Initial Thoughts on Pandaria

[Hawkbit]

Monk just hit 60, started him 8 days ago.  Literally hit 60 on the final quest turnin for Swamp of Sorrows.  Also his trip to 60 got 1.5 levels to our guild rank (3 to 5) and exalted with my guild.  Going to run around ungoro till mining hits 275, then off to Outlands.

[Mithas]

Word is the raids are tuned pretty hard on normal, which I guess is the new thing since the progressive nerf system is going to be in from now on along with LFR. I think I can kinda deal with that. If it's not doable in heroic gear, hit LFR and gear up a bit there. Or just unsub for a month or two and then come back when it starts getting whacked with the nerfbat. I'm sure the hardcore crowd will baw their eyes out but they won't unsub ever, like usual.

Also I played a bit; the questing seems a lot more focused in a good way. Just a bit less hand-holdy/cutscene heavy than Cata which is fine by me. Also wow, they really still know how to stretch these art assets. The music and art really do a good job of keeping WoW looking good.

Isn't that exactly what the hardcores want? Don't they want it to be really hard? To me they nailed it in this expansion. I realize I can't raid. I don't have the time. I'm too casual but I have lots to do still. The hardcores have their difficult raids and challenge modes.

[Merusk]

Hardcores want it hard.  Faux hardcores - those who bitch about 'casuals ruining the games' and 'free epix' - don't.

My guild went in and tried Moshugun last week. Their complaint was the first fight is an exact rip of one some old boss fight.   I didn't recognize the name, though.

[Jimbo]

My son found a neat quest @ level 11 where he was rounding up Raptors and then launching them into space!

[SurfD]

My son found a neat quest @ level 11 where he was rounding up Raptors and then launching them into space!

Ahhh god.  I loved some of the questlines in the revamped Ashzara.

Blizzard ususally does a great job of having a decent number of quests that just have you laughin your ass off while doing them.

[Fabricated]

Word is the raids are tuned pretty hard on normal, which I guess is the new thing since the progressive nerf system is going to be in from now on along with LFR. I think I can kinda deal with that. If it's not doable in heroic gear, hit LFR and gear up a bit there. Or just unsub for a month or two and then come back when it starts getting whacked with the nerfbat. I'm sure the hardcore crowd will baw their eyes out but they won't unsub ever, like usual.

Also I played a bit; the questing seems a lot more focused in a good way. Just a bit less hand-holdy/cutscene heavy than Cata which is fine by me. Also wow, they really still know how to stretch these art assets. The music and art really do a good job of keeping WoW looking good.

Isn't that exactly what the hardcores want? Don't they want it to be really hard? To me they nailed it in this expansion. I realize I can't raid. I don't have the time. I'm too casual but I have lots to do still. The hardcores have their difficult raids and challenge modes.

No, the hardcores want it to be hard forever and to have a tiered raiding system back where the dumb newb badscrubs can't ever get close to their shinies. I mean they're going to whine when Blizzard turns on the progressive nerf system for this tier. Then they'll whine whenever they put in catch-up gear on new 5-mans or for justice points or whatever.

[Merusk]

Not the real hardcores and you know it, Fab.  The folks in the top 30-40 guilds in the world couldn't give two shits about that because it's small potatoes.  They're running hardmodes and pushing for world/ server firsts then waiting for the next content cycle. 

The folks who bitch about the nerfs are the ones who say "another week and we could have had "X" down and now it's meaningless"  But they ignore that 1) it's a damn video game it's always meaningless and 2) they can turn off that buff and have it mean the exact same thing - but they won't.

[Ironwood]

Took the plunge and made a Pandaran Monk.

I've never been so bored in a starter zone in my whole WoW Career.  It was really, really dull.  The only excitement was watching Elena chase down the mad bunnies with me.

[Lastwolf]

I duuno, I'm the very definition of a middle of road/bad raider, got into my first raid last night, only downed 1 boss.

Gearing might be an issue still, some our usual roster isn't 90 yet, the off tank only had about 2 hours to gear up, he did alright I guess.

The first boss was tougher than most DS bosses, but not super difficult, the co-ordination between tanks was more than I've had to do in months, we solo tanked 4/7 DS bosses, even in Heroic mode and most of that basically solo tanking with two separate targets. It's very similar to Omni-tron Defense System, lots of stuff for the tanks to do, alot to monitor found it difficult to get into a decent rotation and I still topped DPS as a tank.

The Second boss 1% off getting to second phase, seemed easy enough though, again very tank orientated, still have to master the tomes, I was getting better but I need another few goes.

I like it being a bit more difficult, DS was a joke until you got to last two bosses and then Heroic and then it was a brickwall of fuck you after first boss, which was still pretty easy.

[luckton]

Brickwalling like this occurred with every expansion beforehand.  Everyone says it's always easier when going from a launch raid to a patch raid, mostly because they're entering the patch raid in full purples, gems, and enchants.  People enter launch raids wearing a clown suit of greens and blues, with maybe a token purple, cheap enchants, cheap food buffs and MAYBE a flask or elixir.

Or, as Boromir sez, "One does not simply walk into Mordor Naxx Blackwing Decent Mogu'shan Vaults"

[Outlawedprod]

PVP in Stormwind sure looks pro!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_vCFKuXrQo

[Simond]

Pandaria 'clownsuit':


I've had worse. 

[Ironwood]

That's rather fetching.

[Selby]

Well I'm enjoying the hell out of just questing and looking around.  It's nice to be doing quests that amuse me and help others in small ways rather than the "OMG SAVE THE WORLD" at every turn in Cataclysm.

[Paelos]

Well I'm enjoying the hell out of just questing and looking around.  It's nice to be doing quests that amuse me and help others in small ways rather than the "OMG SAVE THE WORLD" at every turn in Cataclysm.

Are you suggesting that washing yaks isn't saving the world? Because you and I have very different definitions, sir.

[Outlawedprod]

PVP in Stormwind sure looks pro!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_vCFKuXrQo

Surprised there wasn't more talk of this hack here unless I missed it in another thread.  Apparently the same people behind the sever crashes a few weeks ago.

edit: On second thought I'll just make a new thread.

[luckton]

Probably because we assumed it was just another bug with DKs being able to PK people with Blood Plague again 

Still, if the worst that could happen was just insta-gibbing people in cities, and not actually thief their stuff or delete their toon, it's not a big deal to me, really.  Heck, it took them this long to do something like this?  How long as this game been around again?

[Simond]

That's rather fetching.

The annoying thing is I spent a while putting together a transmog set of slate grey/cobalt blue plate for my tanking gear towards the end of Cataclysm and then my levelling gear is pretty much exactly what I was looking for anyway.

[Paelos]

I don't understand the design decision behind Golden Lotus reputation in this xpac. I fully expect that after the next series of content comes out, they will change it. Right now it feels like a very slow and artificial gating to the factions. Not only do you do 10 dailies every day just to get a paltry amount of rep gain, but you are REQUIRED to grind those if you want to see the August Celestials and Shadopan factions.

Normally, I'd say who gives a shit? Factions are there to be long term goals in an expansion. Well the problem arises when you realize they've tied two bad design decisions together. Gating factions through other factions, and putting JP and VP gear on those factions. It's not good enough to just get the points, you have to grind a faction so you can grind a faction to have the priviledge of spending those points you earned. It's convoluted and needs to be addressed.

[Merusk]

It's worse than 10 dailies.  When you get to Honored you don't get the 'end' quest as the 10th, you get referenced to another hub with 5 more.  So now it's 15 dailies per day for me.  Group-up for them or go mad.

It *IS* an artifical grind meant to occupy time.  They said they wanted to 'keep people out in the world' more.  Well, it's working but it's also going to turn people off a lot quicker.  I've already abandoned Klaxxi faction because fuck 6 more dailies on top of the 15 for GL, the 3 for Fishing, and the 6 or 7 for Tillers PLUS cooking dishes and the 5 Cloud Serpent dailies.  Tack on the Darkmoon Stuff right now and my tolerance for it is dropping to the levels of most of you who say "fuck dailies" and I've always enjoyed them.

Part of the problem is I'm a completionist and that's working against me.  I think their intent was to give a variety of things to do and you're not really MEANT to grind out all of them every day.  Pick some, dink around, and have a mix of things to do.  

They misunderstand the player base here, though.  If you give them to us they feel mandatory and we HAVE TO do them  until rep is maxed.  Daily quest tabards would make sense for this crap.  Then I wouldn't feel like it's such a waste and I could pick the quests I *LIKE* doing instead of grinding them all out.

It also doesn't give me much joy that you cap out on one 'reroll' token a week but every quest gives you a token.  I'm already seeing many complaints about this in my guild and will expect to see it from the casuals soon.  I've got almost 2 stacks of 180 tokens but I can't turn more than 90 in at a time. I'm going to have a huge stockpile by the time I hit exalted with all these factions.  Not a good thing.

Ditto capping my VP.  Here again, the buff for capping is meant to encourage you to do other things or play other characters, but tying it to faction gains means people will grind regardless of their best interests and the designer's intent.

Verdict so far: Content Fun - Engame Grating.   Maybe my attitude will change with LFR unlocking today but it's showing a clear lack of a greater vision for the endgame right now.  They were desperately tossing "more things to do for the casual players" against the wall and didn't pace it right.

[Paelos]

I don't mind the dailies. I mind the gains. It's absurd that the gated part of their content with Golden Lotus only gives 100 rep per completion. Anglers give, what? 500?

There's a happy middle ground there, and they missed it.

[Rendakor]

I wrote the Golden Lotus and it's associated factions off as a loss, for all the reasons Merusk mentioned. It feels like the stupid Firelands dailies all over again. I am working on the Tillers, Anglers, and Order of the Cloud Serpent, and I'll just get my gear the old fashioned way.

In other news, LFR does not seem to have actually unlocked yet. I've got the required ilvl but the tooltip still says "You do not meet the requirements for this dungeon".

[luckton]

In other news, LFR does not seem to have actually unlocked yet. I've got the required ilvl but the tooltip still says "You do not meet the requirements for this dungeon".

Try again in 15 minutes.  Should be open at the 1300 EST reset.

[Ginaz]

Kung fu panda is now 81 and doing Cata quests.  Leveling was incredibly fast and easy, esp. with the daily xp buff I got from going back to Panadria and doing a quick quest.  The monk is windwalker (dps) so I don't know how the other specs are or how they play.  Dps has been pretty good in dungeons so far and once I figured out rotations and priorities it went up quite a bit.  With groups of mobs, I use single target dps rotation with 2 mobs, 3 mobs use spinning crane kick instead of jab to build up chi then single target dps, 4 or more spinning crane with chi burst.  For bosses, I don't wait for tiger brew to get to 10 stacks I just use whatever I have up.  This is the only time I will take tiger claws(? damage buff) up to 3 stacks.  Using it on non-boss mobs seems like a dps loss for the short amount of time they are alive.   Survivability seems good with your healing abilities doing damage, too, and a few short term damage reduction abilities.

[Merusk]

In other news, LFR does not seem to have actually unlocked yet. I've got the required ilvl but the tooltip still says "You do not meet the requirements for this dungeon".

Try again in 15 minutes.  Should be open at the 1300 EST reset.

You're a braver man than I, trying it on the release day.  There's enough fail groups halfway through the content because of people cheating iLevel with mix-spec or PVP gear or queuing for offspec roles just to get in quicker.  I don't want to attempt LFR for this week or next because of this. Glad X-com came out to keep me from attempting it.

[Rokal]

I don't understand the design decision behind Golden Lotus reputation in this xpac.

The goal behind gating two other factions behind Golden Lotus is to not overwhelm you with daily quests you "need" to do. Once you have gotten Golden Lotus to revered, you will most likely be done with Klaxxi (and probably Cloud Serpent too). Two major daily factions/quest chains are replaced by two more daily factions/quest chains. You can (and should) put Klaxxi/Golden Lotus Exalted on hold until Blizzard makes the reputation changes to speed up exalted, if you want the mounts/tabards from each faction.

The only thing more obnoxious than gating Shado-Pan and August Celestials behind Golden Lotus would have been having both factions available now and feeling like I needed to do 50 daily quests a day to "keep up" rather than the 25-30 or so that already feel like too much.

I finished Klaxxi revered last night and I'll finish Cloud Serpent in another 2-3 days. By the time I unlock Shado-Pan and Celestial dailies, I'll have had a bit of time to rest and not feel so overwhelmed by dailies.

The only mistake with the reputations in MoP, imo, was throwing so much VP/JP gear on them with high faction requirements. I'm fine with the gating.

[Ingmar]

The only thing more obnoxious than gating Shado-Pan and August Celestials behind Golden Lotus would have been having both factions available now and feeling like I needed to do 50 daily quests a day to "keep up" rather than the 25-30 or so that already feel like too much.

No, you're mental on this one. I look forward to crap like this being fixed by the time I finally give MoP a spin.

[Nebu]

So... assuming that you started at 85 and played the game 4h daily, how long would it take you to consume all of the Pandaria content with a good guild?

[Rokal]

No, you're mental on this one. I look forward to crap like this being fixed by the time I finally give MoP a spin.

I see that people who aren't playing the game are again experts on the current content 

Every night I hear people complaining about how many dailies they "need" to do before logging. Doubling the amount of dailies available every day would not have helped the situation, as people still would have felt pressured to do them as quickly as possible to access the power rewards they offer.

In a few months I expect Klaxxi/Golden Lotus rep-per-quest to have increased. That will shorten the grind without increasing the amount of quests your character does every day. The gating I expect to stick around, and I'm fine with it.

[Ingmar]

I feel comfortable opining on this one what with the 7 years of rep grinding in WoW I have behind me.  

The "need" to do all available dailies at the fastest possible rate is entirely in your head. You are a thinking adult; you should be capable of prioritizing tasks within the time you have available.

[Rokal]

I feel comfortable opining on this one what with the 7 years of rep grinding in WoW I have behind me. 

The MoP rep grind is truly in a league of it's own. It's like having 3-4 molten fronts to do every day.

The "need" to do all available dailies at the fastest possible rate is entirely in your head. You are a thinking adult; you should be capable of prioritizing tasks within the time you have available.

You realize we're talking about WoW right? Blizzard has never been afraid to make changes to the game to discourage unhealthy behavior that people should have had the common sense to avoid. This isn't any different than waiting a week to unlock raids so that people didn't feel the "need" to be ready to raid within the first 48 hours of the expansion. It's not much different from the reasoning behind the original daily quest limit, valor caps, weekly dungeon bonus limits, etc.

If there is a way to improve your character's power faster, plenty of people will do it even if it causes them to enjoy the game less.

[Zetor]

I just did lfr on my resto shaman. Seems fairly easy and straightforward except for the first boss(es) that seem to do some weird petrifying shit. The LFR raid solved that problem by stacking them up and hitting them repeatedly in the face - only issue then was healing through the explosion damage (120k or so, so wasn't a problem even when two of the guardians blew up at the same time). Last boss also had some trickiness with the spirit world, but it seemed like the main purpose of it was to pop in and pop out for a massive mana regen bonus.

Ended up with a healing cloak, which isn't a bad haul for 3 bosses - my loot track record for LFRs was usually far worse, especially in the first week!


Also, screw rep grinds and dailies (yes, it still needs to be said  )

[Paelos]

So... assuming that you started at 85 and played the game 4h daily, how long would it take you to consume all of the Pandaria content with a good guild?

~24 days to get all the golden lotus dailies done, 12-20 more days to get Shadopan to revered, depending on your other quests you did and your passives. Right now, only one raid is open Moguwhatever Vaults. Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring opens on October 30. LFR modes open in November.

[Merusk]

Paelos didn't include leveling in that, I note.  I played a good 4-5 hours a night from release day and didn't hit 90 until I had the weekend to sit down and catass.  I was taking approx 6-7 hours per level because I had no rested XP and didn't run dungeons more than 1-2 times per level.

 So you've got another week or more just in the leveling content before you get to the rep grind.  More if you decide not to skip zones/ quests as you level and insist on running through every quest.  I haven't touched a whole zone and didn't clear all of the starter zone before hitting 90.

[luckton]

Logged in this afternoon to find some peeps forming a Sha of Anger world boss kill, so's I hopped in and tanked the bitch.  The Horde was a problem, trying to kill us at the same time as the Sha (and this is on Earthen Ring, which mean's we deal with "The Instance"'s AIE guild a LOT), but we overcame.  Didn't get any loot, even after burning my reroll coin, but the cash from the first and second rolls were decent, and hey, achievement.  Also, first time kill gets you an item that starts a quest for free epic boots for your role. 

Then I managed to get into a LFR for Mogu'shan.  Although I had read up on it, I was still kinda confused on how the council fight first boss worked, but the Druid that was leading the thing was really knowledgeable and shot-calling like a boss.  Downed the lion's on the first go.  No loot from either the roll or reroll though, but I did get the first of 10 quest items I needed for the legendary.

Second boss was decent, and once I had the shield part down, it was cake.  Our first attempt ended in failure though as the person who was sent the bomb, while they did successfully run away from the group, was Leap of Faith'd back into the group by a Priest on auto-pilot following the leader's instructions of stacking on the boss  .  Second try was no problem.  Picked up a new set of tanking bracers with my reroll.

Third boss trash was interesting...half the raid died before they realized to kill the bat flyers overhead  .  After that, the boss itself was relatively painless.  Just a little group coordination and we had it down on the first go.  I managed to score a set of tank boots, and burned my reroll before checking the boss' loot table and realizing that he only has ONE piece of tanking gear, and the reroll was a success for another pair of the same tanking boots I has already won.  So now I have two identical LFR epic boots AND the epic tanking boots from the Sha of Anger quest reward.  I put in a ticket to Bliz to see if they'd exchange the Sha quest boots for the DPS version; we'll see what happens 

Overall though, I can see how an ill-prepared or leader-less LFR could fail easily on these bosses.  I think I lucked out because most of the people scoring the gear were probably semi-hardcore people anyways, since they're all sporting at least 460 ilvl averages this soon after release.  I imagine once some of the slower peeps catch up and start queueing things will go downhill.  But by then the nerfs will start to roll in as well.