If Wrath was the “easy mode” expansion, Cataclysm is the “copy/paste” expansion. When Wrath pasted Naxxramas, I was fine with it because it fit into the story arc AND most players never got to see Naxxramas when it was a 40 man. But the writing was on the wall when they copied Onyxia’s Lair and then gave it to us as a content update. Blindly, I didn’t see it at all until Cataclysm.

Cataclysm is the epitome of Blizzard being lazy. Oh, sure, we got some nice new zones like Vashj’ir and some of the day-zero 5 mans were “new”, but nearly everything else has been a copy paste. Copied SFK, copied Deadmines (which people STILL bail on, even outgearing it), Nefarian again, Ragnaros again, all of Hyjal was just an outdoor Molten Core. Harrison Jones showing up again and ruining what could have been an epic zone by making half of the zone an Indy Jones ripoff movie.

The 5 mans were boring within a month, and yet it was several months before we got new ones… which were also copies: ZG and ZA. Grim Batol was BRD with a purple hue. With some exceptions, even the raids themselves were just hollow copies of previous raids: BWD::BWL, Firelands::MC, respectively.

ONLY NOW, with the FINAL content patch, are we getting legitimately NEW content. After we’ve found out they’re making the game MMOs-For-Dummies with Pandaria, stripping RPG elements, and player choices, OUT of the game. Everyone’s going to be a cookie cutter build next expansion, even if you don’t want to be.. because you only get 7 choices over the life of your character. Yeah, they can be changed on the fly: So what? That will just get integrated into mods telling classes to switch for specific encounters.

It’s clear Blizzard has lost their direction in favor of this cash in of an expansion and that’s why subscription numbers have been declining over the last year. I’ve watched entire guilds fold up because of people quitting, online friends of 6 years have been cancelling and waiting out SW:TOR’s release.

Fucking Pandas! WTF are U smoking Blizzard!

And the fact that every joke was a reference to something in pop-culture got really boring really fast.

But Mists of Pandaria just sounds like they’re dumbing everything down, from how you build your characters to the story content. I mean, I thought it was stupid when they eliminated frost and unholy tanking for DKs in the 4.0 patch, but now they’re basically eliminating talent trees altogether. I know it’s so they can have an easier time with balancing classes, but you can bet they won’t stop complaining about it or tweaking everything with every patch.

All that aside, yeah I did have a lot of good times in Azeroth. If it were free to play my level capped characters, sure I’d give it a shot. But I’m not spending $50 on something that I expect to be terrible. I’ll be taking my money elsewhere. I’ve given Blizzard hundreds more dollars than other video game companies. They’ll be just fine without me.