Way back before the holiday mayhem started, I received a promotional from Blizzard to play the Pandaria expansion for two weeks.  I wasn't feeling any real need to go back to WoW but I heard so many good things about the latest expansion that I took them up on their offer.  Amazingly, Blizzard managed to get back a little of the magic that surrounded the game during the heady Lich King days.

What Blizzard had managed to do was keep all the great things about the Cataclysm expansion and curtail its excesses (such as too many cutscenes, phasing and vehicle quests).  The smooth sailing questing lines that I enjoyed in Cataclysm, with no back and forth to the same areas, has been introduced to Pandaria as well.  I loved the new story lines and the mysterious Pandaren continent.  As crazy as it may seem, Blizzard managed to throw off its European Middle Ages Sword fantasy shtick and totally immerse itself in Chinese Middle Ages Sword fantasy shtick.  The new expansion feels like a different game.

The artwork is absolutely fantastic.  Despite the low fi graphics, Pandaria looks lush and colorful.  Great attention was paid to creating wide open spaces as players leave the initial forest area.  The vistas are gorgeous and created with care to mimic real Chinese scenery.  The game's equivalent of The Great Wall is a true achievement.  What is even more, the new score for the expansion is just as beautiful and matches the art.

The class tree lines have been pared down to very straight and simple techniques.  On my Paladin main, this was a relief.  I mostly played as a Retribution Paladin since I mainly just solo play.  During Cataclysm my Pally was hamstrung because her hits depended on the game's casino wheel to roll triple diamonds.  This meant she either wiped NPCs with just a look or she would be forced to keep hitting for minutes on end.  It was strange and frustrating.  Thankfully that is all gone.  The wheel of big hits has been tamed and now Pallys do reliable damage.  I spent a bit of time on my other main, a warlock and she is doing rather well too.  However the warlock is nowhere near the powerhouse it used to be and was once the scourge of PvP and PvE alike.

Cross server areas....  I'm holding back my opinion on this element.  This was Blizzard's way of trying not to close empty servers.  In fact I was a little dismayed and confused when I was visiting Silvermoon to see it filled with players with hyphenated designations/server names.  There are only certain areas where the cross servers work and those areas are mostly low population.  However I've noticed that it hasn't led to happy, happy family results.  It mostly leads to people from my server snarling at cross server visitors to go back to their own servers.  It doesn't help that the players sharing my server are from Moonguard (which has a terrible reputation as being the red light district of WOW).   We'll see where this goes eventually.

I have run two dungeons so far, Stormstout Brewery and Shado-Pan Monastery.  Both times I held my breath when I signed up for LFG.  WoW still has a terrible reputation for nastiness among its players.  I have to admit I rarely experienced this in any group, even during my heyday in the game.  However I am no longer the player I used to be nor even half as good.  So I was terrified of being cut out of a dungeon run.  My fears were unfounded and the two groups I was matched with were calm and cool.  Out of the two dungeons I found Stormstout the more enjoyable.  The fights were slapstick instead of the intense atmosphere in Shado-Pan.  I especially enjoyed rolling barrels into a monkey boss who liked to throw banana peels at players.

So far I have found a lot of enjoyment in this expansion, and I was glad to purchase a few extra months to see it develop.  Does that mean I will be going back to WOW.  I'm not sure.  I'm not the motivated player I was years ago and there are times when weeks go by in which I don't play any games.  A regular subscription isn't cost effective for me at this time.  But I can say that I will probably spend 3 to to 6 months in Pandaria.  Because right now, looking out at the game scenery while standing on the Great Wall is just too enchanting.

Some Time Later...

It's been some time after the release of Guild Wars 2 and updates are trickling into the gaming blog/news community.  Tobold had an interesting post regarding falling play numbers for GW2.

This is not a surprising result to me or many other people.  In today's game environment, new mmorpgs only have a small window of opportunity to make a mark.  GW2 attempts to keep this window open with their buy2play formula.  The company is, in essence, trying to recoup their expenditures as close to the front as possible.  Then glide on store purchases.

So at this point, a fall in the number of hours played are not a worry for GW2.  What would cause worry is a fall in store revenue.  Anet has not released any kind of serious financial health information on the game (except that it sold 2 million copies), so we can't tell if their store is a success or failure.

Since the game marketed itself as casual friendly and no subscription, the creators may have counted on the ebb and flow of players.  They released the game knowing that Blizzard was going to send out a big expansion (Pandaria) in the same time frame.  I feel they knew they would lose players to the biggest game in the industry.  The question is, how much did they plan around that fact?  Will Anet crumple into a heap much in the same way that SWTOR did when it flagged in numbers?

It is still too soon to tell.  As for me, my own hours in the game have flagged.  This is not due to falling interest in the game.  I still enjoy it.  But I find myself engaged in RL activities and I feel that is much healthier than loafing about in an mmorpg.

Also, for the record, I did not buy nor do I plan to buy Mists of Pandaria.  I'm taking a wait and see attitude toward WOW right now, especially since I felt burnt from the Cataclysm expansion.  The expansion I am thinking about buying is, crazy enough, RIFT's Storm Legion.

The other shoe...it dropped

Well, well, well.

Just in the time to steal the thunder of GW's last Beta hype and ahead of LOTRO's hype of its new mounted combat reveals, Blizzard announces that Mists of Pandaria is releasing soon.  Real soon.

On September 25, stalwart WoW fans will be able to roll their favorite Panda class.  So the cancellation of their Blizzcon event did portend a nose to the grindstone release schedule as some hypothesized.  I believe this is the first time in many years that Blizzard has released before the Holiday season.

Interesting.  Competition is tight in MMORPGs today and Blizzard won't give up its crown easily.

Read all about it here at Blizzard's site.