If you were worried there would not be enough to do at 90 (for some reason) think again. A huge number of reputation factions open up, with both one-shot and daily quests.
Jarsus hit 90 yesterday, and I've been taking him around to various factions and such. The first thing you'll want to do after hitting the cap is to head to your respective Terrace (the absolutely beautiful mini-cities in Vale of Eternal Blossoms - that count as contested even on PvE servers, though you don't get flagged, so... yeah, I don't get it.) Talk to the dude on the cloud serpent for your Pandaria flying (no way to get the cost down via rep, as he belongs to a faction you need flying to level... I think. Anyway, don't be cheap.) Then you're going to get an absurd number of breadcrumbs quests. The first is from a guy who hands you a Legendary envelope with an invitation to talk to a certain non-corrupted black dragon. I'd recommend picking this up first, as he'll give you a couple quests to do while you do other things. One of them is to get honored with his own personal faction by killing level 90 Mantid and Mogu in certain areas, though you might get the rep before the quest anyway.
You actually won't be able to get August Celestial or Shado-Pan rep until you're revered with Golden Lotus, so this is probably a good place to start. I think they've gotten rid of the daily quest cap, so feel free to work on any of the reputations you want.
Lorewalkers are actually quite unique among the reputations. You do not gain any rep from daily quests or killing things. You get them by completing the "lore object" achievements. Searching the continent (perhaps with some help from Wowhead...) you'll see little scroll containers with some neat lore about one of the Pandarian (as opposed to Pandaren) races, or specific characters. Reading all of these (or at least clicking on them) will have Lorewalker Cho send you a message in the mail, net you an achievement, and get you a bunch of rep. Turn the letter in and you'll get more rep and a cool little show talking about the subject you researched.
I love this feature, incidentally. I always complained that I knew nothing about the Tol'vir, even after they had been set up to have some really cool lore. With this, I now know more about basically all the races in Pandaria than I do about even such awesome people as the Vrykul. I really hope this becomes a recurring thing in every expansion. Imagine a wizened old Broken telling us the history of the Eredar! Lorewalkers also gets you a really cool magic flying disk, which is very different from the typical "ooh, another dragon" (though cloud serpents are very cool, and I'm definitely getting one. Already working on it. Thinking of calling him Whiskers.)
I've done one scenario (I actually don't recall the name, but it involves helping a brewmaster create a new beverage while fending off Hozen pirates... which is fantastic.) It really is a very different take on the instance, being more objective based, which allows for serious variation.
I've also done my first heroic dungeon, the Siege of Nizauo Temple (no idea if the vowels are in the right order there.) Considering I was just barely at the right iLevel, I was surprised at how easy it was, with us wiping only once on the third boss due to my not knowing where the adds were coming from (we almost did again when my keyboard locked up, a new feature I've noticed since Mists came out.) My understanding is that they really want to make dungeons an easy, casual thing, as they were in late Wrath (other than Halls of Reflection) and to put more of an emphasis on raid finder. I'm a little worried my computer is going to explode (it's... three whole years old!) from the effort, but Challenge Modes (which are like... Heroic Heroic mode?) are there for the hardcore 5-manners. Not sure if this is the direction I'd like to see them take, but for now, it's nice to have some easy, simple 5-mans. We'll see how I feel when we're all geared to the teeth in Tier 16 or whatever it is and every dungeon is "gogogo." (Someone literally said that to me on the first boss of SNT - can we call it that? - after I asked how the fight worked.)
Mists will probably be labeled as "casual friendly," which some consider a derogatory term. I'd agree with them that it is casual friendly, but I think that's good. As we come to know further patches and see how the expansion evolves, we'll get a better idea of where the game is at, but for now, I think it's a resounding success.
Random Notes:
-Mogu might be evil, but damn if their architecture ain't pretty. Terrace of Seven Stars is truly opulent!
-Both Execution Sentence and Light's Hammer have very cool visuals (even if they reuse art assets.) I absolutely love Light's Hammer for Protection. It's a Death and Decay in addition to my Consecration that also heals my buddies. It might be less powerful on single targets for threat/damage, but then I get to help out the healer! And Execution Sentence might just be a DoT with a fancy visual, but it's really, really fancy.
-The Disk of the Red Cloud is the kind of mount I'd like to see them make more of. I hate how often people park their enormous dragon mounts on top of quest givers and flight masters. The Disk is totally unobtrusive, barely increasing your real estate. Plus you get to look like Kit Cloudkicker! (Yes, I was born in the mid-80s, as this reference demonstrates.)
-The cloak engineering tinker Goblin Glider is one of the best things ever. Not only do you get to play around, like jumping off the peak of Mt. Neverest and seeing how far you can get, you can also use it as an escape plan in any area with lots of hostile enemies and a handy cliff-side.
-The Klaxxi - they might be... slightly evil, I think... but they're really badass. Anyway, they're less evil than the rest of the swarm, which is nice.
-One of the amazing and awesome revelations from the Lorekeepers is that the Jinyu were once Murlocs. The waters in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms transformed them... which is what happened to the Dark Trolls and the Well of Eternity to create the Night Elves. So, there must be a Titan influence here. Also, some archaeology finds suggest that Mogu language is related to Titan. My theory is that the Mogu were created by the Titans, but like the Vrykul, they weren't exactly nice people (either by design or corruption.) Remember the army of Iron Vrykul in Halls of Lighting? Well, there's a Terra Cotta army of Mogu in their raid. Who are the Mogu? Were they created as they are by the Titans? Were they a local species that was transformed by a Well of Eternity-like source? This is, I think, the most compelling mystery of the expansion. So much of Pandaria is new and unfamiliar, but when you are hit by those subtle connections, it's quite the source of excitement.
No comments:
Post a Comment