I Bought MoPFollow

Yeah, I got it to work tonight. Got all my chests except the one that drops the big super token. Also did that quest chain that gets you the 502 boots, which I was in desperate need of an upgrade. Now I'm ilvl 497, woo hoo!

I was able to get in once, and I got kicked out for not having my legendary cloak yet.

You have to go aaaaaaallllllllllll the way to the "circle" area in the very western end of the compound, by going along its southern side. Don't go in the middle, the doorway right next to the broken bridge, that is indeed Ordos's area.

Of course this makes you aggro more mobs and die more, but meh. Going naked still works quite well. But then the more you die, the more chances your spirit will spawn at the SH when it has 1-3 seconds before its next rez pulse. *sigh*

They really need to make that a choice.

Yeah, you gotta drop off in the red pond, then jump the waterfall into the other pond, same as usual. Just continue going west after the broken bridge.

Farm once you are done the story arc and are exalted is mainly about growing mats for whichever Profession you are. I farm herbs and that has kept my main and alt full on flasks the entire expac without ever once having to go flying around for herbs. It's a nice quick thing to check in on daily. I am using it right now to farm what I need for my Sky Golem.

Pacing on questing compared to when expac first released is meh. I just leveled my Priest to 90 and I wasn't close to finishing any zones. My paladin at launched finished Jade Forest, Valley of the Four Winds, Kun-Lai and I was most of the way done Townlong went I cherry picked quests in Dread Wastes to get 90. Story wise the pacing of the zones and the daily quest story arcs fit well and tie off rather nicely at the end. This is an Alliance vs Horde expac with the Pandaren being caught in the middle. It also shows insights of the Horde and Alliance doing soul searching about what they are along the way.

5 mans are a joke compared to Cata. Merely a step to gearing. Heroic Scenarios have some mechanics that will kill you if you are a goober. Nothing super elite though, just basic bad.com checks. The raiding is fairly decent this expansion. Once you have geared up a little get in LFR, goto Timeless island and start working through the reps. As for DK's my brother was of the same exact opinion as you, however somewhere along the way he fell back in love with his DK and now I can't get him to stop playing it and get on his druid.

Honestly this expac is a very solid outing. Theme~atically very different than WotLK but in terms of volume of content and variety of content a lot better than Wrath.

Sorry to see you aren't having fun with it.

Personally, I am loving the questing and the story lines. I don't really have a high bar, though, and I am coming back after 4/5 years (pre wotlk) so all the changes since then are still new to me.

^^
This.

Back in Cataclysm, the ONLY thing I could come up with to do was leveling new characters. Couldn't do Heroics, they were too hard and everybody in the randoms failed (didn't have a guild either).

Too few dailies meant not having anything to do on that front either.

Crafting sucked, and there was very little that could be made so that sucked too.

At least now there's LFR, the Heroics are do-able and smooth, there's Scenarios if I wanna show off (I meet a lot of peeps wearing blues in those, lol), Pet Battles, etc.

Wha?

From all the complaints on the boards, it sounds like people wearing PvE purples (at least in the open world) had the advantage because they changed how Resilience worked?

When's the last time you tried PvP?

Or did they change that back in 5.4? lol. They keep going one way, then the other way.....

There's no damn way they're going to make PvP <> PvE... they're going to have to either just accept that PvP is utterly broken and will never be balanced or fair, or make both gearsets equal to each other and just accept that people can raid and get gear for PvP.... why not? People can AFK and dork around in Battlegrounds and buy Honor Gear. Is there some kind of difference there? Oh, right, you can't really AFK raids very well. At least not anything above LFR.

IMO: Make PvE gear the same as Honor-bought PvP gear of LFR-tier item level, and downgrade Normal+ Raid gear while in Battlegrounds to even the playing field. Conquest Gear can remain the same level as Normal/Heroic Raid Gear or something. That way, if you AFK in battleground or AFK in LFR.... you get about the same kind of gear anyways.

Edited, Dec 8th 2013 9:50am by Lyrailis

Sometimes that can be a good changeup.

I mean, during Wrath it was all Arthas Arthas Arthas Arthas Arthas Arthas Vrykul Vrykul Arthas Vrykul Malygos Arthas Malygos Vrykul and it got a little old after awhile (hence why I took most of my characters through Sholazar but yet skipped large pieces of the rest of Northrend on my alts).

Then Cataclysm and it was all Deathwing Deathwing Deathwing Deathwing Cult Cult Cult Cult Cult Cult Cult Deathwing Cult Deathwing Cult Deathwing Cult.

THAT got old real fast. There weren't even any sort of diversions or anything, except for the Harrison Jones and the Temple of Uldum thing... which got old fast too. If I wanted to watch an Indie Jones movie, I'd watch an Indie Jones movie, TBH. That's why when I took Alts through Uldum, I did the Ramkahen portion and didn't touch Jones' portion much at all.

Now, in Pandaria... we have some HvA (but yet not too much of it: after 9 years of it, it is getting old too), some Sha, some random side-quest things happening, their 4 gods worship, the Mantid, the Yaungol, and... bleck. The only thing I really did not like about MoP was MORE F---ING TROLLS.

PLEASE tell me we killed off the last of the non-darkspear trolls. Please.

They better not pull some bulls--- out of their *** to make an excuse for trolls to appear in WoD... I will be fairly pissed.

EDIT: The more I think about it, the more I feel like they made every excuse they can to put trolls in MoP, because... trolls. They seem like they are forced to put them in every expansion, no matter how ridiculous their inclusion feels. In Cataclysm, it was kinda "meh".... a Tribe that was once on your side has suddenly turned evil and now you gotta re-do two dungeons all over again! Oi. Okay fine.

Then in MoP... I was questing through Kun-lai for the first time, you go down into the Emperor's Tomb (I hadn't been reading much about the lore online to avoid spoilers), and suddenly... it is "OMG THE ZANDALARI ARE HERE! The Trolls have been friends with the Mogu for thousands of years!" and my reaction was: "Are you f---ing KIDDING ME?" because this sounded like the most lame excuse ever to include Trolls in an expansion to date. If the Trolls and Mogu were friends for thousands of years, why didn't the trolls at any point earlier in the game ever mention the Pandaren or the Mogu whatsoever? They didn't, because that part of the lore hadn't been invented until MoP and it just seems like a lame excuse to include them.

Edited, Dec 8th 2013 10:03am by Lyrailis

No. It can't. This is an entire expansion we are talking about, not a patch. The entire expansion should not feel like a series of side quests. That's just really, really bad writing.

I'm not going to bother with Cata, because Cata also had terrible writing.

But both BC and Wrath were very well done. I think you've completely forgotten what Wrath was like, because it was DEFINITELY not all Arthas, all the time.

Yeah, your war on the Lich King was the central plot of the expansion, and it was the context by which you came to Northrend. But Ulduar and the Blue Dragonflight were both major plot elements. Plus the Vrykul. And they were plot elements that, along with the Scourge, were explored throughout the expansion.

Did the Scourge get most of the screen time? Of course it did. You were invading a continent they controlled - your conflicts with them SHOULD be the majority of your story.

But it's just not true, at all, that it was all Arthas, all the time.

Stuff on the various plot lines and how they're unveiled and interacted with from Zone 1 to endgame:
SpoilerYou arrive in Borean, and the first thing you do is deal with some Scourge attacking your base. Awesome - that's why you just boarded a boat to Northrend, to kick Scourge ***. But as you progress through the zone, you also get introduced to the Blue Dragonflight conflict. Later on in the zone, they start seeding the Ulduar/titans stuff, with the curse of flesh stuff. You also meet the Walrus people (Kalu'ak?) and have to help save them from Vrykul invaders.

That is one zone that, A. introduces all the major plot threads of the expansion but B. portions them out. Probably 50% of your quests are Scourge-specific or -adjecent. The rest are related to the other plot elements.

After that you go to Dragonblight, where you deal with Scourge, Dragons, Horde/Alliance tensions, and the walrus people again.

Yes, Scourge remains a real present threat, and that story progresses, but they also progress the other plot lines.

And they use each plot line to support and progress the others. Like when you get to learn about the origin of the human race from the Vrykul while also learning more about Arthas' transition into the role of the Lich King, when you're in Howling Fjord.

The Howling Fjord to Grizzly Hills is more Alliance/Horde and Vrykul and shaggy Tauren, with a side of Scourge, than the Western side of the continent. But it does the same thing - it explores the Scourge through the lens of the Vrykul. So you get a dynamic plot structure.

Then your two end-game zones are Icecrown and Stormpeaks, primarily, which let you further the expansion's main plotline AND explore the entire world plot (yay worldbuilding!) of the continent itself, AND learn more about the Titans, the Dwarfs, meet the giants, deal with the Old Gods, etc.

And let's not forget that we have Scarlet Onslaught thrown in there. And plenty else. Like Trolls. ()

I mean, of the Wrath raids, only two were actually dealing with the Scourge. I guess 3 if you count the Tournament... but c'mon.

But what the expansion did was unify the plot threads. It made nothing feel like a serious outlier - everything was a part of the world, and you were IN the world.

Stuff on why MoP doesn't do that at all:
SpoilerMoP has completely missed the mark there. If I wasn't working from a position of this being last patch and I know where things were going, none of these plot lines would make any sense. They aren't being linked together at all, and they aren't really selling themselves on their own value, either. Big Sha-infested areas crop up for no reason at all (seriously - from my perspective in the story they just feel like RIFT's rifts). I've encounted only a handful of Horde. The Pandaren just farm. Mogu may or may not be up to something and it may or may not be problematic. The insects broke the wall, but they don't really want to invade, and it's unclear if that was just Sha influence or if they were trying to escape something.

Maybe these all come together in the end. But it's TERRIBLE writing if your plot threads aren't reinforcing one another to make the player want more. Right now, it's a "pick and choose" scenario, which is the absolute worst thing you can do to drive world building, plot development, or immersion.

So, yeah, I disagree.

I absolutely agree that side quests are important. Like I said earlier, the actual ASSETS here are quality. There's so much they COULD have done with them. What I'm saying is that they failed miserably at actually using them.

Like, look at it this way.

You arrive in Jade Forest and you've been meandering your way to the tower battle. It's not perfect, but whatever - you're there. You have this Hozen vs. Fish people plot, this militarization plot, the Pandaren hesitation, some Celestial guardian that just lost its statue thing, and the Sha.


So, instead of just going your separate ways for two freaking zones...

SpoilerAdmiral Taylor and the Horde dude get possessed by Sha, and return to their factions as leaders (and you obviously have no proof of anything that happened there). That drives the Horde vs. Alliance thread. While you're helping Farmers in the Valley, you also need to deal with some skirmishes between their factions.

Celestials plot line? You have a Jade Serpent Order. Have them rushing out to help protect and warn their other Pandaren. Now SOME of those help the farmers quests can be recast as "Holy crap these crazed animals are already bad - get my stuff back and help me build barricades in case the Sha come!"

Then you actually have the Jade Serpent Order flesh out more of what is causing the Sha energy to break out across Pandaria, rather than just at the tower. THEY send you to the bird celestial guy, and you get to learn more about the role of Celestials in Pandaren society (not just "Save him! even though you know nothing of why he's important).

Etc.

You don't just freaking press pause on the plot then have you jump through assorted plot lines that don't link into each other in any meaningful way.


I guess the way I want to put it is that these plot lines are like you're playing Skyrim, where they can't know what kind of progress you'd make on other quest lines, so EVERYTHING is disconnected. You might have ended the Civil War, killed the emperor, and stopped Alduin, but the Mage tower quest line references none of that in any way.

And we accept that, because it's done to give you the freedom of choice in your content.

This is a completely directed and controlled story experience not designed to be skipped (literally, because you can't even access endgame until you progress it far enough). For me, it's inexcusable for that experience to not be working with itself.

Now, I'm going to start by pointing out that all you've suggested is that there exists an alternate, less-terrible story path. That's not really a stellar accomplishment.

And if you have to stumble into it, then it's not something they're getting any credit for from me. Yeah, I got that quest. But I had a bunch of quests in my pack for the current zone I was in, which was level appropriate. And those quests naturally led me to the next zone.

A breadcrumb quest is only valuable when you need to follow the breadcrumbs. If they wanted to ACTUALLY create a fork in the road, then I should have had a quest that established that fork. Find myself at that pass and have to choose whether or not I want to follow Chen or Lo, or whatever. Not permanently, but make it clear that the story is forking and I'll be following one path or the other.

But that still doesn't change the fact that he Krasarang/Valley plot lines were just bad. Simply not good. There's nothing wrong with the individual pieces of it - they were all fine. The problem is with the construction of the whole.

Let me put it this way; say you were writing a book series and each zone was its own book. Howling Fjord could be a good read. Valley and Krasarang wouldn't be.

And my point as a whole remains the same. Under no circumstances should finishing the first three zones of an expansion leave you in a place where you feel like you've failed to find any real plot.

I'm SURE the plot picks up right at that point, in the next zone (after you take that boat down stream). Thing is, I just don't care. I did well over a hundred quests that were so empty of real substance that the promise of amazing substance around the corner wouldn't make up for it (and I don't really trust that it's going to be amazing).

It's the equivalent of having to read 200 pages into a book before it finally starts to get decent. That's ridiculous. And we aren't talking about a 1500 page book, here. We're talking about one that's 350-450 pages. By the time I hit the halfway point, I should be really invested in the story. Not forcing myself to chug along in the hopes something, some time, will matter.

You are a phylumist for revising Wrath history to exclude Anub'Arak. >8< spider pride

I finished 3/7 zones.

Fine, maybe that's not the halfway point. Maybe it's a quarter.

I still don't care. It's pathetically bad to have gone through that much content and still not care, for the content to be completely at odds with itself, to feel like I'm just doing unrelated quest arcs that don't matter, and which fail to actually develop the world I'm in.

See, my argument doesn't hedge on whether or not these arcs come together in the end or not. My point is that I quested to level 90, finishing 3 zones in the process, and the plot was a hot mess. I just don't care if Blizzard gets around to wrapping up it up nicely with a bow in the end, because they didn't earn that right.

It doesn't matter if the second half of a novel is amazing if the first half is pathetic. The book is still mediocre in its execution.

This is the point you are completely missing. If nothing in the plot starts working together until you've done even 25% of the content, it's a severe failure of writing.

If you're not playing the game for the story, then it's probably not the worst deal. Because you were going to play even if the story was meh, so you can ignore the fact tha the story is sucking.

And you don't need a linear plot line to make these parts work together. All you need to make them work together is to contextualize them alongside each other. They can't just be separate until the final event ties up the bow. That's awful. But the actual plot threads can have causal effects on eachother outside of major events.

And the game did a decent job of that up until Cataclysm (with BC a huge step forward from Vanilla, with an even bigger step forward with Wrath), where it pretty much just disappeared. Suddenly everything became linear, and in seemingly separate directions.

MoP may not be so linear as Cataclysm. But its plot still runs in separate directions, which is a problem when none of the plot lines are given the attention they need to stand on their own feet.

Because at the end of the day, that's the problem. There isn't a single plot line that's been actually explored or given the support necessary to even act as an interim main plotline. I'm three zones in, and the game has been nothing but quests that are being treated as side quests without anything else to compliment.

That's the problem. There is literally no central plot to the questing experience through the first 3 zones.

I want you to really take a moment to think about what I mean. Think about the final, major closing event for Valley - the break in the wall. You literally just stop into that village for a moment before you head elsewhere on the map. You issue some evacuation orders, and then you're gone. Yet THAT is the plot line they use to drive the events to a finish?

I was fighting that battle, and then killing that big bug, and all I could think about was how stupid it was that I was doing this. How I'm doing something big and heroic and it doesn't even matter to me because I literally can't tell you the name of a single Pandaren in that village, because I have no clue what the wars with these things actually are, because I have no clue how important this wall actually was.

It was built like a climactic event, but none of the previous events of my quest led up to it. And then, to make matters worse, it's solved by a ridiculous feat of deus ex machina on part of the player.

I was so bored during that quest line. They clearly wanted it to be energetic and exciting, like the end of the DK quest line, when you revolt against the LK.

But without context, it was just a random big bad. Sure, I wanted to kill it - I was playing a video game. But I had no particular emotional desire to kill it.

And that is the entire reason a RPG exists.

Plus, these random, emotionally insignificant "climaxes" were my personal major issue with Cataclysm. Once upon a time, the game was so good at setting up story climaxes, like NO ONE else in the MMO industry was doing. Wrathgate and so many other questlines in Wrath are so memorable.

But then Cataclysm turned everything into a climax moment. MoP, thankfully, didn't do that... as much. But I've been consistently underwhelmed by the climaxes across the board. The random army clashing at the Jade Statue? That came on so fast - you equipped those soldiers so much earlier in your questing, and suddenly they were back in the limelight? And wait, when did the Horde presence get THAT big? And why are we marching to do battle at this statue; that makes no sense - why lose so much of an army at a strategically insignificant location and not even have the pleasure of taking out supply chains or bases in the process? Etc.

And, again, the problem is that the "main" quest line was executed the same way as the "side" quest lines.