World of Warcraft and Pandas

Revisiting World Of Warcraft

In 2004, Word of Warcraft is by far the most popular fantasy-based MMORPG on the Internet. It gathered 11 million avid followers, and generated millions of revenues that skyrocketed Blizzard status to be one of the premiere companies in the online gaming industry. Every avid online gamer and that includes me bought a copy of this game along with a 60 days subscription pass – a requirement to enjoy Azeroth and all its features. I played this game religiously for 3 years and I love how my human paladin progressed, and acquired some cool gears for Pvp. However, 6-7 hours a day of gaming really took its toll on my social life, and so I change my ways and dropped my subscription and find a more casual game.

So, in 2007 I quit Wow and everything about this game is just history. I’m not even interested in reading articles about Wow or glimpse the newest patch that Blizzard is going to implement on the game. After all I just need to move on and find a less competitive game or at least a more casual-friendly environment. For 6 years I have no Idea on the status of Wow or even the controversies it faced during my absence.

But when I browse an article that BattleNet was hacked this year, I got curious and wonder if my account is still existent, even though   it was dormant for 6 long years.  I was also worried that my credit card detail was still within Blizzard’s system and that it might have been compromised. Fortunately, I still remembered my username and password that I used before, and when I logged-in to BattleNet, everything looks fine and my CC details are intact with no previous payment history.

I was also curious of their newest update “Mists of Pandaria.” So I contacted my friend who is still an active Wow player and he let me play one of his accounts who have this particular update.To tell you honestly, I still enjoy this game, even though in some aspects it is quite dated. For its age, it can still inject some fun factor that most online gamers are looking for. The new update has been set after the events of Cataclysm and Death Wing. 

The new setting is in a titular land called Panderia, and players can now play the Pandaren race, which is very much like the main character of the Kung Fu Panda movie – a giant panda with martial arts abilities.  A new class has also been added to the menu, and this would really fit the new race, it’s the Monk.

Also, they made some changes to the raiding system and added new challenging modes to break the repetitive condition of dungeon crawling. 

There’s also a pet battle system now, where vanity pets can battle in a new turn-based combat system, and I find this particular feature – cool and enjoyable. However, Wow is not that populated now… and I’m a little disappointed because I love the open world PvP that this game has offered before. The Fun of killing another faction’s champion is quite exhilarating, and I cannot find that now on my recent visit to Azeroth. I can still recommend World of Warcraft, but don’t expect too much from it, and you will still need to pay the $15/month subscription fee which is too steep for most online gamers today.

Posted in: Mists of Pandaria, online games, World of Warcraft