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[General Article] World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria: Review in Progress Week 4 Dungeons
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
We continue our ongoing series of articles leading up to our final review of World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. In this week's edition, we take a look at the new dungeons that shipped with the latest expansion. Check it out!
There are a lot of areas in Mists of Pandaria that have gotten mixed reviews. However, one area that is really impressive to me is in the Dungeons. There are some very solid encounters to work through in each of the new instaces as well as the challenge modes. Challenge Mode really is the icing on the new dungeon system cake. I played the dungeons as a Healer on my Shaman, because of the quick wait times to get in. I am trying to write everything out here without giving spoilers, although by this time most of you have played through the instances anyway… still, enjoy the good and the bad as we comb through each.
Read more of Garrett Fuller's World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Review in Progress, Week 4: Dungeons.
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Comments
If nothing else, the dungeons alone are worth playing this old gem one more time. The amount of detail and creativity they have put into their dungeons/raids and the new mechanics added to flesh out their replayability is top notch. There are many outdated things that come with playing World of Warcraft, but they have managed to keep their loot grind and dungeons fresh and unique, and this expansion has really impressed me when it comes to the instancing.
There are definitely a lot of bad things that came with this expansion, but most of it is just overcoming the changes they have made to the classes/talents.
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Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
I loved the comparison to an old pair of comfy slippers, lol. It's so true.
I'm still leveling up my Monk through the old content (just got to 80 last night), so I haven't yet experienced the new dungeons, but you've given me a lot to look forward to. My friends have all been raving about the dungeons since week one. Hopefully this weekend I'll level up enough to try out the first one.
While you are leveling up your monk, the new scarlet monestary dungeons are quite nice. it was a pleasent surprise to see the changes they made to the classic dungeon.
~ ~
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
One of the few bad things about MoPs dungeons is that between 85 and 90 there are 4 dungeons to do. There are 2 at level 85 and 2 at level 87. So, if you queue for LFG a lot while leveling you see these 4 a lot and are tired of them by the time you get to level 90 and now have to run them again on Heroic.
But I really like the attention to detail in most dungeons. Small little things that many people might not notice.
In Stormstout Brewery theres a room where you have 2 ghosts insulting the group in a Statler and Waldorf manner. And they have a lot of lines.
"I think this group will get better with age"
"You think they will improve?"
"No, my eyesight will get worse"
"Hahahahaha"
Some people may complain about "breaking immersion" but its something that makes me laugh in an otherwise unfun Heroic run.
The dungeons get more simple and streamlined every year. Its a shame when you think back to Blackrock Depths and now have to look at those "dungeons". Why is every developer afraid, that their players can't even make decisions where to go. GW2, WoW, TSW, Rift, SWTOR.....all the same.
Goddamn, 4 rooms ordered in a few different ways are not epic dungeons. Don't get me started on the streamlined 2 Room raids nowadays. I would break out into tears instantly.
Hodor!
Challenge mode dungeons aside I personally found the heroic dungeons far too easy and lack any challenge at all. Also, on a side note I think the MoP LFR raids are the same, avoid of any challenge at all and it feels like just a loot hand-out once a week. I was actually pretty disappointed by the dungeons/raids in MoP, they get easier every expansion.
I'm looking forward to the challenge RiFT will bring to the table in Storm Legion, I'm sure you won't blast through each dungeon in 30 minutes.
Heroics have always been easy, so has the LFR, LFR was made to be faceroll. About the only time when I remember heroics being challenging was back in Burning Crusade because some of the heroics were harder then usual (Shatt Halls - Shadow Labs) because they were made for players that had a little better gear then fresh lvl 70 blues and CC was required.
If your looking for challenge you will need to do the normal/heroic raids and stay away from LFR, Mogushan Vaults has its tough fights (Elegon) its definitely not a faceroll.
HEAVEN OR HELL
Duel 1
Lets ROCK!
The raids are harder than previous entry raids and require exact timing and coordination.
Also, why would the dungeons in Storm Legion be any different than the 30 minute dungeons in Rift?
Actually the heroic dungeons when RiFT launched took 2-3 hours per dungeon even with a full guild group. Now that everyone out gears them ofc they are easy
As SL will be a gear reset I expect them to be as hard and you won’t be clearing them in 30min any time soon.
LFR takes out all the boss mechanics, or most of them.
But you get the same loot / rewards? This doesn't seem right at all. I swear LFD/R systems like WoW's system are the root cause of a lot that has gone wrong with MMO's. Join up with zero effort, don't say one word the entire time, get the same rewards as those that do guild runs and actually socialize.
No the loot from LFR is not as good as heroic or normal raid gear.
what zectorin said. the loot isnt the same. the purpose of LFR is to give people who arent "hardcore" a chance to see endgame.
Also very misleading to say LFR takes out ´most´ of the mechanisms. In actuality in MoP, almost all the mechanisms are the same for LFR as the real raid. The biggest change is the damage is toned down a lot. For instance, there is a boss where some of the players have to go into a spirit world and kill adds, the more adds there are alive, the more damage the boss does to the rest of the raid. In LFR, there are less adds in the spirit world and the damage they apply to the rest of the raid is less. But it still can´t be ignore. For this tier, mostly it feels like LFR is simply the 10 man raid that is done by a 25 man PUG.
I have still wiped a few times in LFR.. Elergon and Guardians the first week.
The real difference between LFR and the real raids is that in LFR, most of the time you can learn during the encounter and overcome your mistakes.. in a real raid, you learn by wiping. But in LFR, if enough people don´t learn fast enough, it can still be a wipe. .. ie.. half the healers not getting off the platform.
In raids, many times 1 specific mechanic to overcome is basically the challenge in the whole fight (in addition to the basic move out of x, inturrput y, use cooldowns when Z happens).
In LFR, they leave in 95% of the origional version's mechanics, but the ones they DO remove, are the biggies that tone down the fight by a huge amount...not just the damage done.
Reasearch...it does a body good :-)
All of the loot in LFR is a big downgrade from the normal versions, you by no means "Join up with zero effort, don't say one word the entire time, get the same rewards as those that do guild runs and actually socialize."
.../sigh
We are having multi-part pre release and post release reviews for new content now? It was getting ridiculous for new MMO's at launch but this is getting crazy now.
"economized the new dungeons" = Made smaller for tha casual crowd.
Humour in a high fantasy MMO is a very difficult balance, Vanguard fell down in that regard for me. Beer elementals do seem a bit silly and out of place.
Well, you have a stronger stomach than I. It was the Harley motorcycles that finally got to me. Didn't make it to beer elementals, but Jesus.
Came back for a bit of nostalgia, and to get back in regular contact with Guildies. I have found this expansion to be lacking in interest, the dungeons fairly meaningless, overall fairly boring. I like the cartoon-style graphics of WoW, but overall the game feels like it is passed it's "used by" date. I know that is not the story for millions of other people, and I'm really glad they are happy with this expansion. I quit Cata after two weeks, so quitting MoP after probably almost 2 monhs should be something of a compliment
On a different note, after reconnecting with a group of childhood friends who are table-topping, I asked why they didn't play MMOs - the answer was very similar between them "Why pay to grind, why grind at all?" Food for devs' thoughts.