I had a field day in start of cataclysm, but thanks to dungeon finder it was quite ruined later on.