MoP cinematic and beta thoughts, plus Cataclysm post-mordem
The Mists of Pandaria cinematic was unveiled recently, and it was very cool, as Blizzard cinematics always are. The music, the ambiance, and the sweeping, epic feel hit all the right notes. It was a fun little piece. It did not, however, give me chills or make me hop up and down squealing in fangirly glee like the previous expansion cinematics have.
The Burning Crusade cinematic was automatically cool because it had Illidan in it, and the brand-new Draenei and the flashy Blood Elves made it something new and unique. It was more montage than lore, but it was still one I watched many times in giddy anticipation of the first expansion's release.
The Wrath of the Lich King cinematic is easily the strongest of the batch, in my opinion. It was epic on such a grand scale, both visually and lore-wise. The irony between Terenas' voiceover and Arthas' on-screen actions was absolutely delicious. Sindragosa blew me away, and the endless sea of undead made me go, "Holy crap, we have to defeat these guys?" Everything about that cinematic was spot-on perfect, and the chills it gave me were not because of the ice and snow.
The Cataclysm cinematic was pure eye candy. It was fairly weak from a storytelling perspective, but visually? Oooooooh my. Knocked me out of my chair. The Booty Bay tidal wave, the flooding of Thousand Needles, the breaking of the Loch Modan dam, the scouring of Auberdine, and the ending with Stormwind in flames... OH EM GEE! And the fact that it starred one of my favorite dragons of all time made it an automatic favorite. Sadly, it is now tainted by the knowledge that Cataclysm was the least enjoyable expansion for me.
From the very beginning, Cataclysm gave me mixed feelings. On one hand, OMG DEATHWING!
♥ ♥ ♥ SQUEEE! Nefarian and Onyxia are back! Dragon lore by the truckload! Woohoo!
On the other hand, goodbye to the quaint old world of Azeroth that I was so familiar with and fond of. Goodbye Auberdine and Darkshore, Loch Modan, Thousand Needles, Tanaris and Hillsbrad of old. Goodbye Cairne and Magni. Goodbye Warchief Thrall (and hello attention whore World Shaman...)
When the expansion actually came out, I had even more mixed feelings.
Pros: New content, new lore, new armor, flying in Azeroth!
Cons: Brutally hard heroics to begin with, being railroaded through very linear questing, feeling sad at seeing familiar NPCs dead and nice places like Auberdine wrecked, and Deathwing's character being reduced to "RAWR, DRAGON SMASH!"
So shortly after hitting 85, I took a month or two off from playing the game, and when I did return I mainly messed around with alts instead of trying to get my main geared. Consequently, I ended up skipping the first two raiding tiers and only got back up to speed a couple months into Firelands. That meant I missed out on progressing through Blackwing Descent, which had the coolest black dragonflight lore of the entire expansion. I'm a Nefarian fangirl, and having him heckle us throughout the instance was priceless. I've gone back a few times with guildies for fun, but still have never downed the final Nefarian and Onyxia encounter. I would have loved hanging out there for week after week, soaking in the black dragonflight goodness (or evilness, as the case may be).
I don't regret missing Bastion of Twilight all that much, since the fights seemed harder and the lore wasn't as interesting to me. I have cleared that place a few times, though, back when I was trying to play catch up on the gear curve so I could do Firelands. Someday I want to see the Sinestra fight for the lore value, but otherwise I can shelve that place without feeling bad about it.
Firelands was an odd duck. I loved the callbacks to Molten Core, and as a fire mage the fiery motif was right up my alley. I felt very gimpy starting out in there since I was so poorly geared and hadn't raided since late WotLK. I also didn't get a raid spot most weeks, which is understandable due to my gear. Eventually I had my tier set and other proper gear and was doing okay DPS, and I was second in line to get the legendary staff.
Then Dragon Soul came out, and shortly thereafter half the guild stopped logging in so they could play Star Wars: The Old Republic and Diablo III instead. Among those who disappeared was the guild officer/raid leader/mage who was first in line for the legendary. That bumped me to first in line, but, alas, getting a group to do Firelands was like pulling teeth when it was no longer the current raid tier. Sadly, our guild turned into noobs whenever we tried to fight Ragnaros, so I still haven't killed him. Not having that achievement, or any heroic experience, made it a lot harder to get a spot in a pug, and even then it was pretty much impossible to get a group where the items for the legendary weren't already reserved.
I have the second epic version of the staff, and about half of the embers I need to progress to the last stage of the quest. It would take a few months of full clears of Firelands to finish it off, which isn't going to happen. I know some melee types who are just getting Shadowmourne, which means maybe when MoP winds down I'll get enough embers to finish Dragonwrath. :P
As for the Dragon Soul raid itself, it's another case of mixed feelings for me. From a game play perspective, it was highly successful. It's the first time I have EVER killed the final boss of an expansion when he was current content, and the first time I've ever downed more than two heroic bosses in a raid tier. Aside from rare mount drops, there is literally nothing left in DS on normal mode that I need anymore. I even have heroic pants! (That sounds funny...heehee...)
From a lore perspective...BLAH! Morchok, Zon'ozz and Yor'saj are okay because they make sense as minions of Deathwing and N'zoth. But Hagara and Warmaster Blackhorn? Who the hell are they? We were introduced to 5-man dungeon bosses while out questing and leveling, but two of the bosses in the final raid were complete unknowns.
Then we have to put up with Thrall butting into the situation, when it really wasn't his place. This was a dragon matter, and if you absolutely had to have a mortal lore figure involved, call in Rhonin. For all the hate he gets from the player base, at least it would make sense for him to be there. He has a long history with Deathwing and the red dragonflight. Hell, even Khadgar would have been okay, since he and Deathwing clashed in Outland during WCII and Deathwing swore to pay back Khadgar for breaking some of his armor and destroying so many of his eggs. (See the Beyond the Dark Portal novel.)
It was also a crying shame that Korialstrasz did not have a role in the Cataclysm storyline. He was unceremoniously killed off in a book and never showed up in the game doing anything during this expansion. The conflict between him and Deathwing, and him and Sinestra, had been building for ages. It was personal, not just a "oh crap they're going to end the world" thing. He at least should have been at the Bastion of Twilight to combat Sinestra, but instead we got Calen, who we knew nothing about beyond his AQ40 appearance and a little questing in the Twilight Highlands.
I get it, Thrall is a very powerful shaman, they needed someone with a connection to the earth element, blah blah blah. But they needed a shaman because they wrote it that way, and dragged the Dragon Soul into things. They could easily have written it differently so that ol' blue eyes wouldn't have to have been involved.
And I used to like Thrall! I didn't even dislike Aggra to begin with, but then they were shoved down our throats all expansion long, and they stole the lore spotlight away from Malfurion (see the beginning of the Elemental Bonds questline) and the Dragon Aspects (same questline, as well as the Dragon Soul raid). I will never stop mourning the fact that Deathwing's demise was completely absent from the final cinematic of HIS OWN EXPANSION, and instead we got the "Thrall's gonnna be a daddy" moment. I didn't want warm and fuzzy at that moment. I wanted fiery and badass!
Sigh. So, yeah, Cataclysm was a huge bag of mixed emotions for me. Game play? Actually pretty good. Heroics were overtuned to begin with, but things got better on that front as the expansion progressed. LFR is a long overdue addition to the game, and I loooooooooove transmogrification. Lore? A putrid pile of FAIL. I won't even get into how they utterly wasted Fandral Staghelm's character, cut short the worgen storyline way, WAY too soon, and left the Neptulon storyline dangling. The dragon lore trainwreck alone would have soured the expansion for me.
A couple of weeks ago my guild held a meeting and officially decided to quit raiding until we gear up again at level 90 in MoP. We were at the point where doing DS on normal was trivial, and we had heroic Morchok, Yor'saj and Ultraxion on farm status. Everyone was getting thoroughly bored with the place. Furthermore, two of our best tanks were moving away for college and would have interrupted/limited play time, and our two main healers were expecting a baby this month.
Thus we find ourselves a week and a half away from the big 5.0 patch that will pave the way for Mists of Pandaria to arrive on 9/25/12. I haven't been playing much, just trying to finish up a few archaeology projects and putz around with alts. I really want that stupid blue bug mount from Uldum, but Tol'vir archaeology is akin to watching paint dry, only way more frustrating.
I have had access to the Mists of Pandaria beta, but I haven't played all that much for fear of spoiling too much of the 85-90 experience. It was different with the Cataclysm beta because I wanted to explore all the re-done areas in the level 1-58 zones, and I knew if I did that when the game went live I'd the last person in my guild to hit level 85. Heh. So I freely explored all the new "old world" zones and flew around sightseeing. There were also two options for the first leveling zone, so I did Hyjal on the beta and then did Vashj'ir first on live, only going back to do Hyjal at 85 for fun/achievements/daily unlocking. It worked well. With MoP there is only one zone to start leveling in, the Jade Forest, so I don't want to spoil it by doing it in beta and then having to re-do it all when the game launches for real.
So I haven't done a lot in MoP beta with Skarlette, but I played through the level 1-12 Pandaren zone a couple times, once on a monk and once on a mage. I also took a night elf monk named Flippyjump through most of Teldrassil just for giggles. I did copy over Skarlette and play some of the Jade Forest, but it got kind of screwed up because I got teleported to an area toward the middle of the zone progression but didn't realize it, so I never did the actual starting experience for the Alliance, which I guess has some important lore stuff in it with Anduin and others. Just as well to leave myself unspoiled on that, I guess. I messed around with some quests in the central and northern part of the Jade Forest, killing tigers and mogu and such. I was about halfway to level 86 when those quests ran out. I didn't want to spoil anymore, but I did explore a little bit in other areas of the zone, and then rode into the next zone over to check out the Tillers stuff.
I'm really looking forward to sinking my teeth into Pandaria when Sept. 25th rolls around. I may be proven wrong, but I think this expansion will be a return to the vanilla vibe in the sense that there isn't a single lore thread pulling it all together, and each region has its own little story that doesn't necessarily tie in to anything else. Sort of a, take at your own pace, bit by bit, explore as you like kind of thing.
I actually hope so, since, as the rant above indicates, recent lore developments have left me underwhelmed. If they're going to treat my favorite lore characters like they have Deathwing, Fandral and Maiev in the Cataclysm era, I'd rather they focus on some new stuff for awhile instead. :p
Some random adventures and new foes are sounding really good about now.
The Burning Crusade cinematic was automatically cool because it had Illidan in it, and the brand-new Draenei and the flashy Blood Elves made it something new and unique. It was more montage than lore, but it was still one I watched many times in giddy anticipation of the first expansion's release.
The Wrath of the Lich King cinematic is easily the strongest of the batch, in my opinion. It was epic on such a grand scale, both visually and lore-wise. The irony between Terenas' voiceover and Arthas' on-screen actions was absolutely delicious. Sindragosa blew me away, and the endless sea of undead made me go, "Holy crap, we have to defeat these guys?" Everything about that cinematic was spot-on perfect, and the chills it gave me were not because of the ice and snow.
The Cataclysm cinematic was pure eye candy. It was fairly weak from a storytelling perspective, but visually? Oooooooh my. Knocked me out of my chair. The Booty Bay tidal wave, the flooding of Thousand Needles, the breaking of the Loch Modan dam, the scouring of Auberdine, and the ending with Stormwind in flames... OH EM GEE! And the fact that it starred one of my favorite dragons of all time made it an automatic favorite. Sadly, it is now tainted by the knowledge that Cataclysm was the least enjoyable expansion for me.
From the very beginning, Cataclysm gave me mixed feelings. On one hand, OMG DEATHWING!
♥ ♥ ♥ SQUEEE! Nefarian and Onyxia are back! Dragon lore by the truckload! Woohoo!
On the other hand, goodbye to the quaint old world of Azeroth that I was so familiar with and fond of. Goodbye Auberdine and Darkshore, Loch Modan, Thousand Needles, Tanaris and Hillsbrad of old. Goodbye Cairne and Magni. Goodbye Warchief Thrall (and hello attention whore World Shaman...)
When the expansion actually came out, I had even more mixed feelings.
Pros: New content, new lore, new armor, flying in Azeroth!
Cons: Brutally hard heroics to begin with, being railroaded through very linear questing, feeling sad at seeing familiar NPCs dead and nice places like Auberdine wrecked, and Deathwing's character being reduced to "RAWR, DRAGON SMASH!"
So shortly after hitting 85, I took a month or two off from playing the game, and when I did return I mainly messed around with alts instead of trying to get my main geared. Consequently, I ended up skipping the first two raiding tiers and only got back up to speed a couple months into Firelands. That meant I missed out on progressing through Blackwing Descent, which had the coolest black dragonflight lore of the entire expansion. I'm a Nefarian fangirl, and having him heckle us throughout the instance was priceless. I've gone back a few times with guildies for fun, but still have never downed the final Nefarian and Onyxia encounter. I would have loved hanging out there for week after week, soaking in the black dragonflight goodness (or evilness, as the case may be).
I don't regret missing Bastion of Twilight all that much, since the fights seemed harder and the lore wasn't as interesting to me. I have cleared that place a few times, though, back when I was trying to play catch up on the gear curve so I could do Firelands. Someday I want to see the Sinestra fight for the lore value, but otherwise I can shelve that place without feeling bad about it.
Firelands was an odd duck. I loved the callbacks to Molten Core, and as a fire mage the fiery motif was right up my alley. I felt very gimpy starting out in there since I was so poorly geared and hadn't raided since late WotLK. I also didn't get a raid spot most weeks, which is understandable due to my gear. Eventually I had my tier set and other proper gear and was doing okay DPS, and I was second in line to get the legendary staff.
Then Dragon Soul came out, and shortly thereafter half the guild stopped logging in so they could play Star Wars: The Old Republic and Diablo III instead. Among those who disappeared was the guild officer/raid leader/mage who was first in line for the legendary. That bumped me to first in line, but, alas, getting a group to do Firelands was like pulling teeth when it was no longer the current raid tier. Sadly, our guild turned into noobs whenever we tried to fight Ragnaros, so I still haven't killed him. Not having that achievement, or any heroic experience, made it a lot harder to get a spot in a pug, and even then it was pretty much impossible to get a group where the items for the legendary weren't already reserved.
I have the second epic version of the staff, and about half of the embers I need to progress to the last stage of the quest. It would take a few months of full clears of Firelands to finish it off, which isn't going to happen. I know some melee types who are just getting Shadowmourne, which means maybe when MoP winds down I'll get enough embers to finish Dragonwrath. :P
As for the Dragon Soul raid itself, it's another case of mixed feelings for me. From a game play perspective, it was highly successful. It's the first time I have EVER killed the final boss of an expansion when he was current content, and the first time I've ever downed more than two heroic bosses in a raid tier. Aside from rare mount drops, there is literally nothing left in DS on normal mode that I need anymore. I even have heroic pants! (That sounds funny...heehee...)
From a lore perspective...BLAH! Morchok, Zon'ozz and Yor'saj are okay because they make sense as minions of Deathwing and N'zoth. But Hagara and Warmaster Blackhorn? Who the hell are they? We were introduced to 5-man dungeon bosses while out questing and leveling, but two of the bosses in the final raid were complete unknowns.
Then we have to put up with Thrall butting into the situation, when it really wasn't his place. This was a dragon matter, and if you absolutely had to have a mortal lore figure involved, call in Rhonin. For all the hate he gets from the player base, at least it would make sense for him to be there. He has a long history with Deathwing and the red dragonflight. Hell, even Khadgar would have been okay, since he and Deathwing clashed in Outland during WCII and Deathwing swore to pay back Khadgar for breaking some of his armor and destroying so many of his eggs. (See the Beyond the Dark Portal novel.)
It was also a crying shame that Korialstrasz did not have a role in the Cataclysm storyline. He was unceremoniously killed off in a book and never showed up in the game doing anything during this expansion. The conflict between him and Deathwing, and him and Sinestra, had been building for ages. It was personal, not just a "oh crap they're going to end the world" thing. He at least should have been at the Bastion of Twilight to combat Sinestra, but instead we got Calen, who we knew nothing about beyond his AQ40 appearance and a little questing in the Twilight Highlands.
I get it, Thrall is a very powerful shaman, they needed someone with a connection to the earth element, blah blah blah. But they needed a shaman because they wrote it that way, and dragged the Dragon Soul into things. They could easily have written it differently so that ol' blue eyes wouldn't have to have been involved.
And I used to like Thrall! I didn't even dislike Aggra to begin with, but then they were shoved down our throats all expansion long, and they stole the lore spotlight away from Malfurion (see the beginning of the Elemental Bonds questline) and the Dragon Aspects (same questline, as well as the Dragon Soul raid). I will never stop mourning the fact that Deathwing's demise was completely absent from the final cinematic of HIS OWN EXPANSION, and instead we got the "Thrall's gonnna be a daddy" moment. I didn't want warm and fuzzy at that moment. I wanted fiery and badass!
Sigh. So, yeah, Cataclysm was a huge bag of mixed emotions for me. Game play? Actually pretty good. Heroics were overtuned to begin with, but things got better on that front as the expansion progressed. LFR is a long overdue addition to the game, and I loooooooooove transmogrification. Lore? A putrid pile of FAIL. I won't even get into how they utterly wasted Fandral Staghelm's character, cut short the worgen storyline way, WAY too soon, and left the Neptulon storyline dangling. The dragon lore trainwreck alone would have soured the expansion for me.
A couple of weeks ago my guild held a meeting and officially decided to quit raiding until we gear up again at level 90 in MoP. We were at the point where doing DS on normal was trivial, and we had heroic Morchok, Yor'saj and Ultraxion on farm status. Everyone was getting thoroughly bored with the place. Furthermore, two of our best tanks were moving away for college and would have interrupted/limited play time, and our two main healers were expecting a baby this month.
Thus we find ourselves a week and a half away from the big 5.0 patch that will pave the way for Mists of Pandaria to arrive on 9/25/12. I haven't been playing much, just trying to finish up a few archaeology projects and putz around with alts. I really want that stupid blue bug mount from Uldum, but Tol'vir archaeology is akin to watching paint dry, only way more frustrating.
I have had access to the Mists of Pandaria beta, but I haven't played all that much for fear of spoiling too much of the 85-90 experience. It was different with the Cataclysm beta because I wanted to explore all the re-done areas in the level 1-58 zones, and I knew if I did that when the game went live I'd the last person in my guild to hit level 85. Heh. So I freely explored all the new "old world" zones and flew around sightseeing. There were also two options for the first leveling zone, so I did Hyjal on the beta and then did Vashj'ir first on live, only going back to do Hyjal at 85 for fun/achievements/daily unlocking. It worked well. With MoP there is only one zone to start leveling in, the Jade Forest, so I don't want to spoil it by doing it in beta and then having to re-do it all when the game launches for real.
So I haven't done a lot in MoP beta with Skarlette, but I played through the level 1-12 Pandaren zone a couple times, once on a monk and once on a mage. I also took a night elf monk named Flippyjump through most of Teldrassil just for giggles. I did copy over Skarlette and play some of the Jade Forest, but it got kind of screwed up because I got teleported to an area toward the middle of the zone progression but didn't realize it, so I never did the actual starting experience for the Alliance, which I guess has some important lore stuff in it with Anduin and others. Just as well to leave myself unspoiled on that, I guess. I messed around with some quests in the central and northern part of the Jade Forest, killing tigers and mogu and such. I was about halfway to level 86 when those quests ran out. I didn't want to spoil anymore, but I did explore a little bit in other areas of the zone, and then rode into the next zone over to check out the Tillers stuff.
I'm really looking forward to sinking my teeth into Pandaria when Sept. 25th rolls around. I may be proven wrong, but I think this expansion will be a return to the vanilla vibe in the sense that there isn't a single lore thread pulling it all together, and each region has its own little story that doesn't necessarily tie in to anything else. Sort of a, take at your own pace, bit by bit, explore as you like kind of thing.
I actually hope so, since, as the rant above indicates, recent lore developments have left me underwhelmed. If they're going to treat my favorite lore characters like they have Deathwing, Fandral and Maiev in the Cataclysm era, I'd rather they focus on some new stuff for awhile instead. :p
Some random adventures and new foes are sounding really good about now.