I went away on the weekend, kept my nose away from the news, and enjoyed being unplugged. We went to a beach, a few wineries, and a charity dinner.
When I got back I discovered that the inmates are running the asylum, and we’re to get Warcraft – Mists of Pandas as the next expansion.
Now I asked for Monks in a few blog posts over the years, so I can say I’m pleased about that. And yup, they are Tank, Dps, heal modes just like I thought as it was kind of a no-brainer to guess. But the rest of it I’m not sure about, to the point of thinking of stopping wow until after its live so I can avoid the long drawn out release and change in modes. Pandas? Seriously? No. Not as Player characters.
Lore wise … a big ocean battle discovers an island race of monks who wished to remain hidden. Now that they are discovered they don’t hide, or just open a slow trade, or ask to be left alone – they join both sides of an expanding war. WTF. That is like the Dali Lama using an assault rifle.
The mini-pet-combat seems a distraction that is not worth it to me, and it stinks to think they a re-vamp to the gear award system is half-hitched, but we’ll see mini-pet combat. That is misguided. And I can’t think that the new talent system will actually feel ok, but then they’ve got more experience doing this.
Overall – I’ll wait and see what this expansion planning looks like in March or June next year. For now, I’m more scared than excited.
Blog Azeroth has a shared topic for this too, some interesting thoughts.
I was hoping for something a bit more, something that might tempt me to play WoW again.
Talents set up so that the choices don’t matter and item normalisation so that gear doesn’t matter. I like the sound of scenarios, but overall I’m looking forward to Diablo 3.
On the other hand my kids think that Kung Fu Panda + Pokemon + Warcraft = AWESOME.
Maybe I’m not the demographic they’re after any more.
TBC, Wrath and Cata had such cool bad guys, you felt prep’ed for a fight, this is far less so. What and who is the great bad, the force to strive against, the reason to fight?
Dunno if you’ve read this: http://arewenewatthis.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/3654/ – but maybe they’re embracing the fact that we are the bad guys? Sounds a bit like it.
Personally I believe that the new talent trees offer more true choice than the previous iteration. Why? Because for something to be a real choice, you have to be giving up something tangible. Fewer but more meaningful choices make sense to me.
I read somewhere that the Horde is going to sack Thermaore (go Horde!) in one of the preliminary events. Please, please, please maybe – just maybe – we’re going to stop the Horde/Alliance hand-holding and get back to whacking on the opposite faction now that the major threats to the world are gone?
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