Why is MOP getting so much praise lately?

[Awbee]

everyone was far more salty about the kung fu panda expansion than they are now

Nah, only pretty childish people were. Mostly dudes who want WoW to be HARDCORE!!!1111 with some bloody muscled orcs beating down on bloody muscled humans. Ignoring that ever since the start, WoW had an extremely diverse world with peaceful native american cow people, tiny pink-haired geniuses in cogwheel machines, and so on and so forth. Blue goat russians from space and british werewolves are sensible, but asian panda monks are "taking it too far"? I just don't see it.

I enjoyed MoP thoroughly, the design of the zones was some of the best, I liked all the new stuff that they tried and introduced (scenarios, challenge modes, pet battles, the farm "friendship" thing, the Lorewalkers stuff, treasures around the map). I also like the Monk class, and class design in general was amazing. (I very very much miss MoP-style Elemental Shaman, Disc Priest and Ret ...) Since I also enjoy dailies, I didn't have a problem with them like many other people. All the patches brought pretty cool and new content OTHER than raids: Isle of Thunder, Dino Island, that Horde v Alliance thing, Timeless Isle.
I really don't have much of a bad word to say about MoP, other than that I find it very sad that the Vale was permanently destroyed and hasn't been "healed" yet. Kind of sucks seeing it nowadays. Oh, and the dungeons were too easy and didn't offer much after the start. Also, no new dungeons were introduced over the course of the expansion.


I also mostly liked Cata. It had some flaws, like Dragonsoul being not too great, scrapped content like the Neptulon raid, and the fact that the zones were all spread across the map, not giving that distinct "expansion" feel that comes with a whole new continent. Oh, and healing being a total bitch at the start.
What I really liked about Cata: the dungeons! The starting dungeons, the Troll dungeons and the endtime dungeons. All great. Also transmog and the Firelands daily area.


The only expansion I quite strongly dislike is Warlords. For a player like me (no raiding), it offered me very little. The questing was nice, bonus objectives are a good idea, and SMV is super pretty, but that's about it. The dungeons were alright, but offered nothing as the expansion went on. Apexis was awful. Reputation was AWFUL. So much content with potential was scrapped (Farahlon, Tanaan only in 6.2, Shattrath, Karabor ...). There were only two patches, and one of them was "that" patch with garrison updates and the selfie camera. Which btw I don't hate, but come on, that's not patch material. Compare with MoP's patches! The garrison itself wasn't an awful idea, but the almost non existing customization (all in Human and Orc design, and you can't choose a zone ...) ruined it for me. Plus the fact that there was almost literally nothing else to do, so you logged in to your garrison, did the missions, and logged out. Ughh.


For me personally, I'd rate the expansions I've actively played as follows:

Legion >> Wrath and MoP >> Cata >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> WoD

Wrath is only on par with MoP because of the story, the theme, and nostalgia (since I started back then). In terms of actual content and features, MoP would probably win out.

[Deleted]

For me, the things about MoP that I really disliked and that (for me at least) makes it my least favorite expansion of all are following:

Quests and zone design:

To me, the quests and leveling experience was downright terrible. I did enjoy some parts of the Jade Forrest, but all the other zones felt mediocre and dull. The quests were poorly written and the lore did not catch my interest at all. The zones (outside of Jade Forrest) felt big and boring and overall made this expansion a drag to level alts in.

I will give Blizzard credit for the 5.1 Alliance vs Horde questline, which might have been the single one redeeming questline in the entire expansion.

Dungeons and raids:

As much as I enjoyed raiding SoO (mostly just because it was a pleasure to bring ruin to the horde, as an alliance player), the only raid I enjoyed was ToT. The dungeons however were just terrible, they weren't interesting and I hated having to do them for JP and VP.

Content and end game:

MoP (especially in the beginning) with their daily quest spam was almost worth unsubbing for, because stuff was gated behind golden lotus rep. I know some people enjoyed Timeless Isle, but I personally got tired of it after 2 weeks. However the ToT Isle was decent and the long SoO wait just made everything even worse.

I know many people wont agree with me, and that's fine, but I can honestly say, that when looking at the lore, music, quests, raids and general feeling of fun, Mop is at the bottom of the list for me, and even if people think I'm trolling, I am genuine when I say that I enjoyed Cata and WoD more than MoP.

[Deleted]

ToT and SoO were better than all the cata raids, plus we actually had something to do outside of raids.

What made MoP so great for me were the dailies. Okay, yes at launch they were a little bit too grindy, but once 5.1 came out with those account wide rep buffs at revered they became fun. Unlocking story content as you went along with the expansion. Whether it was something small and silly like your farm or big like the 5.1 campaign.

You had a reason to go out into the world instead of AFKing in your capital city and every daily you completed felt like actual progress rather than what we have in Legion today.

Funny how people experience it differently.
ToT was a pretty shitty raid all things considered.
I personally really really enjoyed SoO but i think people undervalue dragon soul quite a lot...
From a raid perspective it really had "team feeling" for almost all fights. They felt fresh and unique.

I really loved vengeance so for obvious reasons I enjoyed mop quite a lot except the dailies..the fking dailies killed it.
Other then that I'd rank it wotlk->ds=mop->rest.

[Sarevokcz]

I ended Cata with 8 IRL friends playing wow. MOP took that number down to 1. Sure you can argue that MOP had some cool content but soo many people seem to forget that right before Cata was pretty legit until the dragon soul patch. Have you guys forgotten how good BWD,FL and to a lesser extent, BoT was? Every time people diss Cata as the 'casual expansion' they conveniently forget to mention that it had some of the hardest dungeons and pretty challenging raids prior to the nerfs and DS patch. Then those same people praise MOP as the be all end all of expansions. Sure, compared to Dragon Soul Cata and the shitshow that was WOD it was good, but if I remember correctly, people where not happy at the time, everyone was far more salty about the kung fu panda expansion than they are now. Just, for a second, imagine that MOP didn't exist (yet), and after imprisoning Sargeras and defeating a Titan you would get friggin Pandas, idk about you but I would not be too happy.

you answered yourself already, there was a vocal poart of comunity, screaming "kung fu panda" or "pokemon" from rooftops, which beat pretty much every other feedback, but they seem to be mostly gone now. content wise, it was great, story wise too, only real issues were how integral dailys were at the start of expansion to everything and how scenarios were rather boring.

[wookybear]

Because time is a flat circle and every expansion goes through the routine of being the worst thing ever and after a while it becomes a great expansion.

TLDR: People are generally stupid.

[Woobels]

I'd pay good money for an expansion with class design on MoPs level, I know it's really subjective but nothing has come close to me since.

[Deleted]

I'd pay good money for an expansion with class design on MoPs level, I know it's really subjective but nothing has come close to me since.

I would honestly settle for dragons soul class level.
Arms has never even come close to that level of play. SoO fury was pretty good but i miss arms.

[Jngizu]

While before playing MoP i too couldn't believe they would pull the kung fu panda thing , after playing it all I look back with happyness to it . PvP still made sense and the raids were far more inspired than WoD and Legion ones , in terms of raiding difficulty for the average player (nm/hc) I am disappointed with how basic mechanic are .
If you played the raids tell me honestly that
Lei-shen
Durumu
Ji-kun
Garalon
The stone guard
Galakras

weren't the peak of entertainment for what the wow engine had to offer for a boss fight .
Overall it wasn't that bad of an expansion , Isle of thunder had that cool progression feel to it and SoO introduced the flexible raid system which is a bless and it's gifts are the whole scaling algorithms they use now.

TL;DR people tought Cata to be the peak of wow at the time , only because they hadn't seen WoD yet

Galakras is probably one of the worst fight I've had to progress on. it was not hard, nor fun. There were way better fights in SoO to pick than Galakras. For example, Blackfuse was really hard and interesting, as well as unique. Galakras was just annoying.

For me, the things about MoP that I really disliked and that (for me at least) makes it my least favorite expansion of all are following:

Quests and zone design:

To me, the quests and leveling experience was downright terrible. I did enjoy some parts of the Jade Forrest, but all the other zones felt mediocre and dull. The quests were poorly written and the lore did not catch my interest at all. The zones (outside of Jade Forrest) felt big and boring and overall made this expansion a drag to level alts in.

I will give Blizzard credit for the 5.1 Alliance vs Horde questline, which might have been the single one redeeming questline in the entire expansion.

Dungeons and raids:

As much as I enjoyed raiding SoO (mostly just because it was a pleasure to bring ruin to the horde, as an alliance player), the only raid I enjoyed was ToT. The dungeons however were just terrible, they weren't interesting and I hated having to do them for JP and VP.

Content and end game:

MoP (especially in the beginning) with their daily quest spam was almost worth unsubbing for, because stuff was gated behind golden lotus rep. I know some people enjoyed Timeless Isle, but I personally got tired of it after 2 weeks. However the ToT Isle was decent and the long SoO wait just made everything even worse.

I know many people wont agree with me, and that's fine, but I can honestly say, that when looking at the lore, music, quests, raids and general feeling of fun, Mop is at the bottom of the list for me, and even if people think I'm trolling, I am genuine when I say that I enjoyed Cata and WoD more than MoP.

I share the exact same opinion, although the Titan and Mogu lore was pretty neat and some of the zones (well, Kun-lai really) look really good. Sure, class design was probably the best in WoW, when you had decent gear. Most classes suffered from the old "plays like shit until you reach cap (haste/crit/etc)".

As for the dungeons, there wasn't one I liked, and I did those so many times for CM. There were only 9 and they became obsolete really fast (WoD has the same problem).

I don't know, reading the replies in this thread, it feels like I played a different game lol.

[Awbee]

Because time is a flat circle and every expansion goes through the routine of being the worst thing ever and after a while it becomes a great expansion.

TLDR: People are generally stupid.

I hear this again and again and it's simply not true.


During Cata, people "praised" Wrath, because they perceived Wrath to be better. That still holds true for most people today.
During MoP, people didn't "praise" Cata. In fact, most people I know liked MoP better than Cata, even back then. So, major major difference to Wrath.
During WoD, almost everyone praised everything that wasn't WoD. Which holds true today, WoD seems to be the most unpopular expansion so far.
During Legion, people didn't praise Wod, cause I like just said, WoD was and is not very popular.

So there's no pattern or routine at all. People praise Wrath, because they like it. People don't praise WoD, because they don't like it. Cata and MoP overall had some mixed reviews (the latter mostly because of immature reactions to the asian theme), but most would still agree that they were better than WoD.

Legion is overall quite well liked, though some people have major gripes with it (RNG and legendaries mostly, and actually "to much to do"). So I assume Legion will overall remain one of the expansions that people refer to as a positive example, no matter how good or bad BFA or the following expansions will be.

[voidillusion]

MoP was really good and did many things right. Sadly it lasted too long and it had a theme that made xenophobes bleed from their eyes.

[edw]

MoP is top notch on my list, what's not to like? Ok some insecure ppl didn't like pandas (they were in wc3, was even a hero in the tavern)
Warlords was bad, tho i liked the animated episodes, really great, something blizzard should continue.

[Najnaj]

Not lately, it has been praised since the start of it and continuously after. MoP is by far the best xpac they have ever released and is the only xpac that was not hated upon ending.

edit: That is ignoring the daily quest debacle at the start of it which was truly awful.

[RobertMugabe]

i cant speak for the others but i always loved mop

[Zazajin]

I loved MoP personally, I'd played Cata and wasn't too keen on it at the time due to there being a lot of glitches and not much end game content for non raiders, I'd done Firelands a few times which was pretty fun and DS normal, but I'd have preferred to have more to do.

I liked how MoP gave me a lot of narrative driven dailies, the Dominance Offensive and Isle of Thunder were really engaging to build up to for me, and I liked the strong narrative across the expansion, I wasn't as keen on Siege of Orgrimmar, though but I felt 5.0-5.2 had some of the best content in the game, 5.3 had some amazing moments, too but MoP did drag on far too long after Siege, which I'd completed to get my tier set and finish my legendary cloak and quit after. I wish they handled Pandaren a bit better, and shown more of their Chinese culture instead of "Beer om nom nom" but it was an otherwise great experience, and likely my favourite or second most favourite expansion.

[ldev]

Because mop demo warlock was THE SHIT.

[TranquilDream]

I didn't like MoP as a whole. The introduction of races such as the Mogu, Sha, etc felt out of place. I didn't care for the asian-inspired themes (music, landscape, etc). Since I couldn't get immersed in the story, I hated questing. I was 100% burnt out from daily quests, so wanted nothing to do with them for a while. Unfortunately, dailies were a big thing in MoP. I quit after the first month, and only came back for 2-3 months at the end to try and get green fire on my warlock. SoO was the only raid I cared for. Really, the only story elements I cared about from MoP concerned Garrosh and the whirlwind of controversy he created as Warchief & the warlock green fire questline.

In retrospect, learning Y'Shaarj was behind the Sha helped with things a bit, but overall I still don't like the story of MoP.

[Deleted]

MoP was a fun expansion and I don't think it's something new that people praise it. People that just focus on hating the Pandaren aside, that is.

[Deleted]

MoP was perfect, I really enjoyed how all the specs played like and there was more depth to classes in general, the only bad thing was the long end tier.

[Rafal]

MoP was the last expansion was difficult 10 man raids ;-;

I miss this format more then anything.

[Mendzia]

I still think it was not good... like any other x-pack after WotLK. Just mediocre.