Hello my friends and welcome to Metro’s final look back at Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft’s fourth expansion set! With the new calendar year of Warcraft approaching rapidly, its time to wrap up our affairs and say our final farewells to Chen and Li Li and wish Taran Zhu a speedy recovery.
By all accounts, the expansion has had its ups and downs, and despite my own exuberant love for some of the features, there is much dread to recall alongside.
This article is part 1 of a two part series where I go through the top 5 best and worst features. We start with the worst in order to frame the best, as I frankly feel despite there being 5 of each, the 5 best far outweigh the 5 worst.
If you would like to see my top 5 best/worst of cataclysm, you can do so here.
Part two will be released on WoWstratics shortly, and the link can be found here.
Let’s get right into the list! Drumroll please!
Worst #5 – Daily Quests!
The start of Cataclysm was an abomination for me for this one reason alone. As a Guild Leader, how can I attempt to force people to get pre-raid BIS and be prepared when even I couldn’t stomach the grind. The big issue for me however, was my spec choices. I love healing raids and I love tanking 5 mans, so there are little options on my Paladin. I was not about to respec every day as some of our players were doing, and it eventually just became hatred out of spite at how difficult it was to get anything done as a Protection paladin early on. To this day, I look at this as one of the worst decisions Blizzard has ever made. Thank god its gone for good.
Worst #4 – Absurd Boss Mechanics!
First of the expansion is Blade Lord Ta’yak. Aside from the asinine name (should have been wind lord and vice versa) this boss features the single mode retarded mechanic I have ever done in this video game. There certainly have been a few, but this boss takes the cake as the worst boss in the video game.
The mechanic is known as Unseen Strike, and can be explained easily as a frontal slash that must be split evenly with enough people so the damage is survivable. However, it just simply did not work this way. On Heroic, the damage was intense, and the phase dictated spread with movement, so it was often times a scramble to get enough people in it. Furthermore, for some reason unbeknownst to me, there was no definitive directional component to show which way the cone would hit. This caused CONSTANT (IE every single time) deaths of people because we simply didn’t know where to stack or stand. Even times when it hit the group correctly, one person would die from full health as if it didn’t split properly. The fight was entirely trivialized when I switched to my shaman healer in blues and lfr gear to come in and drop Spirit Link every other. It was that easy. Boss died first night after that. Worst fight ine game imo.
Other one that makes the list is Tortos, but no explanation needed. If you ever did the fight you know why a healer would hate it. Here is to actual predictable mechanics coming back in WoD and these getting buried next to daily quests!
Worst #3 – Length of Raid Tiers!
HURRY TOT IS OUT OK SOO IS OUT KK SEE YOU IN A YEAR.
All you need to know.
By the time ToES and HoF were even available, ToT was in the works. We were able to finish 6 heroic bosses in the first tier (mostly because we were bad) before ToT came out, meanwhile on the other end of the spectrum we have been farming 14 heroic bosses in SoO for months now. How is it possible to have a 4-5 month tier and a 13 month tier in the same expansion? A true blunder, and no matter how amazing the raids were, this can not be overlooked.
Worst #2 – Limited Time Legendary Buffs!
Keyword is Limited Time here. What on God’s green earth possessed them to do this? Jay Wilson said it worked with Diablo guys lets try it for WoW!
If your goal is to nerf the legendary quest, then just do so. There’s no tangible benefit to alternating them weekly and making the valor one only happen on the weekend after all raiding is over. Its just stupid and really cheap if you ask me. It sounds like something a company with low standards for their game would do and really makes me worry about the direction Blizzard as a company is headed if these ass-backwards ideas is their idea of prevent sub loss. How bout you put the 6 purchases everyone has to make into one video game geniuses?
If anyone has insight into why this is this way, please let me know. As of right now, this is IMO as cheesy as it gets.
Worst #1 – Community and Stigma!
“This is NOT a joke!”
When you have to say that, you’ve made a horrible mistake. Me personally? I loved the asian theme and the art. It was breathtaking. But you will NEVER convince the halfwits who dominate this game that it makes sense or can be done in a non-childish way. Even to this day, there are still people who talk bad about the expansion purely on the out-of-context theme Pandaria featured, and it absolutely ruined the expansion for me. If I have to read one more time about how pandas ruined WoW, I’ll cut my eyes out. Thank god this is over. It turned the best expansion into a running trade chat joke.
Honorable mention goes to 5 man heroics!
Here’s to you! I soloed you at 480 item level. Hopefully we can have some actual challenging ones in WoD.
Don’t forget to check out the top 5 best!
If you prefer to listen to more detailed rants on these topics, you can find a full video here below:
(when its finished).