World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria

[Darmalus]

Since the only other thread I found on World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria is a year old, I figured a new one would be in order.

Personally, I'm enjoying it quite a bit. The Pandaran lore is interesting, I'm having fun getting my farm fully kitted out, and pet battles is a hoot. I'm on the slow end, so I'm still a ways away from getting into LFR so I can't comment on raiding at all and I still have some quest lines in the Dread Wastes to finish off.

The only real downside for me is that Blizzard seems to be keeping to it's promise of making the Horde/Alliance conflict central to the expansion. Since their revenue stream is shackled to this conflict I can't bring myself to care what happens, since it will end exactly as it started, both sides still balanced and at war.

Also, forsaken monks look awesome in action.

[Zwinmar]

Pandaria just didnt seem interesting enough for me to continue playing...

[Flagg]

Yeah the questing is vastly improved but I've been spoiled by class storylines from TOR.

[Broomstick]

I, for one, am thoroughly enjoying the new exploration, quests, instances, pet battles, and my farm (just expanded it this morning, in fact).

[TheFeniX]

Yeah the questing is vastly improved but I've been spoiled by class storylines from TOR.

As flawed as SWTOR was, this is my main beef with going back to WoW. Sure, the Knight storyline was pretty cliche and boring, but at least I felt like a Jedi Knight. Besides the Death Knight starting area (I didn't play the game until late Wrath), the there's no distinction between the classes. Even with a rogue, there's no incentive to play/act like one. Sure, you could go Subtlety and snipe quest NPCs from the shadows. But with the same gear, you could just go Combat are brutalize groups like you would with any other class.

My real beef was losing viability in small PvP engagements with my DK when they got nerfed hard and also Bliz man-handling Prot Pallies in PvP (Holy and Ret were still great, but I like Prot). My only real option was to play my Rogue and Bliz buffed them so much in 4.3 (I think), it wasn't even worth playing as even in a patchwork Honor and Arena gear, I could face-roll 70% of the players I faced. Wait, no. Once I got my two 359 daggers, I could murder pretty much everyone. The rest of the gear just added survivability considering raid gear. Anyways, it was boring.

[Flakin]

Cross Realm Zones finally finished my WOW experience. The level of idiocy just got too much to handle. I understand it's not active in Pandaland for now, but it's only a matter of time.

[TheFeniX]

Cross Realm Zones finally finished my WOW experience. The level of idiocy just got too much to handle. I understand it's not active in Pandaland for now, but it's only a matter of time.

They ended up implementing that? I quit right around the time Blizzard announced it. I always figured it would end up like the Dungeon Finder if they ever went through with it: an extremely good idea that would have issues because people are assholes.

What was up with the idiocy? Namely, what made it so shitty?

[The Yosemite Bear]

my panda hunter insists on a cho-ku-nu and a Hawatcha be made available.

[Civil War Man]

Cross Realm Zones finally finished my WOW experience. The level of idiocy just got too much to handle. I understand it's not active in Pandaland for now, but it's only a matter of time.

They ended up implementing that? I quit right around the time Blizzard announced it. I always figured it would end up like the Dungeon Finder if they ever went through with it: an extremely good idea that would have issues because people are assholes.

What was up with the idiocy? Namely, what made it so shitty?

To be frank, it's not nearly as bad as he makes it out to be.

It's basically resulted in two things. The biggest effect it has is having to compete over quest items/mobs/gathering nodes in low level areas again. The other is that the weekend fishing contests have been temporarily disabled because players have been using Cross Realm Zones to cheat (players group up with someone in a server that's several hours ahead and then fish up the contest fish long before the contest even starts on their home server).

But really, if temporarily losing the fishing contests is what makes someone quit playing WoW, I'm not sure what to say.

[Temjin]

To be frank, it's not nearly as bad as he makes it out to be.

It's basically resulted in two things. The biggest effect it has is having to compete over quest items/mobs/gathering nodes in low level areas again. The other is that the weekend fishing contests have been temporarily disabled because players have been using Cross Realm Zones to cheat (players group up with someone in a server that's several hours ahead and then fish up the contest fish long before the contest even starts on their home server).

But really, if temporarily losing the fishing contests is what makes someone quit playing WoW, I'm not sure what to say.

This is true if you're playing on a PVE server.

It has a bigger effect on the PVP servers. Leveling up on a PVP server is now even more of an exercise in masochism. Before it was only so often you'd have a bored high level player terrorizing lowbie zones. Now one bored high level can gank lowbies from multiple servers. Also, the pool of bored high level players has vastly increased thanks to cross-level zones, so there's a greater chance of it happening.

Now, I understand that that sort of ganking has always been a part of pvp servers. It's why I play on one. I like the danger of having to pvp when I'm just running around questing or something. I never even minded the ganking. But this is making some zones unplayable for lowbies. I've yet to venture into STV even once where the lowbies weren't complaining about some high level that's repeatedly ganking them whenever they venture away from the flight point.

[Minischoles]

Aside from the pvp aspect of cross realm zones - which is a huge problem, one bored level 90 can pretty much shut down questing in an entire zone - multiply that and you get to the point where you just say fuck it and just LFD your way up.

Other problems
- Mob availability. Low level quests, pretty much up to Northrend level just aren't tuned for this number of players. Trying to level in popular zones during the hours you'd want to level (eg after work or school) is an exercise in frustration. Entire zones can be completely cleared of mobs, and that's not even taking into account the rep farmers. You try to do any of the quests in STV while a level 90 wants to work on their rep, and you may as well just log off right then and there.
- Nodes - mining and herbing is basically impossible to level now, again it's a case of simply not being tuned for that level of players. Northrend and Cata are particularly bad for this, due to the nerfs in spawn rates both places suffered. It's having a knock on effect on server economies.
- Rare spawns. Farming for any rare spawn is damn near impossible now.

The final thing is, what was really the point? there are no quests you need a group for anymore - of the 11,000 odd quests in WoW, there's like 200 odd group quests, and most of those you can solo. The old world felt empty because of how easy Blizzard made it to level and LFD - I can literally level out of a zone in a handful of quests and a dungeon run.

It really just feels like a patchwork solution to underpopulated and imbalanced servers - instead of offering incentives to balance it out or populate them, they've instead implemented this. It's a stupid solution - and this is coming from someone playing on a server that's 70/30 Alliance/Horde.


Other than CRZ stupidity, Mists on the pve side is great. There's a ton of quests, the zones actually feel finished and well polished and in general there's a lot to do.
My problems with it are:
- Dailies. Everything is gated behind dailies now - two entire factions can't even have their rep grind started until you've done another long rep grind - where said dailies give 110 rep, further lengthening the time taken. And all the Valour Point gear is on said factions reputation, so if you want to raid, you have to rep grind.
- Heroics, or should I say level 90 normals. They're tuned so low, that the amount of farming you have to do in them to get geared becomes very tedious.
- PvP, is as usual a gigantic clusterfuck. Things that were pointed out repeatedly in the beta, and on the PTR, and on live during the 5.0 patch were outright ignored and going into pvp at level 90 was an exercise in getting raped by either a warrior or a hunter and his entire zoo of pets.
That's not even mentioning the terrible handling of arenas (Blizzard outright forgot to reset MMR then claimed it was intentional) and the exclusion of honour weapons (don't want pve players to have to do pvp, but it's fine the other way around)

[Darmalus]

I haven't really noticed any daily grind, but then again I only bother when there are 1-3 other people I can shoot the shit with, we just plow through them like it's nothing.

I actually like CRZ, since I get to neat transmog outfits from far and wide. I figured CRZ was a test run for that Titan project, and might wind up working in reverse of it's current form. I'm imagining a single server of each type (PvE, PvP, RP-PvE, RP-PvP) per continent, and it uses the CRZ tech to spread people out when a zone gets too crowded, instead of packing them in if it gets too depopulated.

[Sharp-kun]

Cross Realm Zones finally finished my WOW experience. The level of idiocy just got too much to handle. I understand it's not active in Pandaland for now, but it's only a matter of time.

They ended up implementing that? I quit right around the time Blizzard announced it. I always figured it would end up like the Dungeon Finder if they ever went through with it: an extremely good idea that would have issues because people are assholes.

What was up with the idiocy? Namely, what made it so shitty?

As someone who plays on a low pop server with a disproportionate amount of Horde, CRZ's are awesome. Yes there are issues, but I'm fine with those just to see players of the other faction again.

- Dailies. Everything is gated behind dailies now - two entire factions can't even have their rep grind started until you've done another long rep grind - where said dailies give 110 rep, further lengthening the time taken. And all the Valour Point gear is on said factions reputation, so if you want to raid, you have to rep grind.

No, you don't. You need heroic dungeon gear to raid. Add in crafted gear and LFR and you can easily get gear. Also the heroic raid available right now was cleared pretty quickly by the hardcore lot, yet we're only 3 weeks in to the expansion so at most they've spend 3,000 VP (2 items tops). If you want to raid, you don't need that gear.

We were in Mogu'shan Vaults last night, majority of the raid ~465 ilevel since we're a rather casual guild (most of us have played together since Uni and don't have the time we used to). No issues with tank damage/dps/healing. Now if you're aiming for heroic raids right now you might have more of an issue, but you don't need that VP gear for the any raids.

In terms of gear progression it's basically either:

Heroic Dungeon Gear (463) > Normal Raid Gear (496) > Heroic Raid Gear (509)
Heroic Dungeon Gear (463) > LFR Gear (476) > Better LFR Gear (483) / VP Gear (489)

What VP gear will do is give you options to fill in gear later on if you don't get raid drops or something to work towards if you don't raid.

[Broomstick]

Aside from the pvp aspect of cross realm zones - which is a huge problem, one bored level 90 can pretty much shut down questing in an entire zone - multiply that and you get to the point where you just say fuck it and just LFD your way up.

Reminds me of vanilla Hillsbrad, except back then there was no LFD option. You learn to get sneaky. I learned how to hide an 8 foot tall red Tauren in the green foliage of Strangelthorn Vale back in the day.

If you don't like that challenge there are PvE realms.

Frankly, I've had no trouble with leveling my low alts in this expansion.

- Mob availability. Low level quests, pretty much up to Northrend level just aren't tuned for this number of players. Trying to level in popular zones during the hours you'd want to level (eg after work or school) is an exercise in frustration. Entire zones can be completely cleared of mobs, and that's not even taking into account the rep farmers. You try to do any of the quests in STV while a level 90 wants to work on their rep, and you may as well just log off right then and there.

This happens every new expansion. The problem is that EVERYONE is trying to level an alt right now. Wait a month and this problem will go away by itself.

- Nodes - mining and herbing is basically impossible to level now, again it's a case of simply not being tuned for that level of players. Northrend and Cata are particularly bad for this, due to the nerfs in spawn rates both places suffered. It's having a knock on effect on server economies.

Find another zone that is less populated. Work on something else for awhile.

Bliz does want to shake up the server economies, some of which have become quite bloated. Hence the gold sinks, and making some resources harder to obtain.

- Rare spawns. Farming for any rare spawn is damn near impossible now.

There's a reason they're called "rare". It's not supposed to be easy, it's supposed to be a challenge. Some people just want stuff handed to them on a silver platter.

The final thing is, what was really the point? there are no quests you need a group for anymore - of the 11,000 odd quests in WoW, there's like 200 odd group quests, and most of those you can solo. The old world felt empty because of how easy Blizzard made it to level and LFD - I can literally level out of a zone in a handful of quests and a dungeon run.

So? There's no reason you can't dally in a zone as long as you like. You aren't forced to go elsewhere once you reach a given level. Sure, your XP gain suffers but if you want to quest longer somewhere there is nothing stopping you other than your own self-imposed headlong rush to a particular goal.

Meanwhile, those who do want to level relatively quickly can do so.

I, for one, do NOT want to return to the endless grind of vanilla.

It really just feels like a patchwork solution to underpopulated and imbalanced servers - instead of offering incentives to balance it out or populate them, they've instead implemented this.

They HAVE offered incentives for people to transfer to low population servers, including free transfers, and directing new players to low pop servers, and not enough people took advantage of them. They tried it way you suggest and it wasn't enough. The player base reacted negatively to the idea of closing some of the lowest pop servers. This is the current compromise. If you have a better idea tell Blizzard, they might even implement it if it hasn't failed before and makes some sense.

It's a stupid solution - and this is coming from someone playing on a server that's 70/30 Alliance/Horde.

I disagree.

- Dailies. Everything is gated behind dailies now - two entire factions can't even have their rep grind started until you've done another long rep grind - where said dailies give 110 rep, further lengthening the time taken.

Poor baby. Again, there is supposed to be some challenge here. Clearly, you weren't around for vanilla where everything was a rep grind and dailies didn't exist, you just had to kill a thousand X to get a dozen drops of Y which you could then do something with after running instance Z fifty times. Thank Og we don't have to do that anymore.

You pick one or two set of dailies and work on them until you get the rep. Many factions only require "revered" for the bulk of the goodies they give and make exalted optional.

And all the Valour Point gear is on said factions reputation, so if you want to raid, you have to rep grind.

No, you don't. This has been addressed already so I won't repeat it, but see post above this one.

- Heroics, or should I say level 90 normals. They're tuned so low, that the amount of farming you have to do in them to get geared becomes very tedious.

The level 90 normals were deliberately made low so the very casual and/or inept player can see the content. Blizzard is trying to make more of the end game and instances accessible to those without L33T raid skills and solid guilds, a trend I, for one, applaud even if I myself play at a higher level than "least common denominator". I don't feel threatened that someone else can see an instance with less effort than I'm exerting to get into the heroic version.

- PvP, is as usual a gigantic clusterfuck.

I thought that was the POINT of PvP

I won't comment on the arenas because it's an area of content I've never been interested in nor have I ever participated in them.

[Civil War Man]

Other than CRZ stupidity, Mists on the pve side is great. There's a ton of quests, the zones actually feel finished and well polished and in general there's a lot to do.

One thing I will say that's a big improvement is making it so many of the named quest targets (in Pandaria at least) don't get tagged by combat. So if you get a quest to kill some guy, and get to the spawn point to find someone already fighting it, you can just jump into the fight and still get credit instead of having to form a queue.

- Dailies. Everything is gated behind dailies now - two entire factions can't even have their rep grind started until you've done another long rep grind - where said dailies give 110 rep, further lengthening the time taken. And all the Valour Point gear is on said factions reputation, so if you want to raid, you have to rep grind.

My main complaint about dailies is that the lesser tokens currently take up bag space. They should be a currency like the greater tokens.

I will admit that it's easy to burn out on dailies if you try to do every single one of them every day. Right now I do Tillers, Klaxxi, and the Celestials every day, since they are all pretty quick, then one or two of the other factions if I feel like it. They have a good idea going with the Klaxxi with the changeable buffs to increase power while in the Dread Wastes. My Frost DK has been breezing through the dailies in record time since I got access to Raining Blood.

As for valor gear, I agree they shouldn't be gated behind reputations. At least they started moving in the right direction by decoupling the justice gear and lowering the requirements for the valor gear. That being said, I've been doing a lot of dailies, but I've been gearing up way faster running Heroics, though I will admit that I've been way luckier with gear drops this expansion compared to Wrath or Cataclysm. Of course, I have no plans to raid outside of LFR.

- Heroics, or should I say level 90 normals. They're tuned so low, that the amount of farming you have to do in them to get geared becomes very tedious.

Honestly, I have no problem with this. I much prefer the move back to the quick Wrath-style dungeons over the Cataclysm heroics that were a time sink even after you outgeared them. Especially when you take into account that Cataclysm-era DF queues could easily top an hour if you weren't queuing as a tank or healer.

- PvP, is as usual a gigantic clusterfuck. Things that were pointed out repeatedly in the beta, and on the PTR, and on live during the 5.0 patch were outright ignored and going into pvp at level 90 was an exercise in getting raped by either a warrior or a hunter and his entire zoo of pets.
That's not even mentioning the terrible handling of arenas (Blizzard outright forgot to reset MMR then claimed it was intentional) and the exclusion of honour weapons (don't want pve players to have to do pvp, but it's fine the other way around)

Nothing to add here, since I don't PvP.

[Minischoles]

Reminds me of vanilla Hillsbrad, except back then there was no LFD option. You learn to get sneaky. I learned how to hide an 8 foot tall red Tauren in the green foliage of Strangelthorn Vale back in the day.

If you don't like that challenge there are PvE realms.

Frankly, I've had no trouble with leveling my low alts in this expansion.

It's not really like Vanilla at all, since the moment level 90s come to respond the offending griefer can just switch zones and end up somewhere else - or just sit nice and high on a flying mount where you can't get at him.
I don't mind pvp, when it's a max level vs a max level, or at least similar - world pvp is not getting auto shot killed by a level 90 hunter on your lowbie toon.

This happens every new expansion. The problem is that EVERYONE is trying to level an alt right now. Wait a month and this problem will go away by itself.

Except it didn't happen in Pandaria, there was maybe one zone where I found it hard to finish a quest and that was at the very start as Horde when you jump off the ship to go and fight. Other than that the mob spawns were tuned high enough. And the problem won't go away, as long as there is CRZ, you're always going to have a lot of people.

Find another zone that is less populated. Work on something else for awhile.

Bliz does want to shake up the server economies, some of which have become quite bloated. Hence the gold sinks, and making some resources harder to obtain.

Except a lot of herbs/mining nodes now are completely zone based instead of being spread across serveral zones. It makes leveling a new profession extremely unpleasant, which some professions already are to a degree, while some are easy some are outright painful to get up to a useful level.

So? There's no reason you can't dally in a zone as long as you like. You aren't forced to go elsewhere once you reach a given level. Sure, your XP gain suffers but if you want to quest longer somewhere there is nothing stopping you other than your own self-imposed headlong rush to a particular goal.

Meanwhile, those who do want to level relatively quickly can do so.

I, for one, do NOT want to return to the endless grind of vanilla.

Orange quests/group quests are gone - there are no longer any quests that are actually difficult from 1-90, that would require grouping up as an incentive for the extra reward. Quests gray out incredibly quickly, the only reason to even stay in a zone anymore is if you're a completionist after the achievement points.
I'm not asking for a return to Vanilla, but something more like TBC or WOTLK would be better - leveling wasn't hard, but it took a little extra time.

They HAVE offered incentives for people to transfer to low population servers, including free transfers, and directing new players to low pop servers, and not enough people took advantage of them. They tried it way you suggest and it wasn't enough. The player base reacted negatively to the idea of closing some of the lowest pop servers. This is the current compromise. If you have a better idea tell Blizzard, they might even implement it if it hasn't failed before and makes some sense.

The incentives they offered to go to low pop/imbalanced servers just aren't enough to overcome the huge disadvantages
- harder to get groups for RBGS, arenas, pugs
- harder to get recruits for raids, as you're coming from a lower pool and it's quite hard to be competitive enough to attract people to transfer to you
- economy is severely screwed by the low pop, resulting in the AH either being dominated by several players or being dominated by bots
- moving away from friends you've likely had for years
- for imbalanced servers, why would you ever want to transfer. Less chance of getting the world bosses, harder to do dailies, always outnumbered. There are several servers I can think of off the top of my head that are hideously imbalanced in the EU
Just offering a free transfer isn't enough of an incentive. The better alternative is to forcibly merge or even split the higher population servers - an option that is actually coded into the game already, and apparently has been for a long time.

Poor baby. Again, there is supposed to be some challenge here. Clearly, you weren't around for vanilla where everything was a rep grind and dailies didn't exist, you just had to kill a thousand X to get a dozen drops of Y which you could then do something with after running instance Z fifty times. Thank Og we don't have to do that anymore.

You pick one or two set of dailies and work on them until you get the rep. Many factions only require "revered" for the bulk of the goodies they give and make exalted optional.

No, you don't. This has been addressed already so I won't repeat it, but see post above this one.

I'm probably one of the few people that actually completed Naxxramas at level 60, so I know all about grinding for gear and consumables and rep, I even raided Sunwell where you literally had to farm every single buff possible in the game when we were first progressing on Brutallus.
Blizzard did the right thing with WOTLK and Cataclysm, they made rep grinds infinitely easier and also removed the massive consumable farming that was required. Gaining rep from Tabards was a fantastic idea, since it got more people into dungeons and it meant that any gating was simply a matter of how much time you personally were willing to put in.
Now everything is stuck behind rep vendors - behind daily quests that in some cases give absolutely pitiful rep (wtf is with Golden Lotus dailies giving 110 rep with the guild perk?) and you can't do things are your own pace anymore. You do things at the pace the daily quests give you - and you have to do said grind on every character that you wish to raid with.

The level 90 normals were deliberately made low so the very casual and/or inept player can see the content. Blizzard is trying to make more of the end game and instances accessible to those without L33T raid skills and solid guilds, a trend I, for one, applaud even if I myself play at a higher level than "least common denominator". I don't feel threatened that someone else can see an instance with less effort than I'm exerting to get into the heroic version.

Think about it though. Will you be happy in two months when you're still having to farm those same 'heroics' to get your weekly valour cap? it isn't lowest common denominator, it's braindead - it isn't anything about effort, it's about realising that terrible easy content is a bad idea for everyone - it's not a question of feeling threatened either.
Those will be it for some players, they'll never raid or go above LFR - so they'll be farming those dungeons for months. Easy braindead content is great for a few weeks, but these dungeons will have to last for months.

One thing I will say that's a big improvement is making it so many of the named quest targets (in Pandaria at least) don't get tagged by combat. So if you get a quest to kill some guy, and get to the spawn point to find someone already fighting it, you can just jump into the fight and still get credit instead of having to form a queue.

I like this as well, it is a huge improvement over the problem of quest mobs and world elites. You don't have to farm a group, you just have to get some damage done.


I'll reply to both points about the valour gear here - you may not need to go for them if you're a casual player/raider, but if you're a progression raider, you have to get every possible upgrade you can. That's why when conquest gear came out, our entire guild was forming arena teams and RBG teams to get the conquest points for weapons. That's why some of us were laying out hundreds of thousands of gold to level professions and get gear.
You don't need it (and I have already done all the new bosses on heroic in gear much lower than you'd require) but the point is for progression raiding, you take every single advantage you can get - those items but not be a high ilvl, but they'll fill a slot better than a blue while you wait for your drop from the raid.

[Sharp-kun]

and you have to do said grind on every character that you wish to raid with.

Why? The raids seem quite doable without any VP gear and indeed the heroic modes have been cleared as such (or in short enough time that raiders couldn't have more than 1-2 pieces of VP gear, and only rings/necks/capes if 2). Said raids give gear better than any VP gear. The VP gear is only as good as the gear that drops in the other 2 LFR raids.

One of our healers last night had no VP gear, and hasn't done any dailies yet. He seemed to be doing fine.

Just because there is better gear does not make it a requirement, even though some people may view it as such.



For the heroics, have you tried the Challenge Mode versions? I went "meh" at the heroic difficulty, but have found the few challenge modes I've done to be a bit more involving as a tank (things hurt me).

[Minischoles]

and you have to do said grind on every character that you wish to raid with.

Why? The raids seem quite doable without any VP gear and indeed the heroic modes have been cleared as such (or in short enough time that raiders couldn't have more than 1-2 pieces of VP gear, and only rings/necks/capes if 2). Said raids give gear better than any VP gear. The VP gear is only as good as the gear that drops in the other 2 LFR raids.

One of our healers last night had no VP gear, and hasn't done any dailies yet. He seemed to be doing fine.

Just because there is better gear does not make it a requirement, even though some people may view it as such.



For the heroics, have you tried the Challenge Mode versions? I went "meh" at the heroic difficulty, but have found the few challenge modes I've done to be a bit more involving as a tank (things hurt me).

Yes but said raid gear isn't a guaranteed drop - I went through the entirety of Dragon Soul without ever seeing a heroic mode version of the healer trinket drop, and many of our raiders never upgraded from the LFR version.
They are quite doable without them, but the point is there are a couple more raids to come, and you need to be gearing your character as efficiently as possible if you're in a progress guild - and that does mean filling some slots with VP gear if all else fails.

I have tried a couple of the challenge runs, at the moment they do seem to favour class stacking - getting gold in some of them practically requires you running without a healer at points, and some of the bosses are nuts (Hoptallus for example is insane in challenge mode).

[Sharp-kun]

Yes but said raid gear isn't a guaranteed drop - I went through the entirety of Dragon Soul without ever seeing a heroic mode version of the healer trinket drop, and many of our raiders never upgraded from the LFR version.
They are quite doable without them, but the point is there are a couple more raids to come, and you need to be gearing your character as efficiently as possible if you're in a progress guild - and that does mean filling some slots with VP gear if all else fails.

Yeah, but there's no rush for that. We've not even had all the raids of this tier out yet and the requirements for them I doubt are significantly higher than Mogu-shan Vaults. There's plenty of time to get rep so that by the time bad luck has really set in, you can buy what you want.

It takes enough time to get the VP due to the weekly cap that there's no need to rush rep.

I have tried a couple of the challenge runs, at the moment they do seem to favour class stacking - getting gold in some of them practically requires you running without a healer at points, and some of the bosses are nuts (Hoptallus for example is insane in challenge mode).

I'm personally aiming for Silver in all of them. I don't see Gold in my future.

Hoptallus was not fun.

[Broomstick]

Reminds me of vanilla Hillsbrad, except back then there was no LFD option. You learn to get sneaky. I learned how to hide an 8 foot tall red Tauren in the green foliage of Strangelthorn Vale back in the day.

If you don't like that challenge there are PvE realms.

Frankly, I've had no trouble with leveling my low alts in this expansion.

It's not really like Vanilla at all, since the moment level 90s come to respond the offending griefer can just switch zones and end up somewhere else - or just sit nice and high on a flying mount where you can't get at him.

Yes, it is like vanilla, back when a level 60 would be stomping the lowbies just outside the starter zones and would simply go elsewhere when your also high level buddies showed up. Or you'd have two groups of maxed toons lay waste to an entire zone in an impromptu war. Like so many others you view those days through rose-tinted glasses.

I don't mind pvp, when it's a max level vs a max level, or at least similar - world pvp is not getting auto shot killed by a level 90 hunter on your lowbie toon.

Same shit as when my lowbies were getting one-shotted by level 60's.

Seriously, if you can't stomach that risk don't play on a PvP server - go to a PvE server where you only have to PvP against those you allow to battle you.

This happens every new expansion. The problem is that EVERYONE is trying to level an alt right now. Wait a month and this problem will go away by itself.

Except it didn't happen in Pandaria, there was maybe one zone where I found it hard to finish a quest and that was at the very start as Horde when you jump off the ship to go and fight. Other than that the mob spawns were tuned high enough. And the problem won't go away, as long as there is CRZ, you're always going to have a lot of people.

And this is a problem because....?

You already stated you didn't have a problem leveling in Pandaria. The lower level zones are still not as heavily populated as in the past. You say it's a problem then say that problem didn't happen. Which is it?

Find another zone that is less populated. Work on something else for awhile.

Bliz does want to shake up the server economies, some of which have become quite bloated. Hence the gold sinks, and making some resources harder to obtain.

Except a lot of herbs/mining nodes now are completely zone based instead of being spread across serveral zones. It makes leveling a new profession extremely unpleasant, which some professions already are to a degree, while some are easy some are outright painful to get up to a useful level.

Professions aren't "gimmies". They, too, are supposed to require some effort.

So? There's no reason you can't dally in a zone as long as you like. You aren't forced to go elsewhere once you reach a given level. Sure, your XP gain suffers but if you want to quest longer somewhere there is nothing stopping you other than your own self-imposed headlong rush to a particular goal.

Meanwhile, those who do want to level relatively quickly can do so.

I, for one, do NOT want to return to the endless grind of vanilla.

Orange quests/group quests are gone - there are no longer any quests that are actually difficult from 1-90, that would require grouping up as an incentive for the extra reward.

Right - because the player base asked for that. People were bitching about how in the older areas you couldn't do the group quests anymore at the appropriate level because the zones were so damn deserted. Hence, CRZ so there would be enough people for spontaneous grouping if anyone wanted it, and re-tuning quests so less grouping was necessary.

Quests gray out incredibly quickly, the only reason to even stay in a zone anymore is if you're a completionist after the achievement points.

That describes a significant number of players. Even some raiders like to go back for completion points, as it were, in their spare time. Sorry, dude, you're in a minority.

I'm not asking for a return to Vanilla, but something more like TBC or WOTLK would be better - leveling wasn't hard, but it took a little extra time.

You're complaining you can't gear up fast enough for raiding, but you want the days when leveling took a little more time - again, you seem confused here. Do you want to take more time to get where you're going, or less?

They HAVE offered incentives for people to transfer to low population servers, including free transfers, and directing new players to low pop servers, and not enough people took advantage of them. They tried it way you suggest and it wasn't enough. The player base reacted negatively to the idea of closing some of the lowest pop servers. This is the current compromise. If you have a better idea tell Blizzard, they might even implement it if it hasn't failed before and makes some sense.

Just offering a free transfer isn't enough of an incentive. The better alternative is to forcibly merge or even split the higher population servers - an option that is actually coded into the game already, and apparently has been for a long time.

And when that was floated as an idea the player base screamed NO! - for some of the same reasons those incentives failed:
- economy can be severely screwed by the AH players who have enjoyed advanages for years, accumulating massive resources, and the bots
- being forcibly separated from friends you've likely had for years
- for imbalanced servers, why would you ever want to merge or be forced to move? Less chance of getting the world bosses, harder to do dailies, no longer enjoying massive advantages

Blizzard did the right thing with WOTLK and Cataclysm, they made rep grinds infinitely easier and also removed the massive consumable farming that was required. Gaining rep from Tabards was a fantastic idea, since it got more people into dungeons and it meant that any gating was simply a matter of how much time you personally were willing to put in.

And people tore through the content in record time and screamed for more, which then then tore through in record time... the developers can only work so fast.

Now everything is stuck behind rep vendors - behind daily quests that in some cases give absolutely pitiful rep (wtf is with Golden Lotus dailies giving 110 rep with the guild perk?) and you can't do things are your own pace anymore. You do things at the pace the daily quests give you - and you have to do said grind on every character that you wish to raid with.

It's been repeatedly addressed that gearing for raids is not the arduous grind you portray it to be. Raiding really isn't just about gaining the absolute highest gear, there are other things involved that, as pointed out, have allowed guilds to complete raids this early even without the highest possible gear ever.

The level 90 normals were deliberately made low so the very casual and/or inept player can see the content. Blizzard is trying to make more of the end game and instances accessible to those without L33T raid skills and solid guilds, a trend I, for one, applaud even if I myself play at a higher level than "least common denominator". I don't feel threatened that someone else can see an instance with less effort than I'm exerting to get into the heroic version.

Think about it though. Will you be happy in two months when you're still having to farm those same 'heroics' to get your weekly valour cap?

Yes, I will - because I sample from the buffet that is WoW instead of stuffing myself on just one selection.

Look if YOU want to go after highest level raiding and highest level gear like a bat out of hell that is YOUR CHOICE. A lot of the player base - literally millions of people - don't have the same drive towards that goal that you do. Not everyone gives a damn about "weekly valor cap". When I feel like working on those sorts of goals I do. And other times I just do dailies or just explore or do something else. I recently spent three months seeing how much gold I could amass from crafting and AH, a task I found just as fulfilling as any raid accomplishment (and has also left me in a position that I simply don't have to worry about gold anymore, even if I choose to buy a few gold sinks or play the black market).

My guild fields a 25-man raid team. Do we get world first? No. But I suspect we have a hell of a lot more fun than you do. We also have a contingent of "support staff" who don't raid but, in exchange for helping the raiders, reaps some of the perks of being in a high-level guild. It's a win-win all around and we all have fun without gnashing our teeth over self-imposed deadlines in what should be entertainment.

If you don't find chasing the brass ring in WoW fun anymore, or no longer fulfilling, then reconsider your choices, or find a game more to your liking.

it isn't lowest common denominator, it's braindead - it isn't anything about effort, it's about realising that terrible easy content is a bad idea for everyone - it's not a question of feeling threatened either.
Those will be it for some players, they'll never raid or go above LFR - so they'll be farming those dungeons for months. Easy braindead content is great for a few weeks, but these dungeons will have to last for months.

Apparently you are clueless that there are some players, even some long term players, who never venture into instances. My spouse has been playing WoW for six years and probably hasn't been in a five-man for the last four - just doesn't like them. Still has a toon in Panderia, though. Even so often someone says "That spec is terrible for raiding! Don't you know that? WTF is wrong with you?" Nothing - they're talking to someone who has zero interest in ever raiding and chooses specs for solo and world PvE play.

"Some" players will never raid or LFR? Try most players won't. Some of them got a taste with LFR in late Cat and said "yup, not for me" and others weren't even interested enough to try it.

It's rather like PvPer's who simply can't comprehend why players don't BG or gank others - isn't that the POINT of WoW? No, actually for many it's not. That's not why they play the game.

So... no, I don't think "terribly easy content" is bad for "everyone", especially since there is still plenty of "terribly HARD content" still in the game. Blizzard, like any good capitalist company, is attempting to please ALL its customers, not just 1% (or whatever) who engaged in hardcore raid content.

I'll reply to both points about the valour gear here - you may not need to go for them if you're a casual player/raider, but if you're a progression raider, you have to get every possible upgrade you can.

Then why are there guilds already completing the highest level raids currently available when it's impossible for them to have gained "every possible upgrade" at this point?

YOU and your guild are choosing to do this. It's not "required". The top world guilds don't depend just on gear, there's teamwork and being willing to wipe over and over until they get the perfect teamwork and timing to take down the bosses. Sure, they do it easier with the very best gear, but it's not required if you've really got the chops.

That's why some of us were laying out hundreds of thousands of gold to level professions and get gear.

"Hundreds of thousands of gold"? Really? Then you aren't doing it right. Seriously.

[TheFeniX]

I've read estimates that put the percentage of raiders in Vanilla at 5% and raiding reached it's peak in BC with 20%. I cannot find these numbers. I assume Blizz was tried of spending so much money developing content that few people see. That said, WoW still offers a decent challenge with the raids (the best I've personally seen), but it isn't stupidly over the top when it comes to downing content. When Cata popped, BWD and BoT bosses were being downed by players in <=333 questing gear, before the nerfs. Heroic ragnaros wasn't downed for a couple of months and I remember the guild that did it saying it took them 200+ wipes.

Contrast this to Nightmare mode SOA in SWTOR: the first guild to down him did it in 7 wipes. Our raiding group wasn't that great and we were 8/10 Nightmare mode in SWTOR after 3 weeks of raiding. If SWTOR wasn't a broken and buggy POS, we'd have been 10/10 with no issues. The WoW guild I raided with couldn't down Heroic Shannox, not for lack of trying, but could full clear up to Rag with less than 5 or so wipes due to mistakes.

Cata was Blizzards shot at going back to heroic content being heroic and holy shit many of the instances were overtuned way above the raid content. The playerbase backlashed terribly and they began nerfing the fuck out of them.

Blizzard has the right idea of allowing players to access content and giving the lifers there challenge. They only big hiccup is that people view Heroic instances as a precursor to normal raids. That shouldn't be the case IMO and it really isn't. I would almost be in support, especially now that LFR is there, that the progression goes: Instance > Raid > Heroic Instance > Heroic Raids. But that shit would never happen.

[Max]

I am really enjoying Pandaria. As a person who really enjoys PvP and BGs, I look forward to gearing up to be competitive in the new areas. I've been sidetracked with farming and pet battling.. which I was unsure I'd enjoy prior to release....but they're pretty addicting. If you like your pet battles, I'm going to go ahead and suggest using the addon Wokemon.

I haven't noticed much asshatery from players camping players 10 levels or lower on my server...but if you're on a pvp server, then you can probably expect it to happen if you aren't careful. I feel like camping was more of a problem in the BC and Vanilla days. I'm a lvl 90 BM Hunter, so I'm also probably not going to be in someone's crosshairs as quickly as a lvl 50 or something.

Actually, I partially take back the asshatery comment. I've definitely noticed that the dark portal to Outland has been a HUGE hot spot for camping low players, particularly by groups of Alliance. They just sit there waiting to pick off any horde players that happen to phase in to go through the portal. But other areas I've noticed zilch, and I'm flying all over all the continents trying to level my archeology.

Anyway, I'm really liking the new xpac overall. I'm LOVING the talent trees.

[Darmalus]

One thing I have begun to really love that I didn't notice the first time around is how the questing structure is set out. It's not the completely linear, one single path structure they had in Cata, it's all broken up into self contained quest hubs, often with a solid piece of gear at the end. This has made it really easy to play with friends who don't play very often, we can blow up a quest hub here or there and not have to worry about remaining completely in sync.

On a slight down note, the reputations move at a crawl, even with the 10% bonus from Hallows End on top of the guild bonus. They are satisfying when done, but man do they take forever, I think I got spoiled in Cata. Except you, Nat Pagle. I hate you, and your fish turn ins, so damn much.

I really wish the Cloud Serpent Race was an every day daily, not a random daily.

[TheFeniX]

So, I was randomly fucking around in the Starcraft 2 arcade last friday and an old raiding buddy popped online in WoW. We started talking and I decided to accept the Scroll from my Brother-in-law to get back into the game. I have declined to transfer to his server because.... Horde, but also I'd rather game with my buddy.

Anyways, I pounded my Death Knight up to 90 and then got involved in some guild shenanigans and was raid geared from the Timeless isle in like 1 night. So welfare epics ahoy. 80k DPS is hilarious and the gear bloat has become totally insane. LFR is even worse than I remember it with retards everywhere. I'm back for a week and I'm out DPSing other Frost DKs with ilvls +50 over mine. Even top DPS will yell shit like "DPS the adds fuckers!" then I'll see 95% of their 200k DPS is directed at the boss. Doesn't matter because all the bosses are pretty much a straight burn, but idiots still manage to off themselves by standing in the fire. Me? I just pop AMA and enjoy the free Runic Power.

Also, I was so pissed DKs lost their old AOE freeze but Remorseless Winter? HoeLeeShit, I love this ability. Also, they finally made Crit Strike not total fucking garbage for DKs. However, this means I should take it over haste.... which blows.

Anyways, all my complaints aside, there is still shitloads to do at mid-game and endgame, something other MMOs still have not figured out. The pet battle system isn't as horrible as I thought it would be and I'm using my archeology pets just because. I also finally got my Prot Pally to 90, but damn it sucked because pulling an entire area of mobs and taking 6 weeks to burn them down got old. I stupidly didn't realize AV was the Call to Arms until last night. Like an hour of that got me the last half to 90.

Pally tanking is still fun, even though they change consecration (making it a basic part of the rotation) and stole my off-taunt (fuckers). Oh well, time for the timeless isle and free epics.

All in all, I got in at the right time. A lot of the walls have been taken down since we're at late expansion. I enjoyed early cata, but I don't think I have it in me anymore to take an expansion on at release.

[Darksider]

Hey you guys. I just heard some hilarious bullshit rumors about the new WoW expansion. Get this. Supposedly Garrosh escapes justice for his crimes in Mists of Pandaria, goes back in time, and creates some sort of steampunk super horde to re-enact the first Warcraft by invading Azeroth through the dark portal, and I guess the Alliance faction just gets shafted in the story department again.

It's actually kind of funny how ridiculous internet rumors can get these days. I mean Blizzard wouldn't be stupid enough to shoot itself in the foot with something that stupid.

I mean there's just no way.