Hey guys, Pike here. For today’s blog post I thought we’d try something new: this post will contain the thoughts of both myself and Mister Adequate, all in one spot! I’ll say something on a topic and then my esteemed colleague will give his own opinion. Heck, if this works out well we might do it even more in the future. For now, though, I thought we’d talk about something that is big news in the gaming world right now: Blizzcon.

I probably don’t need to inform our audience of the new World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, but just in case you’re an alien species who has just landed on Earth and decided to check our blog first thing, here’s a link.

Here’s our first impressions:

Pike’s Thoughts:

I think the first thing that struck me was total amusement. I’d heard the rumors of “Mists of Pandaria”, of course, but wrote it off largely because it seems like the Pandaren idea was one of those things that Blizzard never quiiiiite took seriously, to the point that they’d had the idea in the past and nixed it. (Am I the only one who remembers the Pandaren rumors flying around back before BC? Metzen’s statement that they were originally slated for BC and then replaced with Draenei did not surprise me in the slightest for that reason.)

Once the initial amusement faded away I decided that there were a lot of promising things here. The whole idea of having a neutral race that chooses its destiny at level ten is, in my mind, brilliant and long overdue and should have been done a long time ago with goblins. I love the idea of Pandaren as a race in general. I love the idea of a monk class and a brewmaster spec, and especially that dorfs can be said class/spec.

There were other things that didn’t excite me quite so much. The focus on a Horde/Alliance conflict didn’t really effect me either way, beyond Metzen’s enigmatic comparison to Warcraft 2 which caught my attention because I’m a geek like that. The idea that talent trees are essentially going away is something I’m iffy on, but I can see where they’re coming from. Pokemon Pets sounds like a fun idea on paper but in practicality it sounds like one of those things that is going to be too much of a hassle for me to bother getting into (see also: archaeology, spirit beast collecting, most holiday achievements, and all the other things WoW has introduced over the years that are great and all but which I have no interest in).

Anyways, ultimately my reaction to the expansion was roughly 50% “This sounds GREAT” and about 50% “This sounds meh/could go either way”, which, to be honest, is pretty good considering that there was really no “I HATE this” involved. That said, my overall interest in WoW remains low. As long-time readers know, my WoW playing over the past year and a half or so has been very off and on and largely dependent on whether I deem messing around on an alt for a few hours a week to be worth $15/month at any given moment. I love me some pandas, but I don’t even think they’re going to change anything for me, personally. Not when I’ve got so many other games to play!

Mister Adequate’s Thoughts:

The funny thing about MoP is that it gets abbreviated to MoP. The other funny thing is that I actually think Pandaria is a really cool addition and I’m all for it. I was hoping they would show up in a much earlier expansion. I am definitely very excited by the fact they can choose which side to join, and I’m seriously hoping (but not at all expecting) that the “Alliance vs. Horde” thing bears some fruit because for a game called Warcraft there’s a distinct lack of, well, War.

I’m also massively excited for the new Monk class. I’ve always been a bit perplexed by their reluctance to add new classes – it’s not like the current ones have ever been balanced anyway. So it’s hugely exciting to see a new one on the way and quite honestly I think that alone will be enough to sell MoP to me.

But aside from what I outline above I’m quite a bit more pessimistic about it than Pike is. I’m not at all convinced that the pokemon angle is a sensible one, for a start. I’m not aware of all the details yet of course but I’m tremendously suspicious of the new talent changes. I’d been wanting them to return to how they used to be, and then become considerably MORE complex and in-depth, not reduced to something that’s barely an afterthought and gets introduced at Blizzcon as “Talents are gone!” The game needs to stop pandaren to customizing appearances and get back to customizing your characters as combatants. And if they do care about appearances so much, just rip off City of Heroes.

So I can’t say I’m desperately enthused about the expansion at this point. It’s got a couple of core things I really, really like, and a bunch of ancillary stuff I’m either disinterested in or downright skeptical of.

(Also if you are the aforementioned alien species can we borrow your spaceship?)