When World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria first hit store shelves it seemed that excitement for the game was a bit lacking. Many game shops throughout the country did not have a midnight launch of the game due to a low amount of pre-sales.
Sales of the new expansion seem to be picking up though as a press release from Blizzard Entertainment indicates that approximately 2.7 million copies of the game have sold and the overall subscriber base has surpassed 10 million, which is great news considering the company saw a rather large loss of subscribers around the previous Cataclysm expansion. Blizzard also pointed out that these sales figures do not take into account a Chinese release of the game which is expected to push sales even higher.
I have had some time to jump into this new expansion and I really feel that this is something to be excited about. The introduction of so many new ways to play the game along with a noticeable, back-to-roots feel, makes this expansion stand out from the rest. Mists of Pandaria was met with early criticism by some members of the community for introducing the Pandaren race into World of Warcraft lore in such a dramatic way. As time has gone on, and the game has finally been released, players are starting to see all of the hard work that Blizzard has put into this title.
Hearing about certain features and gameplay dynamics is one thing, but experiencing them first-hand with your favorite characters is totally different. The beauty of the continent of Pandaria alone is striking and the music and sound of each new area pulls you deep into this new land. Challenge modes bring in a whole new reason to run instances and with the challenge mode leader board, you have a whole new reason to brag about your guild. Even I was unsure about some of the new features, like pet battles, which turn out to be very entertaining and offer up a good challenge. You can see the beauty of the new, simplified, and less static talent tree in action and your character has never felt so uniquely customizable. With new challenges for us even after level 90, this game has plenty of content to chew through and a ton of replay-abillity value.
I hope that as time goes on, those of us who have wrote off Mists of Pandaria will re-consider and jump into the new world. Although World of Warcraft has changed quite a bit since the “Vanilla” days, it is still created by the same great company who, from what I can see, really cares strongly about the community that supports them. As always, I’m sure we will run into some issues that need to be addressed and I’m sure further balancing of classes will become necessary but Blizzard again will respond to these issues in the next update and we will move on as we always do.
So let’s embrace what Blizzard has worked so hard on and let’s get into a war that’s actually fun, a war between Orcs and Humans, the driving conflict of World of Warcraft.
