I don't even know where to start with my disappointment so excuse me if this post seems a bit scattered. I was really looking forward to this expansion. It looked great. Pandaria is a stunning, beautiful place. Visually this expansion is amazing but it seems like somewhere along the development process someone forgot to mention that no amount of aesthetic appeal can turn a boring experience into a fun one. Here's this brand new massive world to explore and go through, to discover and learn and experience but in order to do that you have to grind through the same mind numbing, tedious, and exhausting quests that no MMO can seem to break out of.
I logged in first thing on Tuesday and got going. One of the things that drove me insane about Cataclysm was the cutscenes. They were invasive, they were long, they were pointless. Upon starting the Mists quest chain I was greeted with not one, but two of these. At least you're able to skip these ones. I'm not sure where Blizzard's love of cutscenes came from, but it's at the point where in Diablo III your battle with the last boss of the whole game is interrupted 4 times by cutscenes. Nothing is worse than having the flow of your gaming session (let alone a boss fight) rudely broken by a cutscene.
I do maybe 5 quests after getting to Pandaland and I'm just so underwhelmed by it all. It's the exact same quests as always. Run over here and blow this up. Go over there and kill these guys. Bring me 5 piles of dog feces, moron. Wow, that's really fun. I can't wait to do this for 60+ hours until I get to max level and can finally do what I actually enjoy - PVP. The dungeons are aesthetically amazing yet unbelievably bland from a game play standpoint. Questing takes place in a gorgeous setting that you completely fail to notice because you're face down on your desk half asleep from how boring the quests are.
I know that in theory I could run battlegrounds until level 90 if PVP is what I enjoy. But let's be real here. The experience gain from battlegrounds after level 50 is fairly small and doesn't stack up to dungeon running, let alone questing. After level 70 it's a complete joke. The whole PVE experience is just so incredibly shallow that I can't bring myself to log on and plow through it. Unfortunately it's also the only viable option for leveling in a timely manner. I actually logged off day one and cleaned my apartment in favor of playing WoW.
These are just my feelings towards it, I'd love to play this expansion as it really does look great and there are a lot of changes that I like and want to see fully lived at max level. At some point I'll eventually suck it up and force myself to deal with it. I just wanted to get my personal experience with content that I found to be lackluster out there.
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Since the subject of this thread is largely a matter of personal taste, I'm not sure that I can speak directly to your concerns. I mean, core World of Warcraft gameplay evolves over time, but the essential experience will still be there.
What I've personally really enjoyed about questing in Mists is that, as I travel through a zone, there's sort of a zone story-line series of quests, a la some of the Cataclysm zones, but I'll also find entire quest hubs in the course of my explorations too. I've also seen some really cool quest mechanics (GIZMO! SOCKS!) in the course of these quests, and I find myself getting involved in the stories too. I think the point of the quests that that have you collect x whatevers, or kill so many of y, is that they get you out into the world, killing monsters, seeing the sights, and playing your character, and doing stuff with your character's abilities. I don't personally get head-down-gotta-plow through-these-quests style tunnel vision though, and I make a point of looking around, getting into some PvP, etc. as I go along. Every quest probably shouldn't involve super unique mechanics. I imagine that would get fatiguing after a short while. So, with that in mind I suppose what I'd like to know is: what kind of questing experience were you hoping to see? |
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My first impulse was to ask if we're playing the same game, but that would be snippy. I can say pretty confidently that my experience has been quite different though. I feel like I've gotten a chance to play my character quite a lot (and I've had a lot of fun messing around with talents at the same time), while also getting a pleasant break now and then doing something with more unique mechanics. |
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While I think the person you were responding to is being melodramatic, I do have to say... having just finished playing through the Valley of the Four Winds, absolutely *no* quest there made me feel heroic. When I wasn't doing farmwork, escorting around a little girl and collecting muddy water, cleansing rolling plans of oversized Rabbits, or hunting wildlife for sport... I was slaughtering innocent Curious Water Sprites to get ingredients off their bodies to fund some Panda's drinking problem. Great discussion so far! I know I'm coming back late, but I've read the entire thread, and I wanted to come back to talk about a couple of things. It seems to me that the Valley of the Four Winds offers a chance to get to know some of the residents of Pandaria in a more personal way. You help them with their day to day struggles. You get a glimpse of how they live their lives. After all, the <SPOILER?> Jade Serpent flies you there, she tells you that it's an opportunity to learn about how the people of Pandaria live. Still, while the concerns may seem a bit pastoral at first (I would like to take this opportunity to speak up in favor of puntable marmots), they become much more urgent as you come to the conclusion of the zone, and I think that some pretty heroic stuff happens as the quest lines there come to a conclusion. If the tone present in the Valley of the Four Winds isn't quite your speed, you can head over to the Krasarang Wilds for a different feel. There will also be plenty more opportunities for heroic deeds in Kun-Lai Summit, the Townlong Steppes, the Dread Wastes, and the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. Did a quest in a group last night and noticed I was getting 0 xp per kill. my chat log said (mob dead=2000xp-2000xp penalty) I was pretty pissed about that. That's extremely odd. There's actually a small experience bump for grouping. Can you remember which quest you were on? Also, while it’s true that partying up and doing the quests in the zone will result in less experience over all, it should result in faster experience gain. So, a bit less total experience, but better experience per hour. Assorted reputation grind concerns. I think it's worth mentioning that, for the most part, the really important stuff from reputations in the past came at Exalted. In Mists, 'power' rewards that come from reputations are available a bit earlier. The rough run-down as I understand it works like this:
The thing that annoys me about these threads is that the devs take them seriously. Here is a guy who only wants to pvp commenting on things like story and cut-scenes. I believe that all our players matter: PvPers, raiders, questers, achievement seekers, collectors, parents playing with their kids, etc. etc. etc. There's not one kind of player and often a single player embodies many different motivations; the World of Warcraft is populated by an incredibly diverse community. When someone says "I don't like this" that's actually okay. At the risk of making a real world analogy, I wouldn't expect someone to walk into a restaurant and absolutely love everything on the menu. Still, if someone isn't enjoying part of the experience, I want to find out why. Maybe there's just a misunderstanding at work, or perhaps there's something more fundamental in play. Regardless, without criticism (constructive criticism, simply saying x, y, or z 'sucks' isn't helpful), it's harder to grow. I believe that there are certainly cases where having a discussion about a point of contention can be really valuable for everyone involved. |
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That was lovely, thanks! I'm really glad you and so many others are enjoying Mists. In all the hubbub after the release, I'm not sure that we've properly expressed our appreciation to those who have taken the time to tell us how much they're enjoying the experience. So... Thank you! ♥ |
