The Monk class gets something akin to a dodge, but it only goes forward, makes your character travel way too far, and since WoW demands you manually face your target, what this means is that you’ll often dodge forward, then have to quickly turn around to face the enemy again. The moves are cool and fun to watch, but you can’t help but wish it felt a bit more dynamic. It doesn’t feel right for a master of martial arts to be forced into standing still while performing a whirlwind kick, or performing a rapid-punch combo that looks like something out of Dragonball Z. The Monk is neat in theory, but it’s in conflict with WoW‘s eight-year old combat system. Monk-eying around with classes, talents, and combatĪlthough pandaren are the masters of Mists’ new Monk class, every race other than worgen and goblins can become a Monk. Wait, which one’s a cow, and which one’s a dog? Ugh! All these talking animals are stupid!” Type out “/silly” as a female pandaren and she might deliver said jab: “So I was talking to this Tauren the other day. To be fair, Blizzard seems to realize this and makes a little jab at the critics. It’s very, very hard to take a pandaren seriously. They have not one, but two racial bonuses that apply to food: Gourmand, which gives a +15 to cooking, and Epicurean, which doubles stats from food buffs. Every pandaren has a belly, and they remark constantly how they love to eat, very similar to Po from the Kung Fu Panda franchise. Now that the race has been made playable in Mists, they’ve been significantly de-fanged. Not all of these changes have been for the better.Īlthough they are anthropomorphic pandas and always have been, early sketches of the race depicted them as more muscular than chubby, and their samurai armor gave off an air of ferocity and strength. The pandaren have taken a lot of flak for looking like Kung Fu Panda rip-offs and, while you can defend their existence as a legitimate piece of lore that predates the Dreamworks films, it’s clear that the race has undergone some changes since their introduction to the world of Warcraft. It would be impossible to discuss Mists of Pandaria without addressing the pandaren. This is an expansion for people who are already happy with WoW. This isn’t an expansion for people who like MMOs and it won’t inspire a mass return of players. Mists of Pandaria has neither the form nor function of its contemporary competitors, so playing feels like a step back in time. Blizzard may have the largest amount of players compared to other MMOs on the market, but they’re playing catch-up and it shows. Mists of Pandaria makes do with a nearly decade-old graphics engine and aging mechanics, but the game is starting to feel stale. So what hope does Mists of Pandaria, the latest expansion to an eight-year old game, have? A good amount, actually, but that’s due to the already invested World of Warcraft player base. Factor in The Old Republic, which released at the tail end of 2011, and the market is practically choking on triple-A MMO titles. 2012 is the year of the blockbuster MMO: TERA, The Secret World, Guild Wars 2, and an impending re-launch of Final Fantasy XIV add up to an extremely competitive market and a lot of quality content.
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