World of Warcraft expansions are always a cue for the gaming industry to get excited as the fans divide themselves down the middle. Half of the Warcraft fans herald the expansion as the saviour of the MMO while the other refuse to have anything to do with it because it changes something that they think is fundamental or because it includes pandas or something. The latest World of Warcraft expansion called Mists of Pandaria is due for release on the 25 th September this year.
You can find more info on all of those here on the Official Mists of Pandaria site and the trailer just a eye-movement away. Even while I was playing, I knew that were so many things against the new expansion that it seemed pretty silly and wasteful to buy it.
The biggest issues I had with Mists of Pandaria were…. They were, and in many ways still are the issues that run across my mind. Regardless, I know that all those issues will still be there come launch day. Yet I know that I am going to buy it. How does Blizzard do that? Make a game that can split me down the middle so much. It's also worth mentioning that, before Cataclysm was released, there was a period in which you could get all of the previous expansions for a much lower price.
It was short, though 2 weeks IIRC. It was also around this time that TBC and vanilla were merged. True that. I bought all of the expansions with the main game for 20 dollars. Your answer indicates that you can skip expansions for a second account by transferring a max level char over to the 2nd account.
This is not true, you don't need previous expansions because they offer a certain level range, you need it because the expansions build on top of previous release. Blem I was just giving the simplest explanation. World of Warcraft isn't built to allow an expansion to be skipped. There was a similar sale around Christmas time, I would expect the same this year.
Samjus Samjus 1, 2 2 gold badges 13 13 silver badges 22 22 bronze badges. From my understanding, the Burning Crusade was rolled into the standard game, and Wrath of the Lich King will be rolled in when Mists of Pandaria comes out.
I didn't know that. I always notice the games as seperate when I went to buy. Although I haven't bought the games for awhile now haha. Screenshot of the Week. Submit your photo Hall of fame. There are also new Scenarios, where you and a couple of friends team up to finish a more quest-style set of objectives - the most dramatic at the moment being Theramore's Fall, where Spoilers, ho!
Pandaria sees some big additions though, starting with the aforementioned Vale of Eternal Blossoms. At Level 90, this becomes a hub for daily quests, with Pandaria's various factions offering rewards for longer-term play.
They're still time-sinks, but at least a few offer something a little something more to focus on. The Lorewalkers offer rewards for tracking down stories in Pandaria for instance, while the Order of the Cloud Serpent offers a new type of mount that supposedly takes around 20 days to unlock. Though I'm sure players have already found a way of doing it in about five hours, tops. There are other long-term goals too, including a challenging quest chain where you make friends with Deathwing's unfortunately named son Wrathion, but this is where Pandaria's main factions like to hang out.
The quirkiest additions are a new Farmville type mini-game, which kicks in at around Level 86, and the brand new Pet Battles mode, which are available from the start of the game as long as one of your account's characters has stumped up the gold to learn the skill.
The first requires the Pandaria expansion to get to, while the second is available to all players from the start. The Farmville mode is intricate, cleverly designed, and I would rather eat my own arse than play it. You could say that they're simply inspired by other games, and no doubt Blizzard's lawyers would. Really though, it's Pokemon with your pets, only you don't get mugged in the long grass or have to deal with Team Rocket and its ilk.
I like this mode a lot. It makes the cosmetic pets worth finding, adds a fun distraction to fill time even if you're not planning on becoming obsessed, and while the animals you can train are mostly just regular animals instead of instantly recognisable characters, there's a lot of scope for rarer ones to be added over time. You can challenge players to pet battles in the wild, or have Warcraft matchmake a battle for you sadly, one that ends almost immediately on victory, where you don't even find out the other player's name and can't talk to them , with a wide selection of NPC trainers tamers scattered around the world.
So, to the big verdict. First of all, if you're an active World of Warcraft player, you almost certainly have Pandaria already. It's not much of an option, and in terms of expanding the universe and providing more content, this is a worthwhile pack. Putting aside the appropriateness of the pandas, and ignoring the problems with the premise, Pandaria offers some of Blizzard's best design ever - quest and world alike.
The new zones are neat, the additional games and modes on offer can be enjoyed or ignored as you will, and there's enough new stuff for every kind of player to get something out of it. Is it worth coming back though, or jumping in if you haven't already? Potentially, and probably not. While features like pet battles and the Pandaren starter area are available early on, there are 85 levels between you and Pandaria proper - and that's simply too much.
Even with progress faster than it used to be thanks to general speed-ups and features like the Dungeon Finder, you're still looking at pushing through three big expansions, including the now achingly outdated, deserted Burning Crusade. Obviously, if your interest is in Warcraft as a whole, that's not a problem. If it's in this expansion specifically though and before anyone jumps in to point at other MMOs and how they do things, remember that other MMO expansions don't get TV advertising and such to draw in new players with the promise of cool content you should pass.
At least while there's this much stuff in the way. For returnees, the additions to the game and new content are very enjoyable, but it is fundamentally still World of Warcraft with a few bits strapped onto it rather than a whole new game. If you're coming back from a more recent MMO, things like the stodgy combat are going to feel far older than you remember, and the basic mechanics and philosophies remain the same.
Pandaria as a place is firmly a vacation for your character rather than a Cataclysm style reinvention of their world, and you're only going to avoid the old grind for so long before it's back to business as usual in the endgame.
If you remember the game fondly enough to have read this far, it's worth returning for a month or two to check it out. You're unlikely to stick around much longer though, unless you really get back into the social side, or the raids and next chapters of Pandaria's story prove incredibly compelling.
Sticking a number on all that is tricky, due to a problem only World of Warcraft really faces - that this is a fine expansion by almost any MMO standards, but somewhat underwhelming by its own. That's not down to the nitty-gritty of what it offers so much as a mix of never giving a particularly convincing answer to why Pandaria and this story absolutely had to be the next expansion, and inevitable fatigue from almost a decade of playing the same game.
The last couple of years especially have seen competitors really kicking the genre up the arse. Warcraft hasn't needed to reinvent its primary systems to remain successful, and trying at this point would almost certainly be a Star Wars Galaxies level mistake. It's impossible to ignore its wrinkles though, especially after a long absence.
Mists of Pandaria doesn't change that, and that's honestly not so much a criticism as an inevitable result of time passing. Previous World of Warcraft releases have been genuine events. This one is simply an expansion pack.
A good expansion pack, for sure, with lots of content to keep you playing one of the best and most beloved MMOs ever created. Just don't expect it to be anything more. Our Verdict. PC Gamer Verdict. The Verdict.
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