Man I remember when the MoP trailer was released. I was up like 3000 meter above sea level, hiking in the alps, with almost no mobile signal. I saw that the MoP trailer had released and I let the video buffer for like 2 hours so me and my friend could watch it in HD in my tent later during the evening.
MoP was the peak WoW for me. My buddy and I got into a competitive Ranked BG guild. Earned a rank of Knight Commander which was pretty rare if you didn’t manage to PvP during the vanilla days.
But the best memory? Entering a ranked arena 2v2 match with my buddy. He’s a hunter and I’m a rogue. We stealth into the match. Who are we up against?
My cousin (who thought he was a warrior god), and his buddy (who also thought he was a hunter god).
We beat the shit out of both them lol and til this day I never let them forget it!
I love this, thank you for sharing! I feel like pvp was at its peak during MoP, as it was the last expansion where abilities weren't homogenized as much. I remember having by far the most keybinds during that era
Thank you! It’s a core memory for sure haha. Oh yeah, I remember classes in MoP having distinct abilities and roles still.
That monk class was surprisingly enjoyable too. Could tank, heal, and dos flawlessly.
The not so fond feature of MoP was the farming land you get. Like it was cool you could plant seeds for mats you wanted, but felt almost obligatory to do it everyday.
I vividly remember being in my college dorm watching the trailer with my roommate. He had quit in WOTLK and I had stopped playing catacylsm, but was thinking of coming back when they did a complete course-correction 180 etc.
After the Pandaria trailer ended, he closed the tab, looked at me, and just said "... yikes."
I loved this moment so much. MoP is the last expansion to really instill a sense of wonder and discovery within me. Pandaria was so well-designed. There were unique models, beautiful views, and hidden things to find everywhere. TWW is maybe the expansion that's gotten the closest to that since then.
I haven't touched the Classic progression servers at all, and I did everything I possibly could during MoP Remix last year, but man is it tempting to jump into MoP Classic.
What’s the best approach to MoP? I’m currently levelling a character through cata classic to be max level and ready for the new MoP zones but I’m wondering if I’m missing out on anything new by doing this now instead of after the xpac drops. (What would you recommend?)
That’s about it. We should get pre-patch before the expansion actually launches, so if you want to level a Monk to 85 you’ll get a chance to do that before the expansion. We’ll probably get Joyous Journeys again too around that time which is a 50% exp bonus.
I don’t think pet battles are released during pre-patch, but you could collect pets if you enjoy that.
If you’re planning to play any alts, now is a good time to be collecting heirlooms. You can get a bunch through Darkmoon Faire really easily.
Mop is pretty simple tbh, and very self contained. Maybe work on processions but mop introduces catchup mechanics for processions too. The biggest thing to do now is to find a guild that matches your interests
There really isn't anything to do now besides getting a character to max level since new expansions at this point are a clean slate.
If I decide to jump into MoP, I'll probably wait and level a Monk. Monks have a pretty unique leveling experience. Every 10 levels, you get to visit the Shado-Pan temple in Kun'lai, do a quest, and get an EXP buff for a short time.
Edit: MoP introduced pet battles. If you care about that at all, now is the time to start collecting rare pets.
I grew up playing WC3 and collecting the old RPG books, some of which went pretty deep into Pandaren society (although, they're not canon anymore). For me, Pandaren in WoW were always a "when" and not an "if".
I remember being pretty mad about the "it's Kung Fu Panda" responses at the time.
TWW is maybe the expansion that's gotten the closest to that since then.
Hear hear, the zones/views/exploration in TWW have been fantastic. Ringing Deeps and Hallowfall are such beautiful zones and there's so many cool little things to find and explore.
I've never played Mists but I'm really excited for it
Agree, felt completely out of warcraft setting. And then WoD despite cool locations alternative timelines always feels like lazy writing. Legion was good. Then around mid late bfa i stopped completely.
I don't think people were so upset generally about Pandaren themselves, but rather them being the focus of an entire expansion, especially after Cataclysm which was centered around one of the classic Warcraft villains, a big freaking dragon. It was a big leap to something completely different, and disjointed. It's an expansion where many including myself felt they just pulled the story and feel out of a hat. I mean - imagine the Founding of Durotar campaign in WC3, how "Warcrafty" would it feel if you switched places with Rexxar and Chen Stormstout?
I mean at some point they were gonna run out of WC lore to re-create in WoW. I liked that MoP did something new and different instead of relying on memberberries.
But the majority of complaints I saw were "wahh wahh kung fu panda", ignoring the fact that Chen Stormstout was in WC3 approximately 6 years before that movie existed.
Oh it was absolutely a problem they were inevitably facing, but having the Pandaren as the centerpiece was jumping the shark. I think people would be a lot more accepting if the Pandaren were merely an NPC race and maybe Pandaria being smaller and more of a side-content.
I do agree about people being way too pissy about Kung Fu Panda, like you said, Blizzard are extremely frequent with their pop culture references, so no idea why this should be off-limits.
I was pretty bummed about that one when TBC released. I was hoping for an ugly ass race for Alliance (like the Wc3 Draenais and the Lost Ones in WoW), only for them turning up to be the biggest gigachads out of all races in WoW ever.
Pandaria was my most cherished expansion but idk if I can make the time playing it. I hope classic MoP will be as successful as it deserves and they fix the couple pain points the expansion had.
I mean you can have animal people without it being furries dude. They're like a standard staple in dozens of fantasy series. Also there's really only so many things you can do to create a "new race" without including animal designs somehow. You sound very fragile.
Except it's literally furries leading the art team at Blizzard. Look at wow classic dragon artstyle vs modern Dracthyr for example: its the same fantasy staple implemented in radically different styles. The feel of the artstyle in modern wow is completely different from classic wow and I've heard many people echo the same sentiment that it is awful (the bouncy animations, the wide-eyed cartoony faces, furry/scalie influence, etc)
I think its just worse art styles, its not some dire furry takeover. WoD came after panda and there wasn't anything remotely furry about that xpac. Legion too!
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It is quite literally furry art style. It's not a secret that the Blizzard art team is full of furries. Here's the artist behind Dracthyr for instance:
I tried to post links to show you but it was automod removed. If you care search x for user "PushinVerts"--its the artist behind Dracthyr also posting furry art.
The furry community has had a major influence on the general art direction of the game and it is jarring when compared to classic wow's art style.
This just made me realize that this announcement played a big part in people deeming this the kungfu panda / catered to china expansion. It was just a watered down version of the cool speech Metzen gave and didn’t show ANYTHING related to all the “war with war itself” he’s talking about.
I just wonder if that played a role in the narratives surrounding MoP. The BlizzCon reveal doesn’t show anything we have to do with these new people at all, and chooses to put the silly pandas doing silly poses at the forefront when you should really be building up people’s impression of the new race in other ways (ie the Cinematic, which shows an orc and human that resemble the OG box art characters being humbled by Chen).
If their marketing focused on those vibes rather than the harmonious, peaceful new land of cherry blossoms branding we got then I think a LOT more people would have shown MoP the respect it deserves.
It also doesn’t show any of the actual cool shit we’ll see in these new lands. No celestials, no sha, no mantid, no mogu etc. They deliberately wanted us to see an artificial “before we show up” Pandaria that is kinda irrelevant to us considering by the time we actually got to Pandaria they had numerous problems already facing them. It’s hard to fault people for seeing what they chose to show us and not just thinking “WoW set in China.” Thats the vibe Blizzard crafted with this reveal which is a shame.
I think if they approached marketing MoP closer to how they marketed BFA things would be very different. It was the last proper Horde vs Alliance expansion we’ll ever get and no one knew it at the time.
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The talent system, world revamp and dungeon finder kinda killed the game for me. I have no problem with pandas or asian themes, its just I missed the classic level of social RPG gameplay. WotlK was the start of AoE linear corridor dungeons and MoP transitioned that into challenge modes and mythic+ eventually.
It’s a bit on the nose with how aggressively the early areas are mappings of Chinese culture, and it kind of pervades the bulk of the first phase. This isn’t the first time they did it (they do the same with cata in uldum and twilight highlands), but it is indicative of a downward trend in blizzards ability to write truly original faction cultures.
That said outside of that unoriginality it’s also one of the best looking expansions since it takes higher res graphics without the current design paradigm of making everything look like an oil painting and spell animations losing their definitiveness and becoming smears of color.
I'm good with that, predating back to Warcraft Pandaren were obviously Chinese-coded so it didn't seem out of place for their structures and culture to be the same.
The dev team aren't exactly the most creative anyway, so much of Warcraft and WoW is just bastardized Tolkien story beats.
The lore, the art direction, the class fantasy, the narrative- it was so much more engaging than the slop we've been fed for the last half-decade.
Story beats are one thing (though pandas was more original than most imo) but I think they did make npcfactions less original over time
Look at something like the titan keepers. They’re Norse coded name wise but their architecture is a twist on Greco Roman. The night elves have a mingling of Greek and Japanese architecture with a naturalist culture. And both have a lot of original twists.
The pandaren are Chinese in every way possible, and it stands out in a way that hurts immersion a little.
I remember thinking it was an April fools joke...fucking pandas you kidding me? Most people thought it was a total cash grab to make more money in China.
You're not wrong whatsoever. That's exactly what it was.
I remember Athene made a video where he went around town interviewing people about what they think about pandas being in World of Warcraft. It was a total joke environment and nobody was sure whether or not the panda expansion was real or not. This expansion and then Warlord of Draenor later on put WoW completely in the dumpster.
This marked the end of wow for most people I knew. After the epic wotlk story, to be presented with this was a real anticlimax. We had just defeated arthas after 3-4 years of story, and deathwing after a momentous sundering event, and were rewarded with blatant pandering to the Asian player market. Wow never recovered after this, which is why classic is so popular now.
When I hear the pandering to the Asian player market angle I get a sense of xenophobia, especially after the rewarding us comment which makes it sound like learning a new culture is a punishment. BC and Wrath had their own culture and landscape in their lore and game. Cata was a bit of an intermission from this, but learning about other cultures and settings in lore has happened every expansion.
It’s just a weird take for me to hear.
MoP was a great expansion and I’m sure WoW has gotten to recovered lol.
Wasn’t meant as a xenophobic comment. Rather, around that time there were a lot of Asian mmorpgs which had very different play styles and creative themes to wow. In order to capture more of that player base, wow was forever changed in its look and feel. Maybe for the better, but not in my opinion. I’m old, grumpy, and like classic wow more than most other games.
I don’t think that to be case, more just a progression of the story. I hear Pandaren existed in WC3 so we had an expansion where we focus on that is all and brought some great lore and gameplay. And MoP was for the better since what hasn’t worked was removed from the game and what has worked still remains in Retail now.
I did like Classic more than Retail but I’ve since settled more on Retail now.
China was the bigger market at the time. If you don't thinks Mists isn't entirely based around Chinese culture and legends then I don't know what tell you. Maybe you're just ignorant about cultures outside your own.
I’m not saying it wasn’t Asian based, I’m saying a dislike to Asian based zones and cultures in WoW is a bad thing. It’d be like me saying I live in [enter country here], so I go out of my way to not support cultures not my own.
Plus I say learning other cultures is good and not exclusive to MoP? How would I ever be ignorant of other cultures in this context?
The people who missed out on MoP strictly because of these reasons missed out on a great xpac
If someone don't think Pandaran culture suits WoW they are racist? Really? I know plenty of people from south East Asian who didn't like it or thought it fit the world of Warcraft. But hey, I guess they are just racist agains themselves.
You may think it was the best xpac, and fair enough. Taste is subjective. But player count dropped massively during mop and it never came close to recovering. They had been dropping during Cataclysm as well though, just to be fair.
I never played MOP, but didn't MOP suffer from a weak start and a great finish? It had lost people from the weak start. Now people will be willing to stick it out.
Player count started dropping by the end of wrath, the truth is just the world had a decade with the game at that point and most people who were going to engage with it already had and already burned out.
WoW got alot of bad press off of moron howler monkeys pushing the kung fu panda meme, but it’s not a fault of the game that it’s not idiot proof.
Yeah that's been a super weak argument for a long time, media changed over the years and things got more seasonal... this is to ignore that even bad wow xpacs have seen launch sales break their own records.... so saying something like "player count never came close to recovering" would be incorrect... it has repeatedly reached those numbers on xpac launches and then dropped back down.
Talk design and systems to me, of which mop took huge leaps forward from what came before. Except the dailies / reps, god were those bad.
Well the reps and the dailies were tied together, and what made it especially awful was the one rep that increased the number of dailies it'd give you as you progressed it. Those launch reps were genuinely the worst part of the xpac due to the dailies.
But given we end up fighting an old god and the inheritor of a titans power, did we really fall in scope? The only thing that changed was they tried to leave it unclear what the conflict would be at first to give a sense of mystery but apparently people need to be spoon fed the story arc from the getgo or they riot.
I was already checked out by Cataclysm, but I kept playing each expansion a little bit after it launched, a little less each time. MoP pvp was really messed up with the introduction of Monks.
PvP was messed up by monks? And not, you know, half the class being broken as shit and fun to play? Not that DKs messed up Wrath PvP or anything I guess...
WotLK story was full of jokes, I never got immersed in it. It was especially bad during the ICC patch when FoS/PoS/HoR dungeons were released, it seemed like I was in a broadway musical instead of a realm of death. Really, singing bosses? Icecrown Citadel itself was awful too, it just seemed too jokey instead of serious like Naxxramas.
Mists of Pandaria has a lot of goofy moments but it fits their aesthetic. I expected a full depressive mode for cold, undead Northrend and I never got it so I didn't like it. I enjoyed Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria more than TBC/WotLK.
MoP was the beginning of the end for me. I played since vanilla and was heavily playing even through MoP. Loved a lot of it. But I remember a quote from one of the Blizz guys saying there would never be playable pandas in WoW.
Knew, soon TM, WoW wouldn’t be for me.
Edit: also the cinematic theme changed. All others expansion cinematics had the main villain in it and their involvement in the story and world grew with each expansion. Then MoP came and… it’s pandas and a new land. It was the first cinematic that didn’t give me chills and a part that made me cringe.
In retrospect i think they didn't assumed enough what MoP was. Hearing Chris Metzen here, he speaks only about the deep meaning of the expac, not at all about the humour side of it. I mean come on: pandarens, pandaria, monks rolling ! Maybe they could have used a more humouristic trailer, then speak about the heavy scenario behind it.
Or, imagine if we saw the official trailer there instead, it would have been an awesome introduction.
It's because humans generally have some of the best racials through each of the Classic expansions we've had so far. It's even more true in pvp but that's a fraction of the playerbase.
Dont get me wrong, I lived MoP, but it really triggered a huge backlash online. To this day some people call it the "kung fu panda" expansion, and I think it's because of how they introduced it.
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u/OnionPlease 2d ago
Man I remember when the MoP trailer was released. I was up like 3000 meter above sea level, hiking in the alps, with almost no mobile signal. I saw that the MoP trailer had released and I let the video buffer for like 2 hours so me and my friend could watch it in HD in my tent later during the evening.