We need to manage our expectations about Mists of Pandaria
Our sister site Massively has covered a recent concern posted by savvy dude Bashiok regarding Diablo III. To make a long story short, Bashiok worried that players' expectations were getting all out of proportion. Bashiok makes one heck of a good point.
Diablo III is going to be awesome -- but it's not going to cure world hunger, solve the economic crisis, or cause shiny-happy rainbows to shoot forth from computer monitors. Most of us around here have played the beta and followed the game's news as if we write about a Blizzard game for a living. And we all love it. Really, the game's really cool. But there's no way it can live up to some of the hype it gets.
Star Wars: The Old Republic suffered some of the same problem from over-hype. By the time Bioware released the game, everyone expected a next-generation, MMO-redefining experience. That didn't happen. SW:TOR is awesome, but it's not the nirvana of MMOs. It is, essentially, an MMO like any other, but it's based in the universe of Luke and Vader. And that's good enough.
I fervently hope we don't end up doing the same with Mists of Pandaria. Everything about the expansion is incredibly exciting. Pandaren look cool (if you're into pandas), the new talents look exciting, and MoP promises a lot of new experiences. But let's not set it up for failure by expecting it to be WoW 2.0. It's still going to be a WoW expansion. It's still going to involve killing mobs, questing, and slaying bosses. Because that's the point of the game.
I'm not trying to discourage anyone here. I really, really love WoW. I'm just saying that we shouldn't put our expectations for Mists so incredibly high that there's no way Blizzard can meet them. It'll do an astounding job, as it always does, but let's not make it impossible for Blizzard right out of the gate.
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria is the next expansion, raising the level cap to 90, introducing a brand new talent system, and bringing forth the long-lost pandaren race to both Horde and Alliance. Check out the trailer and follow us for all the latest MoP news!
