You can call me the child of Cataclysm, as I started playing World of Warcraft at spring of 2011, soon after add-on was released. Though I was skeptical before, the game grew on me very fast. I liked the atmosphere, the quests (especially reworked ones for low level; story line in the Silverpine Forest still is my favorite). The stories were immersive, the graphic was pretty and instances were interesting and challenging. Overall, game was good despite all the whine and outdated Burning Crusade peace of content. At first my attempts in raiding in 4.0-4.1 weren't very successful, but everything changed in 4.2 when we started killing hardmodes and I was a proud raidleader. Unfortunately, thing didn't go as planned, and Dragon Soul wasn't closed totally in HM, and I had to make a break until Mists of Pandaria, which didn't work for me. However, Siege of Orgrimmar is a decent conclusion for add-on.
A couple of weeks ago me and my friend found out that Warlords are released, and decided to come back into the game after more than a year. We successfully gained the high level, visited instances, and now I'm ready to express my opinion on it.
Sound and vision
I didn't dig Pandaria mostly because of how it looked and how it sounded. All this curves, patterns and other Asian forms are really over complicated, my brain got tired of seeing all this very quickly. Locations was very bland and unsatisfying, I had no desire to explore them in search of beautiful views. The only exception here is the Kun-Lai Summit, somehow giving this sense of wonder and discovery with its magnificent mountains. I'm not that much against eastern music, but it started to annoy me at some point. And don't let me hear again those monkeys screams, just don't.
Luckily, level designers managed to do their job properly this time. The landscapes are so amazing, you will try to climb higher just to admire what you see around. The models of NPCs and buildings are pretty, armor is fitting. The only location that looks bland is, contrary to the Pands, is snowy one, but it compensated with beautiful music you will hear that. Wonderful. Also, there are much more cutscenes of cinematographic quality thought the quests, and even some starring you and your party in instance, making events more intense. I have to add a complaint about to much voice overs in the starting part of content, but closer to the 100 level it almost gone. Don't like when people doing so much reading for me.
I must mention here, that Blizzard made a huge peace of work before releasing the new add-on. It is really impressive what they managed to achieve with engine that more than 10 years old. The game looks very decent for nowadays, with it's own unique style. And renewed character models are looking marvelous, keeping the spirit of the old one I spent so much time with, and this warms my heart.
Quests and leveling
I guess, it was fun. But nothing really special here and there, and I didn't feel enough development in characters we meet. Firstly, there was story with Duratan and his brother, we see them as two orcs with different views on their tribe and how to rule it, but it doesn't go anywhere. Then we meet Laughing Skull orcs, and we hear nothing about them after that and so on. Such legendary characters like Garrosh, Ner'zuhl, Thrall and Garona presented very poorley, if even presented. My favorite boss from Cataclysm, Cho'gall, is just another NPC to kill. Pathetic job here. All joy of meeting familiar faces and places is totally destroyed.
Important feature presented is Garrison, and it has a lot of flaws. My main issue is that it finally kills almost dead interaction between players. There could be no one but you on the server and you wouldn't tell the difference cause everyone is sitting in his garrison! Here he can gain all needed resources, find a party and create needed equipment with zero interaction with other people. It even allows you to have an NPC as a follower in the world, so you can do everything you need, including daily quest, solo. It should've been at least a guild place, to create the feeling of unity. It would've made sense for all this useless monuments they offer you to have: to remind you and your friends and newly members about how great you are. But what we have now is just BLLSHT!
Gameplay and instances
The most important part in my opinion. I can't say that gameplay changed much, but it was simplified. A lot of features either has been erased or became passive. But I still find it very intuitive and the thing which is simple to learn but hard to master. Dungeons are much closer to cataclysmic, but still not that hard (I will never forget the need to tell the tactic on every boss in Grim Batol, while in Warlords everything can be killed without breaking much sweat). But designs are good, there's much variety of instances, every one is unique. Grimrail Depot is my favorite so far, and I would gladly see something like this in the future. However, I'm yet to see raids, and I'm looking for it with excitement.
I won't give any mark to the add-on, because I don't want to. At the moment my opinion is positive, but I can't be sure that I will enjoy it for any long time and even pay for another month. I more willing to try Overwatch, that's for sure.
