Is Mists of Pandaria the greatest PvE expansion ever created?

[Deleted]

I think MOP is one of the best expansions if you are raiding. TBC maybe better if you were a HC raider back then.

TBC had many raid instances with many bosses
WOTLK had naxx in first tier which was recycled and super easy and the 3 drakes boss. 2nd Tier had Ulduar which was good. 3rd Tier was TotGC which only had 5 bosses and was pretty easy even on HC. last tier was ICC which was again good with many bosses and later on halion which was ok i guess, but pretty pointless.
Cata had a good start but was maybe a bit overwheling. Then Firelands was pretty short but ok raid i guess and Dragonsoul was just crap imo and Blizz really screwed up with Deathwing imo
MOP so far has had big raids and SoO looks to be as good as the previous Tiers.

[MasterHamster]

I will never understand how people can complain about [whatever] today, and refer back to BC as amazing and perfect.

Then again, no one but people who reached t6 or higher would ever say such a thing. A majority of the "few" who raided were stuck in Karazhan for the whole expansion anyway

[speakpkhq]

vanilla dungeons/raids had the most variety and "spice" to them. who remembers spamming /trade looking for someone with a key to ubrs?

the single greatest raid in wow ever, Karazhan, has still yet to even be approached in terms of fun, balance, variety, or novelty, IMHO. those were the days of paladin tanks getting extra damage on undead and making them ungodly tanks in the raid. the lore, scope and area of the raid are unmatched since. such a variety of fights - chess, the 4 random bosses, opera, and end boss made for an entirely unforgettable raid overall at the time. now, it's faceroll. at the time, it was INTENSE!

I think Kara's the first raid that introduced the first of the two "optional" bosses as well. "do them if you can!" or "do them if you want!" is a perfect addition to FUn raids. and everyone who raided kara as it was current knows why I capitalized the FU in FUn there it just made it that much better.

nowadays it's all faceroll with lfd, then lfr, then flex, then 10m and 25m then h10 and h25. blizz is trying to figure it out still, since november, 2004. when i started. i still remember around christmastime, i still couldn't distinguish between npc's and real players lmao. i was asking "people" (npc's) questions in /say and wondering why nobody would answer me... rofl

[Gondlem]

Are you serious? Class stacking existed in TBC... It was called Shaman, Hunters and Warlocks.

Not really, what existed instead was a lack of flexibility in viable raid comps, especially for the harder content.

I mean, you brought those classes for sure, but you couldn't just stack whatever did the most damage because they relied on other specs to do that damage. People talk about "shaman stacking" in Sunwell a lot for instance but generally you brought like 1-2 enhance shamans, an ele shaman and 2-3 resto shamans, or something in that area. Very occasionally you might have brought more resto shamans than that because healing was the one role you could actually stack since healers mostly didn't bring necessary buffs to the raid.

But in terms of DPS comps most raids looked the same, you'd have a melee group which would be rogue, rogue, enhance, warrior, rogue/ret/whatever, a caster group which was lock, lock, lock, ele, spriest, then either a second melee group with more rogues and a second enhance or a hunter group, which would ideally be hunter, hunter, hunter, enhance, feral, and a healer group with another spriest in it, and a second caster group with your mages, a third spriest if you had one, a moonkin if you had one and extra healers who couldn't fit in the other group.

It was pretty rigid and didn't have a lot of room for class stacking. If mages were the highest DPS you couldn't just bring 7-8 of them for example because you couldn't build the rest of the raid comp after doing that. You certianly didn't see comps which had 5 warlocks, 5 hunters and 5 rogues and the rest healers tanks and random buff bots, even though those classes did the most damage by far.

[Moralgy]

Not even close, I have played this xpac far less than any others. I stand by BC being the best raiding for me, and I verified that by playing on a good BC server until my guild died, and with school starting back up, I don't have time to join the other guild on that server that raids far more than I have time for atm.

[Floopa]

Not really, what existed instead was a lack of flexibility in viable raid comps, especially for the harder content.

I mean, you brought those classes for sure, but you couldn't just stack whatever did the most damage because they relied on other specs to do that damage. People talk about "shaman stacking" in Sunwell a lot for instance but generally you brought like 1-2 enhance shamans, an ele shaman and 2-3 resto shamans, or something in that area. Very occasionally you might have brought more resto shamans than that because healing was the one role you could actually stack since healers mostly didn't bring necessary buffs to the raid.

But in terms of DPS comps most raids looked the same, you'd have a melee group which would be rogue, rogue, enhance, warrior, rogue/ret/whatever, a caster group which was lock, lock, lock, ele, spriest, then either a second melee group with more rogues and a second enhance or a hunter group, which would ideally be hunter, hunter, hunter, enhance, feral, and a healer group with another spriest in it, and a second caster group with your mages, a third spriest if you had one, a moonkin if you had one and extra healers who couldn't fit in the other group.

It was pretty rigid and didn't have a lot of room for class stacking. If mages were the highest DPS you couldn't just bring 7-8 of them for example because you couldn't build the rest of the raid comp after doing that. You certianly didn't see comps which had 5 warlocks, 5 hunters and 5 rogues and the rest healers tanks and random buff bots, even though those classes did the most damage by far.

I don't disagree, I'm just saying class stacking existed. Of course it's not like nowadays where you see guilds take huge numbers of a certain DPS to a specific fight (moonkins on DA for example).

BTW, what does it feel like when a Prot Paladin can solo tank everything in HC SoO?

[Sills]

Everyone judges the quality of expansions in their own way. When I look at an expansion I gauge how immersed in its story I was. I play for the lore and the thrill of advancing my character along its path while gaining as much power as possible. Based upon this MoP certainly has the ability to be, for me, the best expansion yet. I have been completely enthralled by all of the aspects of the story of MoP from the moment I set foot on Pandaria. From what I have seen from the PTR this looks like it will continue into 5.4 and if SoO is as engaging as it appears, then MoP can certainly take the crown.

I do still wonder if MoP's story really is that good, or if it just seems really good coming off of the epic disappointment of cata. Don't get me wrong, I love the tech that cata brought in (transmog anyone?), but for me, they took one of the greatest villians in Warcraft history and smushed him into a pile of boring uselessness.

For me though Wrath is still #1 with MoP closing in fast. 5.4 will tell the tale. I cannot wait to see!

[Gondlem]

BTW, what does it feel like when a Prot Paladin can solo tank everything in HC SoO?

I'm hoping they fix some of that before it goes live!

[Sills]

I'm hoping they fix some of that before it goes live!

They will. They havent even started the class balancing yet. Soon we will see a lot of changes to the numbers and such.

[Floopa]

I'm hoping they fix some of that before it goes live!

99.7% uptime on SoR is a bit broken?

[Deleted]

For me MoP is second best after TBC. I wasn't very hyped for it but they did surprise me with lore, raids and general atmosphere.
Last part of Cataclysm and Wrath of the Lich King can burn in hell

[Fluttershy]

Depends what kind of raider you are.

Wotlk was my favorite by far, BC was great assuming you were just a college kid that could raid 16 hours a week and are a complete masochist in terms of outdated mechanics such as melee range taunts, ridiculously terrible threat generation, parry gibbing, bosses that evade/parry spam for 10 seconds straight, raid buffs being party-wide, summon stones only, bosses that spam threat wipes, absolutely no way of getting threat from range outside of misdirect, no aoe tanking incredible amounts of trash that respawns in 45(later 2h) minutes, attunements and ghost runs that make you want to commit suicide.

MoP(grinding alts/dailies BS aside) has content for everyone.

Cataclysm in general is just pure garbage. Didn't raid in classic.

[Durandro]

Not really

Yes really. Warlocks were stacked like crazy in Black Temple and Sunwell, as were Resto Shaman specifically.

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Not even close, I have played this xpac far less than any others. I stand by BC being the best raiding for me, and I verified that by playing on a good BC server until my guild died, and with school starting back up, I don't have time to join the other guild on that server that raids far more than I have time for atm.

So you're blaming your lack of time for the expansion's quality?

Uh... okay?

[Daffy101]

The expansions for WoW in my opinion got worse and worse. The original lead designer and a lot of the original developers left sometime before the first expansion came out. It got harder and harder to find 40 Players to raid and the raid sizes decreased and the fun slowly dissipated from the game. I will admit to buying each expansion but I never even got my main character to end level in MoP before i decided not to waste any more money on WoW and sadly no online game since has even come close to the Fun i had in Vanilla WOW. It made and killed the genre and I don't think MMO's will ever truly reach the same level of Subscribers WOW did in its Heyday.

[Theholypally]

For me its TBC > Vanilla > MoP > Wrath > Cata.

TBC imo was the "perfect" xpac. Granted nothing is really perfect, so to speak, in terms of game play, balancing issues etc but as close as you could get to it thats what TBC was. The pvp (world and arena) was outstanding, the PVE content was challenging and actually felt rewarding, the community was great. It was a step up from vanilla simply because of the brand new area, and flying. Vanilla still holds a place though, i enjoyed it a lot.

MoP is a little too "asian" for my tastes. They went a little overboard in trying to drown the community in that culture and while the art and landscapes are wonderful it just doesnt have the effect that TBC had when you stepped through the dark portal for the first time.

As far as wrath goes, i enjoyed the overall xpac with naxxramas in the beginning (nostalgic 40 man moments on bosses) and i really liked the landscape, the lore, and the details behind the zones. The thing that made Wrath for me was Ulduar. It was the number one instance in that xpac and still remains for me personally as one of the best raids ive ever done. What i didnt enjoy in wrath was the pvp.

Cata was a lost cause imo. Some great looking instances, zones, and lore ideas but it just didn't interest me. Firelands was pretty decent but they lost me in Dragonsoul.

[Exystredofar]

I started in BC, so I didn't get to see vanilla before all the changes. BC raids were decent I guess, to this day I still despise SSC and Hyjal. Karazhan was the only BC raid I can honestly say I liked, all the others were just bad. Wrath was my favorite expansion in terms of dungeons and raids, I loved the Viking feel in Howling Fjord and Grizzly Hills, the Titan feeling in Ulduar and ICC was the pinnacle of raid design for me. Cata was OK I guess. I wish they had done more with Throne of the Four Winds and Bastion of Twilight, those had promise. Firelands was pretty fun and Dragon Soul was a let down, but what you gonna do I guess. Mists of Pandaria is the most fun I've had in raiding. Yes, for me there is a difference in excellent raid design and excellent encounter mechanics. I do admit, the raids are well designed, but the encounters are what really hooked me. Nothing will ever top breaking into ICC and fighting our way to the Frozen Throne for me, but the Mists raids are pretty awesome.

[Deleted]

Well after the disaster that was Cataclysm (see wut i did thar), it wasnt really possible to do any worse then that. Sure, the revamped old world was nice and all that, but the end game content was lacking terribly, not to mention all those dislodged zones gave such a weird vibe, like it all was hardly connected, for an expansion.

Now, MoP is indeed in every way an excellent expansion. The questing, the lore, the raids, you name it. PvP needs some more focus, for sure. But it simply is, atleast for my taste, not an INTERESTING expansion. I just find the lore, i dunno, a bit "meh". Things like fighting off the Burning Legion or fighting against the scourge at their own doorstep, now thats for some interesting lore and action in-game. MoP feels a bit dull.

So for me, im just hoping the next expansion has the same quality as MoP, but with a bit more spiced up lore and some badass villains.

[Deleted]

For me:

WotLK - Lore, new Continent, Ulduar (Hardmodes!), ICC, Naxx was fun good social at realms thanks to no LFG tools
Cata - BWD, BoT, FL - Great Raids with nice Bosses
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MoP - Pandas (little cute bears that doesnt fit to Lore), Pokemons, Farmwille, Idiot/AFKfest (Raid Finder), Stupid Scenarios, Lack of 5 mans, Grindfest, Legendary for EVERYONE, Rep Grind, Lesser charms grind, bad balanced difficulty in raids (2nd boss Horridon, 3rd boss Garalon)

So MoP is step back in MMORPG evolution, doing game for everyone was never good idea that always was a game for noone. I wish Blizz will do this game for normal players again like in WotLK. Normal raiding for normal raiders, HC for Hardcores. Casuals should get another game with teddy bears, /hate channel built in and pokemons, win button, insta max lvl button etc etc.

[Ragu4]

Wrath was my favorite PvE expansion only cause my friends played the game, and anything is more fun when your friends play the game as well. And am I the only person in WoW that liked ToC? No trash, 5 quick fights, and also for me, our guild was server first for heroic beasts. I still have the mail shoulders I used on my paladin, which was also when you weren't locked into only wearing only one armor type, which i think its stupid. This game should be about choice, and the game worked fine when you could wear off gear pieces as a sub until you got your main piece. So yeah, guess I'm an outlier haha.

[Akraen]

TBC gets a 9/10, -1 because the 10 to 25 man conversion required within Tier 4 and the drama that happened in ZA run teams, minor but worth mentioning

Vanilla gets a 7/10, -3 because if people actually remember it accurately, spec pigeon-holing was worse than ever. Many raiders simply got away with being horrible, but the 40 man format gives points back in its favor because you could just get over the bads, keep those casual friends in the raid core, but still do the content. Nothing in my mind has ever rivaled the epic scale of AQ40. Skeram's quotes as you first set foot in the instance, before you even turned the corner to see him. Not even Ulduar comes close, I realize I'm in a minority there. AQ40 was grueling, some of the longest, worst raid nights of my life-- but I look back at it with a badge of pride.

Cata gets a 7/10, -3 because Firelands was hastily thrown together (seemed like every rejected boss fight combined in one tier), FL was also too small, DS was too small. We didn't get our Vashj'ir raid, which is the aspect of lore I enjoy more than any other in the game. DS had a number of boss encounter issues and felt like a bit of a let-down just fighting tentacles. Tier 11 props up Cata's score big time, but it was too hard in relation to Tier 12/13. Tier 13 had severe class balancing issues (multidot, and seriously how did frost mage exist in such a horrid state for so long?). I don't quite get what happened with C'thun and N'zoth, seems to not be clearly written into post-Cata lore.

WotLK gets a 6/10, -4 due to a ridiculous inconsistency in raid design. As great as Ulduar was, having BiS items drop in 10m when you were in a 25m guild (or vice versa) put a lot of stress on people. TOC made it even worse with the farming to get tier and killing the same boss 4 times per week. ICC refined it a bit, but still sucked the life out of any sane person. Encounter design was solid in WotLK. Ulduar's hard mode activations were the best concept they've had yet, topping it all off with Algalon, part of a quest rich in lore, is far more interesting than what they just tried to do with Ra-Den. If ToC wasn't part of the expansion and there was less simultaneous lockout inconsistency then I think it would've been the best raid expansion.

MoP gets a 4/10, -6 because these fights aren't original. Everyone thinks it is hard to be original at this point in the game, but that isn't the reason. The real reason new encounter ideas can never get implemented without balancing techniques like "move out of x" or "stand 8 yds away" is because they are in a 10/25 man trap and they exhausted all their cool ideas in Cataclysm. Honestly, each tier needs a patchwerk fight to help people feel comfortable in the execution of their own rotations. MoP doesn't feel "right" to me, it's just been a collection of mediocre encounters, repeating mechanics, and frustrating movement that isn't fun. Movement on Archimonde, for example, was crucial-- you had to react to the mechanics of the fight and that often meant not casting-- but it wasn't constant. If fire wasn't chasing you or you weren't a mile in the sky, you were doing your rotation and bringing his HP down. On Illidan there was most certainly movement, but the mechanics were such that you had to know when to target switch, how to back off DPS so you didn't mess up a phase transition, and pay attention to threat generation-- the fight was an endurance check without making you feel punished for wanting to finish casting a spell. In MoP, since the very first fight, Stone Guardians, I've felt punished for casting. The pressure is on the DPS to make all these checks, even in normal mode, because you are always carrying some people who do less. This means you train those raiders to just master the mechanics so wipes don't occur, but then it's on your shoulders as the more competent player to do those mechanics, stay alive, and do enough DPS to justify your spot + the deficit of others. As someone who can't move and cast, this means any time:

• tiles need to be run,
• the fire debuff needs to be moved away from the raid,
• someone needs to go into the spirit realm,
• a wall of mogu are chopping away at you,
• an immuner needs to jump out,
• sparks need to be kited,
• attenuation (yellow and green) happens,
• wind step/tornadoes,
• pheromones have to be traded,
• CC needs to be refreshed while wind bombs are going out,
• you get turned into a construct or have living amber on you,
• you have to go deactivate a sound dampening thing,
• lightning alternates blowing up at various ranges,
• you have to clear a darkness debuff,
• GET AWAY,
• you have to kill adds that are out of LoS unless you leave a safe zone,
• you have to dodge balls of lightning and get out of pools,
• you follow a giant dinosaur around a huge room,
• you get repeatedly knocked back by a dumb troll,
• HAHA TORTOS,
• you are running cinders or ice torrents constantly,
• GET AWAY V2.0,
• an eye beam is chasing you and puddles land under your feet,
• the cleaving boss is being moved in a circle around you,
• [dark animus is the only good encounter on heroic],
• constant stacking and spreading along with LoS shields,
• knockback waves and sleep clouds,
• GET AWAY V3.0

Then any of those encounters where you get brief periods of being able to actually stand and cast something, some asshole hunter, shaman, or lock is getting in your range checker (usually a fatass panda), bouncing back and forth making you angry.

Because that's all MoP is, a frustrating expansion of having to do far too many things while encounters are alternating range checkers and movement.

And to those who think 5.4 will be better, I have one word for you: Immersius