Farewell, Pandaria. Au revoir, Azeroth:

You may remember my extensive review of/rant on the Mists of Pandaria endgame not too long ago. What I didn’t mention then was that, immediately after posting it, I logged into my WoW account and cancelled my subscription. I didn’t mention it because I didn’t want to turn that post into another “QQ I quit” post, but… QQ, I quit.

The dailies grind has sucked the fun out of World of Warcraft for me. It’s not that I have anything against dailies as a concept — I loved the Molten Front, and I have fond memories of Quel’danas. But Golden Lotus and Klaxxi are simply awful. So awful that I stopped doing them, but now I have nothing to spend my valor on.

This basically leaves me with nothing to do, since valor is worthless to me. I log on once or twice a week to do the Raid Finder and some Tillers dailies (which I do enjoy), and then I go play Guild Wars 2. It’s not worth paying $15 a month for that.

The irony amuses me. In Cataclysm, I didn’t have enough to do because I didn’t raid. Now I have nothing to do but raids.

The daily issue, and other recent questionable decisions by Blizzard (including cross realm zones), were summed up quite well by a thread on the official forums today. If you want to hear more of my thoughts, skip to page 18, which is where my posts begin appearing. Maigraith is me.

I’ll come back in a few months when this error is inevitably fixed. I want to get out now, before this makes me lose sight of the many things MoP did right. In the mean time, I have Guild Wars, and I might also check out The Secret World. I miss my (undead) homies in Kingsmouth.

My sub runs out later today, but first, I had one last romp in Pandaria.

Enter the Heart of Fear:

I won’t get to try Terrace of the Endless Spring before my sub runs out, but I did manage to get through both wings of Heart of Fear.

Overall, I’m quite happy with this raid. Definitely more interesting than Mogu’shan. It’s visually distinct (if a bit monochromatic), and it radiates dread in the way a good raid ought to. The impaled — still living — Klaxxi at the entrance were an especially nice touch.

I thought the boss fights were largely entertaining. Not the best I’ve experienced, but very solid. Though I did find Garalon and Wind Lord Mel’jarak a little irritating.

Semi off-topic mini-rant: Why does everyone hold up crowd control as the pinnacle of player skill, and describe AoE as faceroll? To do optimal AoE damage, I need to stance dance so as to maintain two DoTs on as many targets as possible while using hand of Gul’dan on cooldown, spam void ray while watching my positioning to ensure it hits all targets, maintain aura of the elements, and watch my fury to know if I can use immolation aura or not. To keep my add CCed during Mel’jarak, I have to hit the extra action button once every forty-five seconds.

As it should be, the final boss, Grand Empress Shek’zeer, was the most entertaining. I especially liked the way the Sha of Fear played puppet master in the background. Excellent voice acting for the Sha, and I like how the raid ends on a cliff-hanger.

We really need more continuity like that in this game. A good story never has the heroes defeat the villain during their first meeting.

Down on the farm:

That same day, I also earned my final vote and became an official member of the Tillers guild.

I still can’t believe how much I liked the Tillers dailies, nor can I explain why. It’s not the epic struggle I usually look for.

I guess it was just a really well-designed series of quests. The friendship system and the way they threw in the one-time story quests seemingly at random amid the dailies really helped to make it feel like an evolving story instead of a repetitive grind.

Plus, songbells are a great way to make gold, and that never hurts.

And that’s that. Next stop, Tyria, and the Lost Shores!