I’ll come up with more detailed analysis later on but for now here’s a quick list of my first impressions of the newest expansion.
- The pandaren starting zone is pretty. In fact, pretty much anything about the pandas is on the pretty side. Forsaken would go insane over there.
- Girl pandas lay a bit too heavily on the cute side. I mean, we’re going to fight dragons, not to a pillow fight with Arthas
- The wandering isle storyline and quests are surprisingly well done. It’s not revolutionary but it’s solid enough.
- Pokemon battles are exactly that, pokemon battles and I found myself hunting for rare pets faster than I expected.
- Using remixes of old game music for the pokemon battles was a great idea, loved it.
- If I had to give an overall impression I’ll say that Pandaria feels like a solid expansion. I think that instead of trying to reinvent itself once more, they went for more tried and tested designs. In short, they went for polish instead of huge changes and I think it serves them well.
One thing that surprised the heck out of me w3as the pet battles. Not the fact that they exist (because let’s face it we all knew about them for months) but how much I am enjoying them. I am too old to have really gone through the whole Pokemon thing, but my friend’s kids loved them as children, so I thought that would be something that I would just avoid. Well, I gave it a shot just to experience it and then found myself being sucked in. I hope that the rest of the non-raiding stuff is as interesting as the Pet Battles. Still WoW, but a little more polish is what a good number of us appreciate.