Last night I was able to finish the quest line of dailies to get my flying snake (dirty!).

Today, I was able to finish my daily quest chain to fully unlock my farm.  You can see the final part of it happening here, with that big brute knocking back the final rocks.

The only thing I haven’t done much of is pet battles.  I used to be pretty strong into Pokemon but I don’t think I want to pay 15$ a month for that single service.

I’ve done plenty of scenarios, plenty of dungeons.  The former are ok but are so distinct from the rest of the game it feels like an afterthought.  Would be awesome if scenarios were somehow linked to the rest of the game, giving a sense of progress.  Dungeons are a bit better in that they give loot (I’m about 30 runs in and 4 pieces of gear) though again, there’s nothing inherently linked.  Everything is too meta.  Raids are just complex dungeons.

MMOs are about people and I’ve met my fair share.  Overall, most are nice but I think that has more to do with MoP being fresh.  Up until week 3 of the expansion, there were still server queues.  Week 4 came around and nothing.  Nosy Gamer has a longstanding post about this issue of player populations.  I expect that by the end of November, any uptick that WoW has seen will be gone.  Especially given the design decisions of late (*cough*Brawler’s Guild*cough*).

The “new” content for this expansion pack has been consumed.  Blizzard gated certain things with the time factor but not skill or story or player investment.  Gone are the days where you do X to unlock Y, then Y to unlock Z, then Z for A.  While I understand that the gating issues of TBC were bad in regards to raids they are NOT bad in terms of PvE content.  Sandboxes thrive on that model.  Instead of giving me 5 hours of work split over 5 days, how about I can do that 5 hours in 1 day instead?  That way, if I miss a day, I’m not feeling lost.  And if I get an extra hour one day, I have something to do.

So what did Panda-land bring?  Same dungeon design (easier that Cata, harder than LK, 30m chunks).  Same raids (though LFR from the start).  Nearly all PvE content locked behind dailies (artificial time barrier).  New air mount behind quest (accomplishment I suppose).  The farm is the start of a player home (far short of the line).  Pet battles are a collector’s dream (and achievers) but that can’t be all there is.

Would I say that MoP was worth the cash?  In terms of $ per hour, yes.  In relative terms compared to other MMOs, no.  There has to be more.