Pandarian Shenanigans

The Mists of Pandaria expansion has been out about a week now and I’ve been very busy in game seeing what it has to offer. I think that after all I’ve seen so, I am loving this expansion. The first day I might have caught a 24 hour type of bug that forced me to stay home…and play a lot of WoW. Damn those strange and random illnesses! (/shifty eyes)The first day I said forget leveling I’m battling my pets and so I ran around leveling up a battle team. I have yet to name my battle team or even the pets in said team but they are around level 10/11. I have collected a lot of new pets and currently I am under 50 pets to the 250 unique pets achievement. Woots.  

After a while I decided to go quest for a bit in Pandaria and see what else the expansion included. I had quested in the Jade forest on the Beta back before they changed the whole zone. Because of this I had seen what the starter quest lines were like and I think that the new starter area is a ton better than the old area. In the old starter area you would find yourself in the Jade Forest under attack from Hozen and you would have to defend yourself. The new zone has you take the fight to the Horde and their base on the island. I much prefer the new quests as they definitely convey the “we are at war” concept that blizzard has been pushing on us for this expansion.

The quests after that are fun and while there are some kill thirty dudes for their eyelashes, there are many new ones like drinking dream booze to see my dreams, riding a mine cart and fending off attacking mobs, and taking over an NPC and shooting a bunch of mobs from a long distance so another NPC can do something. Seriously questing is a lot more fun now.

I rolled a Panda and played through the starter zone and that was a good time. It is a little annoying that you can’t be in a guild until you pick a faction but I understand why they did it. Not being able to chat in guild while leveling the Panda made the starter zone a little less fun than it could have been otherwise. I did enjoy it though and would recommend everyone make at least one Panda alt. Even if all you do is walk around the island and look at the scenery, its time well spent.

I think that sums up the graphics for this expansion: time well spent. There are so many different areas and each one has a unique feel to it. I was talking to the wife about the previous expansions and how this one was so different from each. BC was very colorful and alien, Wrath was dark and dreary, and Cataclysm felt fiery and grim. MoP so far feels light, exotic, and it to me it feels like blizzard set out to make this a more fun expansion. I suppose part of that could be because in previous expansions we were trying to save the world from demons, the scourge, and a giant dragon wearing retainer. So far I haven’t felt like my character was under all this pressure to save the world…again. I’ve felt like I’m helping the common pandas in each zone with their problems and making a difference. Sure I am sticking it to the horde along the way whenever I can but that’s also part of the expansion theme of Horde vs. Alliance.

The game has some beautiful scenery and if you zoomed by each quest hub to get to 90 as soon as possible you may have missed some nice things. I’m personally running around and having such a good time not focusing on leveling. I’m almost 87 on my mage and I’ve run around all of Pandaria grabbing archaeology things for a red cloud, so I’ve seen a lot of awesome things that I am looking forward to. Maybe in a few months once the new expansion shine wears off, I might think otherwise but for the moment I like MoP.

Guild Update:

We actually managed to snag several profession realm firsts the first night of the expansion. One of my guildees picked up four profession realm firsts alone. We also picked up the Guild Working as a Better Team realm first achievement. We’ve got several people at or close to 90 which is fun because they are running guild groups for heroics/scenarios. I can’t wait to jump into heroics with a guild group and avoid the whole pug scene.

Because my guild could always use more new and cool people, we are always recruiting! If you want to come raid with us, we’ll probably have room. If you want a social place where you can level a panda or other alts, we definitely have room. We are on Ursin-US-PVP and we raid Wednesdays from 5-8 PST for people who want to raid. In Cata we finished DS 2/8 HM. We are a casual guild that happens to raid. Our focus is on having fun and enjoying the game. If you are looking for an established guild that won’t disappear suddenly tomorrow, we turned 7 years old in July and I have no plans to disband the guild any time soon if ever. So if you are over the age of 18 and looking for a guild like us, why not check us out! Avengers of Azeroth