At the time I played (CATA) MoP was heavily seen as bad terrible and turning a fantasy story game “memed” into Pandaland. Of course people hate expansions after expansion so this not conclusive it is bad.
In 2014 MOP was seen by MMO & WoW community as failed. Such as videos like “Why did Mists of Pandarai fail?” by Danger Dolan
but if memory serve people Disliked Pandaria for these reason though not limited to
“Off Season April Fools Joke” story
Homogenized class & gearing
1 year+ Content Drought after Siege before… wod…
Cata wasnt even hated that much (AT launch of course…) MOP was when WoW expansion was seen as negative and negative and “mixed” at best. But fine… this could all be my bad memory. Lets look at numbers.
TL:DR Mop sub numbers declined to Pre-BC levels, undoing 5 years of Sub growth. Cata was a “meh” but Rollercoaster started when MOP took off.
So fast forward to present day and Many on forum wish to see MOP classic… seems like a gradual shift to MOP seen as good over the years, it was disliked by most and causing 1/3d of the playerbase to quit.
Lastly… I am not trying to down-play ppls enjoyment of MOP…, but the mass decline at the time is telling, and its concerning that we may be repeating mistakes of history (LFD) if a “Nochanges” MOP classic is pushed as the next classic adventure
People just like to s h I t on the current expansion. I met people back in vanilla that didnt like tbc. Mop was “regarged” as a bad expansion but it in reality it was amazing!. Most players were just burned out after doing SOO for so long
It was seen as terrible by people who suffer from “Reading a book by its cover”. I played the full expansion and enjoyed it thoroughly. The forums was outraged about every little thing as they always have been. Oh no you have to do dailies to get loot? Unacceptable! Oh no reps unlocked reps? Blizzard is out of control! Pandas? How dare you im not 13 anymore, im a grown up 15 year old!
You know who said this? Dps specs that spent the last 2 expansions upset that hybrid classes werent hybrid taxed. Oh no warriors cant have first dibs on all the plate and leather gear! The world is ending! How dare Blizzard not have 8 items in a loot pool that rots because people only care about the items that sim 3 dps higher! Those monsters!
ya because the content pacing in MoP was far too fast. I did ALL of the content and had just finished all of it when MoP ended. If they paced it better no one would have noticed anything.
100% this. When it was announced, it got massive backlash from the sweaties because “panda”. It just happened to be announced around the time a certain panda-based film was released, so without looking further into it people just assumed it was a rip off from that. I mean it wasn’t a perfect expansion and it did suffer from some early set backs like the 1000 dailies and reps locked behind reps, but those who actually played it seem to have enjoyed it. We also shouldn’t forget about the transition from 10/25m raiding to 20m which forced a number of guilds to merge (which always goes well).
ICC lasted a year too, and WotLK had the famous “it cost us a raid tier” gap in addition to Naxx recycling. DS lasted a long time too. Content droughts were pretty normal at that time. Admittedly they don’t help, but don’t think this was exclusive.
5 years is still pretty good, and there are likely a lot more factors involved in that. A large volume of players who were maybe 12-18 when Vanilla came out were now in that early adult stage of life where things change. People go off to university, begin relationships, discover parties, get jobs, have children. These take considerable time away from gaming, and I’d argue that a number of players in that age bracket decided that a long-term investment in a video game wasn’t worth it at the time. MMO’s a whole at that time were in decline and new things like MOBA were making a rise.
MoP wasn’t perfect, and it did have its problems but it was generally a very solid expansion. Zones were beautiful, the story was interesting, raids were fun, scenarios were a new feature (I still don’t get why they were removed), classes were fun. I think the people who look back now and didn’t enjoy MoP either quit after a couple of months or only remember spending 12 months in SoO.
MoP xpanc is what made me finally quit WoW back in the day & I wasn’t a fan of the new race/class/theme, but part of the reason was also just WoW burnout in general after having played since 2004 launch. It was more just the straw that broke the camels back that kept me away from WoW until Classic launched.
MoP is highly regarded as having the best class design out of every expansion to date. it also had amazing raids, good pvp, a great story, pet battles, and wonderful atmosphere.
99% of arguments as to the expansion being “bad” all boil down to people not liking pandarens and they claim it was “copying Kung Fu Panda” even though Chen Stormstout has been in the lore since Warcraft 3.
Idk why people crap on MoP. It was my favorite expac, and in the PServer scene it’s considered the best PvP expac.
It’s very much possible that MoP was during my “Golden Years” for WoW, but I can’t say I have anything but great memories of every patch of it. Especially Timeless Isle and getting the Chiji Buff and going HAM on people for memes
That and Wpvp in the Barrens
I think people just like to say “Pandas…” like it’s supposed to be the first and last bit of information need to decide whether an Expac is good or not.
