WoW Hate

[heyaz]

I almost didn't do MoP because of the panda thing, kung-fu panda, all that cheesy stuff. Especially the cinematic and all the ridiculous kung fu and chinese stereotypical culture references in the name of all of their abilities and quests, zen this meditation that, blah blah blah... but

They pulled it off in a way that wasn't anything like I had expected. I'm not exactly race changing to all male pandas (although the female pandas were pretty cool for shaman), but I'm enjoying the expansion and none of it turned out anything like kung-fu panda nor pokemon.

If you simply looked at the cinematic, heard about pandas and pokemon, and decided the game sucks and never played it, don't know what to tell you.

1. Most people don't play monks, it was nothing like to the extent where everyone made a DK when wrath came out
2. The panda NPCs and players aren't anything like that godawful annoying kung-fu panda pet that I have to mute, or chen stormwhatever in the cinematic. They're actually far more tolerable than the space goats from eastern europe who crashed in azeroth.
3. Pandaria is not a big continent filed with nothing but kung fu references, bruce lee-like sound effects, and that sort of thing.
4. Pokemon (pet battles) are a completely optional, non-essential and small part of little more than sub-game that I don't even see people doing. I haven't even trained it and it affects nothing I do in the game otherwise. You don't see people spamming in trade wanting to do pet battles. It's the same as usual
5. Farmville (aka Tillers faction and their dallies) are optional, and can be ignored if you don't feel like doing it. I've been playing almost since release and I can't even tell you what zone that faction is in and have made no attempt to even unlock those dallies.

Everything else is a much improved an enjoyable WoW:

-Talent and glyph system that makes sense, more customization, streamlined questing,
-cross realm zones,
-World PVP that is actually happening everywhere all the time 24/7,
- dallies that have great rewards and a chance to gank endless players of the opposing faction, PVP vendors out in the middle of nowhere (read: massive warzone gankspot that you can camp, even the vendors can be killed, meaning people will come out and defend)
- new battlegrounds, one of which is awesome for boxers (the powerball one)
- Wintergrasp and Tol Borad coming back for level 90s
- Heroic 5 mans that are easier both for single players and to box than wrath and those horrible cata instances
- Challenge modes if you like doing speed runs
- LFR - great way for boxers to get to do raid content, just queue and go
- More world pvp being added in 5.1, including a daily area focused specifically around horde vs alliance. I can imagine some serious pvp action there
- AOE looting which is one of the best new features since release of WoW
- Quests which were the bane of mulitbox questing - collect items which are dropped off a creature, are now a non-issue because 90% of the quests drop one for each character in the group. Couple that with us being able to do kill quests faster than a single group, and it makes up for the "collect X off the floor" quests that slow us down a bit.


Downsides already discussed. Elemental shaman are horrible single and even more horrible stacked and are actually just getting nerfed (due to resto being OP) which affected both specs. Enhance is decent boxed though. Melee boxing is the in-thing right now with DKs being strong. If you already have shaman (like I do) they're more fun to box as healers. Hardware is cheap enough you may as well run 5x dps 5x healers to be invincible (that's my plan anyway)