While I was looking for time to kill during the no-so-surprising extended maintenance time I was reading the new book, Tides of War.
On one of my reading breaks I decided to check the WoW news and I found this blue post that revealed the attack on Theramore pre-expansion event,
This pre-expanion event is a week-long instanced event.
My first thought and only thought was, “WHAT!?”
No world changes?
No mention of quests that fills us in on what’s happening to the lore
No City changes?
No special events?
What is this?
No, instead we get one lonely instance to get us ready for Mists, over the course of one week before the expansion.
Say what you like about the Cataclysm prep, at least that had changes to the world: The Twilight cult camps, Thrall in Nagrand with his new model, the elemental attacks on the city, and four instanced boss fights that took us down memory lane.
This time we get one instanced scenario and a ruined city that was under the control of the Alliance.
Going back to the quests, I know that Mists of Pandaria starts off with a naval attack out at sea and Blizzard can’t bring out the new models yet because they are still on the island , waiting to be discovered.
For a proposed pre-event quest line, let gets the players involved with the aftermath of the attack on Theramore. Let us be in charge of gathering supplies and raising moral of sailors and solders for the first batch of ships in the escalated war.
That way it gives us a bit more continuity between the expansion and it provides a personal reason for why the players should go on the second wave of ships to look for them.
I was furious when I heard this news. I swear If I did not already preordered the expansion and if I did not know how good Pandaria is going to be, this might have pushed me to unsubscribe to the game.
It’s just that much of a slap in the face to the burnout players.
/rant over
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I’m…dumbfounded. I had no idea about this either and it seems…lazy? The pre-expansion events have always been an exciting time. This one seems to have been incredibly rushed.
I am so glad I’m not the only one who feels about this.
Not by a long shot my friend. Expect a similar post from me at some point.
I was disappointed by the appearance of the pandas in stormwind….you would think they would give some explanation to why they are there.
The into cinematic was great and all but when did the pandas decide to settle inside stormwind?
I have to echo Aqusinna… I discovered the pandas in SW and it TOTALLY felt like a break in the lore. Because, aren’t we a few weeks away from going ‘hey wtf is going on oh noes i have to fly to some place in the ocean oh hey pandas and they kick ass yay!” … …
So yeah, there’s a continuity problem. And so, while I’m used to suspending disbelief (since invariably I know at least something of what’s going to happen), here I find myself suspending disbelief squared. I know what’s going to happen, but it’s not happening yet. And the alternate dimension (beta) hasn’t merged with live Azeroth, but it sort of has, because peoples whom we have yet to discover are given safe harbor near our home city…
Yeah.
On a different note, I’m not too bent out of whack about the fact that this “Theramore” scenario will be a scenario (aka it’s not going away with MoP’s launch), instead of a temporary/terminal pre-launch event. It really fits with their stated goal, which is to make more things more accessible. I don’t have a problem with that. I also don’t have a problem with things being different than the expected launch event. Personally, I think launch events are cool, but I certainly don’t think they’ve been that great over the past 4 years – they’re certainly not the highlights of my game-time. And if the Theramore scenario is pretty great, than at least you will get the chance to experience it at your leisure, on all your alts, etc., rather than having missed it because you were busy at work or something.
At least, that’s how I am looking at it.
I agree, the decision to make the scenario available after the expansion lunches was a smart idea. There have been times where I wished I could turn back the clock to experience the elemental attack on IF, or witness the daemon invasion that I missed.
That’s one good thing from the announcement
ofc a longer prequest line as before cataclysm would have been lovely, but changes to the world really?… doesnt rly follow the lore… what made u exspect to see worldchanges? like all the scars on azeroth automaticlly would heal when Deathwing died? not so likley…
BUT I dont agree on that some better pre-expansion event and/or pre-exp. questline would have been more exciting
When I wrote “changes to the world” I didn’t mean revert 4.0 azeroth back to old azeroth. I wanted temporary changes to the cities like we saw with Cata. Have the NPCs of SW and Org. now have them working on the ships and getting prepared for war. Have citizen Npc have dialogue talking about Jania and her lost kingdom. Stuff like that.
BUT I DO agree*!!
After the Cataclysm pre-event and what I’d heard about Wrath’s pre-event I was really looking forward to what MoP would bring, but it has seemed pretty flat in comparison
Having the Pandaren and the NPCs that interact with your Pandaren when you first get into the cities already there is pretty jarring continuity-wise :S
I feel disappointed in the soon to be event too, I’ve been reading the book and i really hope it’s as epic as it’s portrayed
As for the the pandarian npcs i could see why they didn’t phase them out, it would be just added and pointless work to do, compared to the work they face now, a month before the release date.
Hopefully it will be! It won’t compare to the large scale taking back of Echo Isles and Gnomeregan if you can only take 2 friends (or randoms) with you, but should be interesting none the less. Yeah, you’re right, it is seemingly small thing from the player/user point of view but would probably require much more work from the developers
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