Curse you friendship!

So, I wasted a great deal of time typing up something extensive about Warcraft’s Mists of Pandaria only to realize that no matter what I had to say about it, the expansion as a whole could be summed up as having an aging problem to contend with. Even with Cataclysm, I managed to find entertainment for a few months. Here, part of the problem with blogging about MoP had to do with a complete lack of desire for spending more than an hour or so in front of my computer going through the familiar elements,such as "kill x creatures" and collecting 50 of something for a recipe, that I had grown sick of with the previous games. Granted, this entry is still lengthy, but not as much as it was originally going to be. I must have cut this thing in half, if not more… your welcome.

MoP is a testament to how far Blizzard has come to creating a slick and interesting world, but it’s old now. I’ll put it another way. Even if Star Wars was re-released with hundreds of thousands of CGI banthas stomping across the dirt world of Tatooine, swimming along the waters of Kamino’s Tipoca City, and floating all over the screen during the space battles, possibly crashing into a few of the starfighters, you would still be watching the same movies with the same ongoing plot. If a person has barely or never played WoW before, then I strongly encourage them to, at least, have one character reach the level cap before quitting. The old content has been redone to fix several of the issues players griped about prior to Cataclysm, and the new content shows how the game has evolved to make questing, raiding, and PvP more entertaining, varied, and user friendly. For the rest of us who have been fans of the franchise for years now, there just isn't enough new content to compensate for the grinding, fetching, escorting, and repetition that still plagues many parts of MoP. I don’t have the drive to work my reputation with several factions, run the same ten dungeons a hundred times, and get my ass kicked repeatedly in the battlegrounds all for the sake of wearing gear that will need to be replaced with another new set of junk every few months. Do it once for the experience, and maybe do it all a second time to take in the vast amount of lore, but that should be it. The only thing keeping me in the game is the social aspect. If I could convince all my WoW friends to play a new PC game together, I’d be thrilled. It could even be a shooter. I suck at those, and if you ever spot me in one, I’ll probably be the guy who either can’t get his weapon to stop pointing at the floor or the one who blows himself up holding an explosive too long, but I wouldn't care, because it would be something new to enjoy.

As for the specifics of Pandaria:

~ The mist around Pandaria disappears and players travel south to explore an entire continent that is a spoof of the very country that plagues WoW with account hackers and gold farmers.

~ Pandas are a welcomed addition to the choice of races, as many of us have been waiting for them to arrive since the days of vanilla WoW.

~ The monk class, regardless of how you wish to level one, is a somewhat unique and enjoyable experience. A few similarities with some of the other classes, but it still feels fresh (and so clean, clean).

~ Dragons have become an unavoidable and sickening sight to behold. No matter where you look, there is a dragon mount, a dragon companion, or some type of dragon-shaped decoration on your screen. In the world of nerds, dorks, and geeks, this was already a problem. Much like swords and attractive, world-saving teenagers, a dragon is one of those things that the people behind the creations of video games, anime, novels, etc. all feel a need to constantly incorporate into their work. An in-game example is seen with MoP’s Pet Battle mini-game, which is obviously a knock-off of the Robopon series, which also makes it a knock-off of Robotrek; but, fortunately, it is not a knock-off of Dragon Warrior Monsters, because I very much doubt most WoW players want to spend 50+ hours just dealing with an intricate breeding/raising system when they could be wasting the same amount of time hovering around rows of virtual crops looking for mounds of virtual soil containing virtual presents to give to a bunch of virtual farmers and a drunk, virtual fish man. ...As you level a trio of your favorite companions, you’ll probably notice how often dragons are included in the teams of your opponents. Magic companions seem to be the least popular, probably due to their weakness against dragonkin attacks. Go figure.

~ There are now six “Way of the...” branches of cooking to level and reputation gains for individual NPCs, but both changes seem to only prolong the suffering of trying to max them out.

~ Lastly, there are now scenarios (nothing at all) and challenges (fire) which turn normal and heroic dungeon runs into the equivalents of Taco Bell’s mild and hot packets. I love some of the mechanics of the fights, but after that initial newness wears off, only the challenge mode makes the player feel like he has accomplished something. I've nearly fallen asleep multiple times trying to complete a dungeon or scenario. If I make a mistake, it’s because I was distracted by the pain in my jaw from constantly yawning.

That's it. This is the newer, condensed version of my work. Originally, I started typing a week after the launch, and I was going to talk about things like the new zones, the mobs, the questlines, and the changes to the classes. I was also going to provide screenshots of Juppiter’s (my main's) progress through all of it. It was a long, detailed blog completely erased and redone with something I pieced together in three hours. Hope you had an easier time staying awake to read about the game from me than I did with trying to grind through it, because I’m probably gonna go back to playing my older systems until the day Garrosh becomes the final raid boss on the expansion. I never liked him. The named NPCs who were always by Thrall’s side have deserted him. Obviously, the Alliance couldn't care less for the guy. It’ll be a joy to gear up one last time to kick his sorry ass. Granted, I doubt Thrall will return as the Warchief, but it seems like just about any other NPC would make for a better leader at this point.

*Update*

Not even my desire to see Vol'jin take over as the Warchief has spurred me into paying for another 30 days of gear-grinding heroics and LFRs. If anyone from the guild wishes for my return, I'll promptly return to aid them. Outside of that, I'll just stick to completing my list of older titles and occasionally blogging about them for the sole purpose of amusing myself... and Paul, since he's the only other person I've ever met who has taken an unusual interest in all the garbage I post.