Mists of Pandaria

Mists of Pandaria got laughed at before anyone had played a minute of it. Kung fu pandas. A whole expansion about kung fu pandas, plus a pet-battle system a lot of people immediately wrote off as WoW doing Pokémon. I remember the reaction to the announcement, and it was not kind. It also turned out to be one of my favorite expansions in the whole run, and I've never really backed off that.

The joke fell apart the second you actually got to Pandaria. The place was gorgeous. The Jade Forest, the Valley of the Four Winds, the Vale, all of it hand-built with a care that the goofy marketing completely undersold. And the pandaren weren't a punchline once you spent time with them. There was a melancholy running under the whole continent, this sense that fear and doubt were literal monsters here, that stuck with me more than most WoW stories do.

Even the pet battles I'd rolled my eyes at hooked me for a while, and I'm not proud of the hours I spent chasing rare critters around zones I'd already cleared. That's the MoP magic in miniature. The stuff that sounded dumb on paper was quietly some of the best-designed content they'd shipped.

I did what I always do. Leveled at my own pace, leveled a new panda alt, ran heroics and LFR, poked at scenarios, never went anywhere near the cutting-edge raiding. And I had a better time doing it than in expansions with far better reputations.

I also finally hit the goal of having a character at max level from every class during this expansion.  And then quickly moved on to starting on the same thing on the alliance side.  

Oh, and I did the rep grinds.  That was probably the least great part.  And I killed a lot of rares, which was another great addition to this expansion.

Mists is also where I pulled off the single most absurd thing I've ever done in this game, and I mean that as a compliment to myself. The expansion ended with the Siege of Orgrimmar, and Garrosh Hellscream waiting at the bottom of it. I killed him on a character of every single class. All of them. If the altoholism ever needed a monument, that's it, one dead warchief for every class in the game, most of it through the Raid Finder, one run at a time, over and over until I'd taken him down from every angle WoW would let me. Nobody asked me to do that. Nobody should. I did it anyway, and I'd do it again.  

It was also an expansion where I found myself getting oddly attached to and protective of Anduin Wrynn, which is kind of weird for a Horde guy, but he brought me some hope and stood up for what was right, and I got a little emotional about it.  Still have a soft spot for him, and he's been through some shit now.

Draenor was right around the corner and it would remind me how badly this can go. Mists was the opposite of that. It was WoW being confident and a little weird and completely committed to the bit.

If you skipped Pandaria because the trailer made you groan, you missed one of the good ones. I'll die on that hill, panda and all.

That's it for now! Cheers! Joar