Originally Posted by
-Notorious-
Hello All,
I'm here to promote Frostwolf and MoP in general! I'm obviously going to be biased since I love MoP, but I will try to be as balanced as I can presenting both the good parts and bad parts of MoP. For background, I've played WoW since vanilla, having played vanilla-cata on various private servers, MoP and some WoD on retail. As you can imagine, having played WoW private servers since the very first years, I have a lot of patience in dealing with bugs. You may be different, and that is fine. I will explain how well Frostwolf is working and you can decide for yourself if its worth trying.
Why you should consider MoP:
The pros of MoP in general are many. I will list the most important (imo) below.
1. MoP PvE is generally considered to have been amazing. Raids have many mechanics and were considered the best part of this expansion by many players. The raids were also pretty challenging and fun. I'm not a PvE player, so I can really only go by word of mouth. I mostly PvP'd on retail, and also mostly PvP on Frostwolf.
2. MoP PvP is excellent. Now this is just an opinion, but I enjoy the way most classes play out in MoP. Every class has a myriad of options on what they can do as it was the expansion with the highest number of abilities in the game. Furthermore, PvE gear is virtually useless in instanced PvP. The only gear that any serious PvP'er will use is Prideful gear (ilvl 550), because any item that is not Prideful will be downscaled to ilvl 540. This means no Shadowmournes, no Gurthalaks, no Vial of the Shadows, none of that garbage. It is your skill vs. the enemies skill and whether you raid for your gear does not matter.
3. Arenas. Arenas in MoP do not require teams. This cannot be emphasized enough. MoP allows players the flexibility of doing arenas whenever they feel like it, with whichever composition they like. Want to try something crazy like HLS (hunter/lock/shaman), but you got to 2k playing KFC (hunter/warrior/healer)? Well, now you just play with your new partners rather than leave a possibly high rank team.
4. Rated BGs. Expansions before Cataclysm did not have Rated BGs. For those that do not know what these are, Rated BGs are essentially a 10v10 battleground with arena rules (no flasks, potions, heroism, etc.). Rated BGs have their own rating system, giving titles and mounts as rewards unique to this bracket. This is my biggest gripe with WotLK. Once you are in a PvP guild and BIS, most of your game-time revolves around deleting low geared players in Random BGs or doing arenas with the same people over and over again. Rated BGs allow you to challenge other guilds and do competitive BGs!
5. Pandaria. Now I know many people hate Pandaria as a continent and its lore. That's fine, each to his own. I do feel the zones have a lot going on, and there is more to do in the world itself compared to Cataclysm. This is of course at a peak with Timeless Isle and pet battles.
6. Talents. I'm sure this will trigger a lot of people, since the talent tree is one of the things people hated the most about MoP. However I feel the talents in MoP were a step in the right direction. Before MoP, every experienced WoW player knew the exact build they would need to play optimally. This was specially true in PvP since you couldn't swap talents based on the team you were playing against. As a result, we had cookie-cutter builds that we would all find online in some guide, and then use it for the rest of our gaming life. In MoP however, if you do not swap talents based on the team you are against, you may as well be stuck at 1500 mmr.
What sucks about MoP:
There are a fewthings that suck about MoP, and I feel if I don't mention them, people won't take my post seriously. So here they are:
1. Gear difference in PvP. Gear has always been an issue in PvP in WoW. From Vanilla where tier 3 was ridiculous in PvP, to WotLK where Shadowmourne plagues almost all private servers, to MoP where the difference between Grevious and Prideful is quite ridiculous. HOWEVER, MoP also introduced the Conquest Catch Up system allowing new players a larger conquest points cap to get catch-up faster.
2. Post-Cata Azeroth. Unforunately, Azeroth in MoP is still devastated just like in Cataclysm, with flying enabled. I personally think adding flying to the game at all was a huge mistake, and sadly MoP continues the trend. However, this is just part of life after Cataclysm, so there is nothing to be done here. If this is truly a deal breaker for you, then I suppose you can only really play up to WotLK as that is the last expansion in which Azeroth does not have flying.
3. More Effective Health. In PvP the stat that is most relevant is called "Effective Health". Effective Health is essentially you're health, multiplied by damage reduction auras such as resilience, armor, etc. In MoP Effective Health is HIGH. Very high. Players simply cannot be one shot, ever. Even a naked character has close to 300k HP, and there is nothing that can hit 300k in PvP. For example, even a Chaos Bolt with everything (flasks/potions included) maxes out at about 280k. For comparison sake, Judgement in WotLK can easily hit 15k without potions, which is generally the HP of a naked character. What this means is that healers are very strong in MoP, and fights in general take very long. If you are someone that values BGs with 50 Killing Blows, or someone who wants very fast arena games (specially in 3v3), you may not enjoy the expansion. Some double DPS comps are great in 2v2 and can have fast games, but generally, healer/dps comps are superior in 2v2. Personally I enjoy the slower gameplay, but many players have told me they don't like it, so I put it here.