I heard you like pandas. I know I like pandas. A lot. And not just because I look like a Pandaren irl. (Minus, you know, the fur. Because that would be weird.) Mists of Pandaria launched a week ago today, and as evidenced by the total lack of blog posts and streaming... I've been more than a little obsessed with it.
MoP introduced an entire new continent with something like five adventuring zones, a shiny new I Can't Believe It's Not Dalaran city, a shitload of new factions, gear, instances, these new scenario things... Oh. And World of Farmvillecraft. Because killing dragons wasn't enough, now we also need to make friends, grow random shit, and decorate our farms. And I do mean need, because unless you want to pay a ton of gold for your cooking ingredients, farming is just about the only way to get what you need for making food. In short: there's a LOT to do, and in seven days of playing stupid amounts of hours, I've only begun to scratch the surface.
Now. To catch up those of you who weren't my single sad mystery viewer on launch day, I'm playing my disc priest as my main right now. The week's guild drama may change that on me again, but for now I'm a priest. I went 85-90 as disc, and given the chance...I'd do it the same way all over again. It was slow, but safe- a lot like levelling as prot, which is how I plan to run my warrior up. Spent the week in the same room as an arms warrior and a holy priest running up as shadow, and from the sound of things... I definitely had the easiest time with the quests. MoP mobs are more or less tailored to people in LFR gear or better, so if you're dragging up a toon with less than probably 380 ilvl, you're going to be in for some pain and frustration. (Hell, my priest was 396 when I started her out, and by about level 88 she was getting her taint punched in.)
The quests are fun. Lots of fun. Most of them amount to Go Kill Ten Monkeys and Click On Fifteen Piles of Poop, but between the mobs yelling shit at you like "I'm gonna ook you in the dooker" and using abilities like "hit you harder"... I felt pretty well engaged. I loremastered the first four zones before I hit 90, which was just enough to meet the Pandarian Night's Watch (seriously, if you listen to the Shado Pan guys... We are the watchers on the wall? HELLO! GRR Martin called and he wants his money) , the Farmville people, and the fishermanz. Oh, and Hemmet Nessingwary. Because he's everywhere innocent critters need mass murdered. I have yet to find this expansion's answer to the Ring of Blood/Crucible of Carnage, but I'm sure it's somewhere in the Dreadwastes or something.
The crafting is easy. I was a bit perturbed when I discovered that every last one of my goddamned alch recipes is a disco after the heal pots you train at 525, but they've massively upped the disco rate since Burning Crusade. I had all of my recipes by 600, minus any reusables or the epic alchemist stone, which I'm starting to think are a myth. There are flowers literally everywhere, excepting Golden Lotus, which is nowhere and yet needed for every single flask or gem transmute ever. Now, you CAN trade your spirits of harmony (the asshole primal thingies this time around, which are BoP and you might have ten of by the time you hit 90) for three golden lotus, but... You can also use them to bypass your 24h cooldown on your living steel transmute. (Remember Truegold? Yeahhhhhh....) With herbs and ore being ridiculously common and beasts being everywhere, I've yet to hear of anyone having issues with the primary tradeskills. The secondaries, on the other hand...
Hooooly crap, did they turn cooking into a chore. There are now six different "ways" of cooking, and each levels independently of the others. Each way represents a stat, except Way of the Brew, which...hell if I know. It's there. It's booze? I haven't looked at it too much. Each Way takes different ingredients, from meats to fish to vegetables, as well as "fuel items" (if you've played EQ2 and crafted, you'll know what I mean by that) that are purchased with cooking tokens. I'm currently stalled right the hell out at 595 in Way of the Oven because you have no option but to make feasts to progress through each Way, and they take a fucklot of mats. The meats and the fish aren't so bad, but having to come up with 50 vegetables, when you're lucky to harvest twenty in a day before you've upgraded your farm (which you can only do with faction) is a royal pain.
Yeah. Love the idea Blizz, but if I wanted to play Farmville or Harvest Moon, I'd play those games. I don't want to play Warcraftville on three different characters to be able to feed my raid every week. (And yes, you need to max all six Ways to get the recipe for the raid feast for this expansion. Lame-o.)
And then there's fishing. You would think that fishing wouldn't be too bad, especially with the guild perk that makes you get more frequent skill-ups, but... Yeahno. I'm sitting at 560 if I'm lucky, and I've done a LOT of fishing for my tradeskill crap. Archaeology's a lot easier, and marginally more interesting because now you have a random chance to spawn mobs that drop Yay More Fragments. I've yet to get anything good from them, but...not complaining.
Anyway. On the whole so far, I'm loving MoP. I only just got my ilvl high enough to queue for heroics, so hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to get a good write-up done of those, the new scenarios, and my baby mistweaver.
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