WoW - Mists of Pandaria - why I'm glad it wasn't a joke.

[TheMigrantSoldier]

I liked the expansion. The quests were grind-heavy but bearable. The story was disappointing but I should of seen that coming when Hellscream Jr. decided to nuke a city in a book, turn evil and get announced as a raid boss and the Warcraft equivalent to you know who.

Regardless, I liked the deep lore of Pandaria and 5.3.

 

[Sansha]

And are now forced to spend our time doing silly odd jobs for panda's.
Sure, there is the Sha stuff, but it just all felt so minor compared to the previous expansions.

I never felt like I was 'forced' to do jobs for pandas. If there was something I found arbitrary, boring or anything like 'work', I simply didn't do it. The reputation/valor system was a terrible system, thus I chose not to be a part of it.

The Talent-Trees where dumbed down horribly. Everyone takes the same Talents currently, since th Playerbase heavily relies on Guides. The Theme and Areas were well designed and looked really nice. The Story however, was a bit lame. We allready had "Old God slumbering until Players show up. Strats wrecking sh*t." in WOTLK and with C'Thun. Also, Garrosh was killed solely because the Community didnt like him, appearantly he was to "Brutal".

I agree there. Using Old God and Trolls as go-to bad guys is getting really stale. I'm sick of seeing the Zandalari getting all bitchy about taking over the world, getting effortlessly roflstomped, then trying again over and goddamn over, and that Old Gods are pretty much everywhere takes from their mystique and threat.

...but in Survival Mode you have a MUCH stronger feeling of accomplishment because you "worked" your ASS off to get all that obsidian and build a giant floating black pyramid in the sky with lava flows running down the sides. There's pay-off for all the time and effort you put into it rather than simply coming up with an idea for something big and grand and being able to build it in 10 minutes. The magic of Minecraft was that it gave you a purpose, a goal, a PROJECT that you could spend days working on.

The same goes with mounts - as an example - with WoW. Apparently they're just giving the things away now. Back in the day you had to put in your time leveling up, then earn a crap-ton of gold to get yourself even a basic mount. Epic Mounts required max-level and an even MORE obscene amount of gold to purchase one. And if you were a Paladin or Warlock, you actually had to go through a long, expensive quest involving various dungeons in order to get your specialized Epic Mount. There was work and effort involved there, things that weren't just handed to you on a silver platter, but rather things you had to earn.

This is just one of the examples of the more modern gripes that I've heard of since I left three expansions ago. But they all stem from the same complaint of "It's just too watered down, too easy and accessible now" and honestly if what I've heard is true I can easily see where those complaints are coming from.

I couldn't disagree more. I don't believe such details of the game should be 'inaccessible' to people because it's a ridiculous grind. I levelled where I didn't get my first mount until lv40, epic at 60 and flying at 70, and I praised the change to 20 and 40, with reduced prices, long after I reached level 70 and was riding a Netherwing. I still fly my Netherwing, actually, because I think it's still the coolest looking mount in the game, for myself. Not to impress anybody else or wave my e-penis around. I have the Icecrown Citadel Drakes, but not the Cata raid ones - I don't like them, wouldn't choose flying them over my already favorites, so I never bothered.
There's no skill in farming gold for mount riding training and buying a damn horse, no real 'effort' - farming gold just takes time. Challenge Mode dungeons, heroic raids - that takes skill and effort and thus should be rewarded. That's not why I wear my Challenge Mode transmog on my Mage, though - it's because I think it looks awesome. I've always been into the 'elemental triad' that the armor represents. So I went and got it on my Mage. But not on my Rogue or other lv90 characters. Seeing a pattern?

I definitely don't agree with the astounding amount of time people put into waiting for rare mobs, especially the mentally sick who spend literal days at a time at their PC's waiting for the Time-Lost, or the mount in Deepholm. MoP's system of getting the world mount is excellence - you still have to pour in the same time, but you're actually playing instead of sitting in your room with NPCFinder on.

I absolutely hate when the term 'work' is ever applied to a game. Because the bottom line is, you're not working. You never work. You're still just sitting on your ass playing an online game, and please don't take offense to this, but I've never understood the 'pride' and 'sense of accomplishment' people get from certain thresholds in WoW that took a great deal of time and energy for something ultimately nobody is impressed by.

I don't believe in making details like mounts, pets etc inaccessible. Why should something like that be excluded from somebody because they're not willing to sit in front of a PC for days worth of time banging on at it? I think that everyone being able to see all the content WoW has to offer is awesome, with the more difficult and focused stuff like heroic raids still being exclusive to skilled and dedicated players - something tangible you raid together towards. An adventure, an experience, with your friends. That's what WoW is, not fucking around collecting enough gold for a certain reward, or sitting in a spot waiting for something to spawn, or deluding yourself into thinking you're working hard for a reward you can be "proud" of.

I get zero sense of adventure working the Auction House for gold for a mount.

I also believe that Mists of Pandaria is Blizzards best work to date in terms of art style, story and encounters. They're still mis stepping with character balancing and talents...

This was the expansion that made me come back after Cataclysm which I thought was awful. A lot of people were, or still are, hating on Mists of Pandaria, though I feel that many of them haven't actually played it and are simply playing hate for the sake of hate.

The problem with the old talent trees is there were cookie-cutter specs - people had spent a great deal of time and effort calculating every possible talent and stat build and had come up with *the* best spec for a given DPS role, and people just looked that up and specced like that. I mean, I did - why wouldn't you? If you want the best out of your character, you go to the people who really know their stuff and follow their instructions. Now, to a degree, you can choose and customize your character's talents in a way that you change it up, and play to your own style. To a degree - there's still a lot of cookie cutters, but in today's WoW community, that's not ever going to change.

And for some reason people can't let the comparison to 'kung-fu panda' go, whatever that reference is.

 

[Rad Party God]

It's been a loooong while since the last time I played WoW and certainly MoP looks like my cup of tea.

I've been increasingly busy lately and I just don't have the time like I used to have when I played WoW back then and while I can see why so many people are upset about the changes, I definitely don't mind them. At all.

And yes, Pandaria looks beautiful, I played the trial for a while and I definitely liked what I saw, yes, WoW's engine is incredibly old, but you know what?, Blizzard still manages to do marvels with it and it still runs beautifully.

 

[TakeyB0y2]

I first started playing WoW during the last few months of vanilla and up until a few months before WotLK came out before I stopped playing. A lot of guildies and friends stopped playing, and playing that game alone felt blagh.

However, I started playing again recently, and I feel that Mists actually improved solo play quite a lot. I've actually enjoyed doing the questing chains and such.

I don't like how dungeons became more dumb-downed feeling. I'm not sure exactly what they did, but it's really not uncommon to do a dungeon run with your party members NEVER saying a word to each other for the entire run. Hell, that used to be the best way to make buddies our get into a guild.

I'm at level 51, leveling fairly slowly to take in everything, and still haven't found a guild and haven't made any buddies...

>.>

... Anyone happen to play on Moon Guard (Alliance)? Or Alexstraza(Horde)? I'm so lonely

 

[Waaghpowa]

The problem with the old talent trees is there were cookie-cutter specs - people had spent a great deal of time and effort calculating every possible talent and stat build and had come up with *the* best spec for a given DPS role, and people just looked that up and specced like that. I mean, I did - why wouldn't you? If you want the best out of your character, you go to the people who really know their stuff and follow their instructions. Now, to a degree, you can choose and customize your character's talents in a way that you change it up, and play to your own style. To a degree - there's still a lot of cookie cutters, but in today's WoW community, that's not ever going to change.

And for some reason people can't let the comparison to 'kung-fu panda' go, whatever that reference is.

The talents is an inherent problem with MMO's in general really. I also think that no matter how they do it, there's always going to be those math obsessed people who ruin it.

Also Kung fu panda is reference to a Jack Black film of the same name.

 

[Charli]

The Talent-Trees where dumbed down horribly. Everyone takes the same Talents currently

Everyone ALWAYS took the same talents. Always. If you wanted to succeed you took the same talents that someone posted on a website. It was referred to the 'cookie cutter build'. And most successful raiding/arena players used whatever it was.

And this is so wrong in raiding, you switch your talents so frequently now I've eaten through 10 stacks of tomes. It's simplified, but far from dumber. And if you've done raiding, challenge modes, or proving grounds you've really got to think about it.


I was skeptical about Mists of Pandaria too OP, but I kept my mouth shut... But I was thinking it.

I have loved this expansion. Cataclysm was utterly deplorable next to the stuff they crammed into this one and the raiding far superior.

Story was great. Raiding was great and those are mainly what I stick around for.

 

[RJ 17]

Snip.

Whatever floats your boat, this - as with all things game-related - is entirely opinion based. Clearly you're the sort who has nothing wrong with instant gratification, I was simply explaining how some who had been with the game since the beginning take the simplification of the game as an insult to the countless hours they had to spend to get the same thing. I'd argue that there's no skill in that game...period. Every boss in every dungeon has a set way to get taken down, so all you do is memorize a dance and go through the motions. MMO's are nothing more than grind-fests no matter how you want to sugar coat them...that's one of the reasons I ended up leaving the game after BC.

But again, this doesn't really even apply to me since I don't even play the game anymore. If you like all the changes well that's just super for you, enjoy the game as much as you like. That doesn't change the fact that there's plenty of others - as seen in the following quote - that take the over-simplification of the game as turning it into a joke

This is just one of the examples of the more modern gripes that I've heard of since I left three expansions ago. But they all stem from the same complaint of "It's just too watered down, too easy and accessible now" and honestly if what I've heard is true I can easily see where those complaints are coming from.

I played from launch up through about the middle of Cataclysm's lifespan, quit for a couple years, then started playing again a little after Pandaria's 5.3 patch went live because I got my hands on a free copy of Mists... and yeah, this right here is my biggest gripe.

The game is running on training wheels. Patch after patch after patch they've been watering everything down for the sake of either accessibility or faster leveling. Now, I have no problem with quality of life changes... but there's definitely a point where a developer can go too far, and I think they've reached it. The game practically plays itself now.

Hell, with the latest patch they've added the Timeless Isle, where you can get a full set of iLvl 496 gear for a fresh level 90 character in about 45 minutes just by riding around looting chests that you don't even have to fight for or anything, and maybe tagging a rare mob or two along the way (which you only need to hit once now to get credit, and you don't even have to have the initial hit - so just run up and poke it with a Moonfire or something, even if it's at 5% health, and woohoo free loot!). Hell, the gear isn't even bound to the character, so you can send it to alts - and it's so ridiculously common, you'll definitely have stuff for alts. My level 77 Discipline Priest already has a complete set of iLvl 496 gear for every slot other than weapon. This makes dungeons, heroics, and a lot of the raid content more or less an obsolete waste of time since I'll be able to jump into Throne of Thunder and maybe Siege of Orgrimmar pretty much the moment I ding 90. It's a joke.

Clearly Tuesday Night Fever has different tastes than you, Sansha, and I somehow doubt that you'll be able to say anything that will convince him otherwise. And judging by what I've heard from various other players in various other topics, Tuesday Night Fever isn't alone in those feelings.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Clearly Tuesday Night Fever has different tastes than you, Sansha, and I somehow doubt that you'll be able to say anything that will convince him otherwise. And judging by what I've heard from various other players in various other topics, Tuesday Night Fever isn't alone in those feelings.

Don't get me wrong, some of the stuff I'm fine with. I'm totally fine with normal mounts at 20, epic mounts at 40, and flying mounts at 60 for example. I've done the level grind so many times now that I'm quite happy with that change. I'd rather be spending my time actually doing something than slowly auto-running around on foot for 45 minutes just to get from quest to quest in my character's 30's.

There are two types of changes that bother me-

1. Changes that make current-expansion content completely obsolete and pointless to bother with.
2. Changes that allow a player to access team-based content that they aren't prepared for skill-wise, making that player a liability and forcing the rest of the team to carry that player. (Team-based being key, because frankly, I don't really care much about what people do solo)

And in the case of the 5.4 patch's Timeless Isle the game has been guilty of both. As I said in one of my earlier posts in this topic, the Timeless Isle didn't need to be effortless-free-loot-headquarters. They already made Valor Point reputation epics reduced in price or converted to Justice Points, pretty drastically reducing the gear-up time. I don't think asking a player only putting in casual amounts of time to spend a week or two gearing up and getting ready for the bigger challenges ahead is unreasonable. Especially when you consider how ridiculously long the preparation time prior to raiding was in previous expansions.

The short-term barrier to entry is not about excluding players from content, it's about preparing them for it so that they're a valuable member of the team as a whole. So many people just don't seem to get that.

 

[sanquin]

I've stopped playing because at end-game, dungeons have become too easy. First there was only one kind of dungeon. Then they became easy, so they introduced heroics for people that wanted a challenge for fairly better gear. But then heroics became too easy, becoming the new grindfest. So they added an even higher challenge mode. I mean, really...? I liked the difficulty of dungeons as they were in The Burning Crusade. The way it is now, it's not a lot of fun. You just rush through everything, mindlessly following the tank.

And the second reason would be as you said, the reputation grindfests. I don't want to spend a week or two grinding the same quests and things every single day, just so I can buy 3~4 'essential' items/enchants before I can join proper raids.

 

[Sansha]

Snip.

Whatever floats your boat, this - as with all things game-related - is entirely opinion based. Clearly you're the sort who has nothing wrong with instant gratification.

Actually, no - I don't like instant gratification, because it makes the game boring as tar. But I think the point of Timeless Isle and the lv496 stuff is for alts, people whose main characters have already grinded away to get their gear and they don't actually need to do it again. I don't think people who are genuinely new to the game are going to slither off to Timeless Isle to get insta-geared because they'll want to play the game instead of doing Timeless Isle shit, which is amazingly boring.

I like actually playing the game to be rewarded, but there's a distinction between doing that, and wasting time - doing something that only takes time. Not effort, not skill, but just time. That's an entry-level desk job. I actively reject such systems.

 

[ERaptor]

This is not meant to disprove anything, as thats your opinion. But i wanted to offer some points since you're complaints are something i hear a lot. Keep in mind i mainly roleplay in WoW, so i get my enjoyment out of a different focus. PvE and PvP are still something i do regularly tough.

[HEADING=2]It's too easy[/HEADING]

While that's true for the instances, i disagree with Raids. They had to implement the Raid Finder to even allow casual players to do the new Raids. Take Throne of Thunder for example. That sh*t is hard on normal Raid Diffictuly, and dont even get me started on heroic. The Bosses throw around some random movementbased attacks, which require actual reflex to dodge. If you can sleep in anything above the Looking for Raid-System, youre either a damn good player, or a bad healer. At least that's what i experienced.

Considering the rest of the content. The Casualisation is one of the major complaints in the PvE Department. On one hand, people want a challenge Instances and Scenarios dont provide, on the other hand, getting into Raiding above LFR takes a lot of time commitment people do not have. One step offered was the Brawlers Guild. I rocked my way to Rank 8 before the Patch, with some relatively crap gear for extra challenge. And i had a blast.I also watched some footage of the Normal "Siege of Orgrimmar"-Raid, and that stuff looks some hard sh*t too.

[HEADING=2]It's ugly[/HEADING]

Well, the graphic was allways kiddy. Coming down to the Designs however, i think it improved a lot. I regularly run trough the old Raids, like Qiraj or the molten Core. Some few Sets there look fancy to me, the others look like you fell trough a Kitchen with Magnets attached to your body. Especially in Qiraj, that stuff looks HORRIBLE. Not only is it mainly fabolous purple, the armor looks horribly out of position on anything but a human. It was allways a problem, that playing Races that had a very different build than humans looked awful in most Armor, but back in Classic it was outright horrible. Currently, i can slap on some of the more asian designs on my damn troll, and it fits at least. I even found a good choice of sets that even look nice. And that's not easy. If you told me a few years ago "Asian Trolls" i would've punched you in the face.

[HEADING=2]It's too simple[/HEADING]

Depending on the area, yes. I liked that you didnt have to gather all Flightmasters with every twink. Some Questareas where almost suicidal to reach, where you either had to take a way longer route, or die your way trough lvl 90 Guards. The whole Groupfinder for Instances and Raids is also an improvement. Back in the day, some instances where simply skipped because it was too hard finding people for it. Ever tried to get a Tank for Blackrock? Good f-ing luck.

On the other side, leveling and the like were simplified too much. I'd rather had they make it more interesting, instead of just making it faster. I dont see why i cant just skip directly to lvl 60, since everything before is just hammering the LFG Button and rock your way to the upper levels. Monks for example. if you had a full set of Leveling-Gear and the Buff, i saw people hitting 80 in 2 Days. Why bother with all that content, if you skip it in minutes anyway? All in all, it's still focused on the End-Content.

[HEADING=2]It's the same game[/HEADING]

I disagree. I barely see Classic WoW beneath the current build. You can argue that it's changed for the worse, but it changed. The Daily-Fest in Pandaria was a major gripe of mine, tedious beyond belief. On the other hand, the new Content and Areas were good looking and had a bit predictable and Clichee, but Epic Story behind it. Pandaria is presented very decently and invites you to explore it. I still find random Rare-Mobs, treasures, Easter-Eggs and the like in it. And it made me actually pursue the upper content, compared to WotLK where i couldnt be bothered by the godawful Argent Dawn Tournament-Bullcrap.

All in all, theres plenty room for improvement, but it isnt as horrible as some make it out to be.

 

[Therumancer]

Two years ago, I wrote this ignorant thread [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.319225-WoW-Mists-of-Pandaria-why-Im-convinced-its-a-joke] about the then-upcoming Mists of Pandaria. Now that the last patch is out, I can both ashamedly and proudly admit that I was completely incorrect and have had an absolute ball with Mists of Pandaria.

The quests are genuinely interesting - I can actually sympathize with the issues on Pandaria, and sympathize with the factions taking care of them, especially the Klaxxi and Shado-Pan. I didn't take part in a great deal of the post-90 reputation grinds, only bothering with the Cloud Serpents and recently Shado-Pan.

That, unfortunately, brings me to my biggest problem with Mists - the initial grind involving both reputation and gear currency was total horseshit. You had to level enough to go to the area, meet the faction, do a ton of setting-up quests, then banging out daily quests as well as dungeons and such in order to build valor for when they allow you to purchase stuff off them. A huge and unnecessarily complicated grind. I disliked the system so much that I simply chose not to take part in it, and as a result took little part in end-game PvE.

Moving on. Pandaria itself is beautiful and varied. It's extraordinarily well-designed with overflowing detail and many secrets. The raids and dungeons are all really well put together, too - unlike the other expacs, I don't have a dungeon that I despise going to. I'm really excited about Siege of Orgrimmar, and I'm getting that sorrowful feeling for the end of the expansion that I've not felt since Wrath of the Lich King was ending - opposed to Cataclysm, where I just wanted it to be over.

A lot of people bailed on the expansion because of the Pandas. I nearly did myself. But, partly out of curiosity, partly because my friends since Wrath urged me to join them, and partly because I once accidentally purchased ten goddamn years of game time, I stuck by, and I'm really glad that I did.

People who say WoW isn't what it used to be are right - it's infinitely better. It builds and improves with each patch (with the exception of Hour of Twilight and Rise of the Zandalari). WoW Classic was poorly designed and with very basic features, which excluded millions from being able to enjoy the game. Today, it's awesome - hardcore players have Challenge Dungeons and heroic raids, and casuals have pet battles and LFR. Who gives a damn - everyone's having fun unless you're just way too anal.

Someone recently asked me if I really think 'bamboo eating pandas' really contributed positively to World of Warcraft. I replied with what I should have realized two years ago:

"Bamboo eating pandas have contributed about the same as the grass-eating cow-men, Cockney werewolves, hyper-capitalist goblins, hippy night-elves, walking dead and Jamaican stereotype trolls."

As an overview of all the expansions, while Wrath of the Lich King is my favorite for its lore and sense of adventure, beating the hell out of countless undead and, of course, Ulduar, I think Mists of Pandaria is Blizzard's best work yet, a huge contrast to their worst - Hour of Twilight, and indeed everything out of Cataclysm except patch 4.2 - Rage of the Firelands.

I'm humbled by being proved so wrong about Mists, but I'm glad I was.

Well, I have mixed opinions. To be honest I stopped doing WoW about the time of Cataclysm when my guild broke up. I tried to come back for Mists but it just didn't click with me. To be honest I had no problem with the Pandas themselves, I mean bear men (Furbolgs) have been a part of WoW from the beginning and these are just Furbolgs with a different fur pattern. I was one of those people who thought the Pandas should have been added to WoW long ago, and I even supported the idea of a "Monk" character class as to me it's always been a staple since AD&D and can be quite fun. I think actually moving the game on to Pandaria was a mistake however. What would have been a couple of cute additions (the Pandas being based on an early joke) to me didn't work as the focus of an entire expansion. Especially seeing as that expansion moved the game well away from the remaining things I wanted to see the game explore. I felt the same about Cataclysm for different reasons, re-doing previous areas being a waste when there were other things they should have been moving forward into.

As far as the changes to the game, well opinions vary, to be honest I don't think the simplification of the game made it more approachable to more people, that might have been the idea, but in reality WoW's numbers have been dwindling steadily, I think The Escapist itself mentioned something like a 54% loss of the subscriber base. A lot of these WoW refugees wind up going to other games, and to be honest it seems like a number of fairly mediocre games like "Star Trek Online" are getting propped up simply because they have enough complexity (managing a captain, his boarding/away party, a ship and a small craft all simultaneously) to occupy the mind. In following the traffic for upcoming games like "Wildstar" and "Elder Scrolls Online" there seems to be recurring concern about over simplification and fears
that these games are going to wind up with too few options or character possibilities. While I'm covered by the NDA, you'll notice there is an "Elder Scrolls Wiki" that is publically available with some leaks on ESO, concerns over the game not only having classes, but so few of them (and some other aspects of this) seem to be pretty common.

That said, I'm glad you enjoyed Pandaria, I don't begrudge anyone having fun. I do not however think it, or the changes to the classes/playstyle went over particularly well in an absolute sense. WoW is still far and away the most successful MMO out there, but it is losing steam, and I think Pandaria actually accelerated the process as opposed to holding it back.

As far as the whole rep/token grind goes, I didn't get that far with Pandaria, but I don't think that can be held against it since pretty much all MMORPGs do that nowadays. At the end of the day MMORPGs can only have content developed so fast, so there is a need for time sinks to keep people occupied. As time goes on the kind of grinds that were fun (rep/tokens were fun when they were newer) get old, especially when everyone does them. The problem right now is that
we need to see more innovation in the endgames. Likewise while it's less of an issue with WoW than other games, I think cash shops are killing them, largely because working to earn costumes/mounts/pets/etc... is a big thing that motivates players. Increasingly anything like that added to the game goes directly into a cash shop which means less stuff to earn. In some games like "Neverwinter" they have tried to have the best of both worlds, but ultimately you wind up with a situation where just about anything you can get just by playing/questing (other than grinding massive numbers of ADs to buy cash shop items) tends to be inferior to what you can buy. For example they just got done with a 20 day summer event where you could earn a green companion (combat pet) for a huge amount of work and dedication in showing up every day, a companion which is pretty weak overall, and was also put up on the market so it could be purchased for cash. This is a different issue but I figured I'd mention it here... since really part of what extents gameplay is earning stuff by playing and getting things other people who didn't put in the effort simply cannot have under any circumstances.

 

[Lawnmooer]

I really dislike MoP myself.

The quests are bloody awful, the quest hubs offer like 2-3 quests and then ship you off to the next place, giving the impression of "Oh, we don't want you to enjoy this area, we just want you to see as much as is possible as quickly as possible!"

They don't have many unique quests to make up for it, it's still mostly "Go pick up X amount of this organ that inexplicably has a very low drop rate" or a flat out "Kill X amount of Y" which makes the entire leveling process tedious (To the point where I have only 2 level 90's and don't have the energy required to trudge through the quests a third time let alone getting the rest of my 85's up to 90)

The forced rep grind at the start of the expansion was completely retarded. They remove shoulder enchants from rep grinds because they "Don't want people to be forced to grind rep" yet they locked valor gear behind rep grinds for MULTIPLE factions (As content is outdated they lower the requirements and costs as well as the need to actually get those items)

While Pandaria has varied zones, the large number of mobs in certain areas along with the inability to fly until level 90 (By which time, you've already completed a large number of the available quests and so travelling around the continent becomes almost purely for finding crafting materials) does detract from the environment design as you're constantly being attacked/encountering cliffs which halt progress of travelling (Made even worse when combined with the point about the quest hubs being small and sending you off to the next one)

The dungeons, while some of them were interesting, have had no new ones since the start of the expansion. Meaning that if you'd been playing since the start of the expansion, you've probably completed them all hundreds of times. This goes with the fact that gear is getting so good that people are soloing heroic dungeons (I do on my Death Knight, and a Priest in my guild also mentioned that she could solo heroics). The only new things they bring out are Scenarios (Also the Heroic Scenarios) but they give very little reward and are still boringly easy (Since the release of HC Scenarios I've been able to solo them on my DK, they are also doable with 3xDPS which means that having a tank/healer makes them mostly a cakewalk)

Then of course my biggest complaint is the Legendary Questline. It's mostly centred around being lucky and getting RNG drops off bosses in Raids (LFR/Normal/Heroic) which is completely stupid and means that while there are a lot of people who've completed the questline and have their legendary cape, I'm still waiting on one of the many random drops I need to be able to progress through it.

Also, don't get me started on that PoS Timeless Isle... "Hmm... People don't like how we forced them to do over 100 dailies... How about we just make them grind elites all day instead!". While the gear isn't that "Must have" (It being item level 535 compared to LFR's 528) it's still quite a grind for the quests and such (There's a quest to get rep, which comes in 10-30 rep per elite kill) - The heavy grind also makes it very farmed so it becomes difficult to do anything productive at prime times (While rares only need one hit to get credit, getting to them when they die in less than 10 seconds after spawning can be difficult outside of massive amounts of camping)

All in all, for this expansion, they've made leveling in Pandaria all about rushing through zones and leveling up quickly (Especially with the 20% less experience needed for levels 85-90 they put in for 5.3) yet at max level all they have is the same few dungeons, a few scenarios, dailies, raids and PvP. With Dungeons and Scenarios not actually rewarding much (Outside maybe a bit of Valor) you're stuck farming PvP, Dailies and/or Raids (Mostly LFR unless in a hardcore raiding guild) - It's reminiscent of why I stopped playing Rift (At the time, all there was, was a handful of dungeons and PvP) and also Guild Wars 2 (All there was, was a handful of dungeons and PvP), but at least those 2 games were less focused on power-leveling you through content and so it actually took time for you to play characters to get them up to max level (Though GW2 a lot of people did just power-level in WvWvW to get max level to be able to do better at WvWvW, also sPvP did automatically set you at max level)

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

The Talent-Trees where dumbed down horribly. Everyone takes the same Talents currently, since th Playerbase heavily relies on Guides.

Uh, this has been the same even before the talent tree switch. Guilds would check your talents and if you didn't have "cookie-cutter spec A" you didn't raid or were dropped from the guild. Now instead of having a talent tree of 30+ useless options you have a smaller tree with abilities to customize your playstyle.
Bugs and kinks in both talents and glyphs need to be worked out though.

 

[Remus]

My biggest problem was that it all felt so....anticlimactic.

The trailer of MoP even gave me that feeling, but it wasn't until I was level 90 I really got it.
The trailer speaks of the past victories the Heroes of Azeroth have had.
stopping those that threaten the peace of our kingdoms.
Venture to a new, alien world, and cast the lords of shadow and flame back into the abyss.
We held the line, when death itself rose like a tide to swallow everything we held dear.
We have endured the breaking of the world.

And are now forced to spend our time doing silly odd jobs for panda's.
Sure, there is the Sha stuff, but it just all felt so minor compared to the previous expansions.

This. 100% this. We went from a zombie apocalypse and a world-eating dragon to....pandas and sleeping mogu that OOPSY! We just happen to wake up. In WotLK, raid bosses involved a whole pantheon of gods being controlled by a corrupt tentacley Elder God. There was a bit of urgency to straightening the gods out and not letting the Titans destroy everything. The same can be said of the Dragonsoul raid. What's cooler and more epic than riding a city-sized dragon and slowly peeling the skin from its flesh? Mists of Pandaria was a complete change in tone. The raids involved sleeping giants, bad feelings, and forced management restructuring. One can only hope that this was the lull before the next big "storm" because there's nothing epic about fighting a black cloud of anger unless you're into rewatching episodes of Lost.

 

[Colt47]

Well, the problem I saw as I played Mists is that not only did they veer off in a really contrived direction, they attempted to pad out the end game to such an extreme that no one could get to see all the content without grinding ridiculous amounts of reputation. It improved somewhat when they released Throne of the Thunder King, but honestly, they should have just made the expansion about Horde civil war and made better use of the existing continents. Pandaria wasn't a bad continent, it just got used in the wrong way.

What they should have done is have the main story and quest areas involving Garrosh happen on the main continents and use zoning to create higher level zones, while leaving pandaria as a side quest theater where horde and alliance are sending envoys. Most of the stuff that happened there could have easily tied into the main plot without all the weird events (like horde and alliance ignoring the entire local populace of pandarans and destroying the freaking Jade Statue, then being spontaneously forgiven by the pandarans only a few quests later for bringing about the apocalypse).

Busy enjoying Final fantasy XIV at the moment, though. Guess I'll just read the cliff notes on what happens in this whole Garrosh dethroning later.

 

[ERaptor]

The Talent-Trees where dumbed down horribly. Everyone takes the same Talents currently, since th Playerbase heavily relies on Guides.

Uh, this has been the same even before the talent tree switch. Guilds would check your talents and if you didn't have "cookie-cutter spec A" you didn't raid or were dropped from the guild. Now instead of having a talent tree of 30+ useless options you have a smaller tree with abilities to customize your playstyle.
Bugs and kinks in both talents and glyphs need to be worked out though.

What i was reffering to, is the fact that it doesnt even change spec-wise. You have the same tree, no matter which specc you have. There was at least SOME variation back in the day, sure it wasnt perfect. But now? You choose from 3 abilities every 15 Levels, and everyone takes the same. Why have Talents in the first place?

 

[RJ 17]

Snip.

Whatever floats your boat, this - as with all things game-related - is entirely opinion based. Clearly you're the sort who has nothing wrong with instant gratification.

Actually, no - I don't like instant gratification, because it makes the game boring as tar. But I think the point of Timeless Isle and the lv496 stuff is for alts, people whose main characters have already grinded away to get their gear and they don't actually need to do it again. I don't think people who are genuinely new to the game are going to slither off to Timeless Isle to get insta-geared because they'll want to play the game instead of doing Timeless Isle shit, which is amazingly boring.

I like actually playing the game to be rewarded, but there's a distinction between doing that, and wasting time - doing something that only takes time. Not effort, not skill, but just time. That's an entry-level desk job. I actively reject such systems.

As I said: whatever floats your boat. I'm not trying to get you to suddenly convert back to NOT liking the game (or thinking it's a joke). All I've been doing here was explaining how there's plenty of people who would disagree with your assertions. As I mentioned, personally I don't see any "skill" or "effort" in the game to begin with seeing as how every boss fight in every dungeon is just either "don't aggro over the tank" or performing a memorized dance. "Skill" is a term that I don't think applies to RPGs, MMO's in particular (with the exception of the maybe the PvP battlegrounds in WoW, but even then gear, level, and what class is fighting what often supersedes actual skill).

Different perspectives, my friend. You just keep on enjoying your game. You're paying for it, so I'd have to hope that you're enjoying it. Just understand and realize that some people DON'T like the changes that they've been making and their reasons for not liking them are just as valid as your reasons for liking them.