Best:
-Flex raiding
-Bonus rolls
-AoE looting
Worst:
-Item upgrades
-Timeless Isle
-Legendary quest
Best:
-Flex raiding
-Bonus rolls
-AoE looting
Worst:
-Item upgrades
-Timeless Isle
-Legendary quest
Best:
All the class changes for the classes and specs I played.
I enjoyed playing all the tank classes and the tank classes alternate specs.
I also enjoyed playing survival and BM hunter.
I enjoyed playing affliction and demonology warlock this expansion.
The addition of the Monk Class. I thought all three specs were a lot of fun to play for monks.
LFR for every tier made it easier to do all the raids in the game even if they were not the current tier.
Quest Zones were more fun than other expansions.
Worst:
I hated most of the MOP dungeons. They were too easy. I hated the layout of most of them.
I hated that blizzard created timeless isle and scenarios instead of creating more dungeons.
I hated the daily reputation grinds at the start of the expansion.
The quests were really boring and repetitive.
Hated to have to wait for the next day to get more reputation from the quests.
At first the grind from level 85 to level 90 seemed to take a long time, then they increased the xp gain which made it a lot nicer of a grind.
I didn't like the lore for MOP much. I like more of a gothic dark theme, personal preference.
PVP being a CC fest.
I posted it in another thread, but Blizzards original stance on " Casual" was based on the amount of time you played in a week. Obviously that may have changed since then, although I have seen nothing official that has changed that, but it does give you a bit better idea of what they consider casual.
Just having watched them discuss it over the years, I get the feeling in their minds that if you are raiding on a schedule ( so probably normal or heroic today) that you are not considered a casual. So if you are heroic raiding but only spend 6 hours a week playing they still won't consider you a casual ( I believe the explanation was because they spend much more time than average on the front end of things). I've always took it that in Blizzards definition Casual = non-raiding and plays less than X amount of hours per week.
I could be totally wrong on that though, but it makes sense to me.
Agree with you on the talent system and flex raiding, they're a peach. Proving Grounds and Challenge Modes are a nice extra if you're interested in them. Also agree item upgrades are bad, as they make you use valor to modify numbers rather than acquire new stuff. It's technically nice to empower a weapon into a more potent form, but it's still just an arbitrary increase in numerical values.
I'm divided with the legendary chain. You make a good point with the problem it introduces to alts, but otherwise I feel the chain was great.
- It's a delicious lore-bit expanding through the whole expansion, not limited to just one patch. Felt like you were a core part of Wrathion's schemes, and by extension it gave a very personal insight into his personality and ambition, something rather useful for a new character building a reputation and trying to win the favor of the playing populace. Sure won me over and I was very critical of Wrathion considering his lame origin(a baby-dragon turned instant genius mastermind and leader of a shady rogue faction).
- Everyone get to experience it. I hated how I missed important lore-events like Kalec's ascension into Aspecthood and Wrathion's introductory chain just because I wasn't a particular class. Raiding wasn't as accessible as it is now either, but that is another matter.
- The reward is reasonable; not an actual legendary item like Frostmourne or Atiesh, but a random albeit powerful cloak that has a nifty special effect popping out from time to time, and it ties to important characters of the expansion(Celestials). It's something all classes can have and it's not ridiculous to see many of it, since it's not a famous single item. Some people like to call the cloak a wellfare-legendary, but fact is we went through a lot of work to reach the goal. It took a long time and dedication to collect all the artifacts and jump through the hoops. That is not dismissible just because you could collect the stuff through LFR. And again, it's not an actual famous item, just a piece of empowered cloth produced by Wrathion with your help.
I'm all for letting only hardcore raiders have actual legendary gear, just as long as everyone can partake in the experience. A select few can have their orange toys, I can totally settle for a worthy final patch ilvl purple reward as long as I get to experience the lore. Quel'delar-chain handled it like that, gave some random but still useful loot to those not eligible for the sword itself.
Other stuff:
- Blizzard's alternatives to dailies are hit or miss. Battlefield Barrens was just awful, while Timeless Isle's concept could become something good if it's honed and given direction. As it is it doesn't really work; too random.
- Thunder King's treasury was meant to be an extra reward, but I ended up never using my keys more than twice, as the solo-scenario wasn't fun to do. I can see the concept of solo-scenario itself being good for the game, but the Treasury was just poorly executed.
- Fighting mobs feels more dynamic in MoP and fits raidbosses especially well.
Now you see it. Now you don't.
But was where Dalaran?
Best:
5.1 dailies actually being fun
Raid content solid throughout
Flex mode is awesome
Worst:
5.0 dailies
Legendary quest
Coin rolls
item upgrades
I am the lucid dream
Uulwi ifis halahs gag erh'ongg w'ssh
Best:
Affliction and Demo revamp
Multiple sources of valour
Challenge Modes
New Talent system
Coin rolls
Worst:
Piss easy heroic dungeons, especially later on
The storyline ending with SoO (and lasting a year, yet again)
Item Upgrading
Gating of reputation early on (Shado Pan/Celestials)
Timeless Isle boa instant epics
Best
Flex raiding mechanic.
5.1 story and quest chain.
New Monk class fit well, fun to play.
Subjective opinion for some probably but the Warlock revamp. Quite like Destruction.
Bonus rolls.
AoE loot.
Brawler's Guild.
Challenge Modes.
Pet Battles, just something extra to do which is nice.
5.2's quest/zone system, quite enjoyed that.
5.4's Timeless Isle catchup system. Kinda derpy in some aspects and a bit cheap feeling to easily gear up that fast but at the same time it's always there and always available...so, yeah.
Mob-tagging.
DINOSAUR MOUNTS.
Super varied raids. Mogu underground tomb stuff, Mantid base inside trees(even though I didn't like Heart of Fear), Corrupted shrines, A lost and forgotten(until 5.2) Mogu empire that came back to life. Stuff like that.
Proving Grounds. Sort of lacking at the moment but I like the idea they're going for in WoD.
Talent system, sort of.
Worst
Talent system, sort of. Its worked out well for many classes and specs but Ret just got gutted. 8/18 talents were all available to it. Just my complaint about it though. Otherwise, neat idea, though I miss the constant feeling of being able to progress as you level, even if it's "You can now hit 2% harder this level!" or "Your crit 1% more often."
Dailies locking you out of reputation stuff.
5.4's GOTTA KILL GARROSH AND ORCS thing that leads into more Orc killing in WoD.
PvP being World of Crowd-controlcraft. Hate it.
Legendary cloak questline being freely available to people who solely do LFR. I admit it's convenient but at the same time it feels a bit weird to let the legendary be relatively easy to obtain and seen a lot.
Scenarios vs. dungeons. Don't like the fact that we never got more heroic dungeons, or that they were tuned to be easy from the start. Risky considering the complaints of Cataclysm's heroics at the start(personally I had no problem with them, only problem was pugs giving up too easily). I don't mind scenarios but at the same time, the lack of any extra dungeons post-launch made me kinda bummed out.
5.3's Battlefield Barrens was...meh.
Armory: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch.../dalaran/ryuji
Song that's currently stuck in my head: pretty much anything from Dance With the Dead
Best
1.)Flex Raiding
2.)Challenge Modes
3.)Bonus Loot Roles
4.)Pandaria setting.
5.)Legendary Quest Chain that remained fun and interesting throughout the expansion. Required effort, but didn't alienate from players based on their play style.
6.)Bronze/Silver/Gold Proving Ground
Worst
1.) Endless Proving Ground challenges. Very time consuming with no tangible reward. I don't see why valor/gold couldn't also be included for players tackling this.
2.) The forced continuation of the Horde/Alliance "conflict". A flimsy excuse to keep justification for Horde and Alliance being unable to group with each other. Legacy system that really just needs to go away or be opted out of at this point.
3.)Group Scenarios - Just didn't care for them or how they played out.
4.)Lack of 5 Man Content - Major bummer, as this is something i greatly enjoy in World of Warcraft.
Best:
- Flexible raiding.
- 5.3 type of world content.
Worst:
- Talent system
- Upgrades
- Elder coins for extra rolls
Best:
Bonus Loot Rolls
Worst:
The amount of dailies..
Best:
Bonus Rolls
Brawler's Guild
Proving Grounds
Warforged Items
Worst:
Challenge Modes. I just hate it. There's no social interaction and it's so stressful. If people want to compete for the fastest times then fine, but challenge modes should be based on executing something properly, not fast. Just make the bosses hard as fuck and limited attempts per week. Also the OP-ness of BrM and Disc Priests made it even more ridiculous. Seriously. BrM+Disc+Ele and you can make 20k gold per hour on boosts. I hate it. It incentivizes gold-buying and the gold-buying market is larger than ever before. We won't ever get rid of bots and all this trade chat spam when so many buy gold these days.
best:
5.1 dailies, timeless isle end game content, challenge modes
worst: the new 'talent' system, lack of 5 man content, mandatory 'legendary'