Why is MOP getting so much praise lately?

[Redsoldier06]

From what I view often, people who dislike MoP only disliked it because of two reasons. Pandas and that the last raid was a year long. That's it.

Compared to many other expansions, it ain't even that bad. Classes were just, oh my sweet baby jesus. It was the best. It was a time that if you were good at your class, you were good. Not just, aye I press 2 after 1.

[Aeula]

Aaaaand except those initial milestones were quick for the first week or so to ease people into that particular content (this in 'Friendly' rep level), till going past the 'Honored' rep, that's when it started to take days and weeks to unlock the rest. We are also talking doing the same 5/6 dailies every day, rotating between 2/3 days, they were NOT the WQs of today. (which were what? go into a mine, kill a bunch of dudes/mogu, kill some alliance/horde, gather some things)

Also, the story didn't take shape till a good way into the 'Revered' rep level. The initial story quests were your typical HvA setting base and nibbling one another.

In the end, this wasn't new. It was a shiny version of the 4.2 Molten Front daily hub in terms of gameplay.

The story was told much bettter. By revered you had a 100% buff to all rep gains, so while it slowed down you still advanced pretty quick, especially since the lore quests gave rep too.

Plus, the dailies were better than world quests BECAUSE they cycled to a different set every day. World quests are usually just about killing rare mobs, since they’re the quickest, give the most rep and give the rep for two factions. They get boring quickly.

- - - Updated - - -

That's, what happens, when all "WotLK kids" and "Cata kids" quit and only "MOP kids" stay - Wow's quality degrades with time (and drop of sub # clearly shows it), but nobody remembers, how bad MOP was in comparison with previous xpacks.

MOP is worst xpack, ever made. It was beginning of WOD/Legion era: 1) Forced daily grind 2) Forced no flying 3) Claustrophobic "no flying forever" outdoor design 4) Dumbing down class mechanics 5) Etc. But it at the same time there were no Garrisons\Order Halls\Artifacts, so it was 100% raid or die. As I'm casual players, there was literally nothing to do for me back in MOP.

Forced dailies and forced no flying? Wat. The flying was only while leveling and the dailies weren’t forced past the first patch where they realised they fucked up. I don’t see how the zones were claustrophobic, Valley of the Four Winds was the last open zones we had.

You’re insane if you think it was raid or die because it didn’t have a Facebook table or artefacts.

[Freesya]

I started playing in Cata and MoP is by far the best expansion they ever released.

It was made new from scratch - new areas, new landscapes, new houses, new races, totally new, different feel and great atmosphere.

It had marvellous questing content.
It had great dungeons, meaningful and same with raids. The end game content wasn't as dreadfully boring as what we have in Legion or had in WoD.

The music was awesome. The ambient was awesome (yes, I often turn off the music and listen to the nature sounds build in - I recommend to all who want to -feel- the area better).

Dailies were longing, but you could choose what you pursue and each day got you closer to the goal, you were making actual progress.

The history itself involving Garrosh and the Sha was great and I still weep after the Valley of Eternal Blossoms and how it was devastated.
We also had Wrathion with unfinished loose ends for future usage.

We got BMAH introduced. And we got a Yak Wash introduced

There were secrets and rares to pursue.

The PvP was good (played on pvp server back then), balanced. They introduced new battlegrounds and arenas. Krassarang pvp also was fun. Especially getting the invitation for Brawlers.

Timeless Isle for many was a repetitive bullcrap area, but I personally liked it a lot.

I recently leveled an alt and MoP was the most enjoyable part after leaving Loch Modan and Duskwood I wish they enabled leveling in MoP from 60 to 100.

[Scrysis]

People always will hate an expac than when it gets old they praise it. Classic is a great example of this. During BFA you will start to see people praise WoD a little bit. Happens every time

This. Essentially nostalgia from people.

[Deleted]

That's, what happens, when all "WotLK kids" and "Cata kids" quit and only "MOP kids" stay - Wow's quality degrades with time (and drop of sub # clearly shows it), but nobody remembers, how bad MOP was in comparison with previous xpacks.

MOP is worst xpack, ever made. It was beginning of WOD/Legion era: 1) Forced daily grind 2) Forced no flying 3) Claustrophobic "no flying forever" outdoor design 4) Dumbing down class mechanics 5) Etc. But it at the same time there were no Garrisons\Order Halls\Artifacts, so it was 100% raid or die. As I'm casual players, there was literally nothing to do for me back in MOP.

1) You weren't "forced" to grind anything, it is ALWAYS just the community that wants everything istantly and burned themselves with grind. I would return to 5.0 daily system in an istant if I could.
2) Which is for the best, despite all the mmochamp crybabies that want flyiing the moment they set foot in the new exp
3) Two zones of no flying that were deisgned with the idea of reviving world pvp, must have been hard uh
4) MoP class design was miles ahead of Cata, and was refined in a way that classic expansion (vanilla/tbc) could never be
5) That was your problem, a lot of casuals had their hands full in MoP

You said that MoP fans were the ruin of WoW, while ironically it has been the people who criticized it like you. All the hate for one of the best expansion ever got us WoD. Those who enjoed MoP are not to blame here.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Count me among those who was underwhelmed by MoP when it was first announced. I ended up taking a long break from the game after Cataclysm, partly because MoP didn't excite me, and partly because I was ready for a break anyway. I went on to have 3-4 years of amazing real life adventures before coming back to the game at the end of WoD.

Half way through Legion, around the end of NH/beginning of ToS, I decided to make a brewmaster. I already had all the other tanks, and wanted to complete the set. It was then I finally gave Pandaria a fair chance and played through it from one end to the other. Have to say I was very impressed with the cohesive, compelling story lines, the fun characters, the art, and the overall tone/philosophy. I am partial to eastern philosophy anyway; Taoist and Buddhist ideas about finding balance and focusing on personal improvement while serving others... feels both rewarding and pragmatic. And beer. Did I mention I love beer?

So yeah, I think MoP gets praised by those who gave it a chance because it's better than most of us expected.

[WowIsDead64]

Forced dailies and forced no flying? Wat. The flying was only while leveling and the dailies weren’t forced past the first patch where they realised they fucked up. I don’t see how the zones were claustrophobic, Valley of the Four Winds was the last open zones we had.

You’re insane if you think it was raid or die because it didn’t have a Facebook table or artefacts.

All valor rewards were gated behind reps, so any valor, obtained as reward for doing any other content, was useless without reps. Plus extra roll coins were mandatory due to nature of RNG rewards and LFR gating, and they were available via dailies only, despite all promises, that "You will be able to choose any content, you like, and get the same rewards". And as LFR was also extremely overtuned, so I couldn't force myself to do it on regular basis, it was about "You either grind reps or game ends on 5ppl blues for you". But 5ppls were also very boring due to being too dumbed down and unrewarding. How about leveling alts? Nope, killed by no flying till 90. So... Just nothing to do = being unsubbed during almost whole xpack.

Also, I don't talk about 5.0 content only. I talk about IOT/IOG/TI, that were beginning of claustrophobic design, I really hate and can't bear.

Also, some class mechanic nerfs started at MOP: Intellect/Healing nerf, that removed our ability to burn mana and made healing very boring + as I remember, smart healing nerf also happened at that point.

[Broken Fox]

MoP was the only expansion I didn’t buy on day one. Kung Fu is awesome just not in WoW. Wasn’t feeling Pandaria at all (and I like Kung Fu Panda!). The zones, the aesthetic, the capital cities, Timeless Isle, just.. nah.

The raids were solid though.

[Jervaise]

IMO cata and WOD were way better than pandaland

[Philomene]

Because it’s the last expansion before World of Diablo, randomness over even more randomness, 4-button repetitive gameplay, Facebook tables to get free gear and/or gold, useless professions, skillful mechanics like snapshotting removed. Legion isn’t a bad expansion, it’d say it’s strong but not as Mists - would be with better class design especially in PvP.

[Kathranis]

This is not a new thing here. Look back through old polls, most people rank it #1 or #2 (behind Wrath). It seems like most people who complain about it literally didn't play it.

Shitloads of content, great PvE and PVP content, and arguably the best class design (especially for warlock, my then main). Plus great storytelling and tons of incentive to explore. I never got bored during MoP, and it's one of the few expansions where I did almost every ounce of content it had to offer.

Weakest part was probably scenarios, which were mostly optional. Biggest complaints were always "too much content" that people felt compelled to do, but they improved the rep grinds pretty quick and fixed that.

[Deleted]

That's, what happens, when all "WotLK kids" and "Cata kids" quit and only "MOP kids" stay - Wow's quality degrades with time (and drop of sub # clearly shows it), but nobody remembers, how bad MOP was in comparison with previous xpacks.

MOP is worst xpack, ever made. It was beginning of WOD/Legion era: 1) Forced daily grind 2) Forced no flying 3) Claustrophobic "no flying forever" outdoor design 4) Dumbing down class mechanics 5) Etc. But it at the same time there were no Garrisons\Order Halls\Artifacts, so it was 100% raid or die. As I'm casual players, there was literally nothing to do for me back in MOP.

This is a nice list of bullshit.

Also people who have only "MUH FLYING" as priority are a disease of wow and have to be droven away from the game.



BTW "wowisdead" + "myperfectwow" link are enough to dismiss your case.

[Kendevis]

I stopped playing in Pandaria because of dailies. It was way too much. Much over acceptable

[Deleted]

I stopped playing in Pandaria because of dailies. It was way too much. Much over acceptable

And yet you have 4 110's during one of the most "grinding" xpac as mmo c peeps state.

Impressive.

[Wries]

Idk. I didn't enjoy it much. Thematic misfit in my book and the first raid tier was very messy, as well as the dull and extremely time consuming daily system. Didn't last for the other two tiers as I expressed my dissatisfaction with my wallet and unsubbed.

[Zuben]

In the end MoP has been a pretty popular expansion, people who whine about kung fu pandas being a vocal minority. Cata offered content to the more hardcore, which turned at least me off.

[Rudkobing]

Because its awesome.

[digichi]

MoP was a thicc expac (trying to reinvent dailies w/ the farm and coin bonus rolls, first iteration of the timed dungeon w/ challenge modes, scenarios, mythic mode at the end, timeless isle). Cata had a major 'staying in cities and queueing' problem, so they were actively combating that.

Things that sucked that i remember:

-The theme was kinda weird just coming off of cata. Pandas were just so odd as a player race. They feel like the tuskarr, sort of goofy but nice relief as a NPC race. I dont mind funny or quirky characters showing up time to time, but to base a whole expac around that just wasnt appealing.
(Mantis people, dog stone people, and fish people as the 'serious creatures' didnt help much either.)

-The natural timeline of the game started happening too (getting bored of dailies repackaged in a different way, and queing for dungeons. Raids or tier sets werent that appealing imo.)

-Fucking mandatory legendary questline (also in WoD). Couldnt just jump in randomly through the expac, had to go get sigils or shit, or be left behind (especially worse for dps. You hit like a wet noodle and felt like you were contributing absolutely nothing without it. You might catch up with gear, but if you dont catch up with the legendary, bad fucken luck.) One of the main reasons i took a hiatus during most of MoP/WoD.

A good postive note being brought up time and time again is how good the classes were though. For the time i did play, i had fun with mistweaver/blood dk/feral druid. Mistweaver is completely different now. There are classes i WISH i could play for the class fantasy but they are just so boring because of the rotations! I wanted to gear a ret pally for the ashbringer skins, but the rotation is no fun. I never thought that would be a problem... class design needs a serious re-evaluation.

[Alkizon]

Lazuli
MoP is far superior to any expansion after it so far, the only people NOT praising pandaland is the salty kungfu panda commenters.

Class design was godly
Wpvp was very much alive, and even balanced compared to the shitshows of WoD and Legion
Pvp was alive in general
The pve was great, varied, we have scenarios raids dungeons and dailies that switched up constantly, were not tedious at all honestly.

I could go on but yeah.. the lore was actually pretty expansive too. This was the last xpac before Blizz B team, otherwise known as the D3 team, took over and started pruning all of our abilities and implementing their fucktarded dumbass ideas.

cparle87
Isn't it also the expansion that introduced that CRZ nonsense we all know and hate? And didn't everyone hate the Golden Lotus dailies that you HAD to do in order to unlock two other factions' dailies? And wasn't it also the expansion that did away with the classic talent trees, gave us the current "pick 1 of 3" setup, and began the pruning?

Darkeon
It was never that highly disliked, aside from the "lol pandas" remarks, to start with.

Only natural that, with the following sub-par expansion, that it would get an even better reputation.

Okacz
-Great, if not perfect, patch cycle (aside of the very end, but I guess one year of nothing before next expansion is to be expected)
-All raiding tiers being really good, ToT being one of the best raids ever (opinion)
-Simple yet pretty good casual content. Isle of Thunder and Dominance Point dailies were much better than world quests, and Timeless Isle was a great time sink in the time of no content
-Introduction of 3 great battlegrounds for PvPers, and PvP being in overall decent state
-Really good class design overall. No fixing what wasn't broken, and the redesigns of specs that needed them went great. New talent trees were a step in the right direction.
-Brawlers Guild baby!
-Cooking split into like 5 branches, with cooking dailies and Harvest Moon clone

For me personally, the more relaxed atmosphere was amazing. Valley of the Four Winds, where the biggest conflict is "Chen has been kicked out of his brewery, so he needs to make some sweet ass beer" might be my favourite zone in the game.

McNeil
MoP at launch wasn't that good, but it picked up considerably in quality with patch 5.1, 5.2 and 5.4. The start of MoP was just a painfully slow leveling experience where all you do is quests for pandaren to do the most mundane tasks. If your not a fan of the Asian theme at all... well there's nowhere on Pandaria to avoid this theme at all. During the end game is was just doing a shitload of daily quests.

The game got better once Isle of Thunder came out. Then it went downhill when SoO lasted for 14 freaking months. I'd say its a decent expansion, but massively overrated.

Swalload
But the entire lvling process was poisonously bad, filled with emo bullshit, extremely boring cutscenes that made no sense at all. The zones were not fun to travel or to quest in, not even that interesting either. Cooking and farming, what in the fuck.

I agree that raids and class design was in general very fun, best time I ever had on my hunter, now it's very RIP.

But I still can't believe how bad the lvling was. Which is something that got criticized and they promptly corrected by making WoD lvling somewhere around 1200% more fun than MoP (and then dropped the ball to make everything else worst) which is one of the reasons why WoD is considered the most alt friendly xpack (with the garrison industrial factory of course).

I also don't like the lvling in Legion, I found it tedious and annoying after the first toon, however I loved it in TBC, Wrath, Cata and WoD. MoP and Legion are the only 2 shit xpack for the lvling part which I think is quite important because that's the part where most ressources are spent, making zones and quests.

Gaidax
MoP was definitely a good expansion, IMO the most important thing about it is a fact that Blizzard literally wrote a huge chunk of lore and story from scratch and it actually worked out really well.

Raiding was good and many specs got a much necessary pruning after Cata mess and were turned into legit good experience as opposed to Cata shit snowball nightmare.

Balance was poor and 14 months drought was a killer really, but other than that MoP was fine.

hashtags
MOP was a great expansion until SoO sucked the life out of the expansion. MOP had amazing raids and dungeons, the 3 man scenarios was very cool. It had problems like they went over board with dailies and gated factions. But over all it was in my opinion far stronger then cataclysm, which in my opinion is only better than wod. while WOD being shitastic all around.

Sharkins
It did, until the last year and a half or something in that ballpark.

I did enjoy MoP. Much moreso than WoD or Cata. It felt very new and fresh, and it did a lot of awesome things. It also did some things wrong. Dailies, for one. Hours of them each day. Other things.

But I think the reason I enjoyed it so much, even through the enormous content draught, was because of the friends I had at the time. We did a lot of RBGs and RP and WPVP, and around that I just did achievement stuff, like the extra Timeless Isle stuff. I think that's when I finished Firelands (the subzone, not the raid).

Dadwen
Last time the Class design didn't suck balls.

*kinda funny was a big thread (been there for a bit) over in the Class development official forums on MOP class design over 300 up-votes and just noticed it's deleted.

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...1107969?page=1

cozzri
People are also forgetting about the Cata Pre-patch that absolutely gutted talents, a lot of my friends quit because it broke a lot of fun builds;

MoP class design was a redemption from the absolute trainwreck class customization turned into throughout most of cata.

Philomene
Because it’s the last expansion before World of Diablo, randomness over even more randomness, 4-button repetitive gameplay, Facebook tables to get free gear and/or gold, useless professions, skillful mechanics like snapshotting removed. Legion isn’t a bad expansion, it’d say it’s strong but not as Mists - would be with better class design especially in PvP.

^ most of this in general, but it would be nice to understand why, some details.

- Good -
1) there weren't really pronounced specializations - difference was in gameplay and not much in "different" set of abilities + still there were at least some situational characteristic class abilities = we still had much class not spec (I don't understand why you disliked chakras and banners (here in this thread), were very good separate interesting mechanics, an excellent addition to old system). This stuff in many respects decided alignment of forces and relative relevance MoP to (w)PvP (+ some personal developers, as I see on forums - warlocks still remember). Monks as a separate class were implemented initially quite interesting (at least before WoD changes)
2) scenarios came apart from "normal" dungeons (that's the way they should have been and this is how story should be implemented, not phasing in the open world) and doesn't look at that first raids and more than half of usual dungeons were too short (which is a very bad design, none of expansions could beat Classic in this sense - it's the best, M+ not needed) and were more like scenarios, by the end of expansion they had slightly corrected situation (raids were really interesting).
3) I won't criticize dailys, because I consider them much more adequate than current implementation through tables and getting them right in the middle of location without a single NPC nearby who can explain it (it's unclear who and why (ghosts?), either mental presence one of menters or leaders (how? through what mechanisms?)) - silly and illogical. So it's better that dailys than these stupid tables, besides already (closer to middle of expansion) they didn't have such importance in your characters progress. Perhaps it was worthwhile only to reconsider their direction, key motivation. Let's put it this way, I missed the beginning of expansion because of business trips and when my time came - these quests didn't seem obligatory to me and especially straining. There were no much time gates with a small exception in farm form and legendary questline, so I wasn't much kill time with getting reputation and just started raiding.
4) I won't criticize world bosses (although I think this is a stupid squandering of players motivation, almost free stuff, they didn't pose particular danger to large raid and there was too liberal loot distribution), but at least there were only a few and there was at least some temporary dependence, Legion world bosses overpopulation is off scale (if desired, one separate raid with progress can easily be made, instead of items-reward-"one-armed bandit"). They are weekly, but still they are random and too many of them. But! I'd much prefer balance them in TBC (1boss-raid) style, since it restricts number of participants and requires greater return on their part.
5) As a separate story taken from nowhere (which didn't actually have any prehistory) and at the same time very detailed (music, art, story etc) and interesting - MoP was magnificent.
6) I don't consider lfr+lfg+crz as good design, in any case, but implementation of LFR in MoP-way was the most adequate of possible ones.
7) This doesn't apply to pluses, rather to better perception of expansion now: we couldn't imagine how badly developers can implement/change game further... but they really coped
8) MoP was the most of "casual wise" expansions.
9) And yes, there were still enough friends in the game, can't argue with that. I'll explain what happened next in the next section.

(2)+(3) So

Frolk
imagine how good MoP would have been if u had replaced its dailies with Legion WQs, and added M+

= nonononono

- Bad -
1) Cutting out 3rd (bonus) semantic weapon (I won't go into details, because everything has already been done here before me), didn't return those elements that were cut in previous expansions (adequate threat system (and some characteristics), more tangibly tied to elements such as stances/powers, normal talent trees which were completely spoiled in Cata (with addition of requirements for filling one branch, cutting stuff and tying mastery to branch only (why couldn't they, for example, link mastery to number of talents you used in each branch?)), instead of stupid perk-system). I hadn't thought about this before, but I was very lucidly explained by friends why this is really important.
2) I mentioned above already about size of the dungeons and first raids, realization of history through phasing (leveling was the same bad as in Cata), CRZ has already been also mentioned in the thread and I'll add here continue growth of stats and attributes (wasn't as severe as in WotLK, but still was unhealthy)
3) start introduction of personal loot and extra "coins" - this goes against original design of the game (to individualization gameplay)
4) pandas (also pet battles?) look stupid and add inadequate to overall picture of current seriousness of the game (which is generally not so bad, I don't hate pandas only their consequences (read on), but overall just not good (people call this an Asian theme, but there are cultures here that, by definition, can't be unified (they can't be mixed), many "asians" will perceive this as spit in face)), which may have been one of prerequisites for next most crucial and most unpleasant for me for the entire existence of this game - redesign models (see the signature). They actually inflicted irreparable damage in my motivation and interest in game "in MoP" (WoD pre-patch) - they introduced these *many rude words* new models by hinting with toggle that old won't stay for long and it's time to "pack suitcases". Half a year after that, seeing that no adequate criticism would help them to reason, I, together with friends who still loged in from time to time, withdrew from game. This status where I am at this moment.

The rest apparently isn't particularly significant for me...

ps. Didn't really write much about stuff before, so had to use friends' material.

[Deleted]

what do you mean lately?
i thought pandaland was the best xpac since wrath.
thoroughly enjoyed the whole xpac, with the possible exception of klaxxi rep.