Monday, March 19, 2012

Mists of Pandaria - Press Info First Impressions

I read through a lot and found some funky things. The one that stood out to me the most was this one:

From Cory Stockton:
New Talent System
The choices that you make should actually matter, make your character feel unique, and add customization.


General Information:
You shouldn't feel like you have to take a certain talent if you are a healer. You can take any of the three talents and have fun with those.


Yeah, right…which one is it, guys? Or is it so that only for healers it doesn’t matter which talent you pick? I’m having a hard time putting this in line with the whole ‘mana should matter’ mantra as well.

I’m also reading some things that I’m shaking my head at:
"Have Group, Will Travel" will be replaced for example, because the goal in MoP is to emphasize on going out into the world to do stuff.

The goal is….yeah, but I read here, ‘it will take you longer to get organized for raids because everybody will have to fly there themselves.’ Not sure if that is a good choice, but hey maybe they’ll still allow raidleaders to summon the raid to them.

Then there are the pet battles, which I am looking forward to immensely, but I read this:
There are roughly 100 wild pets across Azeroth to collect.

And I’m thinking ‘holy crap monkies, you can overdo it Blizzard.’ Spreading this out instead of turning the bucket on players at launch seems like the better tactic.

Overall I’m actually quite excited about a lot that I’ve read, and I think this expansion will do quite a bit better than Cataclysm.

Things I am most excited about:

  • Players will be able to sort of earn dungeon levels, if you have not completed the right challenges you cannot do certain stuff. Yes! Finally a method to separate out players on something else than item level. I’m not sure how this pans out, but it is definitely a step in the right direction. I have always thought that a way to qualify for dungeons/raids/etc based on skill should exist.
  • A boatload of new models/mounts/etc to collect
  • A mass of new dungeons and raids.
  • Curious how the monk will work out, disappointed that the healer part of the monk will work on mana. Sounds like a pallie in leather. 
Things I am most disappointed about:

  • During Blizzcon it was mentioned to have all character slots per account on one server. 11 character slots is somewhat disappointing comparatively. Actually very very very disappointing.
  • Mounts are not account wide, so switching mains is still not an option. Which makes me sad, so sad.