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Question about MOP....
Greymantle4
Member UncommonPosts: 809
My wife and I left Wow during Cata due to the nerfing of the leveling content to the point there was zero challenge. My wife and I love to play alts and loved leveling in Wow. That part of the game is gone and I know I will never see it again.
My question is I have been reading that they tried to being back a lot of the old school feel to this expansion in the leveling content 86 to 90. I guess what I'm asking is could we find any kind of magic we once felt in the 86 to 90 content? I'm talking danger, fear, challenge, etc...
A few question about the expansion if we do purchase it. Can you use flying mounts from the start? Is end game all about raiding and dailies? What do you find fun about the latest expansion?
Comments
Just do the free 10 day trial and find out for yourself is my best advice.
Free trial does not let you play the expansion. 0_0
Not sure it is offering what you are looking for. The end game content in MoP is miles better than Cata, but the levelling was not hard in any way shape or form. The quests were fun and interesting, but not hard. You cannot fly until 90.
The Timeless Isle offers a bit of challenge for soloers though, but that is designed for level 90 players and there are no quests there, and there is always danger of PvP (not sure if that is your thing or not). You can also get a bit of challenge from fighting the named mobs around Pandaria solo.
End game... Raiding yes, dailies not so much, unless you really want to grind out the faction mounts.
What is fun? The raids and PvP, which has always been my main interest.
Given the recent price drop, I would say its worth the money just to check out the Pandaran storyline, even if you don't stick around.
Yeah it does, if you have an existing account there should be an option to try Mists for 10 days. Go check your account page.
Leveling 85-90 in MoP was the most boring thing i have ever done in an MMO, let alone WoW. Now, im not sure how much of that was because i was just coming back from SWTOR (The absolute best story quest lvling in any MMO hands down), or if they were legitimitly that boring compared to previous xpacs.
Once hitting 90 though, rest assured it has the most endgame content of any previous incarnation of WoW, or any MMO on the market for that matter. And im talking stricktly level 90 stuff, not old content folks like to bring up to discreted its endgame as "ZOMG ITS A 10 YEAR OLD GAME YOU CANT COMPARE".
If endgame is your thing, easy or hard, MoP is the best incarnation of WoW yet (content wise).
While SWTOR story quests were interesting, the generic levelling quests were not. At least MoP offers some variety to quests such as controlling other characters, vehicles, using a sniper rifle, pouring hot oil on insects and other non-combat diversions.
If combat is all you are interested in you are better off levelling through dungeons or PvP anyway.
IMO quests when your toon/abilities is not the thing killing "x", it gets boring fast, maybe that was one of the reasons I found it so boring. In wotlk, the first boss (and leading up to it) in Ulduar was one of the most mind numbingly broing things its had in a raid.
I thought the linear questing of CATA was bad but MOP has it beat in every way. You only have one starting zone, you can't skip ahead to the next zone until you reach level 86 and do a quest which is hard to find. There is very little choice in how you quest, almost no way to skip forward to harder content (unless they have changed it in 5.4).
For the first play through it wasn't bad but every subsequent one had me cursing at Blizzard for the on-rails experience and not allowing me to skip ahead. Plus there are very few leveling dungeons - one at 85, one at 86, and two at 87 - so it's hard to level that way because of the repetitiveness.
At level 90 you have your standard fare - dungeons (though they got nerfed so really easy), raids, dailies (mostly for mounts now), and scenarios (which are dumbed-down dungeons). You can gear up fast I hear through killing mobs on Timeless Isle and running through lower tiers of raids with LFR.
Then there's a few features that are new - farming (like Farmville, never tried it), pet battles (enjoyed them but takes a while to level your pets), Brawler's guild and Proving Grounds (solo content that is pretty challenging).
I'd say there's enough content to keep you busy leveling up and gearing up an 85 toon for a couple of months. But if you want to run multiple alts through MOP I'd avoid it. In CATA I could just level up alts and run them through dungeons and BG's and be happy. In MOP I didn't like the dungeons (too easy) or LFR so I'd just gear up alts through BG's, which eventually became tedious so I unsubbed after maybe 6 months play.
What is the Brawler's Guild and Proving Grounds about? PVE? PVP? Solo stuff for end game is what were looking for too so the mount rep grind is fine with us. Is it anything like the dragon mount grind in BC?
On Timeless Isle? I must be doing something wrong....
Played: Ultima Online - DaoC - WoW -
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
There is good and bad in MoP.
The new talent trees in MoP are ok. You don't get a lot of talents, but you do get interesting ones now. It is sort of drab though to have to wait 15 levels for your new talent. All of the old talents are gotten automatically now as you level. Glyphs add some variability though since they actually can give you some new skills as well and you can customize the looks of some things if that is your thing.
Pandaria is beautiful, but very homogenous. It is harder to distinguish between the areas in this expac than in the previous ones. The quests are pretty good, but there is only one starting area that everyone has to go through. I find that area to be the least interesting of the Pandaria areas unfortunately, maybe you will find differently. One thing that I disagree with with one other poster here is one-shotting mobs. No, you can't do that... not even remotely. The MoP mobs (even trash mobs) have lots and lots of hps. In fact, one complaint I have seen is that they have too many and that it takes the average player too long to kill them.
Endgame is the best part. There are lots of different factions with very different things to do, for example there is the farming/cooking faction, the archaeology and lore faction, the temple defender faction, the raid faction, and so on and so forth. You can farm, raid, do scenarios, do heroics, PvP, do tougher solo quests and PvE duels, do challenges, go to the Timeless Isle and kill tougher mobs, etc. Some of the endgame questlines are really good and don't appear to be as tedious as the Cata ones (like Firelands). I find the Alliance vs. Horde storyline to be one of the best, and enjoy how the Siege of Ogrimmar has been worked into the scenarios and the like.
The dungeons themselves are ok. They are pretty distinct one from the other and unlike in previous expacs, there are far fewer of them. Because mobs have so many hp's, I heartily encourage you to do dungeons as soon as you can and get a gearscore at least around 430 to 450 by the time you hit 90. Not only will you be able to do scenarios straight away (which are the best part of MoP in my opinion), but you can also get into the first raids. As a former non-raider, I find that the combination of lfr tool and the fact that heroic 5-mans being dumbed down make raids the better of the two activities to carry out if you have a couple of hours free. The raids are quite fun and vary in difficulty and required gearscore.
In summary, MoP is a mixed bag with drab leveling and outdoor zones but decent dungeons and pretty good raids. The endgame is the best part.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
If you are the type of person that enjoys following the story as you level then you will enjoy the Pandaria experience as it has plenty of storyline along with the quest content. Is there a lot of 'kill this' and 'collect that', well of course there is, this is an MMO and it happens, but then there are also the 'snipe the horde', 'kill this miniboss with tactics' or 'protect the cart' types of quests thrown in along the way that make things much more interesting. The use of cut scenes and phasing are also put to good effect to tell the story and affect the landscape around you
If you are going to tear through and skip off to other zones as soon as you can, you will miss a lot of what the game has to offer in terms of quest content but it is easy enough to move on when you want to. Someone mentioned moving to the 86 zone was hard, but the quest to start it is right next to the bridge you use to cross into it, so not really very difficult. The only place that requires a quest to get in to it directly is the Vale of Eternal Blossoms which requires a visit to the temple of the white tiger to get through.
On the other side of what you were saying, there is more danger about in this expansion compared to others, it is much easier to find yourself in the middle of a group of MOB's without realising what you have walked in to than it was in other expansions with so many crossed paths, MOB's in waiting or hanging from trees and even the main roads aren't always safe especially when most of the incidental creatures are unfriendly as well. That is another feature i liked as you had to put some thought in to how you were going to travel about rather than just jumping on to the nearest road and pushing through.
Personally i enjoyed the experience each time i did it and i have 7 L90's at the moment, three more to go.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
^^^^
Agree. MoP is a dangerous place; even a new level 90 will find things challenging especially for e.g. solo pure healer. As your gear etc. improves it will get easier for your new level 90s and better quality gear will be cheaper now but still. Even the starter zones have some level 90 and higher mobs.
I think the story content was OK - somewhat cheesy but OK! Within most of the zones there are also mini-story arcs and, as well as leading up to an "epic" conclusion they often award companion helpers making some of the 90+ zones easier. (Note: some change with 5.4 patch).
The scenarios were fun and many of the Heroic Scenarios were far from easy even with well geared characters. Same with the dungeons - some a reworking of old content. A word of warning however: the gear from scenarios and dungeons was "obsolete" as far as its level went when I was last playing so I am not sure how popular this aspect of the game is. Same goes for the early tier raids as well potentially - although they seemed to be largely OK.
The content patches (5.1, 5.2, 5.3) added further challenging content. As above it got easier as gear improved - although Blizzard managed to make the 5.4 raids sufficiently difficult (more of a chore than a joy) that many people were opting not to repeat them.
With the Timeless Isle (patch 5.4) mentioned above Blizzard have made it possible for players to promote their level 90s by making relatively high level gear easily available. At least it was easy for a (very well geared) level 90 (as in able to solo the level 90 5 man dungeons).
And as always if you solo it depends on class - but I am guessing that you won't be.
A final word. Blizzard targeted people who like mounts in a rather clever way with MoP. Those who wanted a "Chinese dragon" (or worm is you prefer) needed the secondary professions - cooking, fishing, archaeology. (And food once more provided a serious buff).
In summary I enjoyed my last return - I had been away longer than you however and had lots of memories. Unlike, say, my revisit of EQ1.