Mists of Pandaria launches at midnight 25th September 2012 CET, for the UK that means I will still be playing as part of my normal routine with it still being 23:00 GMT on the 24th September in the UK. This time there will be no waiting for the morning post to get my DVD delivered, I have ordered the game online and so the expansion should be available instantly, similar to the Darkmoon Faire.
My question to everybody and more importantly to myself is, What to do on the launch of Mists of Pandaria?
To be brutally honest, I have not got a clue. In previous expansion, I have always been slightly behind on the main rush, with the expansion only being available the day after launch and the requirement for me to actually go to work. I know that Pandaria itself will be carnage with thousands of people attempting to level as quickly as possible and other desperate to get their hands on Pandas and Monks.
Wrath of the Lich King was a riot with boats full of people setting sail from Stormwind Harbour heading towards the Borean Tundra (I wish I still had the screenshot taken with all the excited chatter and hundreds of people bouncing up and down). Cataclysm was chaos at the 2nd hub in Hyjal, with too many bodies all looking for tiny embers/acorns or widgets on the floor. The leveling process only got easier once the phasing started to separate out the masses.
At the start of Cataclysm, I seem to remember that I had a crazy notion of handing in precompleted dailies, and gaining XP from mining, herbing, and archaeology, and rotating my alts to benefit from rested XP over the first few weeks.
The new starter area is the Jade Forest, which is reached by Gunship for the Alliance and Zeppelin for the Horde, this will involve some preliminary quests before leading to the first major hubs at Paw'don Village and Honeydew Village depending upon your colours. How much of a bottleneck this is remains to be seen. The assumption is that Blizzard know what to expect and will have respawn rates according to the number of people, hopefully they will use the shared kill model introduced in Molten Front dailies.
Of course I am no expert and plans can and will change, but the main thrust for me will be to level a Hunter, Shaman and a Mage. That will give me access to Leatherworking, Tailoring, Enchanting and Jewelcrafting. I will be able to use my gatherers in the months to come when more nodes will be available and less road rage will evident.
Can anybody suggest a better strategy? Is there a better way to get ahead of the angry crowds?
My approach is to quest. If you are doing a hunter first this should be no problem. They are the best questing class in the game hands down. I leveled to 89 within 5 hours on beta with 50 people around me and every questing area packed but they have upped the experience, either way, questing is the best leveling for your time investment. Just kill everything in your path, quest mob or not, and you should move along nicely.
ReplyDeleteI would say fight the pack, just quest. You will get them done faster and will out pace them in no time at all if you are on your hunter.
Word to the wise, unless they fixed it, your max level characters will not get rested unless you log into them. So log into the ones you are not leveling and log back out, so they can start generating rested. Otherwise when you switch to them later you will not have any rested built up which would suck.
Thanks for the tip on restating the rest XP. I will attempt to beat the masses but then again it is not a hard and fast methodology, I can drop out anytime, or grind up, until a quest hub is available further down the food chain (providing it is not as linear as Hyjal was).
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