I Like Mists of Pandaria, But I Understand Why It Failed

[@rocny1008]

it was my first expansion growing up so of course i have a major nostalgic feeling for it but for me Mop has always been my favorite expansion. I still just love the raids, class design and zones more than any other expansion. And with how people are talking about it, it almost feels it is becoming the popular thing to say you have an unpopular positive opinion on it lol

[@mitasrb]

Damn, your comment makes me feel old 😁

[@Oabize]

I started with cata and loved it. Also loved mop. Had so much fun this two expansions. Played a lot pvp in the ptr with friends it was glorious time. Quit with start of wod cuz ofc wod is trash. Then played mop pvp on Pandawow for some time. And now came back tried on stormforge and its just bad. The time back then mop was good but maybe bc i played it through i dont have anymore. Its just a whack expansion imo

[@belstar1128]

I don't even know when i started i briefly checked the game out serval times in the 2000s but my main account is from 2011. but i hated cata because it was different from what i was advertised. i heard about epic 40 man raids and world bosses and group questing and being able to customise your characters. instead i got super easy on rails levelling easy lfr toxic antisocial players cookie cutter builds. that was not the game i saw game play of in 2005.

[@HamsterWheelGaming]

It's getting old enough where people start to maybe remember MoP a bit more fondly compared to when they were actually playing it. Either way, I'm having a lot of fun on a MoP server and I'm not afraid to say it :)

[@choonbox]

@@belstar1128 LFR was only in the last 2 months of cata though

[@Thrydon38]

Timeless isle world pvp and getting into & chilling at brawlers guild were some of the best times I ever had in wow

[@belstar1128]

Timeless isle was really timeless because it was like the patch never ended. but when wod finally came out i wish i was back on the timeless isle.

[@mikeykm1993]

I loved Timeless Isle PvP

[@simplementelicha2127]

Gameplaywise this expansion was ok, but I could never get over the fact they made an entire expansion centered around pandas, when the only panda we'd seen was a minor wc3 character.

[@redlemonade6366]

But hey the game got better and atleast we dont have drago... oh wait nvm.

[@arthursebastiany7311]

it was not only about pandaren, its about the alliance-horde war

[@kckillakrack9714]

Pandas and zandalari trolls are literally two of the earliest races In wow lore.

[@brandonkruse6412]

MoP was my favorite expansion as a little kid, but I didn’t get to experience it to the fullest until I joined private servers. I spent the past year playing on Tauri and Stormforge and had such a fun time. Both communities are small but welcoming and I hope they see more growth if Legion ever gets released.

[@swatsaw6]

same

[@orkoverend4331]

I'm glad other people feel like this about MoP I always looked back on it more fondly than all my friends.

[@HamsterWheelGaming]

MoP definitely has a following. It's small, but it's definitely there :)

[@RAEJDER]

Loved Stormforge and the MoP experience was there on launch and early raiding scene. Loved to relive it anew. Only downside was the guild i joined which after missing one raid night kicked me because "Your dps is no problem, being accountable is". I missed the raid cuz i was in hospital, which I should have foreseen i suppose being in a car crash and all. Really wish that ontop of recovery wouldnt have put me off to it, loved playing mop again in general but now i fear the server has progressed enough to where catching up isnt viable really.

[@redlemonade6366]

Im starting just now , dont be afraid you will always find players to progress with.

[@Egghead012]

Roll to horde and join simps of the round table, ya wont be forced to raid if yer unable to. Also please tell me the username of the guy who told u that so i can gank him and tbag his corpse

[@neartzim4240]

i just started yesterday lol

[@Fabriciod_Crv]

i think the advantage of the ease of leveling post cata revamp over the old world is that the quests are way better designed and each zones have actual stories going that aren't just burried in the quest text that nobody reads (for the most part), because let's be real, vanilla had really, *really* boring quests, they're all either Kill x mobs, collect y from mobs where the drop rate was the equivalent of getting ashes of al'ar (Zhevra hooves anyone?), and absolutely insane travel times, that's basically repeated throughout every Kalimdor/EK zone before the cataclysm revamp. you can't convince me that vanilla silverpine forrest is a better zone to level in than the revamped Silverpine with all the undead and worgen lore.

[@antonjohansson3819]

If they ever made a cata/pandaria server with vanilla difficulty levling I would jump on directly. Difficulty forced cooperation and attention. One of the best examples was playing Guardians of Hyjal on a private server. No NPC team so players would team up.

[@HamsterWheelGaming]

From a technical point of view, revamped silverpine is way better. However, because it's so easy I just don't feel engaged. I actually made an undead mage a few weeks ago, and from all the dungeoneering I did on my main I had a bunch of heirlooms on that character. I mindlessly 1 or 2shot every mob I saw and I did not have enough motivation to keep on leveling that character

[@fritzschnitzmueller3768]

I love vanilla questing. I know the quests are basically only kill x of these or collect y of this or go to z, BUT the story isnt as much "in your face" and way more grounded. In vanilla you start as a small foot soldier, helping people collect wood or help some farmer kids on two different farms to reunite. Then slowly you get introduced to the dangers of the world. You go to redridge and duskwood, where governments complain about attacks from dark forces and cry for help, that their leadership is not providing. You progress slowly in the world and you explore that in feralas/tanaris that some kind of alien life form has invaded azeroth (silithids), you get slowly introduced to dark iron dwarfs and their empire and then this slow buildup results in you actually going into the city of the dark iron dwarfs and kill their leader, going into AQ to get rid of the alien species etc. Its just such a natural progression compared to retail. In retail you basically start as the champion and immediately get to work with the King of stormwind and stuff like that to do majorly important diplomatic journeys. It just feels weird for me. I think the quest texts in vanilla are way better too (of course this is highly subjective) and its just a way more natural progression.

[@LoremasterGarcia]

I liked MoP because, while a lot of things that Garrosh did were considered wrong by the community, he was a daring leader, while Thrall almost always "played it safe". I also loved the Battle Fatigue debuff that basically erased healers from PVP (being a warrior that was awesome, ngl). I disliked the battle pet system, but I liked the whole "Harvest Moon" quests we could do while waiting for raids CD. It was in MoP that I did Loremaster from scratch using a boosted character. There was also a duel I won because I pushed a guy from a ledge in a panic attack because I was losing it. My friend did not speak to me in a week after that, rofl.

[@HamsterWheelGaming]

lmao I love the story

[@HamsterWheelGaming]

lmao I love the story

[@Mythsofmen]

Timeless Isle was fun, had a full set of welfare epics on my mage. Some of those mobs could actually slap!

[@HamsterWheelGaming]

Yep lol, you had to watch your back on the timeless isle. The elites hit like a truck, especially if you're on a ghetto geared alt

[@naejimba]

I love how they kind of gave each type of mob some sort of special ability (like those fuckers who would charge you and do way too much damage). I really wish they would take that principal and apply it to almost every mob in the entire open world. This would make leveling a bit more interesting and require your attention... do this and up the difficulty of leveling content and all the sudden you have a much better experience where you actually have to use your tools (interrupts, CC, etc).

[@naejimba]

Agree with Cata and MoP leveling lacking in difficulty, and agree with MoP Heroics being too easy (did you do the challenge modes though? Some of those were difficult if you do them in the first tier). LFR is also WAY too easy, and I hate feeling like I have to do it IN ADDITION to running the raid every week. I'd prefer never to touch it; it offers zero challenge. When you add it also on top of all of the reps, and dailies, and your farm, and having to kill a bunch of world bosses, and having to farm each patch's special currency needed for bonus rolls, etc. it was too much that I felt obligated to log in and do. It felt like chores tbh... This is especially true if you wanna have alts, and this is one of the best expansions for alts since every spec feels great. The worst part is there were so many things I didn't get around to doing in my p server run, from the brawler's guild, to pet battles, to doing PvP... I felt like I spent too much time doing things I didn't want to do and didn't have enough time left to do the things I did want to do. The maintenance and busy work just felt much higher than Wrath or Cata and almost ruined the experience for me. Solid expansion other than that, and one of the best supported expansions over it's lifetime. I love MoP, but I just feel pressured to do a bunch of stuff I don't want to so I don't fall behind. This was an expansion that felt a bit like a treadmill.

[@sands201]

Great to see these types of videos from you still. I always enjoy hearing your thoughts on these sort of topics even though I don’t really play WoW anymore.

[@HamsterWheelGaming]

Thanks a lot :)

[@phantom0456]

Throne of Thunder is my favorite raid in WoW. That alone makes Mists great for me, but I also agree that class design was at a very high point in Mists as well. I loved how Fury played in MoP, for example.

[@HamsterWheelGaming]

Throne of Thunder I believe is generally remembered very fondly. The setting was awesome, the boss fights interesting and the build-up towards it was just epic (the assault on thunder isle, collecting resources, etc)

[@aussieflintknapping]

Arms was a lot of fun in PvP too. I remember during the last patch I levelled a warrior to 90 just so I could do arenas

[@EdyGlockenspiel]

The thing I like the most about mop is that once 5.4 comes out, you can gear up at level 85 by just looting all the 1 time chests on the islands and even maybe kill a few rares, and loot the unlimited flask item from that cave. You can have a full set for 496 items (not counting weapon) and 2 or 3 tokens to boost items to 525 before you even hit 90. The moment you ding you can slap all that gear on instantly. Being able to progress your character before you hit max level is always a good feeling. I hate when the "end game" does not start until you are actually max level. It's what makes classic feel so good, because nearly everything you do is something you *should* be doing if you were 60. You *want* to get rep with your main factions for the 10% discount, you can start getting argent dawn and other reps as early as I think 19, and you are constantly obtaining weapon skills while leveling which makes you feel like you are still progressing. Where as in legion and beyond literally nothing you do before max level maters because it is all 100000% faster and easier once you hit max level to the point where everything you did before cap was rendered useless after you hit max level. You are punished for playing the game basically in later xpacks.

[@naejimba]

This is an excellent point, and focusing on this would help make the leveling feel more meaningful. One of the big changes in the WoW community was when the emphasis was so biased towards end game that it was seen as "when the ACTUAL game starts." This is where we get the "rush, rush, go, go!" attitude. No time to talk or make friends because that reduces efficiency. Kick that guy because he doesn't already know all the mechanics of the dungeon and we don't have time to teach him. The other half of the equation is when the content doesn't challenge you... at that point you aren't playing a game as much as doing mindless chores so that someday maybe you too could have fun playing a game. Best to get it over as quickly and painlessly as possible like it's a fucking prostate exam. Remember when that was actually part of the game too? People also aren't forced into working together when the content is easy, which means you aren't talking to the same people for any length of time and playing with the same people.... which are the conditions necessary to make a friend. All of that kills the social aspects of the game, and when it is easier and faster to just sit in one spot and queue for dungeons with an ever shifting sea of people you don't know or care about it becomes a very different game. Which is sad because there has to be some theoretical version of the game that both has rotations that are interesting AND the social aspects that made the game blow up in popularity.

[@bigbigu8671]

MoP didnt fail, classes were at their top, pvp was awesome,pve was good, zone were really nice, alt catch up mech were ok. I really miss mop

[@zakariahamdazak3627]

Hello, u should join Helios-wow

[@ahetzel9054]

I loved mop PvP but HATED the way all the gear looked. It was just straight up ugly, especially the priest gear. I felt so dumb running around without xmog 🤣 Aesthetically, they missed the mark, but combat felt really good on any class

[@MW-cx3sb]

Timeless Isle was the best wpvp experience I had since early vanilla back in '05. I loved bloodcoining so much even after the carebear nerf. I was only basic pvp geared (I went casual) yet absolutely dominated timeless isle with blood coining as a hunter, it was just so much fun. Infact late MoP was so fun for all classes with so much movement. Timeless Isle was one of the best zones blizz ever made, it had a reason for everyone to be there for both pve and pvp from casuals to raiders and new toons to geared toons. The zone buffs were the most fun at any period of WoW and the whole island felt alive and engaging. They really set the bar for zone design and sadly they never even got close to reaching it again.

[@Shadrax2904]

(No AI used, 100% human generated text) First of all, I think that Pandaren are cool, They are funny, colorful, and charismatic, they have a very interesting and multifaceted culture I don't consider them a mistake by Blizzard, but rather a very good decision. It's a matter of taste, whoever likes what Secondly, I don't think that Warcraft should be constantly violent, bloody, and serious, with a heavy atmosphere and a basic idea of constant battles between humans and orcs And I don't understand why people who hold such ideas think that they have the upper hand in the vision of what Warcraft should be And thirdly, I think that Warcraft is Blizzard's intellectual property and they should make their game the way they see fit This means giving zero flying fa**s about the fan's vision Making it as interesting as possible, not to be afraid to experiment and to put creativity, not money, first

[@grizzlyfray7355]

The shield on the shaman at the very beginning is identical to a shield from dragon age inquisition. like 102% identical. good stuff.

[@HamsterWheelGaming]

Really? Do you know the name of the shield? I'm interested now

[@grizzlyfray7355]

@@HamsterWheelGaming "Shield of the Dragon" in dragon age inquisition.

[@bambooze1047]

Started late wrath, Pretty casual and just learned the basics of the game in Cata, And then went hard in MOP. Laptop broke during SoO and I didnt pick the game up until early BFA. I have alot of love for MOP, And DF feels almost like a spiritual successor to MOP. A expansion based around exploration instead of some big bad threat.

[@DrinkingMud]

Siege of orgrimmar is the GOATed raid for me because its the first time I ever properly got into raiding, also because of where my life was at while raiding it. Staying up late on school nights doing flex runs with the boys

[@belstar1128]

I did raiding for the first time (not counting lfr) in that time too but it was quite frustrating i did flex and even moved up to normal and heroic. but it got annoying i only raided 2 times in wow the other time was in wow classic in 2020/21. and i also hated it i loved the raid but i can't stand the minmaxing when we are clearing things with ease.

[@davidnagy1046]

my problem was mainly that i was a solo player and without joining a guild, i hit a wall when trying to gear up after getting full raid finder and timeless isle stuff... after getting into flex it gets much better :D

[@abrahamovicovski]

I don't think this expansion failed. They went with a different asian approach to dark medieval fantasy universe of copy pasted Tolkien's stuff left and right but in the end with siege of orgrimmar, they connected the bridge gap to an old god and it became WoW again. It was very lore rich, mostly a calmer and quieter expansion with beautiful ambience and music around. In my opinion panda was my 3rd favorite. My favorites goes as WotlK > Vanilla > MoP > Cata = TBC = Legion Rest is trash imo.

[@JAZ_2002]

Mists of Pandaria was actually the expansion that first made me aware of World of Warcraft's existence, so it's pretty special in that regard. I was like 9 or 10 years old when I saw that promotional poster sign thing at the entrance of Walmart, which was just the box art, and my first thought was "Ew why would anyone want to play as an ugly panda?"

[@belstar1128]

Wow shouldn't you be playing ROBLOX.

[@18ps3anos]

Damn, makes me feel old when I was already giving up on WoW after years of playing it (6 years at that point), but you were just starting to be aware of it.

[@vratti2236]

@@belstar1128 Speech 100

[@sanmedina]

Cherrish these moment man, wont be long till hamsterJR has to farm gold for allowance 🥰

[@Freedom-of-speech4]

I miss Mop which private mop server did you suggest me to play? I appreciate any reply

[@daydreaming5365]

I have levelled on Duskhaven and Stormforge recently and I can honestly say I prefer levelling in mop. Don't get me wrong though, things do die a bit too quickly in mop but at the same time, classes feel so much more engaging to play while levelling that it doesn't matter to me. I think the issue I have with Duskhaven is that there's just too much downtime and mobs just feel really spongey. If you ask me the best balance for levelling would be a somewhere between the two. Things should do damage and hurt but shouldn't take 20-30 seconds each to kill, that just makes it feel like a chore.

[@everythinggamingnow]

part of the reason why cata and mop was so good for me was the timing. Finished school, and had a year or two to just chill and enjoy the game. And at the same time, streaming was popping off, i had been watching swifty for years at that point and he was streaming like 24/7 plus the yogscast and totalbiscuit (rip) doing there competions to see who could release the most cata beta videos, in a friendly way of course, and even doing videos together checking out newer low llv dugeons. Also that was around the time i first found sodapoppin, and then all that drama with mercader and soda, while swifty would have bajheera, hotted and mercader over to his "gaming house" it was a good time. The older i get, the more i realise. After vanilla, the game was never that interesting. It just facilitated an interesting social environment.

[@ght405]

as someone that basically missed the classic era (vanilla-wotlk) when classic wow rolled around the leveling the danger of mobs in the world made it far more engaging i feel like that level of danger while leveling with the more engaging kits of modern wow would make the new player experience really good. blizzard need to take a look at the new player xp regarding the leveling because when you're out there the world feels barren even if blizz just reduces the amount of phasing out in these older areas so you can actually run into other players on your journey.

[@ChoperJoJo]

for meit holds a spot in my heart because I started playing retail at 2013 (MoP, couple of weeks before ToT patch) and i was super excited. Although i played wow a lot prior that moment, MoP for me was super special

[@18ps3anos]

My problem with any expansion post-cata, as you mention, is that the levelling content became a second-class citizen kind of thing. That's simply why I couldn't get into expansions like pandaria. Which is a shame because the game looks beautiful, but it's just boring to play imo. I'm enjoying my time on turtle wow just levelling up, but I must admit I'd like more abilities and different styles of playing a class, while keeping that vanilla philosophy.

[@aroundthefur1210]

While not my favorite expansion, I think that MoP has the best class design. Story was also much better than I think anyone gives it credit for.

[@brandonkruse6412]

MoP’s story stuck with me. Probably due to the addition to cut-scenes in raids. You actually feel there’s a purpose for being in the raid.

[@BigGlutesBigToots]

I 100% agree with you on this vid. The advertising and, most of all, the location and characters, PANDAS, totally killed the Tolkien style mmo I fell in love with. That was the very first break I took from wow.

[@Kiltzombie]

I liked this xpac a lot. Pvp was fun. The zones were fun and beautiful. I loved my farm. Timeless isle and thunder isle pvp honor dailies. Overall really good. I may play twinstars pandaria and make a panda rogue.

[@rubensilva7397]

Wish you all the best with the new Legendary Son! A new moonkin to our world :D

[@carbunehoria6018]

Hi Hamster can you please tell us what addons are you using, your interface looks great xD

[@HamsterWheelGaming]

Hey there Carbune! It's ElvUI :)

[@rickarderiksson7242]

I loved pandaria. The last expansion i had time to play wow all in. It had every thing i loved about wow. Did all achivements, maxed all factions, did all content. Last 5/5 expansion for me.

[@imaloser1947]

the trailer was kinda funny. the theme is amazing, especially maps like jade forest and dread wastes. i dont like the male pandas, but female pandas are decent. for example female panda shadow priest has great casting animations. i wasnt hyped about about monks, but ww monk was pretty fun when i played it abit in patch 5.4.8. the classdesign for every single spec and class was the best we ever had. every spec was competitive and fun. we also got alot of new content (raids, flexraid, dungeons, szenarios, worldbosses, battlegrounds, arenas, petbattles, challengemode, catchup systems for conquestgear, legendaryquestline, bm auctionhouse, reforging, etc). quetimes were amazing for all kind of content, the world didnt felt dead, people were everywhere. everything was fun and it was the best expansion we ever got by far. it was also a great time because the whole community was arround 15-20years old. people started to stream on twitch etc.

[@flokivikinggaming5406]

is there a way for new models?

[@LoreanGlaymore]

I started with Wow in Mists of Pandaria. I came from Perfect World INT, and i started this game because my wife was talking about this game soooo much and i thought...okay...give it a try. And i loved Pandaria. It was such a feel good expansion. i loved the vive of the Pandaren...we ordered loads of chinese food at that time ^^ For me Pandaria is my most favourite Expansion. And god, i loved the Pandaren, the only High Res model back in these days...and they had the only good facial expressions and so on...

[@johnmccown7658]

Wats your toon name on stormforge I think I might try again I stopped at like tot

[@vladimirpalazov7646]

Great video. I will start to play mop on Stormforge server. Can you please reccomend me a race for Resto shaman, and will I get a guaranteed raid spot with this class? If you have any suggestions , I'm here 😉

[@Dampheria1]

I loved mop, it was either my favorite or second favorite expansion. That being said a year of soo was what killed it.

[@TajMahalGaming]

When I first spoke to you about it. You said you were gonna try but was having a lot of fun playing Vanilla+ and now you putting time into StormForge. Funny how that works! Lol, but as always love your content. You make me happy to be a private server WoW Player! Can’t wait to see what other servers you play on! 😁

[@leadingauctions8440]

Can you play a panda in the latest expansion?

[@Akeche]

I never saw death and destruction in the previous WoW cinematics, save perhaps Cataclysm. I saw adventure.

[@JM-md4ri]

I quit wow during cataclysm. Didn’t like where the game was headed. Came back sometime during MoP and was pleasantly surprised. It was fun. Underrated expansion

[@rtgMTB]

Never understood the hate for the mop trailer it was beautiful and it still the best looking/flowing cinematic to date.

[@marnikxvandorth1205]

Hé hamsterwheel, might a wierd or creepy question but are you from 024? I think i saw you riding your bike a little while ago, or a really handsome dubbelganger

[@DrFunk-rk6yl]

I never understood why people don't like an expansion based on the added race.

[@redlemonade6366]

Im starting to play now there , hope we meet sometimes in game :) . And YES i will play a PANDA MONK!

[@austinbyrd4164]

Best class design by far. Pvp was god tier. Best in wow's history. Didn't really care much for pandas, but the zones were extremely beautiful. Story was actually great. World bosses were top notch. Not the best raiding experience, but it wasn't bad by any means. Glyphs & gearing felt nice. Overall, it's my my second favorite period of wow just behind vanilla & wotlk tied for first place. Edit: wrote this before watching, & you said practically everything I did lol

[@mikeykm1993]

I loved MOP. Some of the most fun I’ve had on wow

[@brickusxp]

Congrats on the newborn!

[@ChoperJoJo]

Also i liked it because it was fresh, it felt different yet good. I loved the scenario thing

[@johnnymcgeez5647]

This video rings true! If you look back you will realize that main reason for outrage about pandaria was the fact that it contained pandas... In other words people got mad at the expansion before it even released, and then in their anger they kept on looking for smallest details that were wrong just to continue fueling their narrative of how "it is all ruined now".... Player base wasnt objective back then, and it completely wasnt fair towards the expansion.... But in reality it wasnt all that bad, heck, most of it was actually pretty good, and improvement over previous expansion... Zones were amazing and beautiful with great quests. Dungeons were fun, raids were awesome and ToT with isle of thunder was best content in the game's history. Even classes were all fun to play with good balancing. It was for the first time that all the specs trully felt viable... When you look back, all that stuff that people used to complain about just seems small in comparison to pandaria had to offer.

[@DeckardCainIsDead]

For me, the reason for not playing MoP was because I heard that they remade the Scholomance dungeon, that they turned Scholomance into a Harry Potter theme dungeon. And I was really pissed when I heard that. So I did my research and yes, it was true, I mean the lore of Scholomance and the cult of the damned is very f. up, and they turned that into PEGI 7. So I kept away from MoP, then from WoD because the main reason of the entire expansion, haha on videos about the state of the lore of warcraft "Garrosh was you know who from WW II, and screw everyone on his way for his bloodlust on MoP, at the end he was defeated and prisioned waiting for his future" and in WoD "some stupid dragon thought that was intelligent to release that c... on an alternative reality of the old draenor then he killed the stupid dragon and this time Garosh is the lider of the new horde" Honestly I almost die laughing after the entire reason for that expansion, then I was so angry that I missed the entire videos about WoD lore to this day aaand later I found that the Guldan of that reality managed to bring back the burning legion hahaha. So my friend, for some people, what you explained on this video was the reason for its fail, for me was what I just explained to you. The lore was everywhere. Now I'm playing Tauri beacuse I really want to play a functional Legion expansion, I played Legion on firestorm a little to late, and the current state of legion there is totally abandoned, nobody answer tickets, or bug reports on the forum, The last time I played there was an Antorus hero, the entire raid gave me just gold until Aggramar when someone on the raid told me to tipe "/reload" then ".f" to die before looting, then magic happended and I looted some gear. So I want to wait until tauri release Legion and now I'm seeing the lore of the pandaren and It's not that bad, yes I still think that what they do to Scholomance is an atrocity plus I really, really hate Garrosh, but I'm enjoying my time here despite the low poblation and the fact that there are more hordes than allys, I like MoP now.

[@Unwise]

I tried playing on Mistblade lately and got burnt out really quick.

[@kytch111]

PvPing on my destro lock in MoP was sooooo good!

[@swatsaw6]

how do you spell that name? :D

[@cburton99]

The expansion where i finally hit a max level, twitch early days began, xfire was still around, MoP PvE and PvP endgame is the most fun you can have along with TBC and WotLK in my opinion, the gameplay meshes so well, every class was a class cannon in PVP and felt very rewarding. The pretach for WoD, was my first realization of, dam things will never be the same again, and again, and again. So i started researching private servers, as soon as i got onto Feenix and PandaWoW, i no longer cared at all about retail.

[@Babaganoosh69]

The conversation around MoP has changed over the years. It still has its drawbacks and issues for sure but I think the things MoP did well are now what people typically focus on when discussing it. I think a Cata Classic would tread water and do better than people expect and I think a MoP Classic would blow people away with how many players it would attract. The pserver scene is going to become or already sorta is two different things. 1) A Classic expac preview room. Where there's a bunch of servers that come out of the expac after the current Classic one. & 2) Custom content is going to become more popular and normal. There's already Ascension, Turtle, Vanilla+, etc but I think there'll be even more.

[@belstar1128]

I think the biggest problem with mop is just that it has all of the bad changes from cata. imagine if cata never came out and they just went straight to mop with wrath like mechanics. i think that would have made it much better and wow would still be the number 1 mmo today.

[@coomercommander2554]

@@belstar1128 that would have ruined mop from an S tier best expansion to ever release to a mid tier boring expansion like wotlk / SL

[@belstar1128]

@@coomercommander2554 Wotlk boring ok that is your opinion i guess.

[@18ps3anos]

@@coomercommander2554 Hey man. Why do you consider wotlk boring? I have a love-hate relationship with it due to playing its endgame ad nauseum. I still have flashbacks of war from repeating its tournament dailies and dungeon finder runs over and over and over. In hindsight, that patch 3.2 was horrible. But why should MoP be considered S tier when the levelling experience was simply braindead?

[@AB-su7jt]

@@18ps3anos lmao leveling experience was always braindead easy, that's why everyone bought dungeon boosts in classic

[@Overlycomplicatedswede]

Heroics are ridiculously easy in MOP but are characters are also very strong after around a week at level 90 It takes no time at all to get into decent gear like 480+ ilvl I was geared for raiding after 2 weeks of the server being out Rn I’m sitting on 543 ilvl and in full heroic level gear (mistblade 2) The 3x leveling rate is great it’s enough to level pretty dang fast but also gives you a lot of time to see several different zones

[@RagbroGaming]

what server are you playing on?

[@Molagmal]

Dad Gamer?! Gefeliciteerd man!

[@Modrov]

All what they had to do is make pandaren look more badass and not so damn goofy.. Aside that MoP was insanely good, story, atmosphere and whatever you want, and PvP bro... the PvP was insane. About the PvE idk, I don't do that, raids still looked fine asf.

[@stonks87]

Timeless Isle PvP was honestly the most fun I've ever had in WoW

[@toner01]

i dont think mists was unpopular at all, it held sub numbers above 7M for the majority of the expansion

[@pedroalbuquerquebs]

Despite any faults, MoP is arguably the best post-Cataclysm expansion, with Legion being the only other real contender in this category.

[@ibrahimmalallah3201]

great vid buddy _ u cant say easy if u dont try challenge mode or hc 25 ur playing dungeons + lfr for sure they gona make it easy for ppl to get some gear , make some challenges or try to join a guild who rly care about getting bosses down with hc's not normal mode cause in hc alot of mechanics change and good luck :D

[@joshewert13]

Activision bought wow before mop. This was 100% of an expansion for the Chinese market. Fun fact Chinese servers had separate lockouts with 10-25 man vs NA / EU had shared ones.

[@jodiaz01]

this prob unrelated but the way you described looking at rogue pandas is the same way i always feel about gnomes and taurens. And the people who play them just wanna have goofy characters.

[@Slashresto]

I mean for us whos played wow for 20 years soon im GLAD the lvling is easy and fast cause the lvling isnt smth i enjoy anymore outside of testing new classes. (Altho ive played most classes in most expansions by now)

[@brimstonevalar6053]

Twinstar will release a fresh mop server in one month so I can finally try it.

[@xRip666x]

Great vid bro! I agree the theme of the expansion took away a lot but gameplay wise I seem to remember enjoying myself in pandaria Edit: I still forget sometimes Pandaren's exists on retail tho lol

[@jamwisethebrave]

Hold up hold up, forgettable?! CHEN STORMSTOUT is an amazing part of the wc3 lineup how dare you do my round boi like that

[@cmdmd]

I loved the intro cinematic.

[@minkles1330]

MOP was great!, better than WOD haha, I loved my Kung fu panda. We went from all hanging out in a central hub together to all standing alone in our garrisons.

[@belstar1128]

I think the biggest problem with mop was cata. cata destroyed the levelling experience. they removed all the interesting rpg mechanics and streamlined things way too much. made things more linear. mop tried to fix some of the things from cata but they did not go far enough. and pandaria was isolated from the rest of the world but that has been a problem with every expansion. i don't really care that it looked silly. i thought it was a huge improvement over cata. mop was the last period where i was optimistic for the future of wow. it seemed like they had learned their lesson from cata while wow's golden age had ended the game was still very popular. but then came wod and that was the point when most people i knew gave up. i kept on playing until 2021 but i never had the same interest in the game.

[@18ps3anos]

A great idea for a private server would be MoP content on top of WotLK world ahah. Even better would be on top of vanilla and balanced for 60-70. Too bad cata removed old talent trees and streamlined class progression. But I'd be interested in checking that out as long as the leveling experience would be similar to vanilla.

[@belstar1128]

@@18ps3anos Yea that was my idea too i think cata was the biggest mistake blizzard has ever made. and wow could have stayed popular for much longer. if they just kept old school game play and mechanics and only modernise things like respawn rates on certain npcs but the early 2010s where a dark time for mmos in general. at the time the trend was to make mmos as simple as possible. runescape also sabotaged itself at this time. many early mmos got shut down. you can see newer games trying to break this trend. and the early 2010s was also the time when pay2win micro transactions became popular so this gave companies a reason to ruin smaller mmos so when wow went down hill all other mmos went down at the same time recently some mmos are trying to bring the rpg element back but they are forced to have micro transactions by the publisher or investors It would be cool if private servers could take every post cata expac. and re write it into a vanilla like experience. but that is probably quite hard. and the the newer expansions are so different. you would have to totally remake it or it will be unplayable. like in legion i remember being in combat all the time fighting many weaker enemies that where all over the map. they where weak but with vanilla mechanics they would be unbeatable. since you can't just pull them one by one. the game just expects you to have infinite mana and fast regenerating health. and spells that don't get interrupted and a lot of aoe and self healing.

[@Bcnpnck]

Imo pandaria was the best expansion. Had so much fun

[@felipe8511]

not only the trailer was bad, but the pacing from 85 to 90 was too slow, the quest lines, the dungeons, the zones, everything felt so bad but the endgame loop is pretty nice, its probably the best and most fair pvp gearing the game ever had

[@HoellTech]

we need more pve/Rp Server .... Chromiecraft

[@LetsPlayKenny]

No,maybe the idea is good, but if a server is gonna give me a 7 day ban for saying fuck in global chat, then FUCK THAT

[@JV-ko6ov]

IDK why the made the panadas some weird anthropomorphic godless furry heathens. Now if it were some wild f'in 4 legged rabid beast it would actually be cool

[@leohavoc2183]

It was an overload of pandas and Asian theme. It didn't feel like wow anymore. Would have been nice if they split up the theme with Panda Alliance and something else horde. I did enjoyed the PVP and had a lot of fun with Ret during this time.

[@SupraSword]

I don't think Blizzard actually, specifically targeting the chinese market with this one. China is a dictature, where every products must have an autorisation to be sold here. MoP was censured a lot here because of this. And Samwise Didier, the creator of the Pandaren race, was already an Asia fan for a long time when MoP came out. He already draw himself as a Pandaren even before MoP. He just really like Asia.

[@dannyp9210]

What if they made the Pandarens more bad-ass and less goofy?

[@arashoo2191]

I have heared the exact same arguement countless times, but HamsterWheel is my favorite 😍

[@arashoo2191]

@HamSterWheel1. @hamsterwheel

[@Escapist9207]

I dont think it has failed by any means. Except for pandas(which people had so much contempt for for some reason) this is objectively one of the best expacs, its in most peoples top3-5. Also MOP being easy wasnt the case back then, people are just way better in average now, and going back to older games, Classic Vanilla is a the perfect example, its not challenging.

[@scxiao]

I loved MoP but for me it's 100% nostalgia since that was the last time I had the time to PvP AND raid Mythic (we made Garrosh our bitch)

[@Raxxoish]

Regarding the MoP trailer, you forget that it was the time of Wildstar, Marvel movies and a renaissance of self referential and sometimes even fourth wall breaking humor. Blizzard was pretty sure their audience was going that way too. And they were half right, it's just that they went a bit overboard with the trailer and it felt jarring compared to the end of Cata. It was a miscalculated step

[@ivankovachev8835]

What I think of MoP is that I like it more than I don't like it, but it's an expansion with many positivies and many negatives, my least favorite expansion for sure. Here is my summary of the expansion: MoP Tier14 raids were some of the worst raids ever, then 5.1 and 5.3 were no tier patches, that's 2x content draughts for you there. The early reliance on dailies was so annoying, way too many of them. The timeless isle is bad, it was too easy and braindead. And then by 5.3 there were the simple rotations that popped up and they just made classes have tons of extra unused abilities and the rotation themselves became simpler than both Cata and Wotlk on specs that had them. And MoP actually had bad dungeons, this has never happened in WoW outside of vanilla and the occasional outlier in early expansions. And when it comes to raids, Tier 14 raids were easier than any raid in Cata. Mechanically also raids didn't get much more complex than Cata for most fights. The positives of MoP: 1. Throne of Thunder and Siege of Orgrimmar - excellent raids, especially ToT 2. Monk - epic class. 3. Pandaren - finally a shared race 4. The Brawlers guild 5. The addition of flex. 6. Pandaria was the best levelling at the time since TBC MoP Negatives: 1. Tier 14 raids(ToES, MV and HoF) - far worse than dragon soul, still better than Trial of the Crusader and most Vanilla raids 2. 5.1 and 5.3 content draught in terms of raids 3. Bad dungeons 4. Poor class design due to scaling, simpler rotations and a lot of CC and Utility Spells. 5. Timeless Isle. 6. Dailies in early MoP 7. Leveling became bad in MoP, outside of Pandaria levelling itself. 8. MoP was the beginning of Patch-based WoW - before MoP, in WotLK and Cata we used to have 2x active tiers at a time, but crazy easy catchup gear was added in MoP and that meant that the current Tier, became the only tier. 9. Legendary questline 10. LFR at its worst(not gonna peg it so much on MoP as on late Cata, but it wasn't as bad as in Cata). The negatives weigh-in more though. Neutral: 1. Scenarios - they weren't very good, but they had so much potential, they should have kept them and improved them every expansion, though Legion, BFA and SL have their own versions in the form of the Mage Tower, Horrific Visions and Torghast, they aren't exactly like Scenarios. 2. Isle of Thunder - it was meant to be a more PVE focused Isle of Quel'Danas, but the dailies were so annoying, still I think there should be such a zone in WoW in every expansion, just done better. Also when it comes to PVP: Then in PVP the Druid and Hunter were just broken OP and casters as a whole were just superior to melee classes. MoP was also CC and Utility hell.

[@Fabriciod_Crv]

>then 5.1 and 5.3 were no tier patches, that's 2x content draughts for you there. If you are the kind of WoW player that only cares about raids and nothing else, these patches had a bunch of casual content with scenarios and such >The timeless isle is bad, it was too easy and braindead. I guess you never did the Emperor Shaohao rep grind then, those mobs could literally one shot you if you weren't careful, actually alot of stuff in the island could easily kill you if you just treated them as your typical wow mob. Even if it had easy mobs, the rare events, treasure and just overall exploration of the island was top tier casual content >Bad dungeons Other than Niuzao temple and Gate of the setting sun, i can't agree that MoP had bad dungeons, Scholomance and SM revamps were really good, and the other new dungeons it had were epic, Temple of the Jade serpent is even in the current season's Mythic+ pool in retail.

[@belstar1128]

I think tier 14 was still way better than dragon soul.

[@belstar1128]

@@Fabriciod_Crv The mop dungeons where good but too easy.

[@Fabriciod_Crv]

@@belstar1128 every dungeon in normal/heroic is easy, after the pug disaster that was cataclysm heroics, they don’t want queuable content to be hard at all

[@belstar1128]

@@Fabriciod_Crv yes they took it too far in cata. but i think they could have made them a little harder and the problem was that the gear players got was too powerful.

[@thomas-zs2jm]

The earlier sets look stupid on the pandaren,I agree, but on retail a lot of the newer sets looks really choice on both male and female pandas

[@ocab9589]

It had the best gameplay and class design of all time

[@Godwarr]

MoP pvp is the best to ever exist, i didnt do PvE apart from like Timeless isle stuff, I've played private servers my whole life, WoW Freakz was the best MoP private server i ever played

[@hoffyc.h393]

Totally agree Vanilla to MoP was good, and last Legion.

[@turinhorse]

11:15 well said. i feel the same. Warcraft lost its charm once I didnt respect or fear the game world in the slightest. easy and boring

[@lastingtrice2420]

Stormforge is so good i am also still playing sometimes, but whe nSoO starts in a month i guess ill be online more

[@etaliproductions]

Man i loved your review so mush ... Now am playing through first two expansions in warmane and i downloaded helios to play cata and mop so I wanted to know as a causal gamer cause i have uni and gf and work so i don't have like 12 hours a day to play 😂😂😂 thx man

[@hoshiko3297]

lol bro, i've played WoW since BC, and MoP was kinda touchy in the scene, buttttttttttttttt, it was actually good! I had a really good time playing it! as did most guilds on Eu Twisting nether, also your discussion sounded like you was already a casual! and yes your review is moot!

[@BeBopScraBoo]

cat dps was a ton of fun in this expansion .

[@BeBopScraBoo]

@hamster - you made it bro, lookit this scammer!

[@Byuiso]

I feel like it’s popular to hate on MOP but people don’t want to admit MOP might be the most impactful expansion since TBC/Wrath/Cata.

[@18ps3anos]

Honestly, fuck Cata...