MoP-ing up after the Cataclysm: Updated WoW General Discussion 8/22/12

The Game Room
1

Rather than resurrecting a gargantuan 11000+ post thread, I figured it would probably be a good idea to start a new one for the upcoming expansion.

First, the opening cinematic for Mists of Pandaria has been released. I thought it was a great departure from the more serious prior expansion cinematics, though for some I know it’s just gonna reinforce the (untrue) “WoW ripped off Kung-fu Panda” meme.

In less than a week, Patch 5.0.4 drops, adding a whole lot of new features and setting the stage for Mists of Pandaria’s launch on September 25th. Things I’m looking forward to with the new patch:

  1. AOE looting: I’d love it if that particular change was live now, as I’m in the midst of farming Frostweave cloth to level my Holy/Shadow Priest Tailoring skill, but I’ll definitely be happy this is in place after next Tuesday.

  2. No more grinding rep for head enchants or shoulder enchants: Head enchants are basically just being eliminated altogether (including old ones), while shoulder enchants are becoming an Inscriptionist created item to sell. My inscriptionist may actually be able to make a profit with his talent finally. :stuck_out_tongue:

  3. New talent system: while I was skeptical about the way talents are being done in MoP, after having played around with the system in beta, I actually like how they’re doing it. There are still clear winners in some talent choices, though they are still tweaking them to make it more even overall, but largely it’s much easier to build a new character without having to reference some out of game chart to find out if I should put 3 points in x talent or 1 point in y and 2 in z for “best” effect. Of course, some of the talents are downright boring (I’m looking at you, Druid talents), but picking the wrong one won’t screw up your build, and re-allocating talents is a much faster stop by the trainer, reset, reselect from 6 tiers compared to the 40+ point re-allocation currently in place on live. Plus, when you ding and learn a new skill now, you don’t have to stop in the middle of what you’re doing (dungeon, middle of a quest chain) to run back and train, as all skills are learned instantly.

  4. Account-wide pets/mounts: Most pets/mounts are now available to all toons. I love this because I can finally use some of the rare mounts that have only dropped for an alt I rarely play on all my characters (I’m looking at you, Blue Drake from Oculus dropping on my second Druid without swift flight and with instant flight form). They’re also making it so that if you acquire one of the gold-sink mounts (Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth, Vial of the Sands, etc) on one toon, they all get access to it. Class specific mounts, Cross-faction mounts (account-wide but only with the same faction), and Arena/Rated BG mounts are the cases where a mount is not (completely) account-wide, but that’s about it for now. As an aside, my druids can now change into a ride-able stag form (with a minor glyph) for Travel form instead of a cheetah. Woo!

For new players and players who didn’t upgrade to Cataclysm or even Wrath, they are also making it so that any level account (be it Original/BC only, up through Mists) can create a new character of any race. This goes live next Tuesday although Pandaren won’t be available until Mists drops on 9/25. So if you only have a basic WoW account, you can still roll a Worgen or Goblin or Pandaren. You’d just be limited to hitting level 70. From what I’ve read, it actually applies to the level 20 trial accounts as well. This doesn’t apply to classes, though, so Death Knights and Monks are still locked to Wrath/Mists respectively. Also, for this week only, the WoW Battlechest and Wrath are on sale for $5 each, and Cataclysm is on sale for $10, meaning $20 gets you everything except for Mists.

As an aside, any BDL’ers planning on coming back and playing with the new patch or Mists? We’re still locked out of guild bank access because of the hacked account earlier this year and the few people I’ve seen on don’t seem to have guild invite access for alts or new members, so we’re technically dead in the water at the moment (though at least we finally got guild level 25).

Once Mists drops, I’m actually looking forward to just how much a max level toon will be able to do, compared to previous expansions. They’ve added a crap ton of new dailies (supposedly ~300 in total rotate at about 48 random dailies in Pandaria per day) and lifted the cap off of how many you can do, so if you were really into dailies (or are a masochist), you could also then run Argent Tourney, Firelands, and various Burning Crusade dailies as well. Plus, you actually can earn valor points by doing dailies now, so you aren’t locked into running dungeons to cap valor. You also can grow your own Farm, farm materials (the old school way), engage in your Pokemon addiction, excuse me, Pet Collecting/Battle addiction, run Scenarios (3 person short encounters which don’t require a tank or a healer, though having one won’t hurt), Heroics, Raid Finder, Achievement hunting, or Challenge mode dungeons, engage in PVP, etc. I will grant you that it is, in a lot of ways, more of the same (dailies, dungeons, and raids, oh my!), but at least there’s more variety to that otherwise familiar end game now.

They didn’t change the professions a whole lot this time around, except for inscription (no more prime glyphs, just major and minor, and the shoulder enchant thing), but I’m honestly hoping that they seriously consider altering Professions so that I don’t have to raid to get the latest recipes with each patch, or at least go with a several tier approach: recipes for raid gear acquired from raids, including raid finder; recipes for PVP gear acquired from Rated and Non-rated Battlegrounds; Transmog gear recipes acquired from dailies, world drops, reputations, darkmoon faire; Heroic dungeon gear from running heroics; etc. You know, legitimately make crafting another potential endgame option, as opposed to the current “You must raid or pay a boatload of money on the AH for the recipe in order to craft the gear we released this patch” model.

So what say you, Dopers? Is anyone else excited for the upcoming release, or have most of you moved on to other pastures (SWTOR, upcoming GW2, etc)?

2

I’m happy for you from a distance. Mists of Pandaria looks very interesting and if I had the time, it’s the point where I’d definitely reinstall WoW to try it out. But SW:TOR is my master now. (And the Dopers are on the wrong side of the pond server-wise, which also sucks.)

3

I canceled my account earlier this year. Playing Skyrim at the moment, not sure if I’m going to re-up with WoW or not. I’ll likely follow some of the news as the release gets closer, and see if it grabs my interest again…

4

What I want to know is, do we get more character slots or will I have to move one of mine to make room for a panda/make the panda elsewhere?

Sometimes I think that all the “living lean” I have to do irl because of my constant moving pushes any hoarder tendencies I have into WoW… “what do you mean, I can’t get a bigger stable? But I only have 55 pets!”

5

I’ve stopped for more than a year now, but I’m planning to return for this. I particularly like scenarios. It’s funny how they resort to more and more measures to fill the lack of tanks/healers - dungeon finder, cross server dungeons, they might as well let tanks/healers level twice as fast.

6

If you purchase the Mists expansion, yes, you get an 11th character slot on each server (I think the max is still 50 toons across all servers on the same license, though I could be wrong).

7

Oh good, someone did think of the altoholics. Thanks, I’d been looking for that information but couldn’t find it anywhere :slight_smile:

8

The biggest headache for me as a healer are those who expect you to heal them through the fire/damage they could have avoided. I’d be happy if they came up with a new mechanic for lower level dungeons (maybe around level 40 when spec starts to matter) where instead of creating a damaging spot on the ground for DPS to move out of, they get them in the habit of moving out of the stupid by laying down a damage/healing-debuff zone where the longer you stand in it, the higher a debuff builds, resulting in a 20% damage/healing loss per stack up to 5 stacks with say a 3 second countdown before the buff drops off. Get out of the zone in a second or less and you don’t take even a single stack of it, but even then a brief reduction in throughput by 20% isn’t gonna kill you in any levelling dungeons with heirlooms.

Then gradually as you reach higher level dungeons, introduce a damage component to that zone to really get it to sink in until you have people essentially ready to jump out of the stupid as fast as possible. Nerfing their meter output significantly as a punishment for not moving, particularly if you use the mechanic often in leveling dungeons, should arguably do a better job of training poor players than letting them die and having to deal with the consequences. Likewise, bosses could have an ability that needs interrupting (potentially by a tank, but given the cooldowns of some interrupts, also by dps) which hits everybody in the group with a short term debuff reducing damage/healing output by a significant amount (particularly good with bosses who have enrage mechanics). Miss the interrupt too often and again, you have a good chance at wiping/prolonging the encounter.

Or they could, you know, apply a debuff if you die to a boss’s avoidable fire which lasts for, say, 10 minutes, preventing you from getting to roll on loot at all until it wears off. Having to deal with less stupid would probably increase the tank/healer count dramatically on it’s own (I know even though I have tanks, I refuse to run them through the DF currently at levels > 60 because of the headaches from random players).

9

You may want to let an active player know if you end up wanting to re-sub before you do so. If an active player sends you a Scroll of Resurrection, you get 7 days free to try (up through Cataclysm content), and an immediate jump to level 80 boost for a character on your account of your choice. Monks are currently excluded from the level jump, as are Pandaren who haven’t completed their intro zone and chosen a faction, so you’d have to get one of those to level 12 or 13 and the appropriate questing point before you can grant the character the extra levels.

They also throw in a flying mount for both parties if the player who accepts the scroll then re-subscribes for 30 days within that 7 day span of time.

10

The changes look interesting; unfortunately I’m completely burned out on WoW at the moment. I haven’t played in a couple months, and plan to let my subscription lapse as soon as my 1-year contract is up in October. At the moment I’m playing World of Tanks, while I wait for Guild Wars 2 to be released next week. Since there’s no subscription cost there, that’s the game I’ll probably be playing…

11

I let my account lapse around Halloween last year. I couldn’t put my finger on why, for me, the magic had gone out of WoW.

I can update the game without an active account, correct?

12

I’m still playing and raiding with my mage. But that’s the only time I log in. (People in KA are interested in finishing off some of the Glory achievements)
I expect to keep up raiding during MoP and try out a monk and a pandaren (but not necessarily a panderan monk)
So I’m still around though I’m not sure Moobird (still in BDL) has all the privileges. Just checking now…nope only Rank 3.
If we get some numbers coming back to the game for MoP, I’ll be sure to set aside some time to run around.

13

I usually scale back my playing in the summer time. Lately i’ve just been logging in a few times a week to do some BG’s here and there, which i’ve actually been enjoying quite a bit.

I was actually a little sad when i saw the September release date, i was looking forward to slacking off a couple more months in anticipation of perhaps a November release. Oh well, maybe in another month i’ll have the bug to play more often again.

14

Any chance they’re going to make the game interesting again?

15

I don’t know, I played WoW for a long time but I let my sub end in January (for SWTOR) and I haven’t really missed it. I can’t seem to get excited for all that again, and I’m still enjoying SWTOR. There’s no way I’d subscribe to two games at once. I’m more tempted to try GW2 (even though I’ve never played) than to get back into WoW. But I hope the BDL roars back to life!

16

I’m unlikely to come back for Made Of Panda, but I freaking love the cinematic. I don’t care if people say it’s lifted from Kung Fu Panda or if it’s an in-joke taken too far, I think Blizzard did a really cool job fleshing an injoke out into an actual part of the game.

17

I’ll still be here but I’m not really excited about the expansion. I didn’t really like Cata and got burned out on the whole thing earlier this year and took a long break (as my sudden disappearance from BDL attests).

My biggest issue with Cata was just how badly Blizz dumbed the game down. Yeah, it’s been getting dumber each expansion but there used to be some challenge in levelling a toon. Now I can put myself on auto-pilot and have a lvl 20 in an evening. I’m not expecting MoP to be any better. I just hope it’s not worse. So I’ll be around with BDL on Cairne, my allis on Alleria and Garona, and my other hordies on Lightbringer. For a little while, at least.

18

Do they have to be on the same server? Anyone on Dragonblight?

19

[sarcasm]How could anyone possibly parallel the two?[/sarcasm]

How do you know it’s untrue? Even if you were able to ask Blizzard representatives (I think the only ones who would actually know), I doubt they’d be very forthcoming on the issue. Whatever you believe, you have to admit it is at least similar (panda looking creature adept at martial arts); so it’s not unreasonable to believe that KFP was at least in part an inspiration for the new WoW race/class. It’s not unheard of in the art/entertainment industries to borrow ideas.

[QUOTE=CreaseMunky]
My biggest issue with Cata was just how badly Blizz dumbed the game down. Yeah, it’s been getting dumber each expansion but there used to be some challenge in levelling a toon. Now I can put myself on auto-pilot and have a lvl 20 in an evening.
[/QUOTE]

Same. Game play became very tedious very quickly. Go to an area, collect all the !s, go to a nearby area, kill/loot, return to the ?, move to another area and do the same. It wouldn’t be horrible (just merely bad) if the quest mobs tagged for my level weren’t ridiculously trivial and you had to travel at least a bit to accomplish quests.

20

I reactivated my account last week, logged into my druid and sat there for a while thinking ‘I don’t know what any of these buttons do.’ But I’ve done a few normal dungeons now and it’s slowly coming back to me.

Of course, the most important thing is to come up with a great panda name. So far I’ve got Fuzzybutt…