Was Mists of Pandariz that liked?

[Darknessvamp]

At the start it definitely wasn't. The pandas were the first grievance voiced followed by how the daily quests functioned at max level then reforging came under fire for how much min-maxing it encouraged and people felt like they were visiting a tool and simming to see what had to be done with every new piece of gear that dropped and that it wasn't very interesting (they never really addressed the root of the problem with that sort of thinking and just removed it in the end) lastly topped with issues with the pvp gear levels and I recall something about raid loot. Later on there were some gripes about the legendary quest but after the patches stuff was generally positively received, Isle of Thunder and the Throne raid, Timeless Isle and SoO.

Of course at the time people didn't know what or how the next expansion would turn out and didn't realise how much better it was in retrospect.

[WowIsDead64]

From what I recall, MoP was the most disliked reveal trailer on their youtube channel because of Pandaren.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=nyeZ8khSEC0

I see that youtube hid the dislikes now but I rechecked last week and it had close up to 36k dislikes (!).

Not to mention that the new expansion barely brought in any new players or older players that quit during Cataclysm.
https://imgur.com/a/5FGbBOY

You can see the dropout after the first few months was huge and t continued to drop down until the release of WoD which spiked up the subscriber numbers immensively. (Don't forget Warcraft movie came out at the same time).

Can we conclude that MoP wasn't that liked by the playerbase? Sure it was good compared to BfA and Shadowlands, but does it show that people are more interested in the "conservative" style of Warcraft; Orcs and Humans too?

It was hated, because all Wow's current problems started exactly there. One hour of daily rep grind, that had to be done on every alt to start earning Valor gear on that alt? It's MOP. Claustrophobic outdoor design with flying removed? Yeah, it's also MOP.

[Schizoide]

They addressed the root of the problem with reforging when they removed the hit and expertise secondary stats in the WoD launch patch. Once they were gone there was no real reason to keep reforging, so they (rightly!) dropped it. Easy to forget what a pain in the butt it used to be capping (but not going over and wasting item budget) on hit and expertise.

Flying wasn't removed in MoP, it was moved to an immediate unlock for gold at max level which pretty much everybody accepted as a perfectly fine solution. They tried to remove flying in WoD, and that was a catastrophe.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Once they were gone there was no real reason to keep reforging, so they (rightly!) dropped it.

You, like the devs at the time, fail to see what a boon it was to have the ability to turn awfully stat distrubted gear into somewhat usable gear, especially in times when items are not abundant. Blizzard later adressed this by showering us in loot only to completely forget why they did that in SL.

Btw, MoP was also the first time we had coins as a bad luck protection and it was also the iteration where it was the most usable by offering the most coins. Subsequently they tuned it down until we arrive at the vault lottery of SL.

[Brubbahlubs]

It was hated before anyone even played it due to "kung poo panda'. It was a damn good expansion and it only comes down to who you talk tom i raided three days a week + LFR and I didnt care much about dailies. From a paladin perspective it ranks as my 2nd all time favorite expansion, and as a holy priest my 1st.

Using youtube likes is outright stupid. The trailer for WoD is damn near perfect, yet it was more flawed than MoP from my PoV.

[lockybalboa]

People begun to reflect positively on MoP after suffering from the shitfest that was WoD

[Schizoide]

Reforging is not a good way to fix poor secondary stat balance. Fixing secondary stat balance is the right way to do that. Address the root cause, don't slap on a bandaid.

Even with hit/expertise removed you would still need to visit a NPC to "optimize your armor" every time before equipping it. That sucks, it's just another unnecessary fiddly system in a game that already has far too many.

[Kathranis]

Easiest way to explain it:

It was divisive aesthetically, but pretty much universally praised for its gameplay.

Many players consider MoP to be the peak of class design in WoW, and it had some of the best raids, with ToT often being put up on a pedestal next to Ulduar, and some of the best world content, with Timeless Isle in particular still considered be the high water mark for patch content. Storytelling, art, and music were also all executed at a very high level.

Basically, MoP was Blizzard absolutely firing on all cylinders, and people who dropped the game because "kung fu pandas" missed out.

[Triceron]

The expansion was very much liked, but the vocal minority was the loudest and kept praising the arrival of WoD, drowning out any sensible discussion on MOP's actual content.

[Snowfunk]

MoP had some amazing raids, but everything else, pretty much hated it.

[Venziir]

LFR Durumu was just wonderful

Better than LFR N'zoth though... Good lord what a shitfest.

[sam86]

MoP has the worst launch, that is fact
MoP story is total shit, they even ignored pandas by end of exp and focused on orcs vs humans, that is also fact
HOWEVER
gameplay was really solid, honestly imo it was the BEST era ever of class in wow, MoP is only exp i played with sound off (i hated that music, again only exp), however and honestly and don't underestimate that i'd rank gameplay a solid 10/10, I don't remember I hated playing any class at all, even hunter which i consider most generic boring
Heck monks for all their diablo bullshit influence were still really fun as dps and healers

tldr: MoP has best gameplay in entire wow history that covers all its flaws, I still rank wrath higher but if i just focus on gameplay purely, MoP is best, specially 2nd raid, however the launch patch is probably the worst in wow too

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MoP had some amazing raids, but everything else, pretty much hated it.

1st tier raid was crap, 2nd is best of its exp and 3rd is still really solid, and i hated raiding my own capital

[Doffen]

Dailies of Pandaria

Gameplay was way too similar for every class, same issue in BfA(not that I think BfA is close to the quality of classes in MoP) but the issue in BfA was way more severe seeing it was on the lesser end, while MoP had lots of stuff going on. WoW just wasn't fun for me in MoP, when there is no diversity among the classes. When everyone can do everything, the game lose a lot of both muh immersion and fun.

I only know one that thinks MoP is the best expansion, and he started in MoP. My guild stopped raiding in MoP cause of numbers, and my old guild(that I am in now) had to merge with two other guilds that had the same issue with having too few players.

And just to note, I love the MoP cinematic. Same with 5.2 trailer with Lorewalker Cho talking in rhymes, it is more likely than not my most watched trailer, the 5.2 that is. Also, MoP music is beautiful, and the asian theme is something I really like.

- By Zandalari hands he has been taken, by Zandalari voice, he has awakened.
Pure class.

[sam86]

The expansion was very much liked, but the vocal minority was the loudest and kept praising the arrival of WoD, drowning out any sensible discussion on MOP's actual content.

no the exp wasn't at start...
ppl mix start of exp with end of exp, WoD has the best launch of an exp in wow history, best than even TBC and Wrath themselves, yet check how it ended, a solid competitor for worst exp title with BFA
MoP has the worst launch ever, dailies take days to finish and were mandatory to start doing pretty much anything, 1st tier of raid was crap with barely a good boss or 2 but overall just bad, and pandas were bland ripoff from Kung Fu panda popularity
MoP ironically however started AND ended with the most overall solid gameplay of wow classes, classes had so much to do and were both different AND the same at same time, of course min-max charts will forever exist, but playing any class was actually fun, and never underestimate that, the vessel - ur own character - that u use for pretty much everything was at its peak, and while I LOVE the older talent system over that shit new one, I still consider MoP exp the best in class play
And I wonder why they don't give us same class as MoP at least now? It isn't hard, almost everyone agree that class were best in MoP, why blizz refuse stubbornly to make that the baseline for everything else, instead we get in BFA pruning so hard that my pally had less abilities than wrath era

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Gameplay was way too similar for every class, same issue in BfA(not that I think BfA is close to the quality of classes in MoP) but the issue in BfA was way more severe seeing it was on the lesser end, while MoP had lots of stuff going on. WoW just wasn't fun for me in MoP, when there is no diversity among the classes. When everyone can do everything, the game lose a lot of both muh immersion and fun.

how exactly?
while every healer had a hot, no one hots better than druid, no one tank heal better than paly, and as usual priest was jack of all trades, while monk had the best "oh shit" buttons
That's far better than even Legion healers (and I love legion exp) where each healer had go fuck urself button, less options and abilities to do anything, i'm so glad i'm 'unique' that i'm way underpowered in compare to older exp
the same apply for dps, warlock affliction have cast, but that's for emergency, still his main power is dots, and so on
each class was strong at his aspect, he get off-set abilities to help in his weak areas, but still having a hot doesn't replace druid, just help u if there is no druid

[Saltysquidoon]

Raids were good (ToT is top 5).
5 mans were dogshit tier and clearly had their resources funnelled to that solo instance system blizzard almost immediately abandoned.
I'm not a fan of shared talent trees. Right now we're on the 'class not the spec' part of the cycle so this might be spicy but hot diggity was this peak homogenisation.
Dalies were worse than world quests I guess?
Monks were cool-ish, never had a prayer of competing with DKs or DHs

Solid average/10 I guess?

[Triceron]

no the exp wasn't at start...

But we're not talking about MoP just at the start, we're talking bout the expansion as a whole.

Generally the content of the expansion was most liked, and features like Timeless Isle was praised for its content, and the whole story line regarding who would be new Warchief were followed very closely by fans.

But that would have been drowned out by the fatigue over MoP's locale and general tone, which was met with a lot of mixed reactions. And that's where the vocal minority cried the loudest, especially in the face of the return to a more 'darker' version of WoW with the announcement of WoD. After WoD's announcement, it was just an ongoing hype train for the next expo.

[Kumorii]

You actually answered my point for you. We have murlocs, arakkoa, ogres, centaurs, and a dozen other WoW races that would have fit into the game better than fox people that have NEVER once existed in WoW until they were pulled outta the ass to lure in the FF or pro furry crowd.

A minotaur, is more monster, than antropomorphic animals, same for something like a werewolf.

My bottom line is that there were established WoW races that would have been better fits is all.

Sure, wanting other races is completely fine... And minotaurs, yeah, it's a monster, werewolfs though are definitely antropomorphic. It's literally What if a human became mixed with a wolf. But Tauren is still antropomorphic animal because it's not just a human with a different head like the minotaur. Not sure if Minotaur doesn't fit the description or not though, maybe he does.

Either way, it sounds like you just prefer other races before them. Which is different to them not "fitting" in. Because they do, as evident by all other races. I mean, essentially all mythological creatures are basically animals mixed with another animals and/or human. So I still don't get why vulpera or pandas doesn't fit except not wanting them / liking them.

[melodramocracy]

I didn't love it. Forgettable dungeons and raids (SoO was good though), I didnt like the questing. IoT and TI were the high points.

[Tojara]

I think some people shelved it simply because of the cinematic and the theme.

In reality it was a really good expansion. I didn't particularly like the zone design in Pandaria nor was I huge fan of the leveling, but the raids were really good and the game (despite some homogenization) was at it's peak (tied with WoD) as far as class design was concerned.

Leveling and zone atmosphere is basically secondary to me, if they're good it's a bonus, but I don't think Pandaria had great zone design IMO. Dungeons were fairly meh (IMO) but the raids were fantastic, challenge modes were cool and the classes played extremely well. Basically for me as long as the class design is great and the raids are good, it's a solid expansion.

The first patch was a daily fest though and I fucking hated it.

[TheWorkingTitle]

No. It was universally hated at the time. Pandas were a joke meme from a prior April Fool's Day (and no, the WC3 unit doesn't count since that was meant to be a joke too)

Everyone said it was Blizzard pandering to their Chinese playerbase. And it was. Kung Fu Panda type shit.

PvP was in the worst shape it's ever been. Hunter pets could solo other players. Warlocks were unkillable gods with over 1mil hp. Monks were so broken in mobility/stuns/damage.

Daily quests were out of control.

And the Siege of Orgrimmar patch was so long (over a year) that they must have lost over half their playerbase over that content drought. \


It's only now, years later, that people remember some fond parts of it because Warlords/etc. were somehow even worse.