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World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Launches On September 25
New submitter JestersGrind writes "Blizzard has announced that Mists of Pandaria, the latest expansion of the popular World of Warcraft MMO, will be launched on September 25, 2012 and can be pre-ordered now."
The game page has a good deal of information about the new expansion. The level cap is increased to 90, there is a new race (Pandaren) and a new class (Monk), and the talent system has been completely redesigned. They've added Challenge Modes for dungeons, which normalizes player gear and lets them compete to see who can clear it the fastest. The MMO-Champion website keeps track of all the minor details, if you're interested.
WoW went way past nuking the fridge with this misting the panda ex-pack.
If you call in for tech support on September 25th and the hold time is more than one hour, you can bet your arse many nerds have taken the day off to play this.
This expansion is the embodiment of everything wrong with gaming today. To appeal to a wider audience, WoW went from being a genuinely hard game where huge a minority of players cleared end-game content, to a faceroll two-button shell of its former self.
I guess even grandma needs to be able to down Deathwing when she forgets her meds, eh?
How many days will I have to take off of work to be the realm first level 90? I'll start stocking up on adult diapers tonight, no time for bio breaks.
Actually it would be kind of fun at 90 to go back to solo the old level 80 raids, I may have to start playing in October once all the server issues are fixed.
Wow lost my interest about a year ago. It used be a fun game, but the community is rotten and full antisocial d-bags.
I don't really care for the choices the game designers made either. Encounters are 100% technical execution and leave no room for creativity or fun at all. It gets old fast, and wow's imploding user base proves that most people agree.
It also takes far too much time. The reward for time invested is pretty damn low. Even if we just talk about game time, there are a LOT of other games worth playing today.
Know what I think is killing wow more than anything else? Steam summer sales. :)
So now they are putting Kung Fu Panda into warcraft? Boy, they are getting desperate to retain customers.
Its sad really. I started WoW many years ago (prior to BC) and loved it because it was a vibrant world filled with wonderful things to go see. The players were, for the most part, having fun running around, seeing new content, exploring and just enjoying the toungue-in-check nature of the WoW world.
Then came BC, for quite a while, the game was still viable - lots of players in the level 1 areas, etc - but the expansion areas felt duller, flatter - not nearly as inspired or quirky as the original zones.
Then came WoLK and things started going downhill. Once WoLK was out, the starting areas quickly became ghost towns and the game was clearly regearing itself to make getting through the first 60 levels a simple grind so that one could get to WoLK. The game started dumbing itself down and showed it in terms of being far less engaging. It simply felt cookie cutter.
I played the last expansion, Cat, until I got to level 85 and then stopped. The game had simply lost everything that made it enjoyable to start with. It had degenerated into an unending set of grinds to get better armor tokens so that one could brag about how buff one was. The game had gone from being a wonderful, sight-filled content exploration into "how fast can I get to level 80 and grind out better armor so that I can beat up on other people in PvP and claim that I'm great".
I think if Blizzard wants their subscribers back, they need to sit down and put in the work to create a new MMO where there are 50 or so levels of content out the door. They simply have to re-create that original WoW experience which will require the same level of energy, passion and effort that went into the original WoW. Somewhere along the line someone started trying to minimize the amount of effort required to add content and consequently diluted the game of the very thing that made it enjoyable to start with.
Honestly, the technology underpinning WoW is just too dated these days. Players expect more - Tera is a perfect example of that, a combat system where you actually have to hit your opponent (yes, some of it is simulated, but it feels real.
I have 5 level 80+ chars on WoW, but haven't played the game in at least a year, maybe two, and don't plan to go back to it, even for Pandas.
What little gaming time I have, I spend on games that are trying to innovate.
If Blizzard wants me back, they need to do something other than yet another expansion money grab. They need to do something new, innovative and wonderful. Sadly, I don't see much of this coming from them any more. I played Diablo 3 for about 3 hours before I got bored and switched back to Tera.
Hey Blizzard, how about this: World of Starcraft. And make it awesome, using latest technology - not an groaning engine that's 10 years old.
Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
but MoP is completely of my radar. I used to be a WoW player, a raid who played over 30 hours/week. But the disappointment with the last expansion (Cataclysm) and later content patches pushed me off the game. Without mentioning I had Dragon Soul (the latest "raid") 10 hours after it was released, the overall quality of the game went downhill. Short content with little to no creativity, recycled mechanics and overall boring content.
morcego
When they completely removed all challenge and need for skill WoW became a very pretty Zynga game that was all about grinding out time and not about fun... Since we don't care what Zynga does (unless it's go bankrupt) is this even still new for nerds?
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
GW2 is coming out on August 28th, the next 5 years are taken.
*rolls eyes*
Panderen, which started out as an easter egg joke in Warcraft 3 somehow got turned into a full blown expansions in WoW, because, honestly, blizzard has totally ran out of ideas at this point....
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
It just goes on, and on, and on, and on....
MMO's, tic-tac-toe, and thermonuclear war...they're the games you can NEVER WIN.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
And we say, WoW sucks, because it does suck.
It's the Kindergarten of MMORPG's.
When you WoW players want to grow up, come join a better MMORPG, like EQ2 or something.
We just had a big update to our PVP server, come get killed by me.
Be seeing you...
...WoW is for teenage children and dumb-fatasses who don't know any better.
They're making a mistake not trying to beat ArenaNet to market, IMO.
Well, I have played the betas, and I think GW2 is awesome. The graphics were, IMO, nicer than TOR graphics, and the game performed better as well. And I did a lot of PVP and didn't find it to be "klunky." There is a bit of a learning curve, since you can jump right into top-level pvp after you play through the intro quest, but once you have it figured out it is awesome.
It is true, you can pay real cash for a cute outfit. So what? Cash doesn't buy you better gear, no pay-to-win BS, just solid competition. They have to do something to make up for their lack of monthly fees, and cute outfits are it.
The only thing I don't like about GW is the dialogue for the PVE encounters. Their script writers really dropped the ball. It is like being in care bear wonder land, where everyone you meet wants to give you a hug! It is silly. So if that aspect of the game is important to you, consider other options (though I don't think wow's panda-people are any better).
The only thing exciting is that the expansion shares the same initials with one of Metallica's top tier albums before they decided to change their audience base from rockers to PBR-quaffing coffee shop denizens.
FWIW, the beta pretty much showed all the expansions content until a content patch. We all know the plot of it, so it won't be worth fooling around with until the Siege of Orgrimmar hits.
Looks like we have the same old FoTM stuff too. Roll a panda monk, rock the PvP until a subsequent patch nerfs the class and race in line with everyone else. The DK stuff over again, except you faceroll with a different mechanic instead of rune Tetris. The FoTM concept in WoW (either play the FoTM, or become the FotM's HK) has gotten old, but it is how they keep the subs with everyone gearing what is in vogue at that time, be it a ret pally, DK, guardian spec druid, or even further back, demon lock.
I'm sure others will enjoy it. However, there are other MMOs which have some interesting concepts. EQ2 has something similar to challenge mode for dungeons, except you can also build your own basic dungeons and have them ranked. Rift is dropping an expansion where all you have to pay for is just the expansion, and you end up with that and all content previous. Heck, if you really want a challenge, play EQ 1.
Of course, I will end up buying the expansion. WoW is like Facebook, a central message place for most gamers. However, other MMOs have better challenges, and take both tactics (see red stuff, move away from it), as well as strategy (put this type of healer in the tank group, this type in the melee DPS group, the third type with the ranged DPS, so there is the best buff synergy.)
Blizzard would like to thank you for your patience. While we constantly strive to maintain a stable server environment, there was no way we could have predicted so many people, most of whom pre-ordered the expansion pack, were ACTUALLY going to attempt to play it the day it came out. We thank you for your patience while we work out minor server stability issues. We are confident that you will be able to log in and enjoy the world we worked so hard to create on October 10th, following our regularly scheduled maintenance.
No, and I can explain. It was a voice mail, and I didn't make a custom greeting for missed calls from the past because the past doesn't show up on caller ID.
For all the griping that WoW isn't cutting edge anymore, it's as if gamers are forgetting that everyone has a different reason to play. Of course WoW is dated and some of its systems have been surpassed by countless other games: work on WoW began *eleven* years ago! It's as if there was nothing to be said for the quality of the lore, the humour in the writing, the scale and depth of the game world, and the simple fact that for many us, having played the game for up to 8 years now, the friends we've made and experiences we've had in-game have nothing to do with the engine, game mechanics, or even the battle system. I'm looking forward to MoP, if only to make new friends, and have new experiences that I won't forget for a long time.
I canceled my wow subscription months ago, Ill reactivate it for MOP since it should be pretty cool what with the whole new pokemon style pet collecting and fighting, completely revamped skill tree system, new zones, pandas to play as, new class to play as and other stuff.
Then you have guild wars 2 which will be great also I hope. Plus lack of a subscription fee without having to pay to win is most excellent.
My only complaint about MMO's though is the challenge is gone. I miss everquest back in the day where everything was a challenge, even crossing a damned zone and it was so damn hard it weeded out most of the cry babies and fostered a strong server community. So Ill play WOW MOP for 3 or 4 months till it gets boring and all I have are the idiot kids to play with and Ill cancel my account and then go play guild wars 2 instead because by then they should have all the bugs ironed out and the game patched up very well.
Something about fighting some giant demon-thingy and looking at your teammates and seeing twirling teddy bears just doesn't do it for me.
Let me guess: You didn't like either of the first two Care Bears movies either.
...is that Blizzard still thinks their have enough of a quality advantage that they can still charge and monthly subscription fee AND the price of a new game for an expansion pack.
Watch out for those storks when you get turned into a frog.
Also, it's been fun playing both Pandarean Monk Female and Pandarean Hunter Male, and I like the new appearance mods.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Never heard of Day Z.
I think you may think you're a hipster, but you're just one of those zombie wannabes.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
First, the starting area will drop - a lot. You may have physical problems getting the first quest.
If that happens, Quit the game, forcing a save of your newly created panda character.
This will help the next load.
Second, no, it's not that hard. Until you get to the frog ponds and the cranes eat you.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Who gives a flying f*ck about this game anymore? Only people who were too weak to quit during Cata, I guess... Blizzard sucks nowadays, and whereas in the past I would buy any game the made without hesitation - I now couldn't care less about this abortion of a game...
Wasn't this released last Christmas?
I've been reading all the posts here and I will agree that this game has catered hardcore to the casuals since about halfway through the WOTLK expansion. In vanilla and BC a guild had to work much harder to keep guild members, get them attuned to raids and gear them up and pray like hell no people left so you didn't have to re-gear someone new. Now if someone leaves a guild it's basically "Meh, whatever, lets find someone new who doesn't stand in fire and can watch vids on tankspot for fights".
Even today you still see random level 85 pug raids trying to do oh lets say Icecrown Citadel as an example. They have LFR gear and breeze right through all the bosses basically ignoring mechanics that were important when ICC was progression raiding. Only to get up to the Lich King (and this is usually in a PUG raid) to find that, yes, mechanics do matter even at level 85 and DS gear, and yes, you are a bloody moron for spreading defile on the platform and wiping the whole raid, and also a moron as a ranged character for not helping to kill the valks as they carry members of you're raid off the platform and drop them off the edge all the while the valks are thinking "HEHEHE F-ING NEWBS" ;-). I was in a guild that killed Lich King on my server back in 2010 and if you didn`t work well in a raid group you were considered a casual newbie and not worth raiding so to speak and didn`t know what the hell you were doing, especially if you didn`t have all the proper gems and enchants, could not listen on vent, and later on, reforged gear too.
Also from the days gone by was the hours, and somedays days long, battleground fights in Alterac Valley while each team tried to summon creatures to help turn the tide of battle. Now, battlegrounds are more often then not bots just standing at starting area casting random spells to avoid AFK status and the occasional blatant speed bots running around in BG's.
I don't have high hopes for MoP as it just seems like Pokemon (letting your companions fight in arenas), farming (Can we say farmville anyone?) and raids and dungeons that from what i`ve seen on beta videos on youtube look really easy. But, since I have five 85`s (DK, Warlock, Rogue, Shaman, and Warrior) from playing the last five years I may renew my sub in September and buy the standard edition to check it out.. but then I think back to how screwed up D3 launch was in USA compared to Korea where it launched on time and a lot of koreans had D3 on farm the next day and on streaming videos.
Try imagining all the servers same day MoP is released and how flooded the panda starting zone will be, how many idiotic kids will be there spamming anal jokes and acting, well, like kids do, and how many server restarts and crashes and emergency patches will be issued. Might be better off to wait a few weeks to resub and get the standard edition. :)
If worse comes to worse there`s always SIlkroad Online-R to play where all you have to deal with is Korea style mass grinding to get anywhere, lots of newbies using player bots because they can`t handle korea style grinding let along WoW style grinding, and more non english speaking players then english. *Rolls eyes*.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
My wife and I both play, and have for years. My tendency is to play too much, get all the gear, and achievements, get frustrated by something stupid and quit for a while -- only to come back a few months later. My wife plays casually, *loves* the graphics, and all the little frills (pets, mounts, etc.), and actually *reads* quest text and follows the story. I tend to think she's doing it right, and I'm (usually) doing it wrong. We'll be getting MoP and likely enjoying it enough to pay the fees.
Ah, apparently I have been saving this for YOU. SEE YA! lol
World of Warcraft: Mass Pandering
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Everyone is going to be playing Guild Wars 2 though :/ They should have put in in mid october at the earliest hoping that people would be burned out by then...
If you wanted a non-dumbed down WoW you would be playing Everquest. WoW has ALWAYS been dumbed down. It was Everquest-light and it sold like hot-cakes to the twelve year olds that couldn't handle WoW or were spit out by the community.
Hence you got Barren-chat, a type of chat that would have had the ban-hammers flying in any hardcore game but is the staple for WoW.
Complaining that WoW got dumbed down is like complaining teletubbies lost their hard satirical edge. That Full House lost its black humor. That reality TV became boring.
It might very well be true on an absolute scale but when you are the bottom, digging down doesn't really make a difference anymore. When you are last in a race, stopping won't make you drop any more places.
Go play a real game. Here is a hint, if you encounter barren-chat, that ain't a real game. Real games have a population of 200k, 300k at most. WoW has 10 million.
And people wonder why democracy sucks.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
GW2 is for kids who think X-box 360 graphics are cutting edge. Who really liked that RPG from an athele company that went bust despite it looking like crap and having all the fun of a tutorial level of WoW. The new event system? You don't pick up quests anymore by going to spot X, you go to spot X and wait a few minutes for the event to start. Woot!
Planetside 2, FPS MMO don't work. That is because although you think you might be hardcore for having played counterstrike 16 hours straight, that will be just the first boss out of a 32 boss raid. And that entire fight is against players and scripts so bad, they make they make you long for the AI from wolvenstein.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Wow and Aion? SWTOR which had the worst combat of any current MMO, hands down? Remind me how great of a game that is, with all the wonderful reviews of SWTOR that exist so far. (sarcasm) Polished turd references, etc. People aren't exactly happy with the game.
GW2 is indeed giving you the choice to pay for cosmetic shit. What does that have to do with some kind of purported similarity to Aion combat where you have 4-5 skill bars and consumables in addition? GW2 has nothing of the sort. You have a bar of 10 skills, 5 are static and 5 are change-able. GW2 - forgot the "better or worse" aspects of the opinion, but simply does not have a combat style that matches any other game. They intentionally made it different, and it is.
You might want to check someone other than your "friends" and/or I don't know, you could have maybe tried a beta and decided for yourself? Did you even watch a youtube video of some Spvp or WvWvW?
They told Wow's endgame concept to piss off, and made sure that being overleveled doesn't mean anything - areas retain their challenge. Instead of wow's "spend 10 minutes watching a gryphon fly around, go get a coffee" they have a "you can teleport anywhere at any time". cross server guilds. Being able to play with friends in instances even if they're across other servers. Instead of any game that exists with stupid revival mechanics, they added a "you're not dead yet just because you hit 0hp". Die after that and you can simply teleport back to the nearest waypoint. The only thing that's somewhat similar is the Warhammer concept of "public quests" which GW2 did their own spin on. Oh, and did I mention? you don't have quests, either. You simply have "areas to do things" and you go do whichever ones you want. there is no "order" which is required.
I don't mean this as "wow GW2 is awesome!" as somehow being better than other games but as to highlight that really, truly there aren't other games that are similar to GW2. 0123456 is correct. Also endgame in GW2 as noted is cosmetic.
The Wandering Isle is a blatant rip-off of "Avatar; The Last Airbender"'s Lion-Turtle.
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Who play MMO - who haven't a life.
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)
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