WoW 5.0 - Mists of Pandaria

Shipping?! Digital download FTW.

I think I'm going to be a sucker and spend the extra cash for the mount and pet. Damn you Blizzard!

P.S.: Folks coming back to the game might want to read this. Consider yourself warned!

Enix wrote:

P.S.: Folks coming back to the game might want to read this. Consider yourself warned!

That is so very, very true.

Farscry wrote:
Enix wrote:

P.S.: Folks coming back to the game might want to read this. Consider yourself warned!

That is so very, very true. ;)

I guffawed pretty loudly at that comic!

Thanks to all the people for the comments about coming back to the game. I'm so, so tempted, but my wife is super adamant against being lured back in by this evil game. Now to convince her before tomorrow!

Le0hart85 wrote:

Thanks to all the people for the comments about coming back to the game. I'm so, so tempted, but my wife is super adamant against being lured back in by this evil game. Now to convince her before tomorrow!

Ever play a rogue? Try this!

Enix wrote:

Shipping?! Digital download FTW.

I'm continuing to add to my stack of WoW CE boxes.

Enix wrote:
Le0hart85 wrote:

Thanks to all the people for the comments about coming back to the game. I'm so, so tempted, but my wife is super adamant against being lured back in by this evil game. Now to convince her before tomorrow!

Ever play a rogue? Try this!

Lawl, I have an almost level cap Rogue if I remember correctly, didn't do much besides level her and play PvP with her. But yup, Sap and stun lock my way to victory with the wife. But sad to say she is probably a mix between a resto Druid and Warlock. She'll fear me and pillar hump me till I'm defeated, pretty sure.

After surviving the chaos that is the first couple of quests on EU servers my advice is: when you get to Pandaria, lower your graphical settings.

So anyone play this in the community last night or this morning? Come on fellas! I need to live vicariously through you for now!

Le0hart85 wrote:

So anyone play this in the community last night or this morning? Come on fellas! I need to live vicariously through you for now!

They're too busy playing to post

Le0hart85 wrote:

So anyone play this in the community last night or this morning? Come on fellas! I need to live vicariously through you for now!

Yep. Me. I got about 90 mins in this morning -- enough to train professions and play through the starter area to the first town. Did about 10-15 quests worth. Some impressions:

* Very smooth so far. All the addons that worked Monday night worked this morning. Nothing was downloaded. (Patch 5.0.4 took care of all that.) There was some lag in the opening zone because there's a lot going on, but I soldiered on. No server restarts. Quests all work. Plenty of stuff to kill and loot. The graphics look really sharp. The final boss in the opening quest line actually takes some work to kill. An A so far.

* OMG! Actual voice acting. There was precious little in Cata.

* The story so far does a good job of introducing the Pandas and the new continent as well as setting up the renewed Ally-Horde conflict. The incident at the heart of it all has a certain deja vu quality to it.

Spoiler:

A MEMBER OF THE STORMWIND ROYAL FAMILY IS MISSING - OH NOES!

* Train professions before you go. Otherwise, the ghost iron ore nodes will mock you. (Related: The rich ghost iron nodes did indeed mock the hell out of me. They're all over the starter area, but you need 550 to get 'em. And smelting doesn't level mining like it used to.)

* If you can't figure out how to get to Pandaland, go to Stormwind first. You should auto-accept a quest. Go to the SW keep to begin. (If you're Horde, god help you. I mean, try Org.). You'll end up in the south side of Jade Forest. (Horde is on the north side of the zone.) My only regret so far is that questing is on a rail. All of your toons will face the same set of quests in the same order. It might branch out later, but I haven't yet seen in. Of course, I'm only 90 minutes into it.

* New to Mists: When you finish a quest and there's reward gear available, you don't choose it. Rather, it's chosen for you based on your spec. it's still soulbound.

* Speaking of gear, I went out there with i380 gear (heroic Cata dungeons with a few LFR and actual raid pieces sprinkled in) and did absolutely fine, even with ganged up on. Supposedly there's a vendor who sells upgraded gear (i370 or so), but I haven't found him/her yet. In the meantime, I'm saving some drops for my DK tank.

* Quests give less gold than in Cata, but gray loot vendors for about the same as Cata. (In other words, there's not the huge gold spike like there was between all the other x-packs. The XP rewards, though, are huge. Most quests (with guild bonuses) gives 110K or so XP. Of course, it takes about 1,000 million XP to hit 86. I did about 2.5 bars this morning without really hustling.

* I saw some lvl 87s already. I figure we'll see a realm first to 90 by tonight, if not earlier. Also saw my first 85 monks. RAF FTW! Also, pandas aren't as goofy as I thought.

* Pet Battles look stupidly easy. Trainer is in the house on the SW lake near the portals. You can smash squirrels and rabbits near there without much brain power.

* Speaking of portals, there's one back to SW from the first Panda town (can't recall its name). And there's one in SW that goes back there. That portal is by the Panda area/monk trainer near the other portals in SW.

* Instances (Stormstout Brewery and Temple of the Jade Serpent) are open to 85s. Only requirement is i350-ish gear.

* Guild's first goal should be to level all professions to max (600). That opens up the purchase of BOA pants.

* Not sure exactly what to do with all these JPs i racked up during the Theramore scenario.

That's it for now. I'll be back on tonight for a couple hours. Would love to hit up some instances.

A JP update:

Here's the list of items you can buy with JPs.

Seems you (1) have to have the JPs (duh) and (2) have to have to be honored with the various factions to get some pieces (chest, wrist, legs, bracers, rings, neck, cape). Looks like gloves, hats and shoulders are craftable. I assume everything drops from various bosses like normal.

JP gear in Mists is i450. Cata topped out at i410.

That's a long way of saying that I think I'll trade down some of my JPs to honor in the short term.

* New to Mists: When you finish a quest and there's reward gear available, you don't choose it. Rather, it's chosen for you based on your spec. it's still soulbound.

Can you disable that? It sounds a bit sucky if you were looking to gear up for a spec change, unless the choice is to the armor type you can wear.

Scratched wrote:
* New to Mists: When you finish a quest and there's reward gear available, you don't choose it. Rather, it's chosen for you based on your spec. it's still soulbound.

Can you disable that? It sounds a bit sucky if you were looking to gear up for a spec change, unless the choice is to the armor type you can wear.

I've unlocked the vendor that Enix was referring to earlier, and it looks like they sell armor for all of the armor slots - and they have a different set of armor for each of your available specs. The items are roughly the same ilevel as the stuff you're getting from quests, too, so there's not really a need to worry about getting the "wrong green" from a quest, since you can just go buy it. At least in the first zone - I'm not sure how that'll work later.

Also, the vendor doesn't sell weapons, but the quests I've had so far that give weapon rewards actually allowed me to choose which weapon I wanted out of one for each available spec. I'd imagine trinkets will work in a similar fashion, if I ever find any.

Scratched wrote:
* New to Mists: When you finish a quest and there's reward gear available, you don't choose it. Rather, it's chosen for you based on your spec. it's still soulbound.

Can you disable that? It sounds a bit sucky if you were looking to gear up for a spec change, unless the choice is to the armor type you can wear.

Well, you can't re-do a quest on the same toon. Another option is to change spec real quick, then turn in the quest. Supposedly that works.

Or you can just power through to the vendor. Where exactly is he, Carg? And how far did you get? I'm still at the southern tip of the island.

Enix wrote:
Scratched wrote:
* New to Mists: When you finish a quest and there's reward gear available, you don't choose it. Rather, it's chosen for you based on your spec. it's still soulbound.

Can you disable that? It sounds a bit sucky if you were looking to gear up for a spec change, unless the choice is to the armor type you can wear.

Well, you can't re-do a quest on the same toon. Another option is to change spec real quick, then turn in the quest. Supposedly that works.

Yep, that's your only option. It sort of sucks, IMO. Some quests, usually the ones that reward blues, still give you the option though.

The good news is that in a lot of cases questing as the "sucky" classes isn't as bad as it used to be. For me, in the beta, I wasn't noticeably slower as a prot warrior than arms or a holy priest than shadow (though I'm not an experienced shadow player). YMMV, but I'm just staying in my main specs and going. Except for my shammy; resto was as bad as ever. I've once again shifted back to ele off-spec while I level and I'll probably switch back to enhance at 90. That way I get the "right" gear.

I am thinking of coming back. Is the guild still active? How is the server population on Blackhand? I know they lost some subscribers since I left. Is it still quick to get in a LFG 5man?

How is the LFR? Went live after I left.

Bill Bonney wrote:

I am thinking of coming back. Is the guild still active? How is the server population on Blackhand? I know they lost some subscribers since I left. Is it still quick to get in a LFG 5man?

How is the LFR? Went live after I left.

LFD depends on what role you have. DPS still has a hellaciously long wait, Tanks are instant, Healers are slightly slower. LFR is ok, except that they broke Morchok, not that it matters at this point. That said, the new loot system gets derided by everyone vocal, which probably means it's working exactly as it should and one or two really lucky folks aren't leaving with most or all of the loot and can't grief the raid by needing and leaving before loot gets distributed, which caused it to rot on the corpse.

I sent out friend invites to a number of folks on Blackhand, forgetting to put a message in. If you see an invite from Delola, thats me.

Enix wrote:

Well, you can't re-do a quest on the same toon. Another option is to change spec real quick, then turn in the quest. Supposedly that works.

Or you can just power through to the vendor. Where exactly is he, Carg? And how far did you get? I'm still at the southern tip of the island.

It's not horribly far in. It's in the second village that you come to, which has the second actual flight point in it. It's still on the southern end of the Jade Forest, it's just farther to the east.

Oh, did this come out today?

That means... HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ZENKE!

Bill Bonney wrote:

I am thinking of coming back. Is the guild still active? How is the server population on Blackhand? I know they lost some subscribers since I left. Is it still quick to get in a LFG 5man?

How is the LFR? Went live after I left.

Guild is still active. There were 10 to 15 folks on last night, the most in some time. But some of the Cata raiders (Grinds, Lawk, TK, Oily, Cheets) aren't back. I don't know their status. But we've picked up some new folks and I think we'll have 10 folks for when it's time to raid. Even after some quests, a bunch of mining and one and a half runs through the Temple of Jade Forest, I'm still only 85.5. Can't seem to get in this morning.

Server pop seems fine. It's considered a medium, not low, pop. That said, we're linked in with at least four other realms (Kargath, Trollbane, Hellscream and Zul'jin, according to my notes) via CRZ. My previous realm was medium as well, so the server population seems normal to me. There are plenty of folks with fancy titles and mounts, so there seems to be more than enough top-shelf raiding and PvPing.

The LFG tool remains more good than not. Last night I queued with two other DPSers, and the wait was 30 mins. Ended up with a good tank and healer and, except for one bugged boss, it was a nice, easy run. If I queued solo as DPS, the wait during Cata was usually no more than 10 mins for heroics. I was pleasantly surprised. If you bring your own tank and healer, your queue will pop instantly.

I had only limited experience with LFR. I got the Dragon Soul achievement only in the final week of Cata, so I don't know how it worked at first when folks didn't know the encounters. (I imagine there was plenty of nerd rage.) But I'd recommend it. It's a way to see the content you might not otherwise see, and it's perfect for folks with screwy schedules. Both times I did LFR it was on a weekend morning -- not exactly prime time raiding hours. But I did it, had fun and got some lootz.

My status is that I had babies. Hox had baby. Grinds is working on it and that little bundle of unable to raid is coming soon.

WE CAN'T STOP REPRODUCING.

I'd like to raid and I'm planning on getting pandas but I'm really not going to be available consistently until after 10 PM EST every night. My account is still active and I'll be on from time to time but when I can raid, I'll let you know.

No babies for me and Cheeto. Can't speak for him, but I'm just too busy playing Borderlands and Guild Wars.

So I have a few questions.

I popped back into WoW after a break of over a year. When I came back I found that my guild, to no surprise, has pretty much disbanded and that I was guildless. I used to do quite a bit of raiding back in the day, Wrath was my prime, but as responsibilities, and thankfully employment, began to build up, I soon had very little time to do the Warcraft grind anymore. I left shortly before the troll 5-mans released during Cata.

That said, the expansion looks appealing and I really want to try out the content on a more casual basis. So I went ahead and resubbed.

However, there are a couple of problems I'm up against. For one thing, my server is a PVP server, some friends who no longer play convinced me to roll there waaaay back in the day. Originally, this was not a big deal since the server was pretty backwater and the faction I chose was the dominant faction. Questing without getting attacked was actually pretty normal.

However, with CRZs a new flood of red text has suddenly flooded my server. My tolerance for World PVP is waning dramatically and I'm seriously considering a transfer to a less violent server. Blackhand is high on my consideration list.

That said, I have a dilemma. Mainly, my main is Horde.

While a $25 server transfer is palatable, paying an extra $30 on top of that to faction transfer leaves me feeling icky, especially since I am only planning on playing for a few months. Also, I actually like playing as Horde (despite recent story related events that make me sad about the faction). Does GWJ have a Horde equivalent guild or are you Alli only?

I'm just considering my options at the moment. I've been hesitant to on doing a faction transfer since this will cut me off from all of my alts, and their professions. But after getting attacked by the same rogue for the third time while leveling last night, I'm thinking it might be the less annoying solution.

There is a GWJ horde guild, Crimeny, but it's probably as dead as your guild there.

A few folks (Gannon, notably) complain about having to play Alliance. (Some folks just need to complain, amirite?) And as someone who has flirted with Horde off and on over the years, I can't bring myself to kill dwarves in PvP, and it's hard to kill Ally NPCs during quests. So I feel your pixelated pain, especially because we're talking real money here with a server and faction switch.

But if you do decide to jump ship (servers and factions), I'd suggest rerolling. Leveling is pretty fast these days (go mining/herbing for the XP boost) and you'll get a feel for the lore.

I've also dabbled with PvP servers. Roflstomping other toons in Hellfire as a fresh-out-of-the-starting-area DK is always fun, but going from 1 to 90 that way ... /shudder.

If you make the jump, look us up. I'm happy to set you up with some stuff to get you started.

oilypenguin wrote:

Hox had baby.

Wait, what?! Is that even legal?

Ewww, I never thought they were going to implement CRZ's on PvP realms. That strikes me as a decidedly bad idea; if there's any kind of server that needs to be able to self-police a "community", it's a PvP server.

Enix wrote:
oilypenguin wrote:

Hox had baby.

Wait, what?! Is that even legal?

Most crimes against nature aren't technically illegal.

If any in the BHA would care to throw a invite to Tastypanda, I'd appreciate it. Really enjoying monk tank leveling so far, really smooth, and that's with no BoA's.

Maaaan. I'd hate to delay my exploration of Pandaland for that much longer. Not to mention I'd miss not having access to heirlooms and the 90K gold my main somehow had stocked up on during my post hiatus play. (And yes, even I was surprised I had that much.) I've also grown hugely attached to my Belf Pally.

I'm just considering my options, but is the Horde guild still around? My top issue is just being on a PVP server. I have no issue with playing in a dead guild. Hell, I'm doing so now. With LFD and LFR I can pretty much get all my grouping done anyway. Plus, I can bring over some heirlooms to mail to Alli alts if I decide to roll some later.

Crimeny wrote:

Maaaan. I'd hate to delay my exploration of Pandaland for that much longer. Not to mention I'd miss not having access to heirlooms and the 90K gold my main somehow had stocked up on during my post hiatus play. (And yes, even I was surprised I had that much.) I've also grown hugely attached to my Belf Pally.

I'm just considering my options, but is the Horde guild still around? My top issue is just being on a PVP server. I have no issue with playing in a dead guild. Hell, I'm doing so now. With LFD and LFR I can pretty much get all my grouping done anyway. Plus, I can bring over some heirlooms to mail to Alli alts if I decide to roll some later.

I thought you kept your gold and heirlooms on transfers? You just lose everything in your mailbox.