I resubscribed to WoW, to check it out after a good 6-8 months away from it. I spent about 10 minutes in the game before I logged out, feeling absolutely... nothing. Part of me is sad that I no longer enjoy the game, because I spent a good 8 years of my life on it. Another part of me is @#%^ing pissed off at Blizzard for ******** up my favorite game.
The new talent system is pretty neat from a balancing point of view, but it sucks major *** from a leveling point of view. One new ability every 10-15 levels and one new talent point every, what, 20 levels? Have fun leveling up to 90! Having played Rift a lot now, I could never go back to something as simplified and boring as the "choices" in WoW. I'm also willing to bet that a lot of people interested in starting up WoW are disheartened by the prospect of having to grind 90 levels while paying $15 a month for it, when other games let you do it for free. Said games also feature modern graphics, even physics, and give you something every level, whether just a talent/skill point or a new ability rank.
Then there's the content.
Pandaria is pretty... pretty. It's also completely not my type of content. Never been much of an Asiaphile (not meant as a derogatory term). I've watched my share of Jet Li epics, don't get me wrong, but this is just too much. The Brewmaster was a cute gimmick in WC3, but to devote an entire expansion to it was just a terrible move, in my opinion.
The enemies in Vanilla were classic "I will do bad things, because I am bad" villains. Then came Illidan and Arthas, which were more tragic villains in that they both started out as heroes, but were consumed by the very things they sought to rid the world of. Then Deathwing and the end of the Aspects - pretty big deal in Warcraft lore. All those enemies were tangible villains that needed to be ended before they did more bad things to the world. And they all had a background in the old RTS games.
In Pandaria, completely silly villains are brought in, and we have to care about them because of "blahblah quest text blahblah" that no one reads, because you have to do a million of them to gain a level-up. Take the first dungeon you come across - the Brewery. One boss is a giant ape, and the entire fight is obviously an homage to Donkey Kong. Another boss is a giant rabbit. The final boss is a floating mask conjured up from beer...
Yeah, can I go back to fighting Defias Bandits, please?
The bosses in this expansion just seem so intangible. We're fighting anger made manifest. Okay, cool, except it all looks like black smokey goo. And the Horde vs. Alliance plot was never really explored until four content patches into the expansion. The expansion opens up with a pretty nice battle between the two factions, but then it's all "Well, we're in Pandaria now, and this panda dude said we shouldn't be angry, so let's kill some of the local monkeys/fishmen instead".
Three levels into the content and I'm still killing local monkeys/fishmen, cutting trees, picking flowers and meditating on whatever. I've had it up to @#%^ing here with the hippie bullsh*t, honestly. Can I please get some enemies that aren't small monkeys, bees and smokey black goo? Please?
Bottom line: I just can't get involved in the story like I could in the previous expansions. The game is outdated compared to modern releases, the content has been simplified, homogenized and trivialized in the name of eSports, and I just don't give a sh*t about pandas. If this sort of content is your thing, though, I hear it's the best expansion since one of the other expansions. I just don't see it.
Edited, Aug 24th 2013 5:14pm by Mazra
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