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Blizzard's highly polished item hunt still shines.

Unlike Cataclysm, which tried to be the expansion for everyone, the fourth expansion to Blizzard’s perennially popular MMO is aimed at the experienced player, adding in plenty of high level content to churn through after leveling from 85 to the new cap of 90. If you’ve been away from WoW for a while, much of the core experience remains the same: it’s a ceaseless pursuit of power, where acquiring better items opens up access to more challenging content, which lets you acquire even better items to access even more challenging content, and on and on as you rise from lowly nothing to slayer of the world’s greatest evils. It’s a familiar formula, and still feels rewarding, where your in-game character serves as a controllable trophy rack, broadcasting to others the towering terrors you were skilled enough to defeat, inspiring envy in low-level onlookers and fueling personal pride.

Blizzard’s clearly learned a lot over World of Warcaft’s nearly eight year run, and has molded questing in Mists of Pandaria into its finest form yet; a focused, fast-paced, story-heavy experience. Goals are always clustered close together, usually supported by a strong narrative, dressed up with a surprising amount of voiced dialogue and quick in-game cut-scenes that never take you out of the action for long. You’re often shuttled between locations in WoW MoP cd key custom rides; you may hop on a hot air balloon or ride atop the back of a slithering dragon to take in Pandaria’s beautiful sights while you’re given more of the story. There’s a lot of content to see from level 85 to 90, and because of all the attention to detail, there’s little dead space.

The presence of all that detail helps to fight back against the wearying grind that tends to set in while playing many MMOs, as it feels like the surrounding world changes based on your actions. Monuments crumble, monsters rise from the ocean and the configurations of NPCs in settlements change to reinforce the idea that that Pandaria’s story has a direction and momentum normally reserved for single-player games.

Clever alterations of quest mechanics keep the fun from slowing to a standstill. The majority of quests have kill and collect goals -- familiar territory for any MMO player -- but few are ever exactly the same. In Townlong Steppes, for example, you’ll find a multitude of quests to kill mantids. In one you’ll use a flare to uncover cloaked mantids, in another you’ll kick barrels at mantids and rely on NPC archers to set the creatures aflame and burn through their heavy armor, and in another you’ll kill mantids on a battlefield bristling with explosions. Though you’re always given the same core task, the mixing of rules keeps the quests interesting. The variations also correspond to the storyline, making them feel justified instead of frivolously added for variety’s sake. Considering this is largely true of the entire 85 to 90 run, it’s an especially impressive achievement.

Mixed in you get the occasional vehicle quest where you fire turrets at invading armies or stomp evil monkeys while riding atop a rampaging beast. These alternative quest types help break up the pacing, but are used sparingly so they’re never disruptive. Blizzard also gives even lowly enemies special attack types that require you to stay mobile, helping to occasionally alter the rhythm of standard skill rotation combat.

The writing throughout is also generally strong, taking an ominous tone as the story turns to matters of a rising evil within the typically peaceful land of Pandaria. Though the characters aren’t especially deep, and there are certainly moments of eye-rolling cheesiness as characters strike a tone a little too serious for their own good, it’s still surprisingly easy to get swept up in the tale, thanks in part to the stellar soundtrack. Despite the dire circumstances in Pandaria, WoW still never loses its characteristic goofy humor, so, even as you face off against monstrous beasts, you’re never far from a quest that asks you to shove yaks through a car wash-like contraption, keeping a necessary sense of levity in Pandaria’s hyper colorful world of preposterously large shoulder pads and even bigger vegetables.

As much as Blizzard does well, there are still a few dud quests mixed in, which conjure stinging memories of WoW’s early days. They aren’t especially frequent, and perhaps stand out so sharply because the rest of the questing is so smooth. Questing doesn’t stop after hitting level 90, either, as Blizzard built in a large number of daily quests related to Pandaria’s various factions. The clear the goal was to make the journey to exalted status a little more palatable than the routine grind, so Blizzard fashioned each faction into more plausible pockets of civilization within Pandaria. This idea of more thoroughly developed factions is most strongly exemplified by the Tillers’ home area, where you’re given a private farm to cultivate and upgrade, and can run dailies to gain favor with the faction as well as improve standing with individual NPCs. The level 90 zone Vale of Eternal Blossoms is another strong example, where a rotating set of daily tasks change up your routine and send you further across the zone as your standing increases, giving reputation grinding more of a sense of progression.

Still, the appeal of logging in to run multitudes of dailies with slightly altered goals – one day you might fight a giant crocodile in the Vale, the next a wolf with sword between its teeth – begins to wear thin pretty quickly. It’s still a grind, it’s just presented better, and only one piece of Blizzard’s end game in Pandaria.

Though four dungeons unlock as you level up from 85, the real experience doesn’t start until heroics open up at level 90. These dungeons aren’t prohibitively challenging and can be conquered by pretty much anyone with moderate skill. The focus in on big fights, not trash mobs, so for the majority of each dungeon run you’ll engage towering bosses who exhibit unique attack patterns. Some require you to launch yourself from turrets to exploit weak points, some strafe battle zones with flame so your party needs to flee to the edges, some cast debilitating debuffs and spawn shadow minions, and others teleport you around the battle zone and activate environmental hazards to ensure need to stay alert and active in a fight, resulting in satisfying rounds of combat that don’t suffer from unnecessary frustration.

Each dungeon is also threaded with a significant amount of story content and features elaborately staged encounters. Blizzard knows how to tease its climactic battles better than most other developers, building dungeons like Temple of the Jade Serpent and Stormstout Brewery out in the open world and sending you through on quests, building excitement for the eventual dungeon run and making the structures and creatures feel like natural pieces of a cohesive, and often gorgeous, virtual world.

If heroic dungeons are still too intimidating for you, Blizzard included Scenarios, a more forgiving type of instanced content built for three players. Though less challenging, Scenarios, don’t do anything substantially better than any other part of the game and don’t offer rewards that justify the time investment. Perhaps moving forward Blizzard will continue to roll out important story events in Scenario format (such as with Theramore’s Fall), but even with some creative quest designs, Scenarios just don’t have much of an identity, and feel wholly disconnected from the rest of Pandaria, directly contrasting with Blizzard’s efforts to better intertwine instanced dungeon content with the world at large.
For more dedicated players, Blizzard built in challenge modes for Pandaria’s dungeons, where groups can race to knock down bosses and post clear times to online leaderboards and claim rewards. This, along with raid content that’s just beginning to roll out, seems like it could become an important piece of the WoW experience for more hardcore players in the months to come, as it provides a way for competitive PvE players to really get a sense of how they compare with the rest of the community.

In case PvE encounters aren’t very exciting to you, the PvP game was expanded with two Battlegrounds, both of which feature well-designed game modes that feel very different and provide plenty of tactical depth. On Silvershard Mines, your team needs to capture automated minecarts that run along tracks while preventing the enemy from taking over and doing the same. It’s fast and frantic and results in a satisfying game of risk and reward as some teammates must stay back to defend while others need to band together into assault groups to chase down moving, sometimes heavily guarded targets within a time limit. The Temple of Kotmogu is even more hectic as teams fight over four controllable orbs and hold them to score points, a setup where quick reflexes, communication and sharp situational awareness can make a huge difference in the ensuring chaotic melee.

While this is all content for high level players, there is a reason to start all the way back at level one. The added Monk class can be played as a tank, damage dealer or healer, and is built with mechanics for each specialization that mesh well with the class’ history within Blizzard lore as an agile brewmaster. As a tank the Monk shatters kegs of alcohol on the ground to generate threat, then can light soaked foes on fire by spewing flame breath. While tuned to deal damage, the Monk gains a rapid-fire punch attack that stuns and harms enemies in an arc in front of him, great for setting up lesser enemies for punishment from others in dungeons. He can also pile on spikes of damage by unleashing whirling kicks at enemies, with a chance to spawn replenishing orbs after making kills. With a distinct rhythm of gameplay as he builds and spends two resource types, the Monk is a fun, versatile and genuinely different addition to World of Warcraft’s already stellar class lineup.
Leveling up through all that old content can be a huge chore, though it’s expedited somewhat by a daily buff accessible to the Monk that temporarily boosts experience gain. With the recently reworked talent system that trashed the old talent trees entirely, leveling also doesn’t have the same giddy sense of nonstop rewards it used to. You’re only able to make a talent decision every fifteen levels, activating one talent out of three per tier. Though the less frequent decision making does deflate the excitement of powering up, the new talent system does force some interesting choices, as some are better suited for soloing, filling specific group roles or PvP.

The talent system was recently changed for all WoW players, so there’s no need to pick up Mists to see what Blizzard did. The same goes for playing as the Pandaren race and participating in pet battles, a completely optional Pokemon-like combat system that has absolutely no business being as good as it is. The system lets you fight with, level up and customize all pets you currently own and collect many more throughout World of Warcraft’s zones. The turn-based combat is surprisingly deep, with plenty of differing attack types, defenses, exploitable weaknesses and status ailments. It even features a fully functioning matchmaker, so you can usually find a fight with a live player within seconds. Though the only rewards are achievements and more experience for your pets, it’s a really satisfying system, and hopefully something Blizzard will continue to refine.
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The Verdict

Mists of Pandaria is an expansion built for the high level player that shows off Blizzard’s skill with dungeon design and offers plenty of rewards for long-term play. It’s also the best questing in World of Warcraft, with strong emphasis on storytelling, resulting in an entertaining run from 85 to 90 that seldom tumbles into tedium. While not all the new systems dazzle, more than anything, Mists proves that Blizzard’s venerable MMO is still one of the best around, a mix of breezy questing, top tier class design, and multiple systems to encourage the cutthroat competition that props up the end game. World of Warcraft is still devilishly effective at teasing god-like power, where you start with nothing and climb step by step up a colossal mountain of progression until you can, someday, spike a flag into its peak, look out across the vastness of your experience and revel in a sublime sense of dominance.

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