My personal Mists of Pandaria Review

The highly-anticipated Mists of Pandaria expansion, will be released in under 20 days.

I've been playing the game since its beta, so I'll try to give it a quick, somewhat unbiased review:

Positive things about Mists of Pandaria

No flying mount in Pandaria at level 85 - finally leveling will be more challenging and time-consuming. I mean sure, if you'll get dismounted by a daze effect, you want to break the nearest object within your reach, but hey, this makes you at least enjoy the new content.

New quest mechanics - I personally love the new quest mechanics. If you compare it to quests in Wrath of the Lich King or the Burning Crusade, then, the quest mechanism has been vastly improved. It makes use of phasing, most of the quest givers across Pandaria are voiced and you'll see videos played after you complete a certain stage, which make you feel as part of the story itself.

New Talent System - even though Blizzard did completely overhault talents almost every expansion, they are most likely done for good. The new talents are all yours to pick, depending on your gameplay. Picking a talent of your choice doesn't necessarily decrease your damage output. Some players may whine, due to classes not being unique anymore, but high-end raiders will want to pick talents almost before every boss, depending on the encounter.

Monks - Blizzard did a great thing by creating the monk class. It's mechanics are very unique in every way. There are no tanks nor healers even remotely similar to monk's mechanics in game for the time being.

Reputations - In Cataclysm, you bought a tabard and reputations were just different bars to fill. Now you will relive their stories and become virtually insane, because the daily quest cap has been removed and reputation is now required to purchase gear from justice/valor vendors.

Pet Battles - I really like the concept, but too me, it seems like a cheap Pokémon ripoff. Finally, there's some use to all the useless non-combat companion pets.

Lack of content filled- You have, pet battles, daily quests, challenges, scenarios and you also need to farm several reputations up to exalted. I think there will be more than enought things to keep you busy.

That's about it. Are you surprised? Of course I will not mention everything that was released with Patch 5.0.4 such as AoE loot, new interfaces, because that should have been implemented long ago.

Mists of Pandaria Drawbacks

Pandas, pandas everywhere! One of the things that bugs me are the pandas, not only is there a playable race, pandas are almost all quest givers in Pandaria, new dungeon bosses.

Too much asian-inspired architecture - Look at the beautiful architecture of Sunwell Plateau and compare it to all of the architecture in Pandaria, shouldn't it be called Mists of Asia? No offense really, but I mean the basic scenario in Pandaria is like this: You go to a pagoda, where you talk to a panda quest giver to pick up your quest, where you need to go somewhere and kill a Sha-possesed panda. In addition to Wrath's proto-drakes, there will serpent mounts in Mists with too many recolors.

Still no new race models - Blizzard is really to blame for this. Stormwind floor has a better texture than all of the vanilla races. It's a true story. Even though they claimed they're working on it, do you remember when did they promise us new dances?

Numbers - Why do I have to have 500K health and deal 120K DPS, pick up a mace with +1,300 intellect and such? Would it be such a big problem to reduce all stats (numbers) in game by a certain percentage (even 50% would be too little.) I'm aware of the fact that people like to see big numbers, but still.

Outland/Northrend are outdated and most of the players (including me) hate these places. The quests should be revamped, to match the outcome of the Burning Crusade/Wrath (Lich King's defeat) etc., let's say you'd help by seeding stuff in Borean Tundra to revitalize the area, or similar scenarios.

Leveling itself is fun, but gets too lengthy if you need to go from 1-90. Recruit-a-friend referral system should be increased up to level 85 and more heirlooms should be added. It's unfair you eventually have to recruit someone to get the +300% experience increase.

Lack of a villain - we had Illidan, the Lich King and finally Deathwing. This expansion will primarily focus ont the war between Horde and the Alliance with the main antagonist being Garrosh Hellscream. A stubborn orc compared to a Lich King or Illidan is not imaginable. For me it just "lacks the epic feeling". When we killed Lich King, Deathwing set foot to Azeroth totally reforming it. Garrosh is just a Nobody, obliterating Theramore.

Some players claim that the good old days of Burning Crusade will return with Mists of Pandaria. Only time will tell. We'll see how many subscribers will WoW earn after the first months of the release. Even though Cataclysm lack of content caused a big loss of subscribers, WoW still remains a MMORPG with the most subscribers ever.

That's it for now, if I can think of anything else, I'll just add it in an update.