World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria

There are anthropomorphic pandas in this World of Warcraft expansion. And they are devoted to Chinese martial arts. I put it out there so we can get the Kung Fu Panda references out of the way. Cause it's easy to get stuck on the fact that there is an almost uncanny resemblance between the main characters in Mists of Pandaria and DreamWorks' movies. It's enough to make you forget just how great the expansion really is.

You shouldn't get too caught up on the new Pandaren race. Instead the real story here is the massive amount of new content the expansion brings, and the long line of small, incremental changes that help improve the entire experience.

We got a taste of it with patch 5.0.4., that introduced a lot of the system and class changes. All classes have been overhauled, old skill trees have been completely ripped and replaced with a system where you're faced with a choice of three, in theory equally appealing skills, every 15 levels.

It takes a little getting used to, but the new systems quickly make a believer out of me. Mainly because even with a wealth of skills to choose from, you typically wound up searching the net for the optimal path through the skill tree, which resulted in what appeared to be a rather static system. The new system feels nothing like that.

But there are more changes brought with Pandaria than the ones we were given with the last patch, and some only become apparent as you set foot on the new continent. World of Warcraft may be experiencing some pressure from games like Guild Wars 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic, but it must be said that Blizzard are doing all they can to continuously improve the World of Warcraft experience.

One example is a feature, seemingly lifted straight out of Guild Wars 2, that helps the issue of overfarmed questmobs - where as long as you deal damage on a specific enemy you gain gold and XP, instead of having to compete with other players for that all important first blow. All of a sudden you're not competing with others in the world and it's a nice touch.

The biggest and most important change Mists of Pandaria brings are the new cross realm zones. If you find yourself in a zone that is sparsely populated (something that's true for all zones level 1-85 these days), your zone will be fused together with the same zone on other servers, so you can run next to players from those servers, chat with them and group up.

It's the kind of injection of fresh blood the old content needed. Zones, that used to be completely desolete are now full of both Horde and Alliance members, something that has resulted in more PvP and ganking. Azeroth is once again full of life, and it's great to see.

As far as the quests goes, Mists of Pandaria is a definite improvement on Cataclysm. There was a tendency in Cataclysm to guide the player from zone to zone, with just 2 or 3 quests at any given time. A rather linear experience. Pandaria returns to a structure more akin to Wrath of the Lich King, and you're reasonably free to move between numerous quest hubs, and complete quests in any order you want. It's not uncommon to have 15 active quests going in a zone, and you're often moving between areas before completing all quests in any given zone.

Blizzard have also found new ways to tell the story, and a central part of your experience in the first new zone is told through playable flashbacks from the perspective of several characters. One of them includes another sniper mission, that said there are far fewer gimmick quests than there were in Cataclysm, where you would find yourself driving weird vehicles.

The universe itself is far more inspired by by Wushu and Chinese mythology that you would think at first glance. These are subjects that are seldom seen in video games, and it adds a nice flavour to the more traditional fantasy content World of Warcraft offers.

This is also has an effect on the story. Where the last couple of expansion mostly centered on saving the world from massive threats like Arthas and Deathwing, we're given a different perspective in Mists of Pandaria. The continent has existed in relative peace for millennia, and a lot of a sudden Alliance and Horde appear with their stupid old conflict, and that conflict shakes the balance of Pandaria and threatens the lives of the natives.

There are allegories for colonialism and proxy wars, and while the trademark Blizzard charm is there throughout to lift spirits, there are some heavy subjects that players will experience. The Alliance/Horde conflict is quickly overshadowed and instead the focus is firmly on the havoc you've helped create.

The Pandaren are both fun and charming, mixing their zen-like wisdom with a weakness for homebrew. They are cute without ever getting overly cute, and while at first glance that may look out of place next to the other races, the WoW universe is so diverse (just think of the Walrus men of Wrath of the Lich King) - that it sits well enough with me. And they are far more interesting than the Ramkahen from Cataclysm, for example.

The Monk class is fun to play and versatile, who with their sit chi system and the wealth of movement based abilities, remind us of a more fluid and less repetitive rogue, as Monks are equipped with more flexible tools.

Mists of Pandaria won't attract a lot of new players to the game. It's very much an expansion aimed to please veterans of the game. In many ways it's more of the same, but the standard is very high and the level of polish just makes everything all the more appealing. And at the same time there are tons of the new quests, new dungeons, and optional time sinks like pet battles and your own personal farm, and while the last couple of things may not be everyone's cup of tea, their inclusion is hardly a reason to complain.

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria is by no means a revolution. But it tickles us in all the right spots and does so with a wealth of content that is hard to ignore. Forget about Kung Fu Panda. This is at the very least the second best World of Warcraft expansion to date.