Editor's Note: The most recent impressions will always be posted at the end of the article.
If you're a PC gamer, it’s likely the mention of World of Warcraft affects you in some way. Maybe it triggers pangs of regret over dumping years of your life into Blizzard’s virtual theme park, rosy nostalgia of the vanilla days, earnest anticipation of what’s coming next or a confusing mix of them all. With this fourth expansion, released in a climate of dipping subscriber numbers, Blizzard seems to be building out the end game, adding in many dungeons and long-form progression tracks to keep players busy well beyond launch.
If you still play regularly, maybe you checked out a lot of Mists’ content in beta testing earlier this year, and have been eagerly waiting for launch. Or maybe you’re one of the many who left World of Warcraft behind some at some point during its nearly eight year run, and were waiting for this expansion to log back in.
If you’re part of the latter crowd, expect a longer than usual readjustment period after logging back in. Blizzard recently patched in a significant change to its talent system, getting rid of the old talent trees entirely. In place of the old trees, every fifteen levels you’ll get a choice of one of three new talents, a system where there isn’t necessarily one single best choice.
Take my 85 Paladin, for example. The level 15 tier of talents includes Speed of Light, which boosts move speed by 70 percent for eight seconds, Long Arm of the Law, which spikes move speed up 45 percent for three seconds after a Judgment, and Justice, which gives me an always active 15 percent movement speed bonus with additional percentage bonuses for stored charges of Holy Power. I’ve so far been using Speed of Light to help get away from attacking Horde after stunning them with Fist of Justice (another talent, essentially Hammer of Justice with a halved cooldown), but can see where the other choices would be useful.
Many of the old talent tree abilities you may have been used to have been rolled into class specializations, where you're given different abilities depending on which role you choose for a class. In addition, the Glyph system was adjusted. Prime Glyphs are no longer in the game, so expect to spend a little more time figuring all that out before getting into the rhythm of leveling and dungeon running again.
If you'd like to forget your old characters and create a new one, Blizzard is offering the Monk and Pandaren as new class and race options. Of course, if you really do want to create a Monk, which can be specialized as a healer, tank or damage dealer, you’ll need to level all the way through the old content again to reach the 85 – 90 areas of Pandaria, so it’s going to be a while before you reach the bulk of Blizzard’s latest work. At least if you create a Pandaren character you'll get a glimpse of Pandaria early on, as the 1 - 10 experience takes place in an all new zone that's set on the back of a giant turtle. Pandaren characters are also neutral initially, so you won't pick Horde or Alliance until after you clear the starting area.
Barring any devastating launch issues, I’ll log into World of Warcraft after Mists of Pandaria officially goes live in the United States and post impressions of the new content below as I play for review. Then when I’ve seen enough, a scored review will appear on IGN.
Mists of Pandaria starts strong. As a member of the Alliance I arrived at the new continent on an airship and was immediately tasked with performing gyrocopter bombing runs through hectic warzones. The excitement lasted through initial few hours because Blizzard did a good job of mixing story delivery through voice-over dialogue and standard quest boxes with action so it never felt stagnant and I quickly understood the conflict.
This continued further into the first zone. Blizzard clearly has a lot of experience designing quests and controlling pacing. Quests are bunched in clumps of two and three and can be knocked out easily within 20 or so minutes. Most layer kill with collect tasks so you’re always making progress with both at once. In cases where there are single kill targets, the target isn’t tagged like a normal mob, so if another player starts attacking it first, you can still join in after and get quest credit.
One particular highlight was a multipart flashback sequence where I was given control of different characters to actually take an interactive role in the story they told. Though no segment of the flashback featured very sophisticated gameplay, the segments were short enough that it didn’t really matter, and there was enough humor used throughout to keep it interesting (including a tragic event involving a pet raccoon).
Though the majority of the quests have been speedy, polished and generally featured some kind of entertaining NPC interactions, there are still the old-school WoW style of ‘kill turtles until you get six pieces of meat’ quests, which really just feel like time-wasters. In my play time so far they seem to be in the minority, but they’re still there. And in the cases where there is a small bunch of mobs that need to be killed for a quest, it’s still pretty annoying to run into player behavior where some are AoE pulling everything and greedily killing it. One player even blatantly lied to me about a quest objective so I’d leave the area, giving him the opportunity to make the kill when the enemy respawned. Respawn timers seem to be short, though, so a lot of time isn’t spent waiting. And I suppose these issues can be bypassed by being social and asking others to group up, but that’s assuming others will say yes.
One of the most notable features I’ve come across so far actually has nothing to do with leveling my Paladin. It’s the Pet Battle system, which can be trained outside of major cities. This lets you capture, train and level companion pets and drop them into Pokemon-style turn-based fights against others. Though winning doesn’t earn you experience for your main character, you can level every captured pet individually. And because it’s basically Pokemon, it’s also pretty fun. Capturable creatures can be tracked through the minimap, so finding more animals to collect isn’t tough, and each pet appears to have unique attacks. As creatures level up they’ll learn new attacks, which can do anything from deal direct damage to block attacks to power up future attacks, and some attacks are more (super!) effective against certain creature types. For a completely optional, casual-style system, there seems to be a huge amount of depth.
In my play time so far on launch day, I’m also happy to report my login went smoothly and performance on the server is just fine. There have been no crazy crashes or periods of unendurable lag or anything like that, and if that changes, I’ll provide an update.
Blizzard keeps up the interesting story elements once you detach from the introduction and really immerse in Pandaria. You’ll see giant murals fill in with colored panels reflecting your quest progress in one quest chain, and take part in more dramatic quests where Blizzard sets the scene with all sorts of chaotic enemy activity, and sometimes with voice acting and in-engine cut-scenes. There’s a lot of variation on quest goals, so it doesn’t really feel like you’re doing the same thing over and over even though you essentially are. The variations are subtler switch-ups of collection, fetch and kill tasks. You’ll get a jar, for instance, that you need to empty eight times onto the ground, and sometimes a hostile creature fall out and sometimes it’s friendly, and in this way Blizzard toys with expectations to try and maintain the element of surprise. You’ll find simpler techniques too, like creatures sometimes attacking in packs, sometimes summoning pets, sometimes you’ll have NPCs along to help out, and it seems Blizzard will rarely drop you into a vehicle or machine that gives you an alternate skill bar. For a large majority of the quests, I’ve had my standard class skills available.
As I said, this method of mixing up the goals of questing helps keep the leveling process moving forward at a quick pace, and prevents a sense of tedium from truly taking over. Phasing is still used in Pandaria, though not quite as often used as in Cataclysm content from what I can tell so far. Even though this feature is old news at this point, the effect is still striking when you, for instance, save an NPC from under rubble and then, after clearing the cave in which he was trapped, emerge to find him waiting for you and thankful for your help. This type of design conveys a sense that you’re making progress in the world, reinforcing the idea that that you’re following a story with direction instead of punching time cards at stationary NPCs.
I ran the first dungeon, Temple of the Jade Serpent, and found it to be a pretty brief challenge, though rewarding. Bosses did their best to cause our group to move around and stay alert. The first boss was particularly effective at this. He stood in the center of a pool of water, and our group had to stay on paths that wound through the water or take damage if we stepped in. Initially this was no problem, but as soon as the boss shot out a beam attack and slowly swept it around the chamber, we had to run away like we were fleeing from the advancing hand of a clock while still jumping to avoid the water and making sure we were dealing damage.
Though it’s a very familiar style of MMO gameplay, I’m surprised at how effectively Mists’ excellent environmental design still makes exploration exciting. Sure, I want loot and experience and gold, but I also just want to see what the next area looks like because the art style of the new lands is extremely impressive, and sharply stands out from anything that’s been in World of Warcraft before.
When I leveled to 86, something was missing. I didn’t get a talent point. It used to be a satisfying reward, another way to incrementally power up my class and learn new abilities, but it’s gone now. I understand the reasons why Blizzard switched to this new system. Many players weren’t really making decisions with skill point allocation. Instead, they were just following online guides about how to build the best tank, damage dealer or healer with their chosen class. That probably makes much more sense for life at the level cap, when it’s really just a matter of maximizing efficiency. While questing, though, each level up feels a little more hollow, a little less meaningful, because I essentially don’t get to make another choice about how to customize my class until level 90 when the final talent tier unlocks. Even if the concept of choice was an illusion in the case of World of Warcraft’s old talent trees, I still enjoyed the idea that I can frequently and in an interactive way build my character into an all-powerful being, instead of being told to wait 15 entire levels before I get to make a choice.
That said, the new talent tree choices do result in varied character builds. I gave the movement speed example earlier, and the later choices have a much more direct impact on a fight. In the level 75 tier, for instance, I can choose between two passives or an active. The active, Holy Avenger, boosts my Paladin’s Holy resource generation while simultaneously buffing up healing and damage on certain abilities. Divine Purpose, a passive, gives me an occasional free Holy-powered ability cast, and the Avenger’s Wrath passive grants different effects depending on my specialization. Like with most of the talents, there are situations where one might be more useful than another, so that even with my current talent build I’m still not entirely comfortable that it’s the all-around best possible build for my Retribution Paladin.
I’m now beginning to explore the Valley of the Four Winds zone that sits in the middle of Pandaria, a huge zone of open plains, rolling hills and farmlands stuffed with giant vegetables. Leveling’s been a big of a slog so far because the Horde versus Alliance rivalry is still very much alive, and getting ganked on my PvP server is not exactly an infrequent occurrence. I realize playing on a PvE server could solve this, but honestly, I enjoy that sense of constant threat, of needing to be mindful of where the enemy is at all times, attacking or retreating or calling for help, and feel it meshes well with the theme of this expansion, which seems to be a renewed focus on war and conflict.
The thematic cohesiveness of Pandaria is what’s been most impressive to me so far about Blizzard’s expansion. From NPC to NPC and quest to quest, I was constantly given the sense that I’m an invader in this previously untouched world, that I’m actually screwing things up by being there, which induces a strange kind of shame on my part. Yet it also adds to the excitement of exploration, because it feels like I’m seeing things I shouldn’t, and as I said earlier, because the environments are so detailed and distinct.
Despite the growing serious tone of the main storyline, where an awakened evil energy is poisoning the land and in some cases destroying major structures, Blizzard never loses its signature goofy sense of humor. For example, I was transported out of the opening Jade Forest zone on the back of a glowing dragon who, on the way, warned me of the dire implications of my presence in Pandaria. When I landed, I promptly met a jovial beer-brewer, beat up floppy-eared oversized rabbits, collected stolen watermelons, and earned a puntable marmot. The marmot is actually an inventory item, letting you summon the creature and then kick it across the zone. There’s no reason for it to be in there, really, but I’m very glad I found it.
I’ve also found some technical issues. Later on during my first day of play instances of lag would pop up from time to time, resulting in a few seconds of everything being frozen in online limbo until finally all the queued up actions played out and, sometimes, I found I’d died during the hiccup. As of this writing, I’m also unable to log in, as I keep getting a ‘You have been disconnected from the server’ popup, which obviously isn’t a good thing. Hopefully that gets fixed soon. (update: it was were fixed)
The Pandaren in Valley of the Four Winds sure do like to drink and eat. Nearly the entire main story of the zone revolves around farming and brewing beer, which eventually ties into the zone’s main dungeon, Stormstout Brewery. In Mists of Pandaria Blizzard sets the entire dungeon out in the open. Stormstout Brewery is a gigantic structure sitting on the zone’s west side, and it can be explored without grouping up for a dungeon run. I’ve also taken on standard quests that take me inside and let me run around in the interior, in some cases even interacting with bosses, serving as a kind of preview before fighting them for real in a dungeon run, and making the dungeon feel like it’s part of the zone in a meaningful way, not just some random hole in the wall.
Much more so than the previous zone, Valley of the Four Winds seems to be about humor. I fought a plant called Cornan the Barley Barbarian, frantically stomped weeds in someone’s farmland that started as harmless shrubs and eventually grew into writhing tentacles, and distracted vermin with turnips painted to look like carrots. Generally entertaining writing and a multitude of quest-specific mechanics and animations help keep up a sense of diversity, even though in many cases I'm given similar types of kill and collect goals. The pace has remained fast, with very few tasks taking very long, so right about the time I’d normally start to get bored, the quest was over and I’d move on to the next one. I also ran across some unique quest types here, such as fighting a giant bird while riding on its back, that weren’t just rehashes of the previous zone’s content, and hopefully Blizzard will continue to introduce additional types through the rest of the zones.
Inside Stormstout Brewery I found another short dungeon experience. Mists’ dungeons seem to focus heavily on boss encounters instead of trash mobs, so there’s little downtime between major fights and getting loot and getting out tends to be fast, assuming you have a good healer. The zone's goofy humor was woven in here as well, as the first boss was a giant drunken monkey, the second an oversized rabbit-thing with a Carrot Breath beam-like attack, and the final boss a beer demon (called an Alemental) who blasts alcohol all around the battle room. The last two fights in particular had different types of mechanics that required frequent movement, like jumping over waves of beer, and the occasional item pickup, like mallets to slam the ground to get rid of summoned minions. These mechanics kept the fight entertaining, required more concentration than standard tank and spank setups, and also blended well with the theme of the zone, which again made the dungeon feel like it’s more of a cohesive part of the world.
I also discovered the Tillers faction in the Valley and learned how to farm in World of Warcraft, which involves tilling soil, planting seeds, getting rid of vermin and then waiting for the plants to mature. I have to wait one day before I can harvest, but the system so far seems surprisingly deep. You even get your own phased plot of farmland in the middle of the Valley, so your crops are protected and can’t be messed up by the enemy faction in PvP servers, and you don’t have to compete for planting spaces. I’ll check this out more once I’m actually able to harvest and continue the Tillers’ quest line.
Speaking of phasing, I said earlier in this review in progress that there didn’t seem to be as much of it, and now I’m not sure if that’s correct. Its implementation just seems to be far more subtle and localized.
After the Valley of the Four Winds detour through drunkenness and giant watermelons, it seems the main story of the Pandaria is back in the spotlight. As soon as I arrived in Kun-Lai Summit there was a battle, and after pushing back the aggressors, I met up with Alliance forces and began to build a base camp. This zone, aside from being painted with a striking mix of bright orange ground and deep sapphire blue skies, isn’t quite as impressive so far as Valley of the Four Winds of Jade Forest, but I still have a lot more to see. Blizzard has so far proven it still knows how to build a really interesting zone by making each pocket of questing visually distinct and populated with unique enemies, so it’s very likely I have yet to experience the zone’s best features simply because I haven’t dug deep enough.
Level 87 was probably the most important level of my playthrough so far because it unlocked access to two higher level dungeons, Mogu’shan Palace and Shado-Pan Monastery. Compared to the two earlier dungeons, these were much more sophisticated experiences. They could still be cleared fairly quickly, but felt more substantial than the earlier challenges thanks to more complex boss behaviors.
Unlike the inebriated goofiness of fighting off partying monkeys in Stormstout, Mogu’shan establishes direr, more serious circumstances, obvious in the very first boss encounter. Your group enters into a battle arena surrounded by packs of hostile warriors all hailing from different Mogu clans, and they all shout about who is most worthy of crushing you. I admit, it was a little intimidating at first as gigantic warriors strode from the waiting crowds and tried to pulverize our party while the rest of the enemies looked on from the sidelines, bloodthirsty. The best part was, even after we were successful, the arguing over which of them was the superior didn’t stop, and a giant melee erupted between them as my group headed off to the next encounter.
The final boss was a particular highlight, as damage came not only from him, but from the battle arena. As we fought knives shot from the walls, crossbow bolts zipped around, rings of fire sprung into existence and by the end of the fight our party was stuck in the middle of a bewildering death hurricane. Blizzard still knows exactly how to generate a sense of excitement during climactic encounters by dropping you into the midst of an explosion of damage numbers and spell effects and the chaotic sounds of battle, and of course offering up a big reward for pulling through.
Shado-Pan has been the most visually impressive dungeon so far, as my group ran from boss fight to boss fight in buildings dotted across a nighttime, snow-choked mountain range. The story elements here were the strongest of the dungeons I’ve seen, with frequent character interaction that tied into boss fights, and some notable battle mechanics particularly on the final encounter. The last boss instills hatred in all group members, which is represented by a custom UI overlay. When the hatred meter fills, the screen goes red and attack accuracy goes way down, so you need to click a button to flush the meter and return it to zero. While doing this, you can’t move, which obviously makes it risky, but necessary. All the while the boss is whirling damaging magic orbs around him, keeping casters back and melee characters close, and larger orbs pop up around the battle arena that will grab party members and teleport them around, so they need to be burned down first before returning focus to the boss. It’s a little overwhelming initially, but with some group coordination it’s entirely conquerable, and serves as yet another example of Blizzard’s skill in creating varied, entertaining dungeon encounters.
Throughout all this, though many aspects of World of Warcraft feel old (restrictive target tagging, restrictive resource harvesting, kill X of Y and collect the Z it drops again and again and again), the story elements are so strong that it’s still been a remarkably enjoyable leveling experience. In part I think that’s because Blizzard’s struck a good balance between when to make you stop and listen to what’s going on and when to just give you a little direction and send you into the field. The result is a much better pacing than you get with Star Wars: The Old Republic’s lengthy character interactions, and also delivers a much more focused overall story than something like Guild Wars 2 because it doesn’t have to rip you out of the game world entirely to tell it.
Kun-Lai Summit got a lot better. It maintained World of Warcraft’s goofy tone with quests where I had to shove yaks through a car wash-like contraption and beat up over-caffeinated mountain yetis, and mixed that right in alongside more serious content that tied into the zone’s main conflict. The story I’d been following in Jade Forest, which involved the Alliance’s investigation into the Vale of Eternal Blossoms zone, came to a rather a rather abrupt conclusion in a snowy temple where I was asked to kill a handful of creatures and then given access to the Vale in Pandaria’s center.
The Vale is an especially pretty place, with golden trees and hills and towering statues, the kind of untouched, unspoiled look that perfectly suits an idyllic realm that had been previously bottled up. This is also the home of Pandaria’s main town, where there are a multitude of profession vendors, bankers, faction representatives, and the flight trainer. A lot of this content (and in fact a lot of the content Blizzard built for Pandaria) isn’t really accessible until level 90, so I’ll report back on that once I hit the cap.
Heading back to Kun-Lai, I stomped through snow-choked mountain peaks and ancient ruins and across its open fields. Blizzard continued introducing new ideas to help keep the questing from losing its momentum entirely, often giving special treatment to transitions between quest hubs, setting me on a dragon’s back or in a hot air balloon or asking me to escort a pack of helpless NPCs through hostile territory. At this point leveling in World of Warcraft almost feels more like an incredibly polished single-player role-playing game, where I’m never really encouraged to interact with others unless I want to jump into a dungeon experience. The emphasis on story delivery through voiced dialogue and in-engine cut-scenes and phased content is stronger than ever here, making leveling in Pandaria more of an exciting journey than it ever has in World of Warcraft before, though it’s also a little lonelier.
The focus of the story also seems to have split, which to me was disappointing, maybe because of my expectations. I’d assumed the tale of Pandaria would focus heavily on the Horde versus Alliance tension, but instead, after I was swiftly ushered into the Vale, the story tying the world together is exclusively about the emergence of demonic energies in Pandaria, and helping the local factions take out all the associated hostile forces. Those forces include two world bosses who can be seen from great distances, stomping around and generally making a scene. The Sha of Anger is particularly hard to miss in Kun-Lai, as he will not stop screaming about how much he loves anger. Perhaps Blizzard made him so irritating just as an incentive to kill him and finally shut him up.
While the mountainous region of Kun-Lai turned out to be a really rewarding zone, Townlong Steppes wasn’t quite as impressive visually. It’s an insect-filled forest with giant trees and doesn’t distinguish itself nearly as much as Pandaria’s other zones. Even so, the way Blizzard framed the mantid invasion that serves as the centerpiece of Townlong’s conflict was impressive, as it was featured way back in Valley of the Four Winds, then again at the border of Kun-Lai, giving a strong sense that the mantids really were spilling out across the world instead of trapped within their zone, resulting in a stronger story and sense of aggressive threat. The questing, somehow, still remains fresh as Blizzard keeps cycling in new variations on the common quest goals. Alert: lengthy example incoming.
In one area of Townlong, mantids were trying to sneak past scouts of Pandaria’s Shado-Pan faction. To actually attack them, you need to deploy a flare in the field to reveal them, then engage. In another area, you need to kick barrels across the landscape to coat mantids in flammable liquid, then wait for NPCs to hit them with fire arrows and set them alight, doing damage over time and helping to chew through their heavy armor. Then in another section, you need to kill mantids while artillery strikes are hitting all over the battlefield, meaning you need to stay mobile to avoid the blasts. And in yet another section, you kill mantids with the aid of an NPC who will investigate the bodies for clues that tie into the overall story. These are all mantid kill quests (and there are many more), but by changing up the mechanics of how you go about making kills, they never really feel the same, because there’s always some new factor to consider in the gameplay, and that new factor is always justified through story. It’s really well made, and the best questing that’s ever been in WoW.
Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com
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