The original Vale of Eternal Blossoms has, strangely, turned out to be WoW's most short-lived and exclusive zone. Some of us may have been sad when the Cataclysm ravaged Darkshore, but at least people had had a chance to play and explore that area in its original state for a full four years. Not to mention that it was eventually brought back via Classic in 2019.
Comparatively, the original version of the Vale of Eternal Blossoms was released in September 2012 and only got to hang around for about a year before it was destroyed, with no way to go back. Mists of Pandaria Classic revived it this past summer, but in only a few months time it's scheduled to be destroyed again, which is why I didn't want to miss my chance to have a proper look at it this time around.
I actually played for a few months during Mists of Pandaria's original run, but that was after the Vale had already been ravaged by Garrosh. I actually found that experience a little confusing. I'd heard a lot of complaints about the grindiness of the dailies for the Golden Lotus, but I never actually got to see them for myself. The faction still existed, technically, but they weren't really represented by anyone in particular. The first time I came across the Fallen Protectors encounter in Siege of Orgrimmar, it seemed strange to me that these characters were clearly people we were supposed to know, but I had never come across them even after questing my way through the entire continent of Pandaria (as it was then).
Seeing this content from the beginning in MoP Classic was actually an interesting experience. The Vale gets opened up apparently not just to outsiders, but many Pandaren get to see it for the first time as well and stream into it to settle there. Though it doesn't remain entirely peaceful for long even then, as Mogu invade from the north the moment you hit the level cap, at which point the Golden Lotus (a group that includes those who would later become the Fallen Protectors) give you dailies to fight off said Mogu as well as other, more minor threats.
In fairness, I can see why people didn't love these. Basically, you get sent to the Golden Stair in the north every day to fight some Mogu, and then get a shorter follow-up at another location in the Vale to fight off some sprites or crocolisks or whatever. As far as dailies in Pandaria go, these are not the most inspired. However, for me as someone who appreciates exploring and documenting things, it's still been interesting to see all the different quests and get to know the various NPCs.
The moment the Vale was destroyed, they were basically all killed off and their quests removed from the game. I'm thinking the devs must've still been riding high on the Cataclysm idea of "it's so boring that the world never changes, what if a bad guy blew everything up and it actually showed as blown up in game (and then stayed that way for the next decade)". It didn't really sink in until later that players weren't necessarily huge fans of that.
Interestingly, the Vale was "kind of" restored in BfA... just so it could be assaulted by Old God forces instead every other week. However, this version of the Vale is a) still quite inaccessible, as you'll only be able to see the bronze dragonflight NPC to switch between versions if your character has done a certain amount of content in BfA (I don't know the details of that, I just know that I could only go there on my human monk) and b) not exactly the same as the original. While its general beauty is mostly restored, the old quests are still gone, and even the environment isn't exactly the same. The two giant stone guardians that were destroyed in the first assault on the Vale remain broken for example, with their broken-off pieces just a bit tidied up.
The so-called Twin Monoliths in their different states: in the original Vale (top), in the destroyed Vale (middle) and the restored Vale (bottom).
Another interesting detail is that there are some quests that reference the Vale in quest text, such as "The Golden Dream" which is supposed to give you a vision of the Vale while questing in the Valley of the Four Winds. After it's been destroyed, the quest giver is distraught and yells "No... That's not right... It should be beautiful. It should be pristine!". What they were meant to say originally, while the Vale still is pristine... I don't know, because the Classic devs forgot to update those little details, and seemingly all the relevant quests still have the dialogue about the destroyed Vale from the start, months before it's supposed to happen.
I can honestly say that I don't remember the Vale at all.
ReplyDeleteOnce I hit max level on my Rogue (I think it was somewhere during the second raid when she finished leveling from 1 to 90) I went straight into Battlegrounds. I didn't bother with dailies or anything else, since the guild I was in was effectively dead and I was seriously considering quitting myself. I was still more than a bit annoyed that Blizz kind of smushed all of Asian cultures into one amalgam and called it Pandaria, and that I couldn't go 20 feet without running into another toon named in reference to Po from Kung Fu Panda* didn't help.
Now that I think about it, I believe the area blew up about 4 months after I got there, so I didn't have time to become accustomed to the place like everybody else did. If nothing else, what I remembered the most was Blizzard playing up the rebellion against Garrosh to the point where that was practically the only thing you'd see on the BNet login area.
*Honestly, I loved that movie; I was just oversaturated with Pandaren everywhere. I once was in a Warsong Gulch BG where I was the only non-Pandaren in the entire match.