official World of Warcraft

[dead.cell]

From what I have seen of MoP I am not really that impressed. The first dungeon was just AoE spam. Bosses were far from interesting and we got the feeling we could have killed it on heroic already at 85.

Isn't that what the casual crowd wanted though? People bitched to no end about how difficult Cataclysm dungeons were (at launch), between people actually having to use their crowd control abilities and healers not being able to just heal everyone through their idiocy. (e.g. healing the jackass standing in fire)

I actually preferred how things were at Cata's launch. It's just too bad they didn't back it up with more content. Also, to hell with that ****-stain named Tol'Barad.

[Shadrack]

Interested in hearing what people think. I'll probably pick this up this weekend if it is any good. I promised some friends I'd at least level a character to 90. But I might push that promise back to Christmas. idk. I haven't really played WoW since Cata was released. I enjoyed a lot about Cata, but I've also just played WoW to death in general.

[Joseph B]

Another day, another expansion, same problems. Forget about login servers down. They seem to be a lot of people who are stuck on 90% on the loading screen. Screwed a lot of folks over who were planning to get server firsts. They never learn and never will.

From what I have seen of MoP I am not really that impressed. The first dungeon was just AoE spam. Bosses were far from interesting and we got the feeling we could have killed it on heroic already at 85.

Perfect, glad I didn't waste my money. Enjoy the next year or two of that everyone.

[+Mirumir Subscriber¹]

It's been smooth sailing for me...I'm going to try a monk. I wonder how it will compare to D3 monk.

If anyone is on Hyjal (US) - Alliance, send me a pm.

[Colin McGregor]

Perfect, glad I didn't waste my money. Enjoy the next year or two of that everyone.

good. if you let someones review dictate what you buy your not much of a gamer anyways and probably wont miss it.

Rolled a monk. im level 22 right now and gotta say i love it. i really dont care about all my other toons anymore after making a monk tank. Throwin booze and spittin fire? yes please

[+Mirumir Subscriber¹]

Rolled a monk. im level 22 right now and gotta say i love it. i really dont care about all my other toons anymore after making a monk tank. Throwin booze and spittin fire? yes please

Reminded me of a WC3 hero - breadth of fire + drunken haze ))

[S00N3R FR3AK]

I'm having fun and looking forward to ny monk once I get my first 90. Also had no problems at midnight or any time since then.

[LaP]

Isn't that what the casual crowd wanted though? People bitched to no end about how difficult Cataclysm dungeons were (at launch), between people actually having to use their crowd control abilities and healers not being able to just heal everyone through their idiocy. (e.g. healing the jackass standing in fire)

I actually preferred how things were at Cata's launch. It's just too bad they didn't back it up with more content. Also, to hell with that ****-stain named Tol'Barad.

Normal cata dungeons were really easy.

I mean those are normal dungeons. They are supposed to be easy and doable with pugs easily. I'll never understand why so much good players want 90% of the game to not be playable for 90% of the crowd. It's really a self centered attitude.

Now there's normal Dungeon, Heroic Dungeon and Challenge. Normal is supposed to be really easy. Heroic hard for pugs and easy for guild. Challenge will be the real challenge for guild groups.

So far i like what i see. Looks like it's gonna be a better xpac than Cata. But honestly it's not like being better than cata actually means something as most of cata content was rehashed.

[the evn show]

I finished the grind late last night / early this morning -- it was about 18 hours worth of time includincluding taking a nap/shower and eating regularly:

• Absolutely no connection issues - at just before 3 PST we walked into the keep and got the cinematic - we immediately queued for the new dungeons. Forget that first zone questing nonsense - that's a fools errand. There were no problems at all during the entire grind.
  
• 85-87 dungeon grinding. We ran with 5 DPS (moonkin off healing, frost/blood DK (in dps gear), shadow priest, fury warrior -- the last spot traded between warlock/rogue/mage/hunter/elemental shaman.) and just pulled one boss at a time. That is, we ran from the door to the boss LOS'd at the doorway and then AOEd everything down with the boss. We managed to get the first two down to less than 10 minutes per clear. VE+tranquility+rallying cry etc. was alll it took to survive the damage during our AOE orgy. The bosses died so quickly there was no need to have a healer.
  
• At 87-88 we did the two new dungeons once and then realized there was too much running to be effective XP/hour so we split up and did a bit of questing mixed with 'AV exploiting'. The mobs were all level 85 so you could zerg to Drek and pull him instantly. 750k-1.2 million XP every 4 or 5 minutes with queues popping every 3 or 4 minutes so you could sneak a quest in while you waited. Even losing was giving 400-500k xp so it was worth it even if you lost by a couple of seconds. We ran with 2 groups of 5 (so we weren't in a raid to screw up quest XP). With 7 people to kill drek + 2 or 3 to snare horde at the bridge we didn't lose. If we got stuck in different AVs I'd estimate alliance had about an 80% win rate so it wasn't so bad. I was questing in Kung-lai summit while this was happening -- I ran past the first quest hub into the middle of the zone that way I'd avoid the lower-level people who were trying to sneak past the rest of the leveling pack by skipping the first zone.
  
• Somewhere mid-way through level 88 they hot-fixed AV so we immediately AFK'd out (got to drek, saw 75m HP and said "nope, /afk"). We went back to questing. I did whatever that zone with the luckydos and gunnies(?) until 89 then grinded out dread wastes to completion. Somewhere around 95% through 89 I ran out of quests in dreadwastes so I did a couple of dailies to finish out.
  
• I didn't replace any gear until just before I hit 90. Pretty much everything you come across is a tiny upgrade from T13 heroic gear and without enchants there's just no reason to upgrade.
  
• I made a total of 5000 gold while leveling (almost exactly) but somehow didn't get the "loot 200,00g achievement. I've been sitting a d 199,750 for weeks: I think it's bugged.
  
• I skipped most of the cinematics by the time your at hour #8 you just don't care.
  
• Dread wastes is pretty much the worst leveling content they have ever made. It's like they took every crappy idea they've ever had and put it in one zone. Collection quests with <10% drop rates? Check. Kill named mobs that wander around? Check. densely packed mobs with knock backs and fast respwans? Check. Cross the zone on foot 7 or 8 times to deliver the mail? Check. Run 10 minutes to turn in a quest just to be sent right back where you were? check. 2-3 hours of ****ing vashj'ir content? check and double check. Low respawn widely spaced mobs that you need to grind for quest drops (which aren't 100% of course)? check. **** that zone. I'll level by doing the ****ing fishing daily quests in Stormwind before I do that garbage a second time.
  

We've got a group that's going to do heroic dungeons tonight - we'll clear normal mode raids when they open next week and then start on challenge modes. I'm trying to organize a pug to kill Sha of Fear but there aren't 40 level 90 alliance characters yet.

For the most part leveling wasn't really better or worst than anything else until 89. There were not stand-out amazing quests like wrathgate and there's no dungeon content but it's no more painful than say TBC or Cata was. Dread Wastes was just terrible content - IMO the best way to level is to dungeon grind to 87 or 88 then start questing from the first zone - hopefully you hit 90 before you need to go to that ****hole, especially with rested XP.

Priests are very strong in PVP - the few times somebody ganked me was typically while I was juggling 4 or 5 mobs. If I found them later I just used overpowered chain fears (horror -> scream -> silence -> psyfiend -> fade -> horror -> scream) to shut them down and could pretty easily 100->0 people in my crappy 391 PVP gear. As disc. I'm effectively immortal. For the most part people left me alone - I'm not sure if that's because I'm fairly recognizable on the server or if it's just because everyone wants to get their leveling done. There were some gankers in the lower level zones but it was pretty easy to shut them down with help from friends - and then once I was into dread wastes I rarely saw another person except for the people I was leveling with (we did different quest hubs most of the time just to avoid competition for mobs).

I leveld as a gnome, I'm race changing to panada for the food buff tonight. Overpowered racials are best racials.

[Joseph B]

good. if you let someones review dictate what you buy your not much of a gamer anyways and probably wont miss it.

Rolled a monk. im level 22 right now and gotta say i love it. i really dont care about all my other toons anymore after making a monk tank. Throwin booze and spittin fire? yes please

Never said I was a gamer to begin with. But I am an MMO player, and an ARPG player. I literally don't touch any other genre besides the two, minus Battlefield 3, that one was an odd ball.

Have you tried any of the new 5-mans?

[Slane]

http://www.wowprogress.com/char_level/us - Second page. Props to the Reckoning guild for getting 20 players 'Realm First 90'. That's some teamwork.

Still haven't decided whether or not to play again. Still got 3~ months left on subscription, so maybe I'll get MOP and try it out for the remainder, but I just can't keep feeling like it's going to be the same ****, in a new wrapper.

[dead.cell]

I'll never understand why so much good players want 90% of the game to not be playable for 90% of the crowd. It's really a self centered attitude.

It's not about making it unplayable. Crowd control requires using your class abilities, which is literally easy as pressing a hotkey. Or noticing that the flames underneath you are, in fact, causing you to lose life.

There's a big difference between challenging and unplayable. :/

[the evn show]

Cleared the new heroics last night - They're wrath-esque zergs where even when you don't have the ilevel to queue you can still do 2 packs at a time. 15-minute clears are the norm and I can't detect any new mechanics at all. I suspect I'll be completely done with heroics in a day or two.

Leveling professions was basically free. I kept every quest rewards and cloth drop I got while leveling. Last night I trained new tailoring converted about 30% of my cloth to bolts and then made random things. That got me to 580 or so, then I used one spirit of harmony to buy a random pvp item pattern and made a few of those to hit cap. I sharded everything I made along with my quest rewards - that was more than enough to level enchanting to cap, enchant all my gear with the new stuff, and hand out free enchants to friends. After that it was over to first-aid where i was just a matter of buying 2 patterns and making a few stacks of bandages. After all of that I still have a few hundred bolts of cloth. I'll look at cooking on the weekend: apparently single-person food buffs are better so I'll need to get that.

The rep grinding is going to get old fast. Fortunately raid gear is better than valor point nonsense so if I'm lucky I'll be able to just PVE my way out of that in a week or two. There are 2 factions with good enchants (bracers/weapon) but I can just buy those from the AH, I don't actually have to farm it.

[LaP]

It's not about making it unplayable. Crowd control requires using your class abilities, which is literally easy as pressing a hotkey. Or noticing that the flames underneath you are, in fact, causing you to lose life.

There's a big difference between challenging and unplayable. :/

Yeah but what is challenging for an adult and what is challenging for a young kid is not the same.

My sisters daughter used to play wow here and there.

Just doing good enough dps was hard enough for her.

I mean normal dungeon, heroic dungeon, raid finder and normal raid will be easy. I'm ok with that. Kids and mom have the right to play wow. I wont complain and invest my time in doing heroic raid and challenge mode dungeon.

Now if Blizzard ever do the same mistake they did when they nerfed Heroic Fireland to death and made Heroic DS easy enough for pug to be able to fully complete it now i'm gonna be ****ed off.

I see raid finder (easy) and challenge mode dungeon (heroic will now be easy) as a way to make the game accessible to everyone while keeping the hardest mode really hard. Now please blizzard stop nerfing heroic raid and make challenge mode dongeon gold medals hard to do.

[Bryan R.]

Haven't played for a while and got the expansion a few days ago. It hasn't captured me yet which is disappointing. I'll give it some more time and see.

[dead.cell]

Yeah but what is challenging for an adult and what is challenging for a young kid is not the same.

My sisters daughter used to play wow here and there.

Just doing good enough dps was hard enough for her.

I mean normal dungeon, heroic dungeon, raid finder and normal raid will be easy. I'm ok with that. Kids and mom have the right to play wow. I wont complain and invest my time in doing heroic raid and challenge mode dungeon.

Now if Blizzard ever do the same mistake they did when they nerfed Heroic Fireland to death and made Heroic DS easy enough for pug to be able to fully complete it now i'm gonna be ****ed off.

I see raid finder (easy) and challenge mode dungeon (heroic will now be easy) as a way to make the game accessible to everyone while keeping the hardest mode really hard. Now please blizzard stop nerfing heroic raid and make challenge mode dongeon gold medals hard to do.

Well, I've played with a 10 year old who helped us down the Lich King. Was cute as hell listening to him on vent go, "MOM... MOOOOOOOOOOM, WE JUST KILLED THE LICH KING!" :laugh:

Also, I've played with a family who had a mediocre son, a terribad father (who couldn't even spell), and a mother who was an epic paladin. Was quite hilarious, since we ended up kicking her son for being a drama queen. His dad left with him, but his mom stuck around because she didn't want to carry them hahah.

Anyway, it all comes down to the player. I definitely agree with you though on whether they nerf other aspects of the game. I mean, it's one thing to put the story on the backburner, but not the gameplay, since that's all it has going for it these days. :/

[Tharp Daddy]

According to a new report, the latest World of Warcraft expansion is not living up to the standard set by its predecessors.

VentureBeat is reporting that analysts at the investment bank Lazard Capital estimate that the expansion pack has sold 600,000 to 700,000 retail copies since launch. That's well behind the pace of the 2010's World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, which has sold 3.3 million copies to date. Even adjusting for an increase in digital sales, the analysts feel that Mist of Pandaria will fall far short of the sales of previous expansions.

There could be several reasons for this. One, many hardcore WoW fans weren't very excited by what they viewed as an expansion aimed at a younger demographic. Two, NCSoft's excellent Guild Wars 2 is still picking up steam, and doesn't require a monthly subscription fee. Finally, as we reported in August, WoW has recently shed in excess of one million subscribers.

via Game Informer

What do you guys think about this? I'm inclined to say that it's likely a mixture of the Pandarian Theme, as well as a mix of WoW fatigue and a ton of recent releases. I likely would have tried WoW again if i didn't have GW2, Borderlands 2, Torchlight 2 and X-Com next week all waiting for me.

[Prosidius]

I'm enjoying leveling so far. I'm about done with Kun-Lai and Im 40% from 89. The zones are really beautiful.

[dead.cell]

via Game Informer

What do you guys think about this? I'm inclined to say that it's likely a mixture of the Pandarian Theme, as well as a mix of WoW fatigue and a ton of recent releases. I likely would have tried WoW again if i didn't have GW2, Borderlands 2, Torchlight 2 and X-Com next week all waiting for me.

That's pretty bad if true, considering Cataclysm raked in 3.3 million in the first 24 hours, if this article holds true. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2010/12/world-of-warcraft-cataclysm-breaks-sales-records-for-pc-gaming/

[Blackhearted]

I'm enjoying leveling so far. I'm about done with Kun-Lai and Im 40% from 89. The zones are really beautiful.

Sorry, but "beautiful" isn't a word you can use on a game whos developer largely ignores their graphics engine.

[Rigby]

Sorry, but "beautiful" isn't a word you can use on a game whos developer largely ignores their graphics engine.

How they are ignoring it? They are constantly updating it to add new features and abilities. Obviously they aren't going to write a fancy new Crysis level elite graphics engine for it when they'd be losing millions of customers who would no longer be able to run it on their computers. For a game from 2004 I think it has held up wonderfully, many games from that long ago look like crap today.

[Dotdot]

Really enjoying it so far. Love the new art style and asidde from one 27mill hp boss in the heroics it seems not bad tuning wise. Cant wait to get into raids, but im a bit ****ed at the whole rep being tied to jp/vp

Wouuld of been nice to ding and spend some jps on useful gear, but tbh im in heroics minus spending any jp and my ilvl is climbing daily to get me ready for raids next week. Will probs exalt the factions for mt Exalted title and the mounts etc they provide tho.

[Shadrack]

I would so buy this expansion right now if it came with 1 free month subscription. But $55 just to play this expansion ($40 and then $15 for the month) is just way too much.

[Tharp Daddy]

Sorry, but "beautiful" isn't a word you can use on a game whos developer largely ignores their graphics engine.

A game can be beautiful without being graphically good. There's a difference between aesthetic and graphics. Wind Waker was a beautiful game, even if the graphics are not that great. Battlefield 3 is impressive graphically, but it has no aesthetic, i wouldn't consider it beautiful. Impressive? Yes. Beautiful? No. It's graphical appeal is in the realistic-ness of it, not in the style or aesthetic. World of Warcraft is not strong graphically, but from what i have seen on Pandaria, it is a beautiful game with the aesthetic they have.

[the evn show]

A game can be beautiful without being graphically good. There's a difference between aesthetic and graphics. Wind Waker was a beautiful game, even if the graphics are not that great. Battlefield 3 is impressive graphically, but it has no aesthetic, i wouldn't consider it beautiful. Impressive? Yes. Beautiful? No. It's graphical appeal is in the realistic-ness of it, not in the style or aesthetic. World of Warcraft is not strong graphically, but from what i have seen on Pandaria, it is a beautiful game with the aesthetic they have.

What's frustrating is that the defects of wow (relatively simple models, low-res textures, simple animations, etc) still manage to drag the most impressive hardware to it's knees. There is no difference in framerate between a rather dated GTX 570 and Crossfire 7970s. Bumping your CPU from an i5-650 to a i7-3960x adds a half dozen frames per second. Going from 4gb to 64gb of RAM does nothing at all.

That would be fine if the game was playing at 150 FPS but it's just barely creeping along. With the absolute best hardware warcraft can use it'll just barely reach 60 FPS in the new areas with all of the options turned up. Go to kill world bosses or do some large-group raiding and 30 FPS is your new goal. I imagine the game could look a lot nicer if their engine wasn't cobbled together out of toothpicks and bubble gum.

I find myself joining the small chorus of people who wish Blizzard would completely replace their graphics engine. I don't want fancy new graphical effects (though I wouldn't complain if they handed them out), I just want the damn game to run halfway well on current generation hardware. If world war 2 action shorter games can handle 200 FPS in 40-player death matches on 6x1440p screens then I don't think it's too much to ask for 25m raids to stay at 60 FPS on powerful hardware. They don't have to leave the 'old computer' people behind - even unreal 3 can work at least as well as the current wow engine on ancient hardware provided you're willing to drop down to 'ultra low' graphics settings.