First impressions: Pandaria

Dear God, leveling sucks.

I guess that's the biggest take-away, and the biggest reason I'm having a lot of trouble moving through the content.  Leveling is ridiculously slow.  Granted, I'm spoiled -- I've spent the last two years leveling with heirlooms, with RAF, with various shortcuts, but hey -- that's the status quo, and a game designer has to deal with what is. (As does everyone.)

I'm not saying I'm going to stop playing, or anything.  Just that I'm extremely unmotivated to griiiiiind even one character to 90.  I have no idea how my army of alts is going to work out.

I think the biggest problem is the five-level expansion.  If I was working through ten levels with the same amount of experience, hey, at least I'd feel like I was making progress.  Arbitrary, incremental progress, but still progress. 

I don't have a whole lot else to say, I guess -- I'm less than halfway through Jade Forest, at level 86 on my paladin.  It's beautiful, of course it's beautiful.  The panda animations are amazing (cloaks that flap?  What madness is this?)  It makes me want to go visit southeastern Asia in much the same way as Northrend made me want to go live in Iceland.  So, good job on that one Blizz.

What else.  I love the new talent system.  I love that Sacred Shield and Consecrate are big parts of the pally tankin' thing.  I play tanks because I like feeling immortal, and that's still there in spades.  Of course, they nerfed our damage right to the ground, so my leveling is admittedly taking longer than it probably could be, but hey, I know where my heart lies.

The Pandaren make me happy.  Lorewalker Cho is my new favorite NPC, and I think that the writers really nailed the way the race's internal philosophy is reflected in their chats and their behavior.  Though, as a writer, it does make me cringe a bit, wondering if the "Hey, you Alliance folk aren't that bad" is being mirrored in the Horde encampments.  And that makes my skin crawl a little bit. 

I have never previously bought into the Alliance/Horde conflict too much, probably because neither side was clearly a "good guy" or a "bad guy."  But ... alright.  I'll agree that the Sky Admiral is entirely too vengeful.  On the other hand, the Horde Pearl Harbor'd Theramore, and one of the early quests that we Allies do for the pandafolk is freeing some of their children that the Horde kidnapped for bargaining chips. 

I am not okay with this.

I'm going to have to play a Horde character to 90 so I can see the "other side" of things for myself.  But I know one thing for sure already -- if the Alliance is portrayed as being as dishonorable and belligerent on the Horde side as the Horde is in the Alliance storyline...I might just have to give this entire game a pass.

There's enough of that bullshit in the real world.  I need to be the unequivocal good guy somewhere.