Re-evaluating MoP Content in Remix

All the content people are engaging with in Mists of Pandaria: Remix right now has been in the game for ten years or more, but I reckon with how little reason WoW gives people to go back to old expansions, most players haven't actually seen or thought about any of it in a long time. Or they might never have played through it in the first place if they only picked up WoW for the first time at some point after 2014.

I've seen quite a few "I forgot how good this was" comments around the internet when people talk about Remix, so I wanted to give my own re-review of some of the content. I did play through most of MoP back when it was the current expansion, and I do have blog posts that talk about my initial impressions from back then to fact-check myself when it comes to what I actually thought of it at the time.

Quests & Story

Looking back at my writings about Pandaria's early questing zones from 2014, I was somewhat more critical of them than I remember, in the sense that after I'd just spent the last two years playing SWTOR almost exclusively, WoW's questing felt a bit clunky and dull in comparison. I did think the zones were beautiful though, and it did occur to me in Remix that I was somewhat reminded of Dragonflight in terms of how much the world is just pleasant to spend time in.

I also liked the pandaren more than I expected, though I was rather put off by the way the factions were portrayed. I saw someone say while talking about Remix that Pandaria showed how to do the faction conflict right, and all I could think was "haha, no". I hated how the introductory quest to the expansion has you machine-gunning down enemies from a helicopter, both for stretching the definition of "steampunk elements" to its limits and for making both factions look like horrible warmongers. No, their behaviour is not portrayed as a good thing in the context of the story, but it's not exactly condemned either? You bring so much suffering onto Pandria and except for Taran Zhu, everyone's just weirdly chill about it. Making me dislike my own faction is not great writing in my opinion.

Speaking of not great writing, I'd forgotten how MoP was also the era of... certain other narrative choices, such as Jaina's "I'm gonna be really mad and kill people" arc. Which, you know, is a valid direction to take her, I just never thought it was well done at all, and it still didn't feel that way upon replaying that storyline in Remix either. Mostly it felt like someone saw how people made fun of Jaina's weepiness in ICC at the end of Wrath and decided to make her do a 180 by making her a "badass" instead, even if it felt forced as hell. And oh, I remember all the grousing about the "A Little Patience" scenario and Varian lecturing a night elf leader who is thousands of years his senior about how to be patient...

Still, after recently spending some time in Cata questing zones and realising just how dire they were, Pandaria was definitely a step up in many ways.

Scenarios

On the subject of scenarios, this is another feature that I saw several people comment on with lines like "gosh, scenarios were so fun; I don't know why Blizzard didn't carry them forward into future expansions". Not me! For me it's really just been a reminder of how clunky and awkward they were and that I don't miss them one bit. Though Blizzard did improve one thing about them in Remix: unlike in original MoP, in Remix, mobs in scenarios actually drop loot.

Dungeons 

I apparently never wrote much about MoP's dungeons, and I didn't have any particularly strong memories associated with any of them. On re-visiting them, they are a pretty varied and fun bunch, even if having the revamped Scarlet Monastery and Scholomance in the mix just because they were redone during that expansion seemed odd, considering that they have nothing to do with the expansion story otherwise. I do have a slight dislike for Mogu'shan Palace, because for some reason it's always that dungeon where I end up with an extremely weak group and everything takes forever to die, a problem I haven't had to the same extent anywhere else.

Raids

My experience with MoP's raids back in 2014 consisted of doing a couple of them in LFR, which went fine at the time. I apparently didn't write about it, but I'm reasonably sure that I must've done at least a couple of wings of Throne of Thunder as well, as it seemed quite familiar upon revisiting it. I never set foot into Siege of Orgrimmar.

Now, you can't really pass any judgement on raid mechanics in Remix, considering that LFR quickly turned into a zerg that has bosses dying in mere seconds, and even when we tried to under-man higher raid difficulties, we weren't too worried about mechanics and basically just wanted to see whether we could burst things down before they could kill us. I do think the first tier of raiding being split into three raids was a good decision back then and also makes that tier more enjoyable in Remix because you get to see a greater variety of environments, in smaller chunks. Comparatively, Throne of Thunder and Siege seem impossibly long with their 12-14 bosses, even when you're just zerging through them. I can't imagine how much of a drag that must've felt like when people were actually raiding those places properly.

Also, it's interesting to see how Blizzard clearly hadn't quite figured out how to handle the RP bits in raids yet back in 2014. Some might complain about things like Lorewalker Cho's endless monologuing between encounters in Mogu'shan Vaults, but I think that actually kind of works in Remix as it provides pacing and gives slower members of the group time to catch up, preventing the resident demon hunter from just rushing to the last boss with no care for anyone else. However, boss fights that are hard-coded to take a certain minium amount of time while some RP plays out, regardless of how fast you kill things, do not seem like great design. I'm looking at you, Galakras. Waiting for Lei Shen to finish humping his pillars is another one that I'm particularly un-fond of.

Isle of Thunder

I didn't write much about the Isle of Thunder back in 2014, other than to mention that I found it kind of disappointing after the way a friend had advertised it to me, and that I hated the chain of solo scenarios required to unlock it. At least I was mentally prepared for the latter this time, though I still wasn't a fan of the mechanic. The Isle itself was... fine, though? It's weird that fighting the forces of the Thunder King is made to be so much more annoying than fighting the enemy faction, but in general, the level of OP-ness in Remix makes it a much more chill place than it was back in the day. Back then, the mob density made it kind of dangerous, but in Remix that's not really a problem. While I haven't spent any Bronze on upgrading my shaman's gear, thousands of threads in her cloak still make it a breeze to waltz into the enemy camp and AoE everything in sight. I also got to see the Trove of the Thunder King scenario through to the end for the first time.

Timeless Isle

The Timeless Isle was somewhat interesting to me in 2014, and I praised it back in the day for encouraging grouping and providing an amazing loot rush for newly minted max-levels (among other things). In Remix, I've admittedly found it a lot less compelling. It's nice to finally have a cloak for easy access to Ordos, but in terms of Remix-specific rewards it doesn't really have much to offer. Similarly, it's convenient to be able to solo all the mobs with ease, but it makes hunting for rares even more of a futile endeavour than it was back in 2014. If a star mob doesn't spawn right in front of you, you'll basically have no chance of ever tagging it, and even then it can fail if someone else manages to one-shot it before you can even get your own instant cast off.

Obvious gameplay differences aside, I've got to admit that Remix has done a pretty good at letting people relive the general "vibe" of late Pandaria, encouraging you to zoom around a beautiful landscape to hunt down rare mobs and grinding endless dailies for rewards. I wonder whether another expansion would have worked quite as well with this framework.

Casual Endgame?

When I first logged back into WoW back in December, I was surprised by how many people on my Battle.net friends list were still playing. I guess that's one of the things that keeps bringing many people back to WoW time after time: always having friends to play with. I actually got several offers to join groups for endgame PvE or PvP, but politely declined as I had no interest in getting back into that aspect of WoW. I just wanted to have some fun exploring the new content on a casual basis with my pet tank. But hey, WoW is supposed to be the perfect game for that kind of thing, isn't it?

While we were levelling, this play style worked very well. We actually played quite a lot then, simply because we were having fun. Ever since we hit max level however, I feel that our engagement has been declining. Right now I basically log on to tend to my crops, serve some noodles, do a bit of archaeology and log off again.

I really loved the Tillers by the way. I loved to see the progression of the story and unlocking more parts of the farm. Once that was done, I worked on becoming best friends with all the individual Tillers. Once that was done, I maxed out all my cooking ways and did the various extra quests that popped up along the way (the whole noodle cart thing, cooking one of each max-level food etc.). But now that that's all said and done I can feel my interest waning. I continue planting crops every day to fulfill work orders, but it doesn't feel nearly as satisfying.

Dailies

I have quite a few factions left that need reputation, but I'm just not really a dailies person. That's not to say that I never do them, but even just a couple of days in a row tend to make me feel burnt out. I just don't do this whole "highly controlled drip-feed of content" thing very well. When I'm new to a faction and my interest is high, I'd happily binge play and do loads of stuff for them, but of course the game won't let me do that.

Timeless Isle

The Timeless Isle is a funny thing. I've noticed that once I'm actually there and doing stuff, I tend to have decent amounts of fun, but for some reason I really struggle to motivate myself into going there in the first place. I blame the stupid flight path that insists on going all over Jade Forest before actually turning towards the Isle...

Pet Battles

I haven't really said anything about pet battles aside from a brief mention when I first discovered the feature and that it looked pretty fun. I actually picked out my favourite pets after that and made an effort to level them, but around pet level twelve or thirteen my interest just fizzled out again as it started to feel pretty dull and grindy to continually swap pets in and out just to fight dozens of parrots. Switching zones for variety in opponents didn't really help either. I don't know... I don't think it's you, pet battles; it's me.

Dungeons

We did each Pandaria dungeon at least once, including the heroics (I think there might be one or two we haven't done on heroic left; not sure right now) but there doesn't seem to be much reason to do them beyond seeing the story once, as the gear drops become useless quickly and valor rains from the sky anyway.

Scenarios

There are actually quite a few scenarios left that we haven't done yet, but I haven't been too impressed by the whole feature anyway. I think my interest in queuing for them took a nosedive after the randomiser gave us one too many that seemed to be part of a bigger story somewhere that we didn't know anything about, leaving me with the feeling that I shouldn't queue up again until I've explored every nook and cranny of Pandaria and can be sure that I know the context. (This is an interesting contrast to the dungeons by the way, where I had no problem "jumping ahead" in the story.)

Gearing Up

Ah, that old staple of MMO entertainment: if you've got nothing else to do, improve your character's gear! I recalled that working reasonably well even on a casual basis in WoW as it was before I left it, as you'd get justice and valor points for running dungeons and could then use those to buy gear that was only slightly worse than current raid drops.

How times have changed!

Bizarrely, valor is pretty much raining from the skies these days, as you get some even just for doing daily quests, but finding things to actually spend it on seems to be the tricky part now. I don't find myself saving up to buy valor gear, I find myself frantically searching for vendors because I'm about to hit the cap again and don't know what to spend my money on! I thought it was highly hilarious when I flew to a place where valor and justice point vendors were highlighted on the in-game map, just to find that the NPC labelled as "Valor Quartermaster" won't accept any currency but justice points. Instead, bits and pieces of valor gear are hidden away on various reputation vendors across Pandaria, if you can find them and if you have the right reputation level, but if you want anything close to a full set of "good" gear, it seems that the only way to get one is to run Looking For Raid.

Now, since the last time my pet tank and I went in there wasn't too bad, we decided to give it another go. And it still wasn't too bad, but frankly, as a "casual" form of endgame I think it kind of sucks. The problem is that if you factor in queue times, time to actually kill all the trash and bosses and the occasional wipe, just clearing one raid still takes several hours... so basically as long as a "proper" raid, only without any of the fun bits like socialising or facing challenging content. After spending a weekend in various LFR runs, we were utterly exhausted and once again feeling burnt out.

I think the end of my nostalgic revisiting of the World of Warcraft may be drawing near...

Monday Random Thoughts

I hope the Grumpy Elf won't mind me stealing one of his frequently reused post titles... but it is Monday, and I have a couple of things to talk about that don't really warrant posts of their own.

First off, I was vastly amused when I saw this in chat on the Silvermoon server (where my little Draenei alt lives):

For all the complaining people do about the evilness of random lockboxes, they are apparently popular enough that people feel the need to make their own if a game doesn't provide them. I wonder if someone at Blizzard is watching and taking note of this demand... No, don't answer that; I'm aware that this type of gambling is more likely to break some kind of in-game rule than be adapted as an example to follow.

Speaking of my Draenei alt, I was questing in the Plaguelands with her and thinking about how despite its age and many issues, WoW is still amazingly beautiful and atmospheric in many places. Of course, then I approached the dead town of Caer Darrow and...

HI LOL LOVE IS IN THE AIR! This is just one reason I hate all those seasonal festivals in WoW. There is room for silliness in the game of course, but the way it has become ubiquitous and unescapable, even in places where it really hurts the setting - that annoys me. It makes the world feel ridiculous when it really doesn't have to be.

Speaking of ridiculous things, the amount of self-healing tanks and dps do in this game nowadays has become a joke. I've been thinking about that for a while, but it really struck me the other day when I managed to get stuck and found myself unable to die.

Continuing my little side project of showing my pet tank all the old raids he never saw, we decided to venture into Ulduar. I was a bit rusty on tactics and didn't explain some things very well, so I ended up trapped by a constrictor tentacle on Yogg-Saron and Pet Tank died. Oh well, we'll just wipe up and try again - or so I thought. Only one problem: I couldn't die. My sanity didn't go down any further, Ysera's Gift kept healing me, and I was stunned and unable to do anything. My pet tank eventually left the group to get his corpse kicked out of the instance and I Alt+F4ed out of the game. When I started it back up a few minutes later, guess what? I was still alive and trapped by that bloody tentacle. There were tentacles everywhere and yet they couldn't kill me.

Once I surpassed about a dozen debuffs, my health finally started to dip... just for Hodir to save my life with his flash freeze, and the moment it wore off I was immediately back in a constrictor. I've never missed SWTOR's /stuck command so badly (which allows you to "commit suicide" while in combat). Eventually I managed to achieve death by immediately clicking the flash freeze away the next time it saved me and instantly jumping towards a crusher tentacle so it could whack me dead. Death never felt like such a relief before.

Finally, on a more positive note, I've had some more fun on the Timeless Isle. I found a treasure-hunting quest in a mound of dirt, and when it became obvious that it was directing me towards the one part of the island I hadn't been to yet (across the broken bridge), I finally got off my butt to find out how to get there.

That bridge is a funny thing to the ignorant new player. You watch others run up to it and just fly across, as if by magic! If you're anything like me, you might think: aha, so it's like an Indiana Jones leap of faith thing; I just have to run straight off and... oh, guess not.

I don't expect to get a legendary cloak any time soon, and while there was an option to get across with a vendor-bought glider, I'm too attached to my timeless coins for other purposes, so I was delighted when I found out that there is actually a way to get up there for free: attack a passing albatross until it grabs you, then just hang in for the ride! It's such a silly thing, but in this case I really enjoyed it. It's nice to have an option to get around for players that aren't as advanced, even if it's slower and more of a hassle.

Another thing I found on the Timeless Isle was a quest for a "secret" noodle recipe. It's really old school, requiring you to run back and forth a lot and to complete two dungeons. It amuses me how Blizzard has repeatedly sworn off that kind of design, yet every now and then they still put stuff like that in. Anyway, it was quite fun, until it cumulated in another solo scenario, which required me to... serve noodle dishes to pandas. It's actually pretty fun as a mini-game; it just seemed kind of bizarre to me since I don't recall ever seeing anything this blatantly "gamey" in WoW before, for all the gamification it has suffered over the years. In fact, it reminded me a lot of an old C64 game I used to play, called Tapper, that required you to rush back and forth behind a bar to serve drinks to impatiently approaching customers. Just... weird. The only thing that drives me crazy about it is that the background music is the same little ditty that plays in all the Pandarian inns... and which is my least favourite bit of Warcraft music ever.

The Timeless Isle Experience

One of the interesting things about returning to WoW after having missed a whole expansion's worth of patches is that once you hit max level, the amount of things to do seems almost overwhelming. We started dabbling in various dailies right away, but the thing that interested me the most was the Timeless Isle, so that's where we've been spending most of our time at ninety so far.

Basically, from what I'd heard about the Timeless Isle, it sounded like WoW's attempt at copying part of Guild Wars 2's fairly successful model to see how well their own playerbase liked it: No Very few quests to give direction, and hidden treasure chests and strong mobs with shared tagging mechanics everywhere. (Disclaimer: I've never played Guild Wars 2, so this assessment is just based on things I read about the game.)

Reception seems to have been kind of mixed from what I can tell. Sure, it's popular as the most recent thing "to do", but from what I've read people seem to either love it (for all the easy loot) or hate it (for its lack of direction and feeling pointlessly grindy).

Either way, it seemed like the best way to improve our gear quickly, and as a team of two the fact that mobs were a bit tougher didn't seem to pose a problem. In reality, we still did some dying, especially early on when we didn't know all the various mobs' abilities yet, but it wasn't too bad.

Let me make a list of things I've personally liked about the Timeless Isle so far and a list of things I haven't:

Like:

- The loot rush. I'm a bit hesitant to call gearing up via the Timeless Isle the path of least resistance, considering that some of the mobs put up a lot of resistance, but still... there is loot all over; it doesn't just drop from mobs. You might click on a random sparkle on the ground and come away with another purple piece. The first day you spend on the Timeless Isle as a fresh ninety, you'll come away from the experience with your character having vastly increased in power and it's intoxicating.

- It's busy. After how dead the game felt for most of our levelling up, it's refreshing to see an area that's genuinely busy at all times of day.

- Grouping is encouraged. I'm not a fan of the idea of shared tagging applying to everything, because that just encourages people to hit as many things as possible while hoping that someone else will put the actual work into killing them, but for special mobs I've been in favour of the mechanic for quite a while. It helps that most mobs are actually tough enough that receiving any kind of help is generally welcome.

- Since I score pretty high as an explorer, I quite enjoy the way you can just run around and find random things to click on. The achievement panel provides some direction in terms of listing things to do, but without giving too much away. While I'm sure there are very detailed guides out there for every aspect of the island, there's no real pressure to use them to "keep up" or anything like that.

- Chests are shared! I've blasted Blizzard in the past for making everything that requires picking things up from the ground extremely group-unfriendly, but as it turns out they do have the technology to not make your group mates hate you! When you loot a chest near a party member on the Timeless Isle, it instantly respawns for the other person so they can loot it as well. Of course that won't help you if the druid gets a plate piece from it while the warrior gets leather, but it's the thought that counts...

- I like that the wildlife on the island is of the types that you need to kill lots of for cooking ingredients anyway; it gives the whole process additional purpose.

Dislike:

- Coming down from the loot rush: The loot you get is random. On the first day, when pretty much everything is an upgrade, that doesn't matter and everything you find will seem amazing anyway. But once you've looted your seventh pair of leather shoulders while still sporting greens in most slots, the randomness quickly gets annoying, and after the rush of initial upgrades the whole process starts to feel grindy and unrewarding instead.

- It's too busy sometimes. Rare spawns die within seconds of appearing, and even with respawn timers that seem pretty short, it can be hard to get a hit in even with shared tagging. Chat is full of addon spam about how person X just killed Y mob, which most people won't really care about.

- A lot of deadly mob abilities feel annoyingly gimmicky. It's all about dodging out of the circle or cone on the ground because that's all the rage in the newfangled action MMOs now, so WoW's got to have it too, whether that makes sense within the rest of the game or not. Whatever happened to those things called interrupts? Oh, they don't work on ninety percent of mob abilities, for no real reason.

- As far as grouping goes, there is working together and "working together". The zergs that form against the stronger rares are more of the latter. Sure, you all share the goal of wanting to kill the mob, but other than that it's every man and woman for themselves, meaning that people will make the mobs jump and twitch carelessly, which leads to whole groups of other players getting one-shot by things like conal abilities. In small doses it's kind of funny, but mostly it just makes me long for being part of a proper co-ordinated group where I don't have to worry about other people being more of a danger than a help.

- After a few days I already find myself getting a bit bored of the island. Coming down from the loot rush (see above) has been disappointing, and after that just killing things over and over for rep and coins seems a bit boring, especially since the island isn't actually very large.