The Rightplan on Blizzard – Cata to MoP

                                                       

RP Here!

So now that introductions are out of the way let’s get started. I could only get a short post in today so I will be giving the quick break down on (Mists of Pandaria) MoP and how it has progressed compared to Cata (Cataclysm). So we all know what we hated most about Cata compared to LK (Lich King). The story line just wasn’t there (at least not compared to LK), the dungeons and raids were not near as difficult, and much more. However they did enter some new ideas in towards the end of Cata to try and make up for the downfalls. Looking for Raid (LFR) was introduced where you can que for a random raid and a group will be made for you to kill 2-3 bosses with less difficulty then normal mode but with fewer rewards. By less rewards I mean you are given a loot bag or an item at random, not both and not always an item. The items are a lower ilvl (item level) then normal mode and should be rightly so. My thoughts on LFR? It’s a win/win for everyone. People complain that it’s too easy or that it’s to high ilvl gear for such easy runs, but this was developed for the casual gamer who wants to see the end game content and follow the story line without having to spend 7 days of raiding trying to finish them all on normal or heroic mode. So all in all I am all for LFR, not to mention it gives the raiding guilds a chance to up their gear ilvl a bit to assist them in getting down normal raids faster to work on heroics.

Next Blizzard redid the whole talent points system. As a beta to now player I admit I was sad to see the old talent system go. However they did make a well put together system that is of course dummy proof. I can honestly say it is not near as good as the old one, but it does come with some new skills that can be very useful. You cannot make a toon as tailored to your needs as you could before, but now you can change your talents and glyphs on the fly so you can change them to be tailored to each fight which is a small plus. Skills that you had to learn before at trainers are automatically given to you as you level and of course the mounts level requirements have been reduced.

There were many other small changes to the game when Cata almost finished its reign, but the REAL changes came in MoP. Hello Pokémon! Haha so the pet battle system was introduced, and to all those Pokémon players out there (myself included) you will not be let down. You can do almost everything you can in Pokémon except evolve your pet. They can reach a max of level 25 but once there they are done, but you can get items from dailies to buff them to a rare quality pet improving their stats, however this can only be done once per pet.

Next was the whole new world (not meant to be read like Aladdin). The new environment is amazing, the colors, layout, water quality etc. are all amazing for WoW. The expansion size is on par with that of LK and has a lot of features added such as new cut scenes (cut scenes started back in LK), while lvling, new mounts, new reputations, new dungeons, and at release 3 new raids announced (now 4 but the 4^th to be explained in the 5.2 discussion)

New tokens have been added to raiding in LFR/normal/Heroic modes. These coins allow you roll after a boss is dead to attempt to win another item. However this chance is low and about 8/10 times you will get gold. These tokens are obtained from doing dailies and you can only get 3 a week and hold a max of 10. (There are new tokens in 5.2 and the old ones can be held up to 20 now) You can only get one extra roll per boss per kill with the cost of 1 coin.

New PVP maps were released and a whole new PVP experience with the changes to talents and glyphs and new ones being added at level 90.

Rare elites have been welcomed more into MoP than in Cata and have new achievements/drops for anyone who searches them out.

There are a lot of positives to MoP, but I don’t have that long to go over all of them. So with every release of a game there are the negatives.

First off, Blizzard allows you to be a farmer. For all those thinking Farmville right now, you are not far off. This allows you to achieve a plot of land that you slowly improve upon and expand to a total of 16 plant spots. To achieve these plant spots however you have to complete A LOT of rep grinding, not just with the Tillers guild but with ALL the farmers. Once you achieve an unlocked whole farm, you can then plant 16 seeds once a day that allow you to get more spirits of harmony (crafting mat), Ores, Herbs, and other things you would normally farm (but not leather). I personally found this a negative to the expansion not because of the farm idea, but because of how big of a grind it was just to plant the 16 plots.

Next is the rep grind itself. Blizzard wanted people to be out in the world of Pandaria more and “experience it” and do you ever. If you are like me and want all the mounts/pets/achievements/reps you can get then you’re in for a grind. This is the reputations you have to get maxed out if you want it all: Klaxxi, Golden Lotus, The Anglers, The Lore Walkers, The Order of the Cloud Serpent, Shado-Pan, The Tillers, and The August Celestials. These are the 8 reputations that had to be leveled at the start of MoP. The grind was long and there were 5-15 dailies for each, which took quite a while. Blizzard did notice this though and when the next expansion came out (5.1) they introduces the rep Operation: Shieldwall and allowed tokens to be purchased from every reputation at revered that increase the amount of rep per quest/kills by 100% making it much faster to get to exalted. This still involves a huge grind for new players that want all the reputations, but it took a dent out of the time it takes.

There are other small negatives, but (due to time) the last large one I will touch on is Crafting. Crafting in Cata was a huge gold maker and the patterns and materials were harder to farm. Now because of the Farm you own and how easy these materials are to gather outside your farm, the cost of ALL materials has dropped greatly since Cata. In most cases it is almost not worth it to sell gems for example because in the amount of time it takes to do so you could have killed mobs and achieved the same profit. The only thing that really makes crafting difficult in farming spirits of harmony, and DEing (disenchanting) raid boss dropped gear for Blood Spirits. I hope some changes are made in the future to make crafting a money maker again, but for now it still is but not near as successful as it was in previous expansions.

Well that’s it for me today and in my next post I will start with 5.2 explanations.

Happy Gaming!

-Jon

World of WarCraft Final Patch Notes 5.04

Well it is happening, the next expansion Mists of Pandaria is being released next month and the first patch for it has been released to the general public. I know that a lot of people are thinking the same way “another expansion….really”, I was guilty of this myself, That was until I tried out the new patch…

The biggest change to me was the updated talent tree system. It feels a lot more like Diablo 3 with few tweaks. Each class picks its specialization, for example the druid has 4 specialization: Balance (Casting damage dealing), Restoration (Healing), Feral (This has been changed to straight Damage dealing), and Guardian (tanking). Once the specialization has been chosen you instantly learn all the skills associated to that tree. The talent tree then allows you to choose 1 talent every 15 levels. At first I thought this was over simplifying the game and encouraging “Cookie cutter” classes. At the moment I think this will actually encourage a wider range of builds depending on play style. With the use of the new glyph system, you can then refine your character even more. You can check out the talent calculator for an example http://us.battle.net/wow/en/tool/talent-calculator.

After messing around with the new patch I find myself a little excited for the new expansion. The game is still the same, but the talent mechanics are different enough that I feel I am playing and learning a new character. The talents obviously are not the only addition to the game, there have been many more changed added to keep people coming back. So if you have been thinking about trying the game out again now may be a good time.

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~Mark