Mists of Pandaria – One Week In

The Good, the Bad, and the Timesinks.

There’s plenty to talk about when you start looking into Mists of Pandaria. It certainly feels like everybody has heard about it and has an opinion one way or the other. That is to say, they either love it or hate it. On the other hand, I however find myself on the fence between the two. There are things I like about the new expansion, and things I absolutely despise.

 

Let’s get the likeable stuff wrapped up first, given it’s all fairly widely spoken of.

The game is still WoW. There’s no escaping it. But it’s prettier WoW, with excellent story and entertaining if time-wasting additions like Pet Battles. For the most part the classes are the same as they’ve always been; the combat and levelling too. I found the levelling fun, if again a little too brief much like Cataclysm levelling was. From an equipment and aesthetic point of view, the style of the expansion is also a nice change.

I hit 90 a few days ago now, and have been trying to figure out how to get raid ready with the least amount of hassle and grind. The raiding in this game was largely what kept me playing in Cataclysm. What I don’t enjoy is PUG 5 mans and grinding reputation. I was hoping I could get by after having a few things crafted and spending the leftover Justice points from 85, and maybe gritting my teeth through dailies or PUGs long enough to get a piece of Valor gear or two. Just enough to creep into LFR and work the rest of the way up.

But alas, the game has given out a resounding NOPE to such plans. Justice and Valor gear is now purchasable depending on having both the currency to buy it, and now the reputation. Wonderful. I have to grind rep dailies and instances to get Valor gear. And to top it off, there are no rep tabards this time around, so the reputation gains are primarily through dailies. And there are a LOT of dailies.

I do understand that they don’t want people leaping into the content too quickly. But I find myself at something of a crossroads with the game because of this. It’s a case of limited time and immediate gain. I have a limited amount of time to spend on games every day. I have multiple games to play. Out of everything I play, Mists of Pandaria is the only thing telling me “You have to sink X hours into all of these things you hate doing so you can eventually do something you enjoy” whereas other games, such as Guild Wars 2 or the Planetside 2 beta, or other betas under heavier NDAs for the moment, say to me “Jump right in to whatever you want to do here!”.

Now, doing something unpleasant for an eventual payoff can be rewarding on some level. Like how working in a crappy job can be a stepping stone to something greater. But in the context of a leisure activity with alternatives, I’m not entirely sure the payoff is worth the time spent. And other issues pop up because of it too, like keeping up with guild members and fighting for raid spots.

Still, the gear and rep grind is only a single hump. Past that, and I can head in the same direction I did for Cataclysm. That is to say, get into raids and never look back at reputation and 5 mans. I think pre-Mists I hadn’t been inside a 5 man dungeon in WoW since a couple of months into Cataclysm. 

Given it’s only been a week and it could be some time before things smooth out and function well, with the rep dailies potentially taking a few more weeks to hit exalted with anything, I will have to keep trying to stay interested. At least long enough to work out whether or not I want to finally drop the game. But casual folk take note, don’t be like me and hope to leap into raiding without a fair amount of grind to set you up for it.

- ED