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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBreakfast Topic: Were you impressed with the Mists of Pandaria press event?
by Mathew McCurley 
Mar 23rd 2012 at 8:00AM
What no one complained about was how gorgeous the environments, characters, and effects looked. For a game with a decade-old engine, WoW is really pulling some "rovers on Mars" crap on us. One day, when the Martian storms blow the final WoW server offline, we can put this game to bed.
Did you get what you wanted out of the Mists of Pandaria presser? Will all this knowledge and the very important fact that Mists seems close to completion be enough to tide you over until beta? Sound off in the comments.
Filed under: Breakfast Topics
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 4)
Luotian Mar 23rd 2012 8:21AM
What ho? Someone else who is disappointed to be losing our warchief?
Side note: Garrosh figure? Do want!
Transit Mar 23rd 2012 8:47AM
Yeah I have been slowly collecting all the faction leader figures (Both Alliance and Horde... and Arthas).
Garrosh was just my latest addition. The figure is available on the blizzard store and on amazon.
Luotian Mar 23rd 2012 9:00AM
Ahahaha, that is awesome! Too bad I have absolutely no where to put it >.>. Too many action figures already. Still...its tempting. Particularly now.
Kaiserette Mar 23rd 2012 8:19AM
There was lots of information thrown at us to sort out and digest, but its yet to be seen if any or all of it actually make it in as explained. There is always changes and updates so it doesn't seem prudent to get to excited until we know what makes the cut. Thats why there is very little sense in complaining or reaping praise until we know for sure what we are dealing with and the playability of it.
Johnbishopbrown2 Mar 23rd 2012 8:20AM
Everything looks good so far - especially for a game as old as it is - if we can get past the intial backlash from opening beta it would be even better
mojobimbo Mar 23rd 2012 8:22AM
I was pleasantly surprised by some elements of it, but overwhelmingly disappointed by the whole tone set by the blizzard staff. If they could have got the word 'cool' once more into a sentence, they'd have set a record. It seems - from the coverage at least - that the trend for easyville will continue in this expansion. It feels as if they allowed their 14yr old son to present it - omgcoolandawesomeomg - isn't the tone I was expecting from Blizzard.
I realise this is the culmination of a few years work by Blizzard, and they may have been a bit excited, but in future, would suggest that they preview how they describe what is incoming in a more professional manner. At the moment, I am unsubscribed for the first time since 2006, and after the presentation, I find myself totally unmoved to resub.
Warcraft overload maybe, or maybe it all just whooshed right over my head, but I can't imagine myself playing the game as it is now, and what it is evolving into.
ElrithCC Mar 23rd 2012 8:26AM
Blizzard has always had over flowing enthusiasm for their projects. You seem bitter, jaded, and overly cynical. Creative people working on things they love talk like this. They don't care about concepts like "EZ MODE".
Luotian Mar 23rd 2012 8:34AM
Warcraft overload. I'd get off this site and find something else to fill your time until you're ready to come back.
cmichaelcooper Mar 23rd 2012 9:14AM
As a web designer / developer, I don't create things as complex as a video game, but even I get geeked out over some of the artwork I create, or some of the functionality I manage to program, and I'm sure I sound like a broken record calling things "cool" too.
And I don't really understand the concern over the game being easy anymore. There is no need for questing content to be particularly difficult because it would just act as a barrier to leveling. Also, the playerbase by and large does not want to spend more than about 30 minutes (at the very most) in a dungeon anymore. We saw how Cataclysm dungeons really put players off and they had to nerf them. The only place for difficulty anymore is in raids and pvp.
LFR (easy mode raids) has been overwhelmingly successful, so much so that many players aren't even pushing for normal modes anymore, much less hard modes. Blizzard is taking a lot of flak from a tiny minority for "making the game too easy", but player response to less demanding content proves that the players are encouraging this design trend. Should Blizzard design the game to be difficult just to spite the people that pay their paychecks, or teach them how to be real gamers (or something)?
I think it's time to let the MMO of the past go, and just focus on simply having a good time. Mists of Pandaria seems to be offering a great variety of ways to do that, and I for one am very excited about it.
Mycroft Mar 23rd 2012 8:22AM
I was disappointed, sad to say, with WoW Insider's coverage. During the Q&A podcast, I think I heard that someone (Alex?) fell asleep during the event, and later questions were answered by the hosts just pulling up Wowhead's site and reading it from there.
There wasn't a whole lot that you guys covered that other places didn't cover better or more in-depth. (Though MMO Champion had a lot more walls of text, I was similarly disappointed that they just seemed to phone it in liveblogging style, which I thought the whole purpose of the NDA was to prevent. So WoWI wasn't my only disappointment.)
You're still my favorite WoW fan site though, don't get me wrong!
epperson.christopher Mar 23rd 2012 9:13AM
Have to say that I felt the same way. I was a little surprised to hear how disengaged the staff from wowinsider was at the press event. From Alex saying he didn't pay attention to the Raid Finder loot roll change (which I think is probably very important to your readers) to Mike Sacco deferring to wowhead at seemingly every turn for answers to listeners questions - I would have to say that the coverage was lackluster.
Sure, this is a "blog". But, if I were running a business, and I sent two employees to a press event the last thing I would want to hear would be one of the employees telling our customers that they didn't pay attention during the event and the other employee driving our customers to another website...
cmichaelcooper Mar 23rd 2012 9:16AM
They should have sent McCurley and Rossi.
Luotian Mar 23rd 2012 9:18AM
To be slightly fair, you only have to listen to Alex for .5 seconds to know he's jaded and not all that interested in the 'game' part anymore. And Sacco is *always* double-checking his facts. I'd bet that because it was a live show, they didn't get to edit out the checking he does all the time (he does very often in the podcast anyway if you listen).
evoxpisces Mar 23rd 2012 10:46AM
I love all the WoW Insider staff and love the site, but I have to agree with you. I hate saying things like that about my favorite sites but the way they presented the info they had was done very poorly. I didn't notice much until I checked other WoW sites for info and found those sites had a significant amount more than WoW Insider. Very disappointing.
@eperson.christopher: I agree with you also. WoW Insider is indeed a blog but still a job with employees. And as employees of WoW Insider, it was their responsibility to get the information from the event and get it out to the readers. Again, it kills me to say it because this far and away my favorite WoW site (and one of my favorite sites in general) but they really dropped the ball on this one. The beta is out and we'll soon have more info than we will know what to do with but honestly if people on the staff have lost interest in the game then they step down or be replaced.
CursedMonk87 Mar 23rd 2012 1:00PM
I gotta say that I was feeling the same way. I suppose I was expecting a lot more of an info-dump a la the style of WoWhead or MMO-C. When we have these huge releases of information, I want a huge wall of text.
But we should also realise the style of this blog isn't that. The writers' job here is to write a short-ish article that facilitates a discussion. Hell, that's the whole point of these Breakfast Topics and Queues. What sets this apart from the other WoW sites is the comments and commentators. As frustrating as the comments system is, that's really the heart of this blog. The thumbs-up/thumbs-down style is really a way to involve everyone in a somewhat democratic process of what the community is liking or hating. It's really a great way to take in the flow of the discussion.
So as far as that goes, I think the guys (and girls) have been doing a great job. We also have consistent and prolific commentators like yourself, my friend and GM (cutaia), Pyromelter, and others whose names & avatars I scan each page for because I can always expect some brilliant and entertaining thoughts. I know it sounds like I'm kissing ass but I'm more just pointing out what this place is all about.
epperson.christopher Mar 23rd 2012 2:36PM
I don't think anyone here is suggesting that we don't like the site, or the staff. The conclusion is that we expected more. I want to make sure to avoid the usual internet hand-wringing and hyperbole here. Maybe I'm in the wrong, but I "feel" like my experience reading this website used to be a little different. I came here for insight, and the writing (I don't play a mage, but I love reading Arcane Brilliance, same for Mr. Rossi's warrior columns). Now the site seems to be peppered with "How would/does this make you feel?" posts. This amounts to something a little different than a "blog". What we're getting is a fancy looking message board. There's a niche out there for wow insider to fill. It should demand a little more of itself than its current iteration.
ElrithCC Mar 23rd 2012 8:24AM
I've been in love with WOW for 7 years, but after burning out I've been desperate for a reason to play it again. For the first time in an expansion pack it looks like they are putting in enough novel features to give me pause to smile. As a lover of lore, the idea of finding an easter egg reward system based around lore, with a place you can bring that item and see lore brought to life on a stage, well that's fantastic.
Getting to do more than grind heroics, boring faction grinds, and raids has me keenly interested. As well as exploring a new world without a single pervasive quest in mind to bring down the latest villain, it brings back memories of 2004 and playing WOW just to explore and see what was in this world.
durandal Mar 23rd 2012 9:44AM
That's true, you get a lot of more things to do at the end game level.
On the other hand, the 'novel' features aren't that novel at all:
- Kung Fu Pandas (hello Dreamworks)
- Monk class (hello Diablo)
- AoE looting (hello Rift)
- farmville (hello Facebook)
- pokemon fights (hello Nintendo)
It's good that Wow gets these feature, too. I will certainly enjoy them. But novel from an innovative point of view? Not really.
CursedMonk87 Mar 23rd 2012 2:03PM
@durandal
Old QQ is old, but I digress.
Kung-Fu Panda (hello...Bruce Lee, Kung-Fu movies, Chinese culture. And it's a damn good movie. Not just for kids!)
Monk Class (hello D&D and other RPGs, Shao-Lin, cultural archetypes)
AoE Looting (hello wft man? How is this a problem? People have been asking for this for years was Rift so brilliant to use common sense? And remember the original reason WoW didn't have it was to curb the progress of gold farmers who could just bot and loot an entire dungeon, etc.)
Farmville (hello well, one we don't really know how this is being implemented, I don't think it will be an entire meta-game of keeping a farm. A lot of games have a farming profession (LotRO for one). You get A plot of land, you have to do dailies to get anything to grow. It serves a purpose for your other professions.)
Pokemon (hello Nintendo didn't even come up with the making creatures fight each other thing. Pokemon's creator, Satoshi Tajiri, used to collect bugs and make them fight each other like miniature Godzilla battles. They've been doing that in Japan for a long time and it's a fairly common betting sport. He just had the idea to turn it into a video-game/anime mega-franchise and make more money than most of us combined. I will admit the Pet Battle system is a little close to the same as Pokemon, so I'm wondering if there's some legal brush with Nintendo, but I loved Pokemon as a kid (with a deep appreciation for it as a 20-something) so it'll be something fun to do that's completely optional.)
What I'm trying to say and what you guys don't seem to get (I'm sure you're just a troll and this is more of a mental purge for me, but whatev) is that nobody is truly original. There's nothing new under the sun. All of these RPGs copied D&D. D&D scaled down and copied military war-games and Fantasy archetypes. Military war-games copied historical military battles. Hell, Fantasy as a genre came from the old myths and epics. The progress of art and culture is taking what you like from the past, changing or improving on it, and making things fresh. A lot of WoW and MoP in particular are paying homage to Asian historical and popular culture. Vanilla took a lot from Medieval, European, Fantasy. BC went with kind-of a Sci-Fi thing. You guys complain and cry that something isn't completely original, but you're still playing a video-game that is someone else's art. Don't like it? Quit paying them. Do you have better ideas? Create them. Make your own damn art and quit shitting on others.
CursedMonk87 Mar 23rd 2012 2:16PM
@durandal
Okay I reread your last sentence and I apologize if my other comment was a little too harsh. You don't seem to be exactly the type of people I was talking about. But you're close. I mean what I said, but don't take it too personal. It was more of a general rant against everyone simply looking for things to non-nonsensically hate about WoW. At least you're sticking around and willing to try out the new stuff. And yes I do understand some of these features aren't original ideas, but i'm not sure there are really any original ideas left out there anyway. It's not a problem reserved for Blizzard.