The Mists of Pandaria Postmortem: Raids, Tier 16: The Siege of Orgrimmar

While we've spent a large amount of time in Pandaria dealing with the local threats, the conflict between the Alliance and Horde has always been in the background. It is, actually, the fusion of the new and the old that leads to the conflict here in Siege of Orgrimmar. Garrosh, in his all-consuming lust for more and more powerful weapons, takes the Heart of Y'shaarj: the source of the Sha and the last remnant of the Old God, which causes phenomenal destruction in Pandaria and basically forces the Darkspear Rebellion's and the Alliance's hands, requiring them to act before he can truly unleash this power.

Inherently, the story of this raid is more complex for the Horde. The Alliance has always had to deal with brutal Warchiefs: Blackhand, Orgrim Doomhammer, and now Garrosh Hellscream. But Garrosh's acquisition of the Heart of Y'shaarj both gives them a reason to shift their focus away from the various battlefronts and go for broke, taking down Hellscream as quickly as possible.

The Horde has seen things slipping farther and farther into a kind of fascist totalitarianism ever since Garrosh took charge, but his assassination attempt on Vol'jin was the real catalyst for change. His treatment of the Trolls bodes ill for any of the other "lesser" races, and we've seen him alienate the Blood Elves and Goblins. On one hand, the other Horde races want a strong Horde that can take what it needs and not need to fear outside forces, but Garrosh has made it clear that there is no place for them in his Horde. Even if you were a die-hard Horde zealot, if you're not an Orc, you know that things aren't going to work out for you (and if you're an Orc Warlock, you're in serious trouble.)

But the raid! Let me get to the raid.

Siege of Orgrimmar is a huge instance, divided pretty neatly into different segments.

Vale of Eternal Sorrows:

This first part of the raid is almost like a small mini-raid that in the BC days would probably have just been made a separate instance. The fights here are a little more intuitive and tuned, I believe, to be easier, but there are some clever mechanics.

Immerseus is an effective gatekeeper boss: simple, but with high enough damage and DPS requirements that it sets a bar for what kind of gear you're looking for. First bosses should be simple, and I think this one works out great. Plus, what a cool model!

The next segment of this wing has us going through familiar territory, which is always a fun thing to do if done in moderation. As you'll see, I think this raid strikes a pretty good balance on the familiar versus the new. Likewise, I appreciate that in the two 4-boss wings of the instance, there is no trash between the first and second bosses. Trash is important for setting a pace (Trial of the Crusader showed us that,) but given how long four bosses can drag, I think this was a good choice.

I do think that the Norushen and Sha of Pride fights were a little too similar in style, but they both had their interestingly unique aspects. Norushen obviously requires a certain degree of individual responsibility. Sha of Pride also has some tricks, but I think it ultimately boils down to being pretty much this raid's most Patchwerk-y fight (even if they said that about Malkorok.)

Anyway, this section of the raid provides a good answer to why we've picked this moment to take down Garrosh. It also introduces (through the Fallen Protectors) a big theme of the raid, which is that we're killing a lot of people we've known for a long time.

Gates of Retribution:

This section of the raid is really what we were all thinking of when the idea of a Siege of Orgrimmar was put forward. The entire wing takes place in the city we're familiar with (though the last part is in Ragefire Chasm.) Galakras is a pretty exciting first fight, and also emphasizes a mechanical theme for the raid, which is the importance of fighting adds. It's also fairly enjoyable to do one of these fights where the raid splits up, even if you're only going to the top of some towers. I do feel that Zaela doesn't really get the send-off she deserves, as she seems to simply fall to her death from atop Galakras. Zaela was likable, and while it makes sense she sided with Garrosh, we didn't really get to hear much from her until we were fighting her people.

Iron Juggernaut is pretty conventional as a boss, as are the Dark Shaman as a kind of smallest-possible Council fight. Clearing out a bunch of familiar NPCs from the Valley of Strength (including the bosses, who were two obscure Shaman trainers) is pretty cool, though some of the shopkeepers feel like they ought to have been hiding. And then of course, you face Overlord Runthak and free Gamon before facing down Nazgrim.

Nazgrim is of course the most heartbreaking fight here, because he makes it clear that he's only fighting for Garrosh out of a sense of duty. Mechanically, it's yet another add-focused fight.

The Underhold:

Here's where we get what really feels like a conventional raid instance, though it's also not so overblown in size as to seem unreasonable as an actual fortress. This truly feels like a military base as you first assault it. Then you come to Malkorok, who gives us our first taste of something otherworldly in Orgrimmar. Malkorok is kind of an interesting fight, though I imagine it's most bizarre for healers. You also of course have to play your little "memory" game with it, but it's a fight that's mercifully devoid of adds after the last couple fights.

And then there's Spoils of Pandaria. Spoils is probably the least conventional fight of the instance, but like many of them, a lot of the individual mechanics of the adds kind of get drowned out by the frantic and chaotic nature of it. I enjoyed Thok the Bloodthirsty quite a bit, mainly due to the perverse humor of freeing all those prisoners only for him to eat them. Thok is one of those great, classic enormous bosses: simple, yet dangerous.

Downfall:

I have yet to see Siegemaster Blackfuse as DPS, but what I can say is that it's pretty fun to tank. Any time a tank gets to do significant damage and kill something on his or her own is pretty exciting. Plus, I'm a huge fan of the weird kinds of technology that they have in WoW, and this fight is all about that.

After Blackfuse, you kind of make your way out of the really conventional military base part of the Underhold and you start going through tunnels. I'm not quite sure where you are at that point, but it's probably not Orgrimmar anymore. The Paragons of the Klaxxi are kind of interesting as a penultimate boss, though I imagine that the difficulty of the fight largely depends on the luck of what order you get. On its lowest difficulty, it suffers, like Spoils did, of having a kind of mechanical overload - one sort of just ignores the mechanics because there are too many to keep track of.

Finally, there's Garrosh. Garrosh actually surprised me in that it's not that hard of an expansion-boss fight if you know what to do, and the mechanics can be broken down and pretty easily understood. However, I do think there are some pretty cool unique mechanics, particularly the visions. The Garrosh fight would be pretty mundane in visuals if it were not for the visions, but every time you get sucked into the Heart of Y'shaarj, you get to see a bit of the connection between the super-familiar (Garrosh and his "True Horde,") and the unique stuff of Pandaria.

Epilogue:

Finally, I think the two cutscenes: the Horde showing Thrall stepping aside for Vol'jin and the Alliance one showing Varian making a decision to end the war, do a good job of establishing the new status quo going forward. Add on to that the fact that we get to talk to many of our leaders (no Genn or Velen though, boo) and see what they think of the situation, plus a whole mini-quest chain involving Lorewalker Cho and seeing how Pandaria is going to move on, and you've got the most story-driven raid yet.

Mechanically, I think we've got a fantastic raid in Siege of Orgrimmar, even if it leans a little heavy on one standard mechanic (kill these adds!) It's a fitting way to end the latest great war between the two factions, and it leaves a ton of questions that will have to be answered in the future (like who is still alive in Orgrimmar?)

So that sums up all the raids in Mists of Pandaria. In the future, I'll be writing up an article about the relationship between Raiding, Dungeons, and Scenarios, and how that's worked out in Mists.

The Mists of Pandaria Postmortem - The Raids, Tier 15, Throne of Thunder

While tier 14 was split up between three different raids, the second tier of the expansion returned things to the grand, sweeping, epic raids of yore, with the largest raid since Icecrown Citadel (or, technically, Ulduar, thanks to Ra-Den.) We had heard much about the Thunder King, so it stood to reason that we would eventually fight the guy (though that may have been a surprise for those who had not done the quests in Kun Lai where he was resurrected.)

Throne of Thunder was intentionally created to feel huge, and it is neatly divided into four sections (that correspond with the LFR wings) with quite different tones and motifs.

Last Stand of the Zandalari:

The Zandalari's sudden turn into villains was a bit of a shock in patch 4.1 (especially given that there were friendly Zandalari quest-givers as recent as 4.0 in Stranglethorn Vale) but it's been long enough that, yeah, I guess we can accept them as bad guys. The relationship between the Trolls and the Mogu made the Zandalari a major presence within the raid, and the first boss is in fact one of the old friendly NPCs from Yojamba Isle (it would seem that this expansion is all about having us fight former friends, especially in the next raid,) Jin'rokh the Breaker. Jin'rokh serves very well as a gatekeeper boss, with relatively simple mechanics but who also requires a certain minimum DPS to defeat. This is mostly a brute-force fight that functions as a decent gear-check.

Horridon, on the other hand, is a crazy execution fight that requires everyone to have their wits about them, dealing with tons of different kinds of adds with different abilities. This one was more of a raid-destroyer, and while at this point it's not too bad, this was the fight that made you dread going in there in the early days. As a second boss, perhaps it was a little over-tuned? However, one thing I kind of enjoy is the way that both Horridon and the third boss, the Council of Elders, play on the theme of the four major Troll tribes uniting together under the Zandalari. Not to mention the fact that on the Council fight, we're sort of having that rematch with Gara'jal that he promised after we killed him in Mogu'shan Vaults.

Forgotten Depths:

Ah, this is the section that I believe was designed to test your patience with LFR players. While the bosses themselves are not too hard (Megaera is probably the easiest in the raid,) the trash area leading to the second boss can be a real struggle, given how easy it is for people to accidentally (or trollingly) pull additional packs. Likewise, the trash before Ji-Kun makes it very easy to fight tons of enemies you didn't need to just because someone walked over something they shouldn't have.

But the bosses, you say? Mostly, I like them, though Tortos could be a little frustrating (after shockingly little trash,) mainly due to the huge number of adds and the fact that those Whirl Turtles are nearly impossible to avoid getting hit by. As a Paladin tank, I've never been allowed to tank the boss (which is funny, because Paladins are definitely not "the AoE tank" that they used to be - I'd give that honor to Monks or DKs,) which I think is the one role that's fairly simple in this one. Still, I appreciate the Mario Bros. reference of having us defeat turtles and kick their shells at our enemies.

Megaera is very simple, but Ji-Kun has some interesting mechanics. The only sad thing about said mechanics is that only a tiny portion of the raid gets to experience them. Fighting Ji-Kun herself is pretty standard boss stuff, but being able to fly between nests killing adds before they become a problem is quite a lot of fun, especially if you play a class that has good cleave abilities. I'm always a fan of funky fight mechanics, and flying around fighting giant birds is pretty unusual.

Halls of Flesh-Shaping:

Somehow, the Halls of Flesh-Shaping fell the most "dungeon-like" area we've been in a long time. That might be because Durumu the Forgotten is basically a Beholder from D&D. The trash in this wing is notably quick. The trash before Durumu is actually substantial, but doesn't feel too bad because it all happens in the same room as the boss. Meanwhile, Primordius' trash is a quick AoE gauntlet-zerg, and there are only two pulls before Dark Animus (though the enemies have a lot of health.)

These fights had some tricky mechanics. Durumu in particular could be frustrating because you could be doing really well for about half the fight, and then totally wipe out when he does his maze. And in some ways, this was really more Blizzard's fault than ours, because seeing your way through that maze was, and to an extent still is, pretty hard. Still, conceptually I love the fight, frustrating as it may be at times.

Primordius is fun, but the absurd number of adds and objects on the ground and just plain stuff going on can make it a lag-intensive one (actually, all three of these fights have their sources of lag.) This is one of those fights that lets you feel really awesome, especially if you get a lucky set of buffs (having an extra 50% crit is pretty cool.)

And then there's Dark Animus. I understand that this fight works entirely differently on Normal and Heroic, in that you have to game which golems you kill to make sure he doesn't hit 100 Anima. But on Raid Finder, where he's only got 80 to work with, it's a fight that actually settles down after a bit. Really, the only major danger of this fight is when the Large Anima Golems are out, but damn if it isn't a fun little bit of chaos. It's also kind of funny that the more golems you leave up, the quicker you can just get to working on the boss itself. Anyway, my main thing about Dark Animus is that it's one of the coolest looking bosses they've done.

Pinnacle of Storms:

The Pinnacle of Storms is quick and easy until you get to the final boss of the raid, and then it's insane. Really, I think we should mention Lei Shen here, because he's the most complicated fight I've yet seen in Mists (though I have not done the Garrosh fight, so get back to me.) Iron Qon, I felt, was somewhat underwhelming. The Twin Consorts, on the other hand, have the fun aspect where if you have super DPS (and I've only done this once,) you can turn a four-phase fight into a two-phase one. The Celestial mechanic here felt weirdly tacked-on, but it's still pretty cool (though I've never actually done the sigil-drawing myself.)

Really, the Pinnacle of Storms does feel like the home-stretch of the raid, but it doesn't have the distinctive character that the middle two wings have. It also strikes me as kind of funny that, other than the handful of guards before Dark Animus, this is the first wing where we actually fight any Mogu in "The Mogu Raid," (ok, to be fair, MSV was also "The Mogu Raid.")

A Return to the Epic Raid:

Throne of Thunder was the first raid to break double-digits since Icecrown Citadel. As a raid, I'm actually a big fan. There's a lot of cool stuff going on in it, along with interesting new models and fight mechanics. I guess my only real critique of the place is that it's rigidly linear. Now granted, this is true of all Mists raids. Still, the place does just feel enormous. Simply trying to imagine how far you have to walk from the beginning of it to Lei Shen's sanctuary: it must be miles and miles (though are we meant to understand that the entire Forgotten Depths and Halls of Flesh-shaping are a detour? Having only run it on LFR, I don't know if there's like a scene after Council of Elders that shows why we've jumped down into a deep dark pit.

It'll be a little while before I get the post-mortem for SoO up, given that I have yet to see the whole place, but you can expect it not long after the Tuesday after next.

The Mists of Pandaria Postmortem - Monks

The Death Knight was an incredibly exciting addition to World of Warcraft, with its unique starting experience and boosted levels, with its cosmetic differences and free weapon enchants, and with its wild overpowered-ness and hideously difficult balancing that took all of Wrath to get right.

The Monk had none of that, but perhaps that's all right. It does have unique combat animations, though, which is something.

Like the Death Knight, the Monk was made available to a wide variety of races (though not the Cataclysm-era ones,) yet because of its co-introduction with the Pandaren, it is perhaps not surprising that most people made a Pandaren Monk.

In addition to bringing in a new tank and dps spec, the Monk is the first new healer to be introduced since WoW's launch in 2004. Sadly, I can't actually say much about Monks as healers, as I've never really played any healer. I do know that they seem to be ok, but that's from a tank/dps perspective, so whatever balance issues there might exist, I don't really know.

The Monk resource system manages to blend the old with the new, keeping a Rogue's energy but using Chi instead of Combo Points. While Energy is important, it's really the Chi that gives the class its rhythm.

Appropriately, Monks feel very mobile, mainly thanks to Roll, and their ability to fight with fluidity is reflected in the mechanics of the class.

Brewmaster:

Case in point, the Brewmaster feels very different from any other tank on the field. Sure, in this era of active mitigation, you can't just wade into battle and expect to survive on heavy armor alone, but the Monk needs to be constantly working to keep up that survivability. Essentially, you have to juggle maintaining Shuffle at all times, maximizing uptime on Elusive Brew, and getting your powered-up Guard up as often as you can, while trying to maintain one spare Chi to use Purifying Brew if you get in trouble. Compare this to, say, Death Knights, who simply have to hit Death Strike as often as they can.

On the other hand, in my experience, Threat seems easier to maintain on a Monk. With Keg Smash as well as Dizzying Brew and Spinning Crane Kick, coupled with the mobility granted by Roll and Clash, not to mention your Ox statue, it's not too hard to pick up those big swarms that tend to be a nightmare for other tanks if they don't use some big AoE attack at the exact moment on the exact target they need.

Monk tanking is challenging, but fun, and it's a real change of pace from the other tanks.

Windwalker:

I'll admit I mainly know Windwalkers from soloing. Essentially, the Windwalker does feel pretty fast-paced, like other Monks. Despite mobility abilities like Roll and Flying Serpent Kick, you'll also need to know when to plant your feet and do Fists of Fury. While Windwalkers do fine in single-target situations and excel in AoE, the cleave-like situations that make up most trash groups are a little tricker, though I believe that's what Storm Earth and Fire are for (I've only run one dungeon as a Windwalker.)

Like Brewmasters, you have a lot of cooldowns, both short-term rotational and long-term burst damage, to juggle. Windwalkers use Tigereye Brew frequently to boost their damage, and Fists of Fury is rotational, but feels almost like a cooldown. The only baseline cooldown that is more than a minute seems to be Energizing Brew, which boosts your energy regeneration. However, at least in my experience, one tends to be more worried about spending Chi than gasping for Energy to Jab more. But again, I've done very little Windwalking other than solo questing.

Mistweaver:

I can't really talk about this from practical experience, but Mistweavers do seem to have a very different style of healing, using channeled spells and other spells that can be cast during those that will boost them and refresh DoTs.

Additionally, they seem to downplay Spirit-based mana regeneration in favor of Mana Tea. Again, I can't comment all that much on this.

While Mistweavers have a built-in Atonement-style damage-to-healing mechanic, it looks like you can't just play as if you were DPS and still put out the same level of healing. I imagine that if you're doing content that you out-gear, you can probably just spam your melee attacks, but I get the impression that Eminence healing isn't as good at dealing with big spikes on the tank.

The Monk HQ:

Perhaps the most notable thing about Monks as a class is Zen Pilgrimage, and the Peak of Serenity. Like Moonglade and Acherus, the Peak of Serenity is kind of the "class guildhall," with amenities designed for that class. However, just as Acherus had far more interesting things than Moonglade, such as training dummies and rune forges, the Peak of Serenity is specially-built for leveling (and level-capped) Monks.

This is primarily because of the quests. Every ten levels, the Monk gets a cool piece of blue-quality gear. In addition, there's a daily quest there (requiring you to defeat the same opponents) that awards "Enlightenment," which greatly increases you reputation gains. At the level cap, you instead get a whopping 3000 mastery rating, which is borderline absurd.

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting:

Despite these advantages, and the overall benefit of being designed from the ground up more recently than all those classes that were carrying eight years (or four, for DKs) of baggage, Blizzard managed to do a good job in balancing Monks. Unlike in Wrath, where DKs were the best tanks and the best DPS (at least at first,) Monks have slid in fairly inconspicuously, doing very well for those who master them, but not overshadowing the older classes.

So overall, a successful addition to the game.

(Now give me a Demon Hunter.)

The Mists of Pandaria Postmortem - The Raids, Tier 14

First off, like the Dungeons article, I'm going to focus on the raids themselves, and not raiding as a whole over the course of Mists. Additionally, because Siege of Orgrimmar is still missing nearly half of its bosses on LFR, I'm going to break this section up by tier.

Thankfully, after the pretty sorry number of raids (or rather, the rather sorry size of said raids) that came with Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria has released a series of grand, epic raids.

Tier Fourteen used the Burning Crusade raid tier model, dividing the tier between three raids, or perhaps more precisely, having a "pre-tier" beginning raid in addition to tier 14 proper. Each of these raids on its own is fairly small, but put together, one gets an impressive 16-boss raid tier, making it the largest since tier 7.

Also, unlike, say, tier 5 or tier 11, the raids here are meant to be completed in a specific order. The first raid within the tier actually awards a lower quality of gear, and does not have any tier tokens within it, making it the clear "starter raid."

Mogu'shan Vaults:

Somewhat in the tradition of Karazhan, MSV is a raid that's all about exploring. Lorewalker Cho accompanies you the whole way, giving insight (or expressing a mutual confusion) about whatever you're dealing with.

Mechanically, the bosses are varied in interesting ways. The Stone Guard feels a little like Halfus Wyrmbreaker in that it varies from week to week. Personally I think Feng the Accursed should have been the first boss, as his mechanics are simpler for a raid to deal with and therefore he makes for a good "gatekeeper" boss, but such is life. I enjoyed Gara'jal the Spiritbinder quite a bit, though his totem mechanic is far more complicated on Normal than it is on Raid Finder (and I'll get into that issue when I do my big "raids, dungeons, and scenarios" article.) The Spirit Kings also had some fun variation, in that you could find yourself fighting them in a different order each week.

And then there's Elegon, the guy who drops you through the floor. On one hand, it was annoying to see how many people would fall, but then, I can't really blame Blizzard here. My only issue with this fight was the degree of lag that I encountered during it. Finally Will of the Emperor was one of those fights that I detested at first, and then grew to find very fun. Essentially, this is one of those fights where you need the raid to commit to performing the mechanics the way they were intended, or else you're going to have a mess on your hands. Once the dps realizes the purpose of Titan Gas and the tanks figure out how to dodge the dual bosses' attacks (DBM helps a lot there.) it actually becomes a sort of elegant dance of a fight, which are always fun.

Aesthetically, I'm always a big fan of going into forbidden ruins. While it's hard to create a good sense of stakes in such a situation (Ulduar being an exception,) I think that as a convention for the beginning raid of any expansion, it makes a lot of sense. Also, Lorewalker Cho is always fun to have around.

Heart of Fear:

While the Klaxxi are my favorite of the 5.0 factions, I felt that Heart of Fear was sort of the dullest of the raids in Mists. Granted, I'm not saying it's a bad raid, and there are fun mechanics (and one really painful one,) but so many of the bosses felt like another "kill this one Mantid guy." I realize that it's the Mantid headquarters, so it would be kind of funny to do anything other than kill Mantid, but oh well.

Aesthetically I also think they could have played a little more with the fact that you're up in a tree. Really at no point in the raid does the building you're in feel organic.

There were a few mechanics here that made little bursts of lag a real pain, particularly on the Blade Lord's final phase. One could find oneself running down the little corridor, getting almost to the end, and then simply because of luck, a new tornado would form underneath you on the previously-pristine section of the floor you were on. This could be very frustrating.

And then there's Garalon. First of all, it's always tough to get someone who's willing to do pheromones, and usually when there is, they're terrible at it. The buff one gets when dealing with the legs is nice, but the area you have to stand in is pretty tiny, and the fact that the boss is often turning very quickly means that you'll rarely benefit from it to any great effect. Still, I will say that this was a boss that had unique mechanics, and was a very good one for training tanks how to use active mitigation, as he had really just one big telegraphed move to deal with.

I did enjoy the Amber Shaper fight, mainly because I always thought that there ought to be a fight where players have to attack one of their own raid members.

Terrace of Endless Spring:

On one hand, this raid commits the grave sin of being tiny and having you fight two bosses in the exact same place (though admittedly, Sunwell did this too.) On the other hand, there are some cool mechanics here.

The Protectors of the Endless have a lot of things going on, but aren't terribly interesting. On the other hand, Tsulong does something cool by blending a conventional boss fight with a variation on Valithria Dreamwalker.

Lei Shi is kind of annoying for two reasons: one is that the water elemental adds spawn at percentages rather than after a set amount of time, meaning that you're going to have to deal with them very frequently if you overgear the place. The other is that those classes that don't have much in the way of untargeted AoE (Ret Paladins have none at all) don't really have anything to do when she hides (and she hides a lot!)

However, the crown jewel of tier 14 is the Sha of Fear, and this is a fight that I actually enjoy quite a lot. Not only is this one of those fights that was great for introducing this new Active Mitigation tanking concept (Thrash) but we also got to be sent off in little 5-man groups to fight mini-bosses at the same time.

While small, and not varying much, at the very least the Terrace of Endless Spring gave you a nice view. Given the current state of the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, it may in fact be the last place to see how pleasant the old Vale used to be.

Tier 14 Conclusion:

The first tier of any expansion is the one where you're going to want the most variation, and Tier 14 certainly delivered that. While the linear nature of the tier meant you didn't have much in the way of options for how you would like to progress, it did solve the old problem of arguing with your guild over which of the new raids you'd want to go to.

The Mists of Pandaria Postmortem: the Pandaren and the Wandering Isle.

With an expansion that centered around Pandaria and the Pandaren people, it would be pretty ridiculous to give them to one faction and not the other. Supposedly, in the initial design stages of Burning Crusade, the Alliance would have gotten the Pandaren instead of the Draenei. For whatever reason, that fell through (and as huge fan of the Draenei, I'm glad it did.)

One of the old design theories Blizzard had long held to was that of the "silhouette." One was supposed to be able to determine both the power level and faction of a character by their basic look. Transmogrification obviously changed that in terms of power level, but with WoW's first (and possibly only) neutral race, they completely abandoned this notion.

So, Pandaren actually get to level 12 or 13, completing all the quests on the Wandering Isle, before they are able to even pick a side.

The Wandering Isle is a fairly cool-looking zone, especially toward the end of its quests when you get to speak with the great turtle him(or her?)self. The Alliance and Horde do not play a major role in the quests there until very near the end, but you do get to see something of the two competing philosophies: Tushui and Huojin. At this point, they are merely different ways of looking at the world, but they will become the defining factors in one's future allegiance.

The Wandering Isle gives you a sneak preview at Pandaria, showing you Virmen, Hozen, and (as-yet-unidentified) Saurok. Likewise, you get to know the various elemental spirits as seen by the Pandaren, who seem a lot more affable than the ones you tend to encounter elsewhere in Azeroth.

With your decision made at the end of the chain, you have your meeting with either Garrosh or Varian, and from there your story is basically over.

While we might be seeing a little more of them in the Siege of Orgrimmar raid, for the most part the Pandaren of the Wandering Isle kind of fade into the background to make room for the mainland Pandaren (the exception being Chen Stormstout and his niece Lili.)

In terms of animation and model, the Pandaren are definitely recognizable as being far better-looking than the vanilla or BC races. While I can't quite tell if they're any fancier than the Cataclysm races, it's clear that the Worgen, Goblins and Pandaren all show why we need new character models for the older races.

Pandaren have a decent selection of classes, but the inevitable consequence of releasing an expansion with both a new race and a new class is that the vast majority of them will be Monks. This is even worse than in BC, when it seemed all Blood Elves were Paladins and all Draenei were Shamans. Over time, of course, this has become less of an issue, and I expect that one or two expansions from now, we'll see a large variety of non-Pandaren Monks and non-Monk Pandaren.

With this new precedent of a neutral race, it does open up Blizzard's options to introduce single races in future expansions. On the other hand, this could be a slippery slope into homogenizing the factions. While I think it made perfect sense for the Pandaren, I would hope and expect Blizzard to continue releasing races in pairs.

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.