Was Mists of Pandariz that liked?

[shimerra]

Someone doesn't like the same things as I do, he must be infantile and a jerk. You sound retarded like that.

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MoP sucked. The asian theme and setting don't fit the european medieval fantasy franchise. But a lot of the systems of the expansion were quite good.

I mean that was generally the sentiment expressed my a large number of people who objected to MoP. "LLOLOLOLOLOL KUNFU PANDU BLIZZ DUMB KIDS" was basically their rallying cry.

Asian theme fit perfectly well. And "European medieval fantasies" steal/use asian cultures all the time. Draeni and space demons are hardly medieval fantasy, nor is WoW's rampant steampunk aesthetic with goblins/gnomes. I can think of a long list of things that fit far worse into a strict medieval fantasy definition before we even come to "Asian armor and architecture also based on the same or similar time period as European medieval armor/weaponry/architecture". We didn't see near the same reaction to Zandalari themes in BFA and that's no less different than Asian themes from this "European fantasy" we're all playing.

Don't' care if you don't like it or not, but the "doesn't fit European Medieval fantasy" argument is just plain ridiculous given the hundreds of vastly more significant ways WoW deviates.

[Overlordd]

Asian theme fit perfectly well. "European medieval fantasies" steal/use asian cultures all the time.

I do not believe you. Most fantasy comes from Tolkien's imagination who took it from a bunch of European folklore.

[Coldkil]

I loved MoP. The lore, setting, pandas, raids everything was so solid. Was so much solid i literally burned myself over it - i played it so extensively i stopped at Throne of Thunder (the best raid of the xpack and one of the best ever) only to return slightly before SoO.

It had its shortcomings. Like i said, initially daily/reputations grinds were way too extensive, and last patch was dragged for a long time. But compared to stuff we have now or had in the last expansions, hell, there's literally no context.

I miss reforging so much, even if it in the end it was just a matter of simulations and it could be basically automated through addons.

[Unlimited Power]

Main criticisms at launch stemmed from the acquisition of valor from dailies, valor gear being locked behind reputations that were locked behind another reputation, and having to do dailies at all to unlock bonus coins for extra chances at loot.

MoP was also the first expansion that Blizzard removed the daily quest cap of 25 quests, and consequently a lot of raiders felt pressured to complete every single daily quest available every day resulting in massive burnout early on.

At the announcement of the expansion, the manchildren were out in force complaining about "Kung-Fu Panda kiddie theme". That said, most anyone that played the expansion liked how the classes played, the majority of the story was well liked, the dungeons and raids were well received, challenge mode and the rewards were a breath of fresh air, and the outdoor world content of Thunder Isle and Timeless Isle were mostly received favourably.

Even the Halfhill farm was seen as a potential precursor to an actual housing system which unfortunately resulted in Garrisons.

Siege of Orgrimmar definitely lasted too long, especially followed by the disappointment that WoD proved to be for non raid-loggers, but it was nevertheless a great raid and I enjoyed it immensely.

[mauserr]

Mop was the pinnacle of class design & gameplay.


Siege of Orgrimmar was an excellent raid.

[Mr. Smith]

It was easily my second favorite expansion behind BC, even at the time of release. As a casual player, I appreciated all the side-stuff to do that was rewarding and didn't overtly waste my time with grinds (Dailies notwithstanding).

I loved being able to find little treasures across the continent that rewarded Heirlooms and unique transmogs, I loved my farm, I loved the Brawler's Guild, I loved the multiple Cooking quest chains, I loved the rares that dropped worthwhile items (I especially loved the eternal PvP wars over that hozen in Kun-Lai that dropped the rep whistle), I loved hunting for Cloud Serpent eggs, hell I loved the whole Cloud Serpent quest chain in general.

And I especially loved the Timeless Isle, which managed to roll the rare and treasure-hunting into one dense, chaotic PvP clusterfuck. I went there every day for months and every day was different just because of how much it had going on: Some days I would peacefully farm the Elite mobs, some days I would camp rares some days I'd stack buffs and use my Censer to do some PvP and farm badges, some days I'd get farmed by someone else using their Censer. It was the peak of open-world design in WoW IMO.

I honestly feel bad for the developers that so many people poo-pooed it just because of the theme and/or the rough first month for the people that were compelled to do dailies because of raiding. It, along with Legion, had this feel to it. I dunno how to describe it, but they both felt like the devs were really going all-in to try and make the absolute best product they could, and I think it's a shame that so much of that effort in MoP was ignored because of a damn Dreamworks movie.

[Zolaris192]

pros:

it ended

cons:

story is garbage (always the case post wrath, but even before this the story shouldn't be told to us, it's an MMO, we should be making the story, our own story)
introduced warforging, one of the most damaging mechanics to have ever been introduced
dungeons were trash (nothing excuses the monkeys and klaxxi, please take off your rose tinted glasses)
dailies
ability bloat (you dont need 30 buttons shut up)
the whole expansion was basically just an excuse to cuddle up to china and felt forced

[klogaroth]

The dailies thing is weird to look back on having experienced artifact power and azerite.

It was a hell of a grind for those doing split runs, especially in an era before multiboxing was as common, but it did have an end point. Both in terms of finishing for the day, and being done overall. But concentrating on main first, or not being so bothered about getting to them all every day, it wasn't all that bad really.

Dungeons were weak, but we got CMs, which were good for a bit, but then you'd never do them again unless you wanted server first, or you were boosting. CMs become more important when you look at the evolution of dungeons since then.

Isle of Thunder and Timeless Isle were great additions.

To get the most out of the expansion I definitely agree you had to raid, but if you did, there was a LOT going for it.

[Lolites]

I was always willing to praise WoD for the things it did right. For one thing, the questing experience was excellent. I thoroughly enjoyed leveling up, and the story stuff was actually pretty fun. The art was amazing, genuinely gorgeous, and pushed what they'd created in MoP even further. It introduced rares (or vignettes as they were known) and treasure hunting to the larger world as a whole, and it gave us our own space to build up and (to a small degree) customize in the form of Garrisons. Oh, and the amount of gold I made was absolutely insane. I paid for 1.5 years worth of sub-time with that gold.

Not to say it didn't have a lot wrong with it, or that it didn't fail in countless ways, because holy shit did it ever. The lost capital cities, the lost zone of Faralohn, the lost T4 Garrisons, the lost Shattrath raid, the insane amounts of lore potential squandered and wasted for Draenor, the lack of decent choice and customization at the Garrison, the thin amount of content at end-game, and so on, and so on.

I wouldn't rate it as my worst, or even bottom three, but overall I'd rate it more "mediocre" than bad, if only for the amount of stuff cancelled and the potential wasted.

oh i absolutely agree on leveling and garisons being awesome, by praising wod i mean people who look at it through rose tinted glasses, saying how it had more and better content than newer expansions or how it was best expansion ever and so on
it definitely should be praised for its pros, but lately people praise it as if it was amazing yet it was soo empty... and people treat that way every old wow content, with pure nostalgia and total lack of objectiveness, while current content is always being put down as terrible, usualy without any thought behind the whining whatsoever

[OokOok]

MOP suffered from the same thing every other expansion before it and after it, it was hated by some and loved by others. MOP had the benefit of coming after cata, Cata was a terrible expansion outside of Arena and Firelands so it would be hard to fuck it up but still people hated it.

The funny thing is that MOP is probably one of the best expansions they've made. If you let go of your nostalgia and biased and actually look at what each expansion brought, Legion and MOP are easily the 2 top expansions. MOP had solid raids, a decent legendary build system, solid arena/pvp, dailies that weren't mind numbing, and timeless isle was actually fun unlike mechagon/naj

But it doesn't matter, people always hate the expansion until blizzard makes a new expansion with even worst tuning...raids...systems.... garbage like torghast etc. BFA was shit talked non stop, now people say they miss it.

[Varitok]

Best expansion by far for me.

It was the last time that WoW was adding and improving. After MoP, the game started getting pruned and cut up. Whole systems and stats just being cleaved from the game for streamlining purposes.

LFR/Flex were amazing in this Expac, LFR rewarded great loot but also was damn hard and it was tough enough in fact that I ended up moving up from LFR to Normal To Heroic and got the Garrosh weapon. The first and last time I felt like LFR was a true stepping stone to the harder difficulties.

The theme was excellent and at least until the end, it wasn't some world ending threat, it was a small, contained story about war and the casualties of it. With it came amazing visuals, the best music Blizzard has produced too. It was all so different and fun and just open that I really hope we get a Classic MoP server. It was truly everything that makes WoW great distilled into one expansion.

[Azerate]

You can't possibly compare taurens, which are monster minotaurs, with vulpera. Vulpera are literally only in the game for the one reason we both know. Minotaurs are a classic staple of any RPG game. You'd have a hard time finding an RPG without a minotaur (which are the taurens).

Panda's don't belong in any game not made in china, and vulpera belong more in ff14 than WoW.

That is a very bad comparison on your part.

Not saying anything negative against the players who play them, but they simply do not belong in the WoW universe. What about ogres? Centaurs? and a dozen other races that ACTUALLY fit into WoW? They should have got the green light before "let's just do fox people for THAT crowd" or "we can appeal to china with pandas!"

It just ain't warcraft material.

Are you sure that reason isnt only in your head though?

If you think everything is created to cater to sexual needs then that's your personal issue, rather than an issue with the game.

Vulpera belong in the game as much as any other race.They were the native inhabitatnts of Vol'Dun.

[Bigbazz]

The official forums were just a cesspool of complaints, memes and hate towards the pandas, this only got worse when the final patch lasted forever and people were begging for the end to come so they could move forward to WOD, which was seen as a return to "Warcraft". Almost all the forum discussion was just people panning Blizzard and trashing on how bad the expansion was/had been, even unfairly so.

The love MOP sees in modern day was entirely absent at the time, it was arguably as disliked as Shadowlands/BFA. The launch experience of MOP was "roflstomp the easiest launch dungeons they ever put in the game and farm millions of dailies every day because you need exalted with several factions if you want to gear for raiding". Isle of Thunder and Timeless Isle was good and Siege was a good raid, but MOP wasn't an expansion that people loved at the time.

The most well recieved modern expansion was Legion, and even that had a tonne of hate/frustration around it.

LFR/Flex were amazing in this Expac, LFR rewarded great loot but also was damn hard and it was tough enough in fact that I ended up moving up from LFR to Normal To Heroic and got the Garrosh weapon. The first and last time I felt like LFR was a true stepping stone to the harder difficulties..

You only played the final patch? Flex wasn't added until SOO and LFR was completely roflstomp in prior tiers too, a lot easier than it had been when it was introduced in Dragon Soul, it saw a bump in difficulty for Siege and even with that comparison it was still hilariously easy by comparison with Flex/Normal.

MOP went through a lot of teething issues, and while the final patch was good it lasted an eternity and is just as worthy of criticism as BFA was.

[Venziir]

MoP was fantastic, bar 5.3 and the fact that 5.4 lasted for so long. People may have disliked it, but I liked it - which honestly is the only thing I care about.

[Xe4ro]

I recall fun classes and raids, challenge mode was a bit weird for some classes but It was the first step towards M+ so it was a worthwhile experiment.

[Akibaboy]

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?

"Hated" by onlookers, people who were rooting for the game to fail because getting older meant they couldn't play as much, people who didn't like pandas.

Everyone who played the game got great class design, tons of content, frequent updates, great raids, and lots of little things to do on the side. About the only negatives out the gate were dailies, pretty forgettable and trivial dungeons outside of Challenge Mode, and the gutting of the Talent system / leveling leaving character progression feeling really hollow.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Not at the time, the theme felt like a cheap asia (mostly china) cash-in, but in hindsight it was mostly a highlight wedged between the horrific end of cata and the catastrophic orc masturbation exercise of WoD. While I think people grossly exaggerate IoT, it was a good patch and SoO also was mostly above just decent. The initial raids were kinda boring as well and Blizzard butchered the casual reward structure in the beginning again in their eternal crusade to not give people what they want (simple badge gear) with out their shit stainspin on it. The initial zones were mostly nice from an artistic PoV, though if you could stomach the cliche stuff in them is mostly a personal thing. Class design also changed drastically afterwards in many aspects, which is why some people have especially fond memories of it. TI was also the beginning of hyper condensed patch specific zones with tons of grinds, that that as you want.

[Heffladin]

MoP had the arguably best writing with the legendary, 5.1 and 5.2 questlines, and in my opinion best class design paired with great outdoor content once the daily problem got fixed. Raids were decent, the gear was awesome (coolest trinkets in my opinion)

Downsides? The environments don't feel very warcraft, dungeons sucked, LFR and phasing became a detriment to realm communities, making the world feel even less connected. Alt progression sucked due to the legendary questline.

Overall I had alot of fun

[schwank05]

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 the last time you could fly without some super complicated and time gated requirements to fly. This instantly makes it 100% better than any xpac after it. That and Class deisgn in MOP was fantastic, Disc Priest need I say more. The first tier was a blast to raid I love smaller raids where there are 1-5 bosses in them and they release 2-3 of them at a time.

[D3athsting]

LFR Durumu was just wonderful