Mists of Blandaria
So. Blizzcon, hm?
Believe it or not, the announcement of a big old missing island-turtle of Pandas, or whatever – I’ve skimmed – has some big implications here at RPL.
For one, it cements my not renewing my WoW account any time soon. Not sure how Lan feels about that.
Two, it marks a big old shift in lore and perspective on Blizzard’s part. You might argue that X in the Emerald Dream doesn’t fit, or that a redone Outland and renewed battle against the Legion would feel like Cataclysm 2 on a different continent. Those concerns may be valid. However, by centering everything on Pandaria and wholly internal conflicts there, this simply doesn’t feel like World of Warcraft anymore. Mantis and koi people aren’t the Legion, they’re not even the Old Gods. From a roleplay standpoint, it’s utter crap. Every paladin who has studied a lifetime to defeat undead, or draenei who has worked tirelessly to combat the Burning Legion, needs to drop everything and hoist themselves over to Pandaria. Metzen’s stated that there’s 15,000 years of lore built up in Pandaria. That’s great, but it’s not Azeroth. It has nothing to do with Azeroth. It’s an entirely different thing dropped onto, not even into, the existing continuity and treated like it’s always been there. I’m sure that for monks and pandaren it’ll be great. Lots of personal vengeances to deal with. As for everyone else? Why the fuck should my human/dwarf/gnome/orc/troll/tauren care about leaving their work with the Circle or Argents or Hand of Argus or whatever else and going to help fuzzy people deal with their problems?
Sure, there’ll be token demons and likely servants of Old Gods. But everything Pandaria related feels like an entirely separate game. Imagine if Aragorn, on his way to Gondor, went into a cave and came out on Athas. And I haven’t yet mentioned my extreme dubiosity (it’s a word to me, dammit!) toward the changes to the mechanical side of things.
Anyway. Back to RPL. We’re not playing World of Warcraft at the moment, and we’re starting to get that feeling that there are only so many lessons to teach when it comes to not doing intensely stupid shit in one’s roleplay. There’re many occasions when we receive a submission that’s terrible, but we just want to ‘prescribe’ an old post instead of writing a new one. We’re just so lazy!
We’re certainly not shutting things down. But content may slow a bit. We still love submissions, though we’re still terrible at getting back to everyone that sends us an email. Please, keep sending it! Especially gold star characters! And most of all, we’re still around, even if it’s not in newspost form here. The Roleplayer’s Lament Facebook page is typically quite active with discussions of Warcraft-related stuff, and we ask the same questions and make the same remarks on @RPersLament, our Twitter account. For personal stuff from either of us, check @tpvincent and @lanuria.
We don’t know how much anyone else might want to hear “Hey, just bugging you to let you know we won’t be bugging you as often!” But we had to say something. Without all of you, I don’t know how to value myself!
Lanuria Dawnblade, a.k.a. Courtney Adler, aspires. She's an aspiring DM, aspiring photographer, and aspiring wife. She lives in Monroe, Wisconsin and complains about the weather far too much. She enjoys The Big Bang Theory and singing the songs from Glee.
Varendil Dawnblade, a.k.a. Taylor Vincent, is a 22-year old writer, student, World of Warcraft player, and 4th Edition DM. He lives in Monroe, Wisconsin with his fiancé and their jade plant, Esmeralda. He likes Douglas Adams and The Venture Bros. He hates Toni Morrison. Don't even ask. 
I feel the same. This (Pandarens) is making me quit WoW.
October 23, 2011 at 2:30 am
I mean… Pandaren were introduced into warcraft 3 to be a joke. To show the world that blizz didn’t take itself too seriously.
And now they are taking themselves so seriously that they expect us (the fans/players) to take that joke seriously.
The more I read, the madder I get. I like the PvE BG things, I like how pandaren don’t choose factions till lvl 10, and I suppose Monks make sense.
But the rest. It is complete and utter bullcrap, and I seriously think that this expansion will be the death of WoW. No new players will be drawn by this. And many old time players will be pushed away.
October 23, 2011 at 2:39 am
People are going to complain and whine about the expansion no matter what it is. Blizzard could pick up their old formula (which they are doing in part with this expansion, at least concerning antagonists) and make an -astounding- experience from it… However, half the player base would still cry about it. They’d find -something-.
Blood Elves. People complained about how they’d ruin the Horde (In part, they did for me… but…) It wasn’t the end of the game, I still found it enjoyable… and so did millions of other players.
Draenei (I still have issues spelling that) Same thing. People kept going ‘LOLORE’ and complaining about -that-… Yet, people still RP them and RP -with- them.
Worgen. People complained about how there’d be furries everywhere. Guess what. The majority of Worgen RPers I’ve seen? Are actually rather decent.
Okay, the lore isn’t the best, and from what I’ve seen? They’re making it so the conflict is centralizing around the Horde and Alliance. Not just Pandaria itself.
Me and my girlfriend will likely be getting this expansion as well. Why? We enjoy the community. To say the addition of a race that was intentionally meant as a joke (a race that was also considered for the original Alliance race for TBC, mind you) is making you quit… is kinda funny really.
October 23, 2011 at 2:57 am
Pardon, just something I want to add. I can see some sense coming from a good portion of the game going into Pandaria. A neutral race that’s being split? The land will be divided, something else for the factions to fight over. Who ever gains the most ground in Pandaria gains more resources from it’s land, more soldiers from it’s populace.
No one’s expecting a Paladin that’s been training to destroy the undead to drop everything they’re doing to help some other race that’s only now being thrust into the war between the Alliance and Horde. My level 85 Orc warrior never stepped foot in Hyjal, the Twilight Highlands, Deepholme… he’s been in Ashenvale ICly through most of the Cataclysm. Character development isn’t quest progression. It’s RP.
Pardon once more, don’t like to appear argumentative or overly defensive of Blizzard. No matter how much I respect your reasons for it, I am still allowed to think it’s silly. Just like you’re allowed to think my reasons for staying are insignificant and/or fleeting.
October 23, 2011 at 3:09 am
As a fan of RPL who agrees with pretty much everything RPL here says, I have to disagree, and agree with these posts by Sergeant Pessimism 110%.
Ever since I started playing back in mid BC, I predicted that one day that Pandaria would one day make an appearance in the lands of Azeroth, and that both factions would be able to play the Pandaren. This would come, I thought, through some sort of civil war in Pandaria, and, in my opinion, this could very well still be the case.
However, there are always going to be people who go BAWWWW about Pandaren originally being a joke, when, after a little research, the Pandaren springs seen in WCII where you go into them and the picture appears on screen, that picture was actually drawn by Samwise D. for his daughter. I have no idea where this whole “OMG ITZ A JOEK MAED REEL” stuff came from originally. I suppose the April Fools Joke rumor was originally generated by the fans, but I digress.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I honestly don’t see any validity in any of the arguments put forth so far against MoP.
October 23, 2011 at 10:46 am
WCIII* That was a typo.
October 23, 2011 at 10:51 am
Please don’t take this the wrong way, I agree with a lot of what you said (still quitting WoW though), but I really lol’d at the most worgens being decent RPers. I can’t remember a single worgen player that was a good RPer. Granted, I don’t have the connections that many people do and when I RP it’s with random people in public, but I’d rather consider the public most rather than the private.
October 25, 2011 at 11:55 pm
I am very excited about panda(wo)men and monks.
October 23, 2011 at 3:07 am
Meanwhile I’m glad to get away from that fucking awful storyline and all associated with it. The less Scourge, Legion, Old Gods, and troubled champions of just causes turned to madness the better.
Why would anyone want to get away from Azeroth? Have you seen the place lately?
October 23, 2011 at 4:30 am
Personally I’m glad to have something new. I’m sick of fighting the Scourge, Cult of the damned, the Legion, black dragons etc. Bring on the new story lines! You can’t just keep rehashing the same tired old stuff.
As for working the new expansion into my storylines I can think of plenty of ways. I think the old adage stands true here, that roleplay is there for those that look for it. You can’t expect it to be handed to you on a silver platter.
Of course you shouldn’t play if you’re not interested in the content but I’m a little sick of people acting like this is the worst thing ever to happen to Wow.
Panda people, so different from Cow people or Hyena people or Warus people or Centaur cat people…what a joke. *rollseyes*
October 23, 2011 at 4:56 am
It’s refreshing, IMO. One of the reasons Dragon Ball Z was ridiculous as hell was the never-ending stream of “A new enemy has appeared, more evil and powerful than anything they’ve EVER SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN” and every last antagonist is like that. I’m TIRED of “Such-and-such was a hero but then they went mad/got corrupted and now you’ve gotta kill ‘em”. We’ve taken down the Qiraji, three and a half Dragonflights, the Illidari, the Burning Legion’s leaders, the Scourge and Lich King, two Old Golds, two major cults (twice each), and soon we’ll have taken out a second Dragon Aspect. What the hell is left to fight?
Each other.
And that’s why Metzen said the enemy is war itself.
This is the logical progression of Azeroth’s storyline. The Horde and Alliance have been too pants-on-head retarded to work together through the vast majority of this; they were literally fighting each other on the way to fight the goddamned Lich King on the Frozen Frigging Throne. Once they run out of bigger fish to fry they’re going to turn on each other full force. It’ll be WC1 & WC2 all over again…unless someone can infiltrate these dumb motherfuckers and inject some sense and inner peace into those ‘roid-burning veins.
Enter the Pandaren. A neutral race dedicated to balance who may individually choose to side with the Horde or the Alliance, a race dedicated to balance in all things. If the Horde and Alliance are going to avoid completing the work of all these great evil foes they’ve been fighting for so many years…the Pandaren may be exactly what they both need.
October 23, 2011 at 5:56 am
All of this.
October 23, 2011 at 7:43 am
Mother of God, a THOUSAND TIMES this.
Also, Pandaren women better be fat n’ fluffy. So help me if they come out slender…
October 23, 2011 at 10:03 am
I like that worgen women is a bit puffy, and damn I will rage if the female pandaren gets slender! I would buy a ticket to America, get on a bus to Blizzard’s Headquarters, book an appointment, have a smart and adult conversation involving violence.
October 23, 2011 at 11:57 am
Nice redundancies, there, Ori. I liked the redundant part where it got redundant. /facepalm
October 23, 2011 at 10:09 am
I can agree with the sentiment that the enemy is war itself, but this places the player base in a situation where we’re part of the problem, rather than the solution. If my character agrees that war is the problem, doesn’t that mean that a character like Varendil or anyone with a shred of wisdom and awareness shouldn’t play?
I’m not hating on the pandaren as an April Fools joke the way others are, but at this point I’d prefer a little more depth rather than breadth when it comes to lore. Blood elves and draenei have received little to nothing since BC. Gilneas and the goblins have open storylines, and in the Lore Q&A all they had to say was “we’d like to revisit it.”
I’m extremely dubious. I recently cancelled my subscription out of boredom, and I just haven’t seen anything proposed to draw me back in. It’s not like I’m happy about that.
October 23, 2011 at 3:44 pm
I just have one point to make, Var. They haven’t yet revealed all of the secrets of whats actually going on over there in Panda-land, nor the how and why of the lore there yet. Blizzard isn’t going to spoon feed you the answers to why this place is going to be important to the Horde and Alliance, nor what essential impact the new race will have as a whole on Azeroth. They want you to -explore- it and follow the quest lines, discover new things and be delighted in the ‘different’ all over again.
I mean, if they told you all of that stuff right off, when even they aren’t completely done exploring it yet, why play? Why play if they tell you everything, and you can’t be surprised?
Of course all they’re going to say to Gileas and Gobs is ‘WE’d like to revist it’. Again, if they aren’t careful what they hand out to you, you aren’t going to have any sense of mystery or excitement. They’ve got a big world out there to handle making for us, and we ought to sit back and bask in the simple, painfully beautiful details they’ve gifted us with. Like, I don’t know, the Fey Circle above Tirisfal and its singing dragonkin.
—And besides. Do we really need more emo injected into the game? Players bring enough of that with them from the real world.
October 23, 2011 at 5:07 pm
“They haven’t yet revealed all of the secrets of whats actually going on over there in Panda-land, nor the how and why of the lore there yet.”
I think you missed something vital in what Val said.
“but at this point I’d prefer a little more depth rather than breadth when it comes to lore”
October 23, 2011 at 5:23 pm
How about this one then, Ellessar. It was stated in the Q&A That the war between the Horde and Alliance was growing worse with each passing day, that they are beginning to self-destruct because of this war as well as destroy eachother. If they do not stop this war soon, there is no hope for the future, and the only way they will ever expect to defeat the Burning Legion, or Old Gods truly, and not be destroyed in the process is standing together. The hope for that end to the conflict, or some way to bring about a new understanding lies within the Mists of Pandaria. Varen wants lore? Varen should read more, Varen wants to bitch? Varen’s gonna bitch because that’s what he and Lanuria are best are, admit it or not, anyone with eyes can see it by looking at their most recent posts. Pandaren have been a full part of lore more than Draenei, originally the Draenei weren’t even the same thing as the Eredar… what changed? Blizz wanted to give the Alliance a new pretty race, tell me… Lan, Varen? Did you two bitch about the Draenei’s new look and their sudden ‘LOL Space jumping ship that was created by beings of pure light’ and say ‘nope, fuck this I’m out, WoW’s just too stupid now.’ No? Imagine that.
October 23, 2011 at 7:57 pm
Best at* Lack of sleep, ended up miss-typing.
October 23, 2011 at 7:59 pm
When Burning Crusade was announced, I was still gung ho about World of Warcraft. At the moment I’m not. Burning Crusade made me interested in the future, this doesn’t.
If the way things have played out through the Cataclysm and the things they’re hinting for the future sound interesting to you, then please, enjoy Mists. I’m not as attracted.
October 23, 2011 at 8:14 pm
“Varen wants lore? Varen should read more,”
I will redirect, again, to what Var said before.
“but at this point I’d prefer a little more depth rather than breadth when it comes to lore”
I think you need to think on what those words mean, before you start typing about new lore being introduced.
Beyond that.
” Pandaren have been a full part of lore more than Draenei, originally the Draenei weren’t even the same thing as the Eredar… what changed?”
Pandaren were added in WC3 as a joke to show the world Blizz doesn’t take itself all too seriously. It’s part of the reason I have always loved their games. Because they did that sort of stuff. They made little jokes.
But that statement is not exactly true… Draenei were first talked about back in WC2.
Even if, yes, there was nothing to suggest they were once eredar at that time. The Broken were ofcourse a rather large part of WC3 expansion. Draenei/broken were far more established in the continuing story of warcraft then Pandaren ever were.
I never had problems with Worgen/Draenei joing the alliance, and Goblins/BloodElfs joining the Horde. I saw the potential in those races. Both in mechanics and in storyline, even if the stories required some retconning of lore and such. I was never scared of Worgen turning all into furries and everything. I noticed the lorelol of Draenei and BElfs, but I found it limited, and thought they were great ideas. I was excited about them because they sounded fun and reasonably well thought through.
With Pandaren I have no such feeling whatsoever at this point in time. Sure a whole new continent that the people of Azeroth were so completely inept at at finding that it remained hidden for 15000 years. I would much rather have more lore about Draenei, I would rather see the Worgens starting questline not finished so abruptly in Gilneas, thereby giving them more charachter as a race. I want to see the NightElfs kick the Horde back from parts of Ashenvale. etc. etc.
Also.
“f they do not stop this war soon, there is no hope for the future, … – … The hope for that end to the conflict, or some way to bring about a new understanding lies within the Mists of Pandaria. ”
I don’t see the logic in this.
I am sure people said much the same in the real world in the interbellum shortly before the second world war. And guess what. We survived.
Theres only 2 races who are threatened with extinction and thats Draenei and NightElfs, due to small numbers.
Beyond that. Why do we need a new continent for that? Why a new race?
War in WoW is simply inevitable as it stands now. Heck the NightElfs are already at open war with the Horde in Ashenvale. There is nothing that can stop an open war when deathwing finally dies. And a peaceloving people cannot change that fact. Blizz is trying to force such a change on us though. It makes no sense whatsoever.
For now the Legion is defeated and it will take some time for it to get new leaders to lead it as one cohesive force. It is not unlikely there is a huge power struggle going on within their numbers between different demons who want power and have a following.
Old Gods. We already killed a few, C’Thun, Yogg-Saron and we just killed DeathWing when MoP starts. It is not unlikely to think for both that now is the time for war with their real rivals. That if they win they might be powerfull enough to win against anyone. It might be hubris. But we did just defeat Deathwing and everything else the universe has thrown at us. We might be entitled to be a bit cocky.
October 24, 2011 at 4:14 am
“I think you need to think on what those words mean, before you start typing about new lore being introduced.”
Then please, yourself or Varen, define what these words do mean. Because I was asking how all the story we don’t know yet is so surely “depth”less, and I don’t think that using figurative language of dimensions is going to help us understand you.
“Beyond that. Why do we need a new continent for that? Why a new race?
War in WoW is simply inevitable as it stands now.”
Other than because the guys who write the story wrote it that way? This is the main way in which Blizzard can design an expansion with both faction exclusive quests and neutral quests. If the expansion was all about the war without any new continent or race in the mix, we would have two separate expansions for the Horde and the Alliance.
But I think it also adds some realism to the world that is supposed to feel somewhat large. Red and blue team aren’t the only people on Azeroth, there’s some neutral parties too.
October 24, 2011 at 8:45 am
if the enemy is war itsself i want a bard class so i can be a protester
October 24, 2011 at 6:40 am
I am not a half-draenei, vampie, half-elf, not a DK IC. I am just a regular belf DK, I am the 1%
I’m a protester
October 26, 2011 at 12:45 pm
Agreeing with the force of a thousand suns!
I kept wondering how in the world blizzard was going to pull up another big enemy, and to me..yes.. it did seem like a slightly more fantasy version of DBZ. Only one I can think of right now is Azshara, but i’m sure she’ll come up at some point.
But I really think the actual war between Horde and Alliance needs to be focused on. This weird passive aggressive war needs to turn into a real war. This is what my characters need, and I think it’s what Wow needs.
October 23, 2011 at 8:50 pm
I would be pumped for Pandaria if it weren’t for two things. Pokemon and DOTA BGs.
As it stands, I’ll still be playing it , I’ll still be enoying it, but if thsoe two things make it in there will be a niggling “do not want” in the back of my mind.
October 23, 2011 at 8:30 am
C’mon, I want to get my Horde Balloon to kick ass. And then they shall fear my Peddlefeet!
October 23, 2011 at 11:54 am
Horde Balloon vs. Argent Squire
October 23, 2011 at 3:47 pm
…Epic.
October 23, 2011 at 10:35 pm
Personally i’m not bothered by this new expansion. I’m heading to Star wars myself. However gameplay wise, na this is boring as hell who the heck really cares. Well some people obviously.
But lore wise? Horde Vs Alliance and thats the solid foundation? Sure thats awesome. The peacefull lands of Pandaria will changed over time as the Horde and Alliance build there structures, camps. Bases. Armies. Half way through the expansion we’d have destroyed half there lands. If progress is like that, good on them. But as for me it’s not enough to keep my intrest.
October 23, 2011 at 12:17 pm
This.
October 23, 2011 at 3:34 pm
I really can’t wait to roll one of those pandaren-fluffballs <3. When it comes to lore, i stopped caring after they let us kill Arthas off. That pissed me off real bad, first Kael'Thas and Illidan, and then Arthas.
Meh, i am sure the gameplay and the enviroments and stuff will be epic, not so sure the lore will be as epic though
.
October 23, 2011 at 2:38 pm
Lore was all that kept me playing over the last few expansions myself.
I love rp’ing. But this is just lorerape on a scale too massive for me.
October 23, 2011 at 3:35 pm
Frankly, and as sad as it is for me to say it… I think there’s only one thing I’ll really be quitting, and that’s my feed from this website. No offense meant, at one time it was actually fairly entertaining… But now it’s starting to remind me of Fox News. It’s all low blows and attempts at humor that just leave me feeling kinda dirty. I’m a big fan of the whole satire thing, but it feels like it sorta lost focus and became quite a bit about complaining. Love the concept, wish the follow-through was a bit better. But thanks for the memories.
October 23, 2011 at 3:18 pm
This.
I’ve lurked here for a while because I was told the community here was much more positive than some other “crit” sites. Perhaps the suggestion to check out RPL came at a bad time, but I’ve just seen a very, very steep downward turn in the attitude of this place that detracts from any positive contributions it once made. I appreciate it must be very hard to keep something going this long, and I wish you the best of luck with it, but color me turned off.
(And no, it’s not the content of the post, it’s the tone. Folks are entitled to their own opinion, and while I have mixed feelings about the upcoming patch, I’m a little tired of the “QQ I quit” over every little thing, and I certainly didn’t expect something like that from a respected site.)
October 24, 2011 at 12:08 am
Well, in all fairness, I cancelled my account on like Monday, before Blizzcon. It’s not the first time I’ve done so, and I didn’t mean it to be alarmist.
We simply noticed that it’d been five or so days since our last post, figured we should say something about the Blizzcon stuff, and we agreed we weren’t that interested in what’s been shown so far.
October 24, 2011 at 1:36 am
The part that is either sad or funny – not sure which yet – is that 90% of the people complaining how bad MoP will be will probably buy the expansion anyway.
As for myself?
I don’t intend to roll any pandas. At least not anywhere near the first few weeks of the expansion. I’ll be rolling a warlock though, guaranteed. Grimoire of Supremacy ftw. Bitches love Voidlords, Shivans, and Abyssals.
Pet Battles? About time. I already have my teams set up. Magical Crawdad demands blood. And it’ll give Dalavesta the ability to ignore peoples’ requests for RP she promised (and then blame them for the drama following) without going offline.
The worst possibility I see coming from this expansion?
1. Whiners go to SW:TOR and find out it’s story is in fact worse than WoW’s
2. Everyone’s theme song becomes “Kung Fu Fighting”
October 23, 2011 at 3:23 pm
“The worst possibility I see coming from this expansion?
1. Whiners go to SW:TOR and find out it’s story is in fact worse than WoW’s
2. Everyone’s theme song becomes “Kung Fu Fighting”
Hi there, Zara’beth here. I’m not sure if you’ve looked into SWTOR very much, but the game itself is VERY interactive, and from what I’ve been able to play and watch my husband play (we can play already because of his pre-order stuff), it’s much more engaging. Your characters actually have a voice dialogue with NPCs, meaning that you’re not just accepting a quest via text and listen to the same five voice sets over and over from the NPC you’re getting your quest from. And that’s just the beginning for me. Your actions and chosen dialogue affects how that NPC will react towards you as well. Bioware put a lot of Mass Effect theory behind TOR just in the interactivity between your character and NPCs, but it’s given the game such a diverse approach to the whole walk-up-get-your-quest-and-grind thing. Also, minions that go and level up your professions for you? HELL YES.
There is A LOT of RP potential in TOR. Just the script alone for the entire game was rated as five times greater than the length of War and Peace, which means that there’s a lot of content that is going to hold interest for a while. I’ve been playing WoW since beta in 2004, so it’s losing been losing its flavor for me for some time now. Friends, RP friends, and relatives are the only reason my account had stayed that active. My mage has been transferred, faction changed, revamped RP-wise more times than I can count, and even starting new characters kept my interest for a while and then slowly declined. Too much ADD I suppose, I do have a problem with starting things like characters and stories and losing interest in them pretty quick, and faction grinding/raiding isn’t something I’m really into…the social aspect more than anything was enough to keep me playing. That’s all gone downhill in a matter of months because I’ve come across some complete psychos on the RP server I was playing on.
Cata, while I appreciated how things like gear were a lot more challenging to get because you had to really pay attention to what you were doing, the overall expansion was disappointing for me because all the “Wrath babies” (as my husband so lovingly refers to them) really made dungeoning with random queue people difficult and frustrating. BC by far was my favorite expansion because, even with some lore retconning, there was A LOT of creativity and amazing gear/graphics/never before seen creations that you didn’t see in the other following two expansions. Wrath just recolored all of its armor and used the same model from level 71 on into the 80 gear unless you were lucky enough to get into a guild that was actually doing Icecrown content. Cata did some of that, but some of their other gear designs just looked really lazy. I loved what some of the paladin/DK/warrior gear turned out to look like, as well as the priests, but I will say that a lot of what left me disappointed was just that it seemed like graphics and visuals were just getting “recycled”. I understand the money aspect of that because Blizz saves money doing that, but still, they make more than enough with their player base to offer up better graphics.
With that being said, the only thing that would’ve provoked me to play MoP were indeed the Pandarens themselves, because let’s face it, the little girl in me loved the big fluffy Pandas.
The level cap isn’t something I wanted to do again. Exploring and some new archaeology stuff? Maybe. Finding new places and ways to RP, yes. But overall, not only is TOR engaging for me and keeping my interest, just the player base itself that I’ve come across in my brief stints of RP have been really willing to help their fellow players develop and make strong RP presence as well as helping their other players (namely newer people to SW lore) understand how to develop their character RP-wise. I’m playing on an RP server called Sanctum of the Exalted, and we’ve had a good run there so far with just the other players we’ve encountered and haven’t run into any of the issues that we’ve encountered in WoW like griefers.
As for me, I’m still going to lurk RPL, because you guys always bring me a laugh or two when I need one. I can’t wait to see what kind of content Varendil and Lanuria bring to RPL from TOR. It’s gonna be a nice change from the Draenei futas and Belf mailbox dancers that are constantly complained about.
Do we see RP descriptions about Twi’leks in our midst using their handlebar tentacles for something dirty? Most definitely, and I hope you guys catch them in action for us for the lulz. <3
December 20, 2011 at 1:50 pm
I see no reason why the uncovered details and dynamics of the expansion (which we don’t yet know about) would only add “breadth” and not “depth.”
I must say though, the oriental design looks BEAUTIFUL! And I know there’s a stigma against RPers who use Asian culture or anime themes in their character, but now there is a medium for the good RPers with a genuine interest for medieval Asia to express that, while abiding to lore!
And seriously, Warcraft is not (and hasn’t been) limited to medieval European themes. There’s no reason for closed minds against inspiration from an entire geographic and historical legacy, if done well.
October 23, 2011 at 5:51 pm
“Why the fuck should my human/dwarf/gnome/orc/troll/tauren care about leaving their work with the Circle or Argents or Hand of Argus or whatever else and going to help fuzzy people deal with their problems?”
…because he’s a nice person who wants to help out in a part of the world that’s not doing so well?
Alternatively, because he’s an evil and/or greedy mofo who wants to milk something useful out of a relatively unspoiled continent?
I think that people have taken statements like “no big bad guy this time around” and the idea of a less frenetic pace and have run with the idea to the conclusion that we’re going to be playing happy bunny time and frolicking in golden fields. Which is hilariously inaccurate. For one, Zandalari Isle is on the Pandaria map, which means good odds of a troll invasion. There’s a new evil empire to be toppled, or maybe even two, with the mogu and the mantids. As has been stated, faceless ones, naga, and demons will probably show themselves at various points. And oh yeah, there’s a full-blown war going on between the Alliance and the Horde, which means we’re going to be busting skulls and kicking over fortresses justl ike we’ve been doing this whole time
MoP is not ending the conflicts in Azeroth – what it’s doing is resetting us to the state of vanilla WoW, with the A/H conflict being omnipresent and many little brushfires happening all over the place to be put out one by one. I agree with Oriseus – the parade of Big Bad after Big Bad, with each one popping up to take the last one’s place, with Deathwing being the latest screaming “ME NEXT! ME NEXT!” only to get duly beaten down has gotten ridiculous. It’s gotten to the point where even RPers are ICly snarking about how “we’ll kill [X] and then [Y] is gonna pop up.” We need time to take a little bit of a breath.
That’s great, but it’s not Azeroth. It has nothing to do with Azeroth. It’s an entirely different thing dropped onto, not even into, the existing continuity and treated like it’s always been there.
lolwut? All the human nations except Stormwind, the continent of Kalimdor, Northrend, the Burning Legion, the tol’vir, the orcish history of shamanism, all trolls having tusks, gilgoblins, the Old Gods, Garona as a half-draenei, the Naaru, Sporregar, two-headed ogres, and even the current world map say hello.
Seriously dude, Blizzard has been shatting things out and treating them as serious since Warcraft 2 came out. You’re going to call out Pandaria but not the legions upon legions of stuff that Blizzard has just flung out over time? Pandaria is much less egregious than, say, Uldum, which has a story of “oh, that desert was over there but nobody ever looked.” Or Twilight “BOLT THIS ON HERE” Highlands. Baron “didn’t I turn your head in back in vanilla” Rivendare?
“Make shit up” has been Blizzard’s MO since the very first game dropped. I find it absolutely hilarious that people are calling out MoP as “NOT WARCRAFT!” when frankly, this game barely even resembles the story it used to be. It’s gone through so many twists and changes, bolt-ons and x-pacs, always aboard the bridge of the USS Make Shit Up. Calling out Pandaria for being “dropped into Warcraft” is (in my opinion of course) absolutely silly.
October 23, 2011 at 6:33 pm
My NightElf doesnot care about anything besides his own people and their sacred homelands.
October 24, 2011 at 4:23 am
That does not sound like a feature.
October 24, 2011 at 4:38 am
““Make shit up” has been Blizzard’s MO since the very first game dropped. I find it absolutely hilarious that people are calling out MoP as “NOT WARCRAFT!” when frankly, this game barely even resembles the story it used to be. It’s gone through so many twists and changes, bolt-ons and x-pacs, always aboard the bridge of the USS Make Shit Up. Calling out Pandaria for being “dropped into Warcraft” is (in my opinion of course) absolutely silly.”
This is exactly my problem with this expansion.
All of it is dropped into warcraft. In the previous expansions there were parts of it where that was done with. But not all. Here it seems more like all with parts that make a bit of sense. Aka the other (wrong) way around.
October 24, 2011 at 4:30 am
lol just…. lol.
October 23, 2011 at 7:49 pm
Personally, I’m ecstatic about all the mechanic and gameplay changes. I can’t wait to get my Arms Warrior some delicious Shockwave for PvP. Assuming I’m not derping up my understanding of the new talents.
The lore… I’m actually kinda glad they’ve revealed next to nothing. I’m also digging the fact that there’s not a big bad this time around, at least not initially. I always thought it’d be awesome if they introduced a character and progress them throughout the expansion INTO being the main antagonist, rather than saying “Here they are OHGODTHEYFUCKEDSHITUPWHILEYOUWERESLEEPING go kill them in three tiers.”
October 23, 2011 at 7:54 pm
^That.
October 23, 2011 at 7:57 pm
I have mixed feelings about this. IMO, this is the worse expansion of WoW so far, but it’s not absolutely horrible. I feel like there’s not a lot here, but maybe it’s because of the lvl 90 cap, even though Cata had that but the entire world was redone. Many of the things put in are just side stuff that doesn’t have much to do with the main story of Pandaria or the questing experience. Pet battles and the like just seem like gimmicks to me, and while I’m okay with it, it just feels like something that could be put into a patch of some sort.
The worse thing to me is that there is no main villain. Sure, the Horde Vs. Alliance is a good thing, but they can still go with that while having a main villian, just like they have been. For example, in Cata, the Horde is trying to take over Ashenvale, causing a lot of fighting there, but Deathwing is still looming overhead as the main threat. We still have Queen Azshara and N’Zoth there that have to be dealt with, but Blizzard decides to still leave their stories open, and I’m not sure if WoW will last long enough for when we will be able to fight against them, seeing as how things look right now. I don’t want WoW to end before we get a chance to find out what happens to the antagonists, and Blizzard can continue putting in the Alliance Vs. Horde stuff in any expansion they give anyways.
It just feels to me that there will be smaller and smaller expansions. The majority of the expansion is the new Monk class, playing as the Pandaren, and Pandaria itself. The latter two will mostly be going through previous content before arriving to Pandaria, and once you get there, it’s just five zones, but even if they are rather big, I doubt it’ll be very long to go through. I mostly just care about storyline though, and that’s the biggest thing that I continue to play WoW for. If we start going back to focusing on antagonists in future expansions, my characters will look back, remembering the threats of the world that they have fought against, but they’ll most likely remember Pandaria as being a small part of the conflict in the faction war, from a view point of either faction… if they were to be compared to the United States conflicts in scale, it would be the war against the Lich King or Deathwing was World War 2 while Pandaria is just Grenada.
October 23, 2011 at 8:01 pm
“The majority of the expansion is the new Monk class, playing as the Pandaren, and Pandaria itself.”
This is the feeling I got as well. First expansion was a whole new planet with some dubious retconning. Second was the culmination of a major war for members of both factions. Third was the reshaping and updating of the old world and the escalating of war. Next to that, ‘more war in a new place’ just doesn’t have the same feel.
October 23, 2011 at 8:10 pm
Exactly. Every expansion brought something major, and I don’t feel anything epic about MoP.
October 23, 2011 at 8:12 pm
^All of this.
October 24, 2011 at 4:35 am
I’m 100% with you, RPL. I quit WoW. I thought about returning if the new expansion held the changes I want– which was graphics that kept up with the time, better individual character custom chances (the transmogrification or whatever the hell it was on the armor wasn’t what I wanted. I mean faces and general LOOK) wasn’t done. And the panda-crap doesn’t FEEL like WoW anymore. Since when has Kung Fu Panda fit into a fantasy world!? Maybe for some people, but not for me.
No, it’s fucking stupid. I have no interest in RPing bears. I think there is a furry game somewhere online for that. I will continue lurking Roleplayers Lament, and if anyone who knows me wants to bother me, I have an e-mail address for it. For now, I will keep my 15.00 for something more productive. Porn, maybe, or start a new hobby, like beekeeping.
October 23, 2011 at 10:29 pm
I miss you wynnie.
October 27, 2011 at 6:24 pm
I have a feeling most of you guys will be baaaaack.
This expansion doesn’t grab me immediately like the other 3 did, but I’m going to give it some time and watch it develop. If you still have any interest in the game as a whole, I’d suggest seeing what develops in beta instead of making sweeping declarations that you’re quitting now.
October 23, 2011 at 11:30 pm
No, the declarations are fine. It makes it funnier when they return.
October 24, 2011 at 4:41 am
Usually the louder and more vehement the “fu blizz, I’m qutting” statement, the more likely they are to come back, or in fact not even quit at all.
But, back to the expansion. If the two of you are still interested in the game by the time the expansion comes, just think of the amazingly terrible finds that may crop up! I’m going to try to predict some that may be coming our way:
- People that claim to have come from Pandaria before the actual reveal
- People that use an Asian setting as an excuse to painfully ram anime tropes into the setting (China, Japan… What’s the difference?)
- The inevitable curvy petite shemale pandaren in Goldshire, despite pandas having comically low libidos
Just think of the possibilities!
October 24, 2011 at 4:42 pm
You’d be surprised.
October 24, 2011 at 6:38 am
Oh, we’ll be back, I know I will. I am not as worried about the Xpac as Varendil is, but WoW has grown a little boring in its current state for me. Instead of paying the 15 a month to log in for an hour a day to go AFK, I’m going to put that money toward some camera stuff. Yay.
October 24, 2011 at 3:03 pm
Sounds like the two of you are just burnt out on the game as a whole right now. Maybe you guys just need a break for a while until it’s fresh again.
October 24, 2011 at 4:44 pm
You need to play Warcraft 3, Pandaren have been with the Warcraft lore since the RTS games.
Sounds like one RPer needs to read the lore some more
.
October 24, 2011 at 4:40 am
I have nothing to add that hasn’t been said alright. Aside from a lot of Mists seems to be pandering (and if you think that’s a play on words I swear I’ll find you and end you) to another demographic that may or may not exist, with Cata being “the old hardcore who thought SSC trash was great shit (wasn’t).
PS – Oh, and they’re copying Rift. I don’t play it but I am finding that to be funny with a lot of the proposed ‘changes’, both with 4.3 and after.
October 24, 2011 at 6:42 am
So we go from people giving opinions to the old, ‘lol they’re copying this game :B’ bit? *Applauds* Well done, good sir. Also, just because you wanna say you’ll find and end those who think it, I thought your play on words was great, you should do more. <3
October 24, 2011 at 9:46 am
I thought Rift borrowed ideas from the warcraft universe, so it would make sense that warcraft borrowed some ideas from Rift. Srsly though.
October 24, 2011 at 2:05 pm
I have no problems with games copying things from eachother.
Better well copied then badly thought up.
October 24, 2011 at 2:42 pm
I think this is just going too far…all this outrage and fury over something that for all you know could turn out really good..really engaging and inspired. You cite it’s previous absence from lore while at the same time ignoring the small snipets of lore found in WCIII (Joke at the time or not) and the RPG books which contained a wealth of information on Pandaria. Don’t forget that not only must a world continually expand and evolve to prevent stagnation and decline but also events happen elsewhere in the world that play a role in the larger scheme.
This expansion is not nessecarily one aimed at us as roleplayers who are millitary leaders…or political figures or even citizens but it creates a fantastic just amazing amount of potential for people not only wanting to experience adventure based RP but also Pioneer/New World RP…the excitement of going to somewhere new and foriegn…untouched by the wars of Azeroth and eeking out either a new existance amongst the Pandaren or trying to claim this new land for the H/A inorder to bring it’s resources to bare in the battle.
Don’t shoot down our Pandaren friends yet when we could well a year from now be thinking “How did we ever play without them?” this doom saying smacks to me of “I didn’t get the changes I wanted so I quit” which is the wrong attitude to take in games of this nature you do have to ride out the good and the bad and I for one am glad to see us moving away from DEMONSUPERULTRAMEGAOBLIVIONGODOFAPOCOLYPSE and returning a little to older WoW where the enemies are less super natural and more…”normal”
Pandas in WoW don’t have to be a bad thing…viewing them as innately destructive will only lead you in one direction..goldshire.
October 24, 2011 at 7:45 am
I’m really looking forward to this new expansion. The game and it’s lore have gotten very stale to me. It’s always old gods this, legion that, crazy elves corrupting things, and here’s some undead. I like the idea that all this time, there was a whole other culture right under our noses and now we get to explore it. I figure Blizz will get back to their old stores in time. With expansions coming out more quickly, we’ll get back to old storylines soon enough. I for one, am looking forward to having new lore and I’m not going to make any assumptions about it until I see it.
October 24, 2011 at 11:44 am
Okay! I can understand trolling people who have …Crap tastic rp, But, when it comes to this new Expac coming out..If you have ever played WC3 you would have some respect for Pandarians.
The Pandarians are actually a very good race that, we, avid lore, knows have been waiting for since BC. You may not like the idea of people playing monks that are not pandarains but if you look at the Lore or so much, It is the fact that they were taught by the Pandarians to be a monk. Which works out awesomely.
I really do not want to hear “Oh..This is making me quit wow.” You are quitting wow because you are tired of it, not because you are not wanting to play Pandarians, I am honestly sorry that you people have no respect for one of the rumored first races on Warcraft. Please, before you say how much you hate it..Learn to try it, and if you decide to quit wow because of the might of the pandas scare you away, Good, No more assholes who troll people for the way they play their characters.
That…and well…More Pandarin fun for the rest of us, Thanks! <3
-Kira
October 24, 2011 at 2:11 pm
“I really do not want to hear “Oh..This is making me quit wow.” You are quitting wow because you are tired of it, not because you are not wanting to play Pandarians, I am honestly sorry that you people have no respect for one of the rumored first races on Warcraft. Please, before you say how much you hate it..Learn to try it, and if you decide to quit wow because of the might of the pandas scare you away, Good, No more assholes who troll people for the way they play their characters.”
This is making me quit WoW.
Yes. I am tired of the game, I have no problem admitting that, and there is nothing about pandarens that gets me excited in it again.
I am sorry you think so little of me that you seme to think I am not considering anything besides pandaren only when making my decision to quit because of this expansion.
Pandaren were never remoured to be one of the starting races of WoW. There were rumours about them being added in BC. And I would have hated it as much at that time. But the game mechanics still kept me interested, and the lore about the Legion and other such things. And I was glad they chose to go with Draenei. Even then it made more sense to me, even if it required alot of lore retconning to get it done.
I hate it because, despite what blizz is saying now. Pandaren were never more then a joke content in Wc3. Draenei were first talked about in WC2.
Me, as an avid lore fan cannot make sense of this. They have never existed before in the entire Warcraft universe besides a gimmick in WC3 and a vanity pet in WoW.
I donot see where you get that a person who has played WC3 should lead one to logically have any respect for the race. They didn’t partake in the story. Broken/Draenei did.
I am also sorry you think me an asshole because I hate the entire idea behind this expansion already. Why couldn’t they have gone with something about the Emerald Dream. Something that would have made much more sense in my personal opinion, as it would have been a better continuation on the storyline of WoW.
I am sorry you donot think enough of me to consider the game mechanics aswell, which have been dropping since after BC. When I look at the new talenttrees, as they are now, I see little I like. (Why do they need to redo a system that works as intended?)
Quick example. The Druid tree. First tier.
http://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2011/october/talents_druid.jpg
Only usefull if your a kitty druid. What if your tanking? Healing? Boomkin?
Now I know it’ll change. But how stupid is it that Blizz hasen’t already considered this before they published it?
Blizz keeps making the same mistakes over and over, and that is what pisses me off the most about this entire expansion from everything I have read about it.
Sure it looks nice and all the new zones. But I never found looks very important in games. I much rather have a game that looks crap and plays brilliantly with a good story behind it, then the best looking game of all time that plays like crap and has a story that can be summed up in two words. Kill shit.
Blizz here is messing up their own story, more then they have ever done before, and it is just a bridge too far for me.
And again. I am sorry you think so little of me not to consider multiple aspects of this expansion.
p.s. Yes. You came over as hostile to me as I read that.
October 24, 2011 at 3:11 pm
Meh spelling mistakes are annoying.
October 24, 2011 at 3:12 pm
http://www.wowpedia.org/Chen_Stormstout just sayin’
October 25, 2011 at 1:00 am
I wasn’t meaning to come out hostle, I didn’t mean to. The point being, Do not knock something until you try it.
The Pandarins have been in Warcraft lore, Chin stormsnout helps Rexar in a BONUS mission in Wc3, I’ve watched my better half play it. They are also in the Wc Table Top game.
People should try this expansion before knocking it out of the water guys, that is a simple as this is. Now, PokeWoW I am not so sure about, I am an avid pet collecter and yay I actually have something cute and fun to do with them..But, PokeWoW eh…lol, I’ve seen the talent system, It is going to change a million times before the actual release date but, that looks pretty cool, I can go Prot (paladin) and be able to heal a bit more (other then WoG), which is a good thing in my book.
Me and my better half will be there for this drop, will we play all the way towards the end? Most likely not, I just want to play it for the beauty of the chinese cultral (Pardon spelling, just woke up and haven’t had coffee yet.) that blizz has put into the game. I have a feeling it is going to blow my other half’s computer up…but, I am looking forward to it.
And Yes….I know. Blizz now has two furry races, Which Im cool with, and now they are getting the third.
In time, Blizz will be making and Expansion to deal with the Legion, revamp outlands (Oh…fucking…Joy..) But right now they are dealing with something that needs to be dealt with, The Horde VS Alliance war, If this wasn’t focused on the world of Azeroth itself would most likely kill its self because of this. This has to do with the World OF Azeroth..And Its right there by the Maelstrom..Woo For not really knowing whats there, and a giant moving turtle which explains why we could never find Pandaria…
October 25, 2011 at 9:44 am
Me, I fervently hope a bunch of people will be quitting come MoP.
More server capacity for me and my army of alts.
October 24, 2011 at 8:20 pm
Welp.
October 24, 2011 at 9:10 pm
All this talk, and nobody has asked the pertinent question that always arises in times like these:
cn i hav ur gold?
There. Continue on. I’m on the fence about MoP – frankly I’m more interested in the possibility they’ll remove the 10-character realm cap and leave the 50-character account cap than learning how to make koi noodle soup.
(that second part is a lie, I’m hoping to add to the recipe book)
October 25, 2011 at 12:30 am
Personally, there is nothing about the coming expansion that I don’t like. I’m going to play the hell out of the pandas and the monks.
October 26, 2011 at 2:23 pm
I’m holding out hope for this expansion. While it doesn’t hype me up from the get go as much as Cata and WoTLK did, Cata and WoTLK didn’t exactly have what I was hoping for. (I know Cata still has a patch to go, and it seems like an AWESOMEEE patch, but I was kinda hoping for more to happen before this last patch. But that’s just me.)
I hope they stray away from revealing a big bad right from the beginning, because it kind of seems like they’re going to rush through the expansion as fast as possible to get to the final boss so people won’t keep saying “Is it time for the big bad now??? We both know how this is going to end, Bliz. You pretty much declared as a goner from the get go. I will break him.” While I do like to keep the story moving, it’s kind of a shame when we leave behind lots of loose ends that we’ll probably never tie up because the opportunity is pretty much gone since it doesn’t seem like there would be another appropriate time to explore certain ideas.
I know there’s a lot of answers still left unsolved that seem like they could be answered next after Cata, but at the same time, this sort of seems like it might turn out to be a “fun filler” sort of expansion. And really, I don’t mind that so much. It makes a nice change of pace, and may get some new people into the game and hooked. It’s something fresh and a little unexpected. (Though at the same time, I recall tons of people BEGGING for pandarens, so it’s kind of a surprise to me that a lot of people are bummed out about it. What with the high demand I’ve seen for that race, there wasn’t much doubt in my mind that they were going to put them in very soon. Although I imagined ogres or something like that would come first or be the new Horde faction.)
Maybe Bliz is experimenting a little with this expansion. Perhaps they’re using this expansion as a way to give the writers more time to think on what they could do to make a “much anticipated” expansion better than the last two expansions were. With Mists, I’m guessing they can kinda let their imaginations go a little wild since there’s not much established about Pandaria and whatnot, while with expanding on other stuff that’s been around much longer and has had a lot more written about it, I’m sure they’ll have to take a lot of time to sit down and really think what would be the best direction to take things in from what’s already been established and all that good stuff. (Yeah I know that some of the writing choices have been questionable in current times, but maybe this little break of an expansion could help fix this a bit. I want to believe.)
Another plus is that it likely means more RPers! Sometimes, it’s hard to find a playable race that you feel like you can realllyyy get into the lore of and play a character of that race and do it justice or at least try your best to. There’s so much you can do with character personality and story creation, but at the same time it’s pretty important to stick with some of the basics about the race you’re playing. It’s good to keep in mind why most members of a certain race are what they are, otherwise it tends to feel a little out of place! It’s easy to find a race you can say “Yeah they’re really cool!” about, but for some people it’s a wee bit tricky finding a race you’re really passionate about playing as. So the more races that open up for play, the better, really. I can’t wait to interact with the soon-to-be pandaren RPers! I’m not sure I’ll be RPing as one anytime soon, but I’m excited to see what other people will come up with.
Who knows? Maybe some more really unexpected events will unfold in future patches of this upcoming expansion. I guess you could say that the future of this expansion is quite a MISTery.
tl;dr My body is ready.
October 27, 2011 at 5:24 am
The more I think about the expansion, the more I am getting excited. My pets actually have meaning and I never object to minigames. I am looking forward to watching Cockfights in Stormwind or saber cubs wrestling in Darnassus.
I will not judge the new skill trees, they will most likely change out of recognition, but I can think of a few uses of these “kitty skills” even for my resto druid.
Pandaren Monks? My would-be druid would love some training in meditation and unarmed combat. And she loves beer. Admittedly the reason is selfdefense during her time among dwarves, but she will not object to meeting other brewmasters.
A whole new kontinent? My Worgen huntress might actually be tempted to put the past behind her and explore Pandaria.
Anyway, since MoP will most likely change considerably, I will bide my time and hope for the best. Anyway, after all the changes, all the chaos, all the big big threads, a bit of everyday troubles might actually be welcome.
October 27, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Blizzard can’t do anything without pissing everybody off can they?
October 27, 2011 at 2:17 pm
No big company can, really. People hate everything Apple does. People hate everything Valve does. People hate Minecraft.
And yet everyone still loves them. It’s the ‘I expect you to cater to my needs, because I’m sure they’re everyone else’s needs’ syndrome. or IEYTCTMNBISTEENS.
…god, I should not be typing at 2:30 in the morning…
October 30, 2011 at 1:26 am
I had already discontinued my sub but I came here still to see what was what. When the new expansion was announced I was extremely disappointed. Thought perhaps Blizzard would at least pretend to cater to some of its older subscribers, but it was a giant spit in the face to anyone over the age of 18. Alas, I wait patiently for this game to suddenly go Free to Play.
October 27, 2011 at 6:24 pm
Christ, speak for yourself, I -love- the look of the next expansion and i’m 21.
October 28, 2011 at 8:05 am
http://www.iisretard.com/wp-content/plugins/rss-poster/cache/79751_b4dfe895-56da-408b-9e20-e2086a9e7f4f1.jpg
October 28, 2011 at 1:41 pm
I feel you there, Vel. :-/ PokeWoW was something that I’m feeling mixed on right now. I don’t know if I really really like the idea or if I dislike it because it’s taking on too many aspects of other games that are NOT WoW. People are free to disagree with me. However, if I wanna play Pokemon, I’ll just go turn on my Wii/3DS to do that. I mean, the idea of my rare WoW pets fighting someone else’s is really cool and kinda nifty, but the fact that it’s not an original game element is kinda what’s turning it off for me. I’m old, y’all…and yes, VERY traditionalist in my gameplay. (If you’ve ever heard people go on and on about DAoC, you’re looking at one of those girls right here.
It was just a very well put-together game until some of the late expansions. It’s a fault I’m proud to admit. :3) Pokemon came out my senior year in high school and while I loved the card game, the video games themselves weren’t fun for me after the third or fourth one was produced. I also started playing Warcraft my sophomore year in High School with WC:OvH and loved it. So naturally I started playing WoW when it was available for beta.
Because Wrath/Cata stuff got boring for me pretty quick, what I had been doing before some of the gear and drops changed from the Old World bosses was trying to collect the rare and not-so-common RP items for my mage and other female characters because the original content is what I enjoyed RPing/playing best.
Very rarely did I venture out of Vanilla areas to RP (save for Nagrand in Outland or Crystalsong Forest/River’s Heart in Northrend) because there were still a lot of neat areas to RP in, especially for my little mage who enjoyed reading books and digging up history…Azshara, anyone? 
That was the part about Cata I will say I loved the most though…the archaeology.
Guys, I’m not a “hardcore” player. I’ve just been playing WoW for a very long time and don’t see the coming expansion as something I want to invest money or time into. I took a break, played Rift, liked it at first and then started to hate it, and have come to realize that most MMOs are either going to have enough aspects to keep me playing for a very long time or turn me off before I get too far into subscription payments. I’ve played WoW for the better part of a decade and really enjoyed the time I put into it, and came out learning lessons, whether they be good or bad, about myself, player bases in general, and what keeps me interested in a game. I’m more of a social/exploration of content player than I am a grinder/raider/PvPer. I’m fine with that. This is not a bitch rant or anything, but I think that all people shouldn’t be catagorized in the “whining” crowd when for some people, the game itself is just getting old.
December 20, 2011 at 2:22 pm
Something I noticed a while back. The more people shout, complain, and threaten to quit, the more fun I’m probably having in WoW. I really think I’m going to enjoy this. If the ‘complain about everything’ crowd keeps to their word and leaves, I’ll enjoy it that much more.
And that’s not a dig at you…specifically. It also goes to all the butthurt HaRdKoRe pLaYeRz who are threatening to cancel in droves. Good riddance to ‘em.
October 27, 2011 at 7:43 pm
I’ve seen so many people bitch and moan about this by now that I’m willing to say SOMETHING. I quit playing before Brewfest ’11. Not because I didn’t like the game, but the amount of time I spent playing didn’t justify the money I spent.
When I saw this expansion, I was excited. We’ve been fed WoWLore since vanilla. They’ve expanded on lore, gave us a few new things, but for the most part, we already knew these stories. We were just reliving them and finishing them. The war between the Horde and Alliance, the Lich Kind, the Burning Legion, Death Wing, etc. We’ve know all of this from before. WoW just let us be in a different aspect of it and finish the stories.
With Pandaria, though, we have this undiscovered continent. This place that’s been here through all this stuff we’ve played. How this affected them is unknown. Maybe the Lich King launched an attack on Pandaria, but failed because of the strength of the Panderan. It’s a new way of looking at the lore we already know.
I’ll probably resubscribe when the expansion comes out just to see the story they build. O
d be sorely disappointed if they don’t give the panda(wo)men their own story with what we’ve already wasted hours of our life playing out.
It’s still new. We have no idea what they’re doing or what they’ll do with it.
We’ll see…
October 28, 2011 at 12:34 am
Pandaria has been safe since The Sundering, since it went into hiding then. No one at all, besides the Pandaren themselves, knew anything about it until recently, I’d say around the upcoming 4.3 patch.
October 31, 2011 at 7:11 pm
Panderan are canon, and they’ve been so for years now, even if they haven’t been seen or spoken of much until now. If you two are quitting simply ’cause pandas’, then that’s your own faults, but if you’re quitting because you’re bored, then by all means.
Draenei were a far more outlandish (pun intended) addition tot he game than Panderan. Hell, Worgen didn’t even exist until World of Warcraft. If Blizzard can add new things, why not alter an old idea and make it something new and exciting?
Why would my human go to Panderia? He’s an agent of the military; he’s going for resources, potential allies, and to further the race against the Horde in the hopes of crushing them. This game truly did lose it’s sight of Horde vs Alliance, and they’re hoping MoP will reignite that, since the villain shall be the opposite faction, or rather the struggles against it. Sure, there will be a PvE encounter thrown in where some raid bosses are a mutual threat, but that’s how Classic was. We fought things that just showed up. The Qiraji just showed up, and they evolved in to the struggle we have now with the Old Gods and the Hammer.
Quitting so early before the next expansion ’cause pandas’ is just close-mindedness, or atleast that’s my take on it.
October 28, 2011 at 12:53 pm
This is a bit of an odd analogy(and I’m not very good at analogies) I know, but I think it works, so just bear(so punny) with me.
In many fancy perfume shops, you will find little cups of coffee beans on the shelves with the perfume. What your supposd to do, is take a sniff of the coffee beans after each different perfume in order to “clense your nose pallet”. Perfumes all share very similar scent patterns, and in order to detect the subtle nuances in each scent, you have to erase the scent of the last perfume by smelling something completely different, hence the coffee beans.
In the same way, the themes and overall feel of WoW hasn’t really changed, each expansion has been another bottle of perfume, each with it’s own new characteristics. But they have been harder and harder to distinguish, until finally it just seems like nothing more than a new race here, and some new class options there, and a few more quests, and a couple more areas to explore, but it all seems to run together, and it’s getting old.
So what we need now is a sniff of something different, something that doesn’t quite fit, to clense our nose pallets. So were going to be silly pandas for awhile, does that mean it won’t be fun, deep, or creative?
October 29, 2011 at 4:06 pm
Honestly, I’ve been weighing the pros and cons of quitting this game for a while. It’s not because of the lore or races, I can accept almost anything Blizzard does to their lore. At the end of the day, it’s -their- lore. Not yours. Not mine. If they want to change things about it or make a retcon, fine. I know in some cases with my role playing stories a retcon was necessary to continue to play the character as intended. Unforseen stuff happens.
My problem with WoW lies within the community. I don’t know exactly who or what specifically is to blame. In all seriousness I don’t think it’s one thing or another. I’m tired of there being such a gross disinterest in quality. Yes, there is a minority of the community who act like decent human beings and strive to have high quality gaming experience. Those people are few and far between.
There was a time in my MMO experience when the bad, rude and selfish players were the minority. As of late they’ve been taking over. No one seems to be interested in improving the quality of their impact on the community. It isn’t even restricted to one sort of interaction for me either. I level an alt and there is a high level player killing my quest mobs just to be a jerk. I try to RP and a level one assassin thinks they can murder my level eighty-five priest that I’ve been role playing on for more than a year. I try to do a few normal heroics and the DPS has no idea what it means to CC.
When it comes down to it, I believe that the overabundance of capped players who are clueless can partially be blamed on Blizzard for constantly nerfing encounters rather than sticking to their guns and forcing people to become better at the game. Sadly, I’ve come to accept that WoW isn’t as frustrating as it is merely because of Blizzard, but because the community accepted this behavior as well. In some cases, they indulged in it themselves.
I guess what I’m trying to say is this: Although MoP isn’t particularly interesting for me, I have been debating quitting for a far different reason. I won’t likely be going to another MMO. The internet turns people into jerks. I’m gonna hang up my RP hat and work on my real life. Maybe go and have a baby or something. I just…can’t deal with cranky, mean, jaded players that our horrible community has created any more.
October 30, 2011 at 5:23 am
DON’T WORRY! I HAVE AN IDEA!
Now, this might come as a shocker, but…
…and here me out here….
…But how about…you just don’t RP on Pandaria!
What, you think the rest of the world is just gonna disappear? Hells no! There will still be EK, Kalimdor, Outlands, Northrend. You can still do all your zombie killing and demon slaying. No one is FORCING you to RP in these places. Not a single person.
And besides…you think they are gonna leave the rest of the world alone? Leaked info says Theramore is being burnt to the ground! How about that! They AREN”T just working on Panda-land.
Not to mention they haven’t touched on ANY kinds of expansions and what they’re gonna be like. We might get more story on the trolls!
Also, Heroic Scholomance and SM! I wonder what they’re gonna do there!
THIS IS ALL SO EXCITING AND RELEVANT TO AZEROTH!
Now, I understand you might not like change. It’s a big, scary thing! D: But change is not always a bad thing. Adding new things is not always terrible! So before ya go jumping on the “I’M RAGEQUITTING WOW FOREVER” boat, try and wait and see how it goes.
That’s all. I’m out.
November 7, 2011 at 10:48 am
Most of the people whining about MoP are people I dislike anyway, so I don’t really care if they quit and shuffle off to ToR.
November 8, 2011 at 8:21 am
I didin’t read all the comments so I don’t know if anybody posted it yet… I felt the same about Pandaria before I read this –
http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/11/06/know-your-lore-tinfoil-hat-edition-the-genesis-of-azeroth/#continued
And if Metzen said enemy was the war itself, then it makes even more sense…
November 29, 2011 at 3:17 am
If the enemy is war itself, our characters are locked by game mechanics into a situation where the only actions they can make are continuing the war. That’s not exactly a comfortable place.
November 29, 2011 at 11:17 am
Well… Our characters don’t know war is the enemy and I don’t think Garrosh and Varian are likely to make peace just because Pandas believe the war will eventually lead to the end of the world (for real this time).
And I don’t know if you read what I linked to but when I said ‘it makes even more sense’ the ‘it’ meant the speculation. And if there actually is something to it, then for me it works as an excuse for Pandaria.
November 29, 2011 at 2:11 pm
Been thinking about this conversation all day at work. While it’s true that our characters don’t know what ‘the enemy’ is, anyone who’s a veteran of, for example, the SSO and the Icecrown campaign can see how stupid the various factions have become. The idea of ‘cooperation against a greater goal’ is a theme one can see since basically Mount Hyjal. It’s visible to characters, too.
WoW isn’t obligated to be everything to everyone, but by alienating more moderate or hippie-pacifist folks the way the story has been, of late, it’s removing incentive to play for people like me that don’t want to play a complete hawk, or whose characters have a shred of perspective. I don’t think anyone wins in this situation.
November 29, 2011 at 4:24 pm
/agree with your first paragraph, more or less. But while I still somehow hope Garrosh is just a temporary solution, the Horde is not going to get any less aggressive as long as he’s in charge. From what I heard, the reason why we’re going to Pandaria is simply because it’s a newfound piece of land for Alliance and Horde to vie for. But hey, we still don’t know who will be the ultimate villain of MoP, do we? I mean… They can’t let the -whole- story focus on the A/H war, that would really make the neutral factions (and roleplaying them) kind of pointless.
As for the lorewise bullshit… I admit there’s a lot of that. The most obvious being the Monk class available for everyone except goblins and worgen… but the reason for this is just as obvious. When the money talks, lore can do so much as shut up and look frustrated.
I guess my point of view is simply different because for me, roleplaying is second to overall game experience. If I should quit wow, it would be for the same reason as this guy – http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2186018660?page=1 – I really couldn’t express how I feel about Cataclysm on the Alliance side better than he did.
November 30, 2011 at 6:36 am
Oh, absolutely. As someone who likes playing the civilized, lawful side of things, I feel exactly the same way. They keep saying that the Alliance is going to get a story in Mists, but I was so deeply, deeply disappointed by the story in Cataclysm – not to mention things like the Groundhog Day Firelands – that I don’t really trust them anymore.
November 30, 2011 at 10:13 am