The Mists of Pandaria Post-Mortem: Introduction

With 5.4 upon us, it appears that Mists of Pandaria has essentially been completed. WoW is a strange beast in that we don't truly get the expansion in its entirety until about a year after it is released.

In this fourth expansion to World of Warcraft, we've seen a total overhaul of the talent system. We've seen a single new race introduced - the first race that is available to both the Alliance and Horde. We've had the second new class introduced as well, this time as a non-hero class that can level up from 1.

We've had a new continent added to Azeroth, with six new dungeons, five new raids, three new battlegrounds.

We've seen Scenarios introduced, and later Heroic Scenarios.

We've seen a whole lot of daily quests, along with a concerted effort to get people out into the world instead of just sitting around in the cities.

We've seen an expansion-long Legendary quest chain that is available to everyone.

We've seen what an expansion looks like with the Raid Finder available from the start, and we've seen a new raid mode, Flex raiding, introduced. With these, we've seen a new loot system for PUGs that extracts loot drama.

We've been introduced to a whole new land with its own cultures, while at the same time seeing our own strengths and weaknesses reflected in them. We've had an upheaval within the Horde, and some serious gains made by the Alliance. We have deposed a Warchief.

Over the next few weeks, I'll put little parts of the Mists of Pandaria post-mortem up, talking about particular aspects of the expansion: where it succeeded, where it failed, and where it surprised.