MoP Pre-Patch Impressions

Mere days after I hit the level cap in Cata Classic last week, the Mists of Pandaria pre-patch dropped. I wasn't particularly excited about it, but I couldn't help but notice some changes as I logged into my hunter to do the daily cooking quest (like I said before, the profession dailies were easily one of my favourite things about Cata, so I'm still doing those until I max out my cooking and get the achievement for completing all the variations in all three capitals). 

The new talents were there, which I didn't particularly like in original MoP and still don't like now. Most notably though, my bow was in my bags and my hunter only had her staff equipped. Re-equipping the bow resulted in the staff going back into the bag instead.

Ah yes, remember how I said last month that one of the things I was enjoying about Cata was that hunters could still wield both a ranged and a melee weapon? R.I.P. to that particular class fantasy; I just never realised that this was a change that happened in MoP.

It actually made me realise that class fantasy aside, it's really kind of bizarre how Blizzard handled this. Survival didn't become a melee spec until Legion, so why would you let hunters equip a melee weapon only and then have them be locked out of using every single one of their combat abilities? Talk about a giant noob trap.

In fact, this is something that's still confusing in retail as I noticed the other day when I rolled up a survival hunter, because you still start with a ranged weapon and then when you hit level 10 and spec survival, you initially have like... one ability you can actually use, with everything else suddenly greyed out. It just feels terrible. Also, I only found out at that point that retail hunters no longer start with a pet for some reason? But you don't get a quest to tame one either, so... I have no idea how new players are supposed to figure this shit out. Anyway, I digress.

I had also logged into my feral druid briefly before the patch, to make the boat ride to Valgarde now that I'd remembered where to get on the right boat. Checking on her after the pre-patch, I was dismayed to be reminded that MoP was also when they did away with the whole notion of being a bear-cat, as feral was split into new feral (cat only) and guardian (bear only). I hadn't realised just how many gameplay changes that I didn't like actually came about in Mists of Pandaria. Both Wrath and Cata did things that I felt at least ambivalent about at the time, meaning I saw both pros and cons to them, but it seems MoP was when stuff got really bad, considering how many of its gameplay changes are triggering a pure "oh yeah, I remember hating that" response in me.

Anyway, with all those bad feelings, that likely would've been it for me and the pre-patch (other than to continue my daily cooking), but then I learned that Pandaren were already available and that you'd earn a free mount in retail for completing their starting zone in Classic, mirroring the promotion they had going on with a protodrake and the death knight starting zone during Wrath. I did that one in spite of feeling less than lukewarm about WotLK Classic, so re-doing the panda starting zone this time seemed like a no-brainer.

I'd actually only been through the Wandering Isle once before, about three years ago, so I was happy to pay it another visit. I also thought it would be interesting to do it as a monk this time, since I didn't create my first monk until BfA and therefore had no idea how different the class was going to be in its initial iteration.

The first difference was in fact immediate and very noticeable as my first ability was a move called "Jab" that actually hit my opponent with my staff, which I thought was delightful. In retail, monks don't use their weapons for anything, ever (which also makes the first Pandaren quest, which asks you to pick up a weapon and show that you can use it, quite nonsensical).

I made it to about level five, slowly jabbing things to death, when it occurred to me that while the Wandering Isle was very pretty, it was also quite boring to hit things to death so slowly. It was only then that I realised - oh right, we're in MoP, where you learn new abilities automatically and I guess they don't even show up on my bar? (Looking back, they did used to go on your bar in original MoP if there was space, so maybe this is just a bug.) Checking my spell book actually revealed new abilities I hadn't even realised I had access to, and that sped things up considerably, even if it was very weird to me to see Tiger Palm be a Chi spender instead of builder, which is the polar opposite of how it works in retail.

I was kind of surprised by how busy the island was, because on a lark, I had decided to create this "throwaway panda" on Hydraxian Waterlords, my old RP server home. Even though it was soft-merged into the regular PvE servers back in Classic BC and was meant to be closed down entirely in the run-up to Wrath, it's somehow still there, not just not closed, but not even locked for new character creation like most of the other old servers are. I figured it was going to be more pleasant to level in this more quiet environment without too much competition for mobs, so still seeing ~40 characters in the zone every time I played was a surprise.

When I got to Stormwind on the other hand, there were only about ten people there, and the auction house looked mostly empty. I wonder if there are any genuine holdouts still playing on this server or if it was mostly players like me who decided that levelling a throwaway character was more pleasant to do in a low pop environment.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Completing the storyline on the Wandering Isle, it was still a bit too linear for my personal taste, with a lot of running about, but overall pleasant. It's probably a better "island introduction" to the game than Exile's Reach to be honest. I was kind of surprised by how emotional the ending still made me.

The Alliance intro for Pandaren was new to me and was actually pretty funny! You meet with King Varian and he lectures you a bit about what it means to join the Alliance, but finishes by asking you to spar with him, because he's curious about the Pandaren fighting style. Now, when this duel starts, he has a buff that gives him 100% dodge chance, so all your attacks miss and he taunts you about it. Until... one hit suddenly goes through, and you get this slow-motion cut scene of him falling backwards and your companions looking absolutely horrified that you just punched the king of Stormwind, which I thought was hilarious. He just laughs it off and simply wanders off afterwards.

Anyway, with my free mount claimed and nothing else about the pre-patch looking particularly appealing, I'll probably coast by just doing those cooking dailies until the expansion releases properly and I can start my journey to the Vale. Though probably even that will have to wait at least a week or two, as I have no particular desire to compete with the launch day crowds.

Pandas of Draenor

Just as I was starting to wonder whether I still had enough of a reason to stay subscribed to WoW, my husband came in clutch for Blizzard by expressing a desire to pick up retail again, now that our new-expansion gearing frenzy in SWTOR was coming to an end for the time being. Much to my surprise, he wasn't that keen on going to Zereth Mortis yet, but wanted to roll up a new pair of characters, this time to level through Warlords of Draenor.

After a bit of discussion about what to go for, we ended up with a pair of pandaren, him a brewmaster monk, me a discipline priest. I've certainly come a long way from being notably underwhelmed by the Mists of Pandaria announcement, to finding the expansion itself kind of neat, to actually playing a pandaren myself!

I had never played through the pandaren starting experience before and found it enjoyable enough, though I did get a bit of a sense of déjà vu towards the end, which makes me think that I must have watched a playthrough of the zone on YouTube at some point many years ago.

And then we were off to Warlords of Draenor, the one remaining expansion from which I hadn't played any content before, though it does of course have a strong reputation. I remember when it was first announced I was actually kind of intrigued and considered checking it out, but that interest didn't last long. I also recall watching my husband play through the content on his own at the time and commenting how ridiculous it was that all the orc warlords appeared with their names floating next to them in giant letters - I guess Blizzard didn't think people would be able to tell them apart otherwise. My opinion on this was unchanged when we got to that part ourselves.

The introduction to Draenor in general is a fast-paced adventure that feels super odd to jump into story-wise with the new levelling system. A moment ago we were noobish pandas only just earning the right to leave the Wandering Isle for the first time, the next Khadgar greets us as famous champions who are Azeroth's only hope. I know that opting into Chromie Time includes implicit acceptance that the timeline won't really make sense, but this just seemed like a particularly extreme contrast. There also isn't any real context for why we suddenly have to go through the Dark Portal, it just feels very rushed and out of nowhere. Also, speaking of Khadgar: I thought he was kind of funny in Legion, but here the first impression he makes is actually one of being rather cold and uncaring... not a fan.

After the intro we were off to Shadowmoon Valley to start building our garrison, another feature that was reported on a lot back in the day. My husband seems to be very fond of it (he has several across his stable of characters) but he does love base-building games in general. I was a little overwhelmed at first to be honest, especially with him going on about all the things I "should" be doing to upgrade my garrison asap. The process looks like it must have been sped up a lot compared to back in the day, but it still costs resources - in fact it's ironic that the garrison had a reputation for being a massive gold generator when WoD was current but now seems to have been reduced to a gold sink instead - my husband confessed that he sent his new alt several tens of thousands of gold to be able to upgrade his buildings asap. As I've refused to do this so far, my own garrison is still extremely basic as my panda priest has only earned a few hundred gold throughout her questing so far.

At the time of me writing this, we've only done a few quests in Shadowmoon Valley plus one random dungeon and we're already level thirty, so I anticipate that just like with Legion, we'll hit fifty very quickly and will then continue running through the rest of the zones overlevelled, one-shotting everything for almost zero XP just to see the story.

While it's been fun to level with my husband again, I have to admit that the expansion content itself hasn't really grabbed me yet. The Alliance garrison being situated in a zone where it's basically always night is an emotional downer for me, and I struggle a bit to care about what we're doing. I think it's a mix between the whole alternate timeline thing and the story just not establishing very well what our motivations are. It was one thing to stop a sudden and barely explained invasion in the intro, but what exactly our beef with all the orcs is now that we're settling down on Draenor ourselves feels a lot more fuzzy. I was always told that the hate for WoD mainly came from the fact that it had little to no content added after launch but that the levelling experience was fine, but to be honest it doesn't really strike me as all that great so far either. We'll see whether that opinion changes as we explore further.

Oh, and as a fun little aside: I'd only been playing my new panda priest for a few hours when a friend whispered me on Battle.net:

Him: Did you really name a character Pishin? [Panda-Shin... get it?]
Me: Please don't tell me it means something bad!
Him: Oh no... OK, my lips are sealed.

At this point I put "Pishin" into Google of course... first result was a city/district in Pakistan, that didn't seem so bad? However, a bit further down the page I found "(Scots): urine, piss" - and of course the friend mentioned above is Scottish. Sigh!