Mists of Pandaria discussion

[Lissa]

Seriously, whoever came up with that expansion idea needs to be taken out back and beaten severely.

Let's see, we've got ...

Turtles all the way down
Pokemon
Pandaren Rogues (??) and Mages (????)
Absolutely nuts talent trees (how the hell does putting Nature's Swiftness in the same tier as Renewal make sense?!)
Boring talent trees (one choice of three skills every 15 levels, oh joy!)
Completely overpowered racials for the new race (surprise!)
Valor Points for daily quests (ugh, daily quest for raid gear as if dungeons for raid gear wasn't bad enough)

The talents and valor points alone are enough to make me be disappointed. Every time Blizzard announces something new for WoW I see the disconnect between A Team (moved on to Titan after Ulduar) and B Team widen.

And now people know why I'll never return to WoW. Just downright stupid now. They took a good game and destroyed it.

And Blizzard doesn't care. The money is in the casuals, not the hard core raiders. Not only are they losing base to time, they have to worry about cannibalizing their own base with D3 and loss to other contenders for folks time and money. Take it from me, that warm wet feeling of pissing into the wind is not enjoyable.

I have been thinking I would drop WoW for Star Wars, but that would depend on the first month of play. Now I will probably stick at least through the 12 month/D3 free offer to see how things shake out.

Has 0 to do with hard core vs. casual, the game has taken a severe drop in quality since Ulduar. ICC was alright, but overall, Cataclysm has been problematic to say the least. The team doing development is totally clueless now on what to do and how to tune.