When Blizzard announced the Mists of Pandaria expansion a couple of years ago, I was less than enthused about the concept, the included extras, and Pandas. The announcement left me deflated and was very doubtful about the direction Blizzard was taking the game. Thus began my game hopping saga and I dragged hubby through multiple games trying to find that one game that could recreate the WOW experience when I first started playing the game. No one game had everything I was looking for unfortunately.
Lords of the Ring Online and Everquest II both had the stories and questing I enjoy, but while LOTRO has unique PVP, EQ2 starts PVP too late for a character (level 30 is entry PVP). Star Wars: The Old Republic is a terrific game but game was released a little too soon and penalized players after the fact. (Requiring both factions to obtain HK51 on the same server when their own analysis would have told them that most players had one faction per server, for example.) Rift has great quality PVP but the while the story is there, it is constantly interrupted by rifts and events. The Secret World had the chance to have great stories and PVP but the game has so many issues that it was unplayable for me. Guild Wars 2 failed to live up to any of the hype: there was no story, never tried PVP because I just didn’t care enough to try, and there was nothing original to the game. The other games I tried just couldn’t hold my interest very long.
WOW somehow has all the right mojo rolled into one game. Yes, there are massive balancing issues between classes sometimes and I firmly believe that the development team listens to the squeaky wheel too much and makes changes based on the loudest whiners. But despite it’s many flaws, it still manages to have great PVP, good quests, and interesting characters populating the world. Then they announce Mists and it seemed like they not only missed the boat, they failed to even have a clue what their player base was after. Farms? Pet Battles? Panda Bears? I had been unsubscribed for 99% of the beta and wasn’t keeping up with the latest beta changes or upcoming changes but that druid travel form peaked by interest. I came back about a month before the expansion released and Patch 5.0 blew me away. I had a strong glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe they hadn’t destroyed their careful crafted universe.
Then the Theramore scenario released and I was plain and simple pissed off. There was no story, it was stupid simple, and it did not require three people to complete. I couldn’t care about the loot and the fact that the one character I ran it on, one time only mind you, received fireworks to celebrate the destruction of Theramore was too much to take. Why on earth would an Alliance character celebrate mass murder and destruction by the Horde? Twitter and bloggers assured me repeatedly that the scenario was NOT representative of what they had experienced on beta. I took them at their word and I am so incredibly pleased that I did.
Mists has not only revitalized WOW, it has raised the bar for the competition. The new continent is amazing. The quests, the stories, and the non-player characters are interesting and entertaining. My highest level character is 87 so far and I’m in no rush to get to 90. I’ve gotten my farm, I’m leveling crafting, I’m fishing, I’m questing, and I’m looking forward to the lack of grinding instances to gain reputation once I hit 90. I made a new character, she’s a Pandaren monk and a blast to play. The new Scarlet Halls and Monastery are so much fun and such a blast. I’m questing with my Monk through the old world and it is truly enjoyable. The revamp the old world received in Cataclysm was extremely well done and under-appreciated.
Admittedly, the developers took ideas from other videos games and have incorporated them into WOW (farming and pet battles for instances). However, they’ve managed to put their own unique spin on borrowed items and made their incorporation feel natural and like it’s always been there. I particularly love how farming and cooking now tie-in together, although no a requirement for either. The two things I was most skeptical about I have to admit are unqualified successes. The one thing WOW has borrowed from other games and I don’t think is super successful is appearance armor. Transmogrification has gotten me to go do instances I hadn’t done before admittedly, but the process is clunky and time consuming. I think they would have served their player base much better by incorporating an appearance tab like EQ2 and LOTRO for example.
So, what makes a great video game? The short and sweet answer is a lot of luck and hard work. The real answer is much more complicated. It takes people who truly love the lore, corporations that give designers and developers time and space to turn out a quality project, and project team who knows where the game is at, where it is going next, and what the next couple of updates and expansion will contain.
Right now, WOW is quite simply a great video game.
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