So, there’s going to be a new WoW expansion. With pandas. Perhaps Blizzard took an internet poll and found something that nobody could dislike after the disaster of Cataclysm and settled upon the fuzzy-wuzzy unlibidinous bamboo eating bear. Of course this being the internet, where people are honour bound to disagree, within minutes of the #mistsofpandaria hash tag appearing on Twitter, people were mocking the new race. Or they were outraged or upset or offended or aroused. Personally it looks to me like Blizz are screaming “Subscribers, come back, check out how cute we can be. This anthropmorphised animal might not have a dodgy accent or be faintly disturbing. Come baaaack!”
Wolf People: Dodgy Accent
Cow People: Faintly Disturbing
- Goat People: Dodgy Accent
Blizzard have announced it, no doubt, to calm the wave of “omg catacylms sux lol” since the last expansion, Cataclysm. The hardcore players got to level 85 hours after they’d started playing and realised there was nothing there when they arrived. I only experienced a tiny bit of end game raiding before my guild fell to bits and my Real Life got busy again. I did some of the new instances, which were, you know, fine. The dailies were tedious and gearing up, especially as a warlock, was prohibitively difficult. I can’t speak for PvP, but the PvE content was just…meh. There were zero wands ever. Ever. I enjoy a challenge, but I don’t enjoy a job. I understand that there are hardcore players who play hours and hours each day but I shouldn’t need to do that to be competent at raid level.
My grumbling about my own experiences aside, I’ll need to see more of Mists of Pandaria before I come to any real opinion. The new monk class should be interesting. I’d heard rumours of cloth melee even before Cataclysm was released. Somebody has probably already bookmarked Friar Tuck for their monk. Triar Fuck will be epic but short lived. I salute you, whoever you are.
Blizz need to curb their pop culture references for this expansion. If there’s a Kung Fu Panda joke in there anywhere I will be having words. I could probably argue that the whole thing is a Kung Fu Panda joke. The odd Monty Python reference in a quest objective is fine. Even some achievements or the odd NPC based on internet memes or films, great. When it starts becoming so obvious as to remove the immersive quality of the game, I start to get irritated. There’s a whole area and quest line devoted to Harrison Jones, the Indiana Jones spoof character. I could have watched Raiders of the Lost Ark instead of going to Uldum.
That’s to say nothing of the new pet battle system (pika?) another new talent system, and pandas. Did I mention pandas? There are going to be pandas. I can’t quite tell if I’m incredulous or excited but look:
Pandaren: We Fight and Snack
Pandas. Pandas with beards. Really. I don’t even know. Pandas.
We can’t even get pandas to screw to save their species and Blizzard expects them to save all of Azeroth from a murderous dragon. Madness.
mellmoore 