First Scenario Live, Yawn

Didn't see any official announcement so I was surprised when a guildie got the Theramore's Fall achievement. Opened up the Instance menu and sure enough it was active. Ended up being in the queue for a little more than twenty minutes. Not that big of a deal since I have to get quest logs full for release day.

 

The load screen looked all exciting. I haven't read any of the books so I wasn't sure exactly what was going to happen. But there was enough chatter on the beta and clues elsewhere that I knew Theramore took a big hit. After the load screen you go right to a video where Goblin_Caption_001 laughs about dropping some sort of bomb right on the steps of the central tower in Theramore. There was no back ground or story leading up. Just... bomb.

Then I'm in a group with another elemental shaman and a hunter. All of us are DPS--wonderful! No more reliance on the Tank/Heal/DPS triad. Which begs the question... what was the queue time for? Not waiting for the right combination obviously. It was probably some sort of server load balancing. Guess that's okay. There wasn't any lag or connectivity problems so I suppose that it nice. But it seemed like there should have been less of a wait.

It was all pretty simple though my shaman is one of my best geared toons. The other hunter and shaman didn't do too bad it seemed. Each class and spec has survival tools that should be taken and used. That is, if you're able to quest solo you would be able to do this scenario fine. I think I will try another with the Priest in heal mode. Will it be faster or slower?

Group composition aside there was very little story there. Had to kill some captains and clear off the docks. Jaina sends us to kill a seige engine right out of Isle of Conquest. Then you grab a few  banners then meet back up with Jaina. Kill a boss then done. You're led around by the nose via the tracker in the top right. That's it. No follow up video or extra sequences. Really no lead-in or introduction to the Mists of Pandaria.

Overall I have to say... meh. The Cata opening event wasn't terribly dramatic but it seemed more fun killing mini bosses and getting xmog gear. And it's no where near as fun and immersive as the Dark Portal opening. Blizzard probably wants to spend time on content that's going to last longer than a week or two. While I can understand that I'm still left with... meh. I was disappointed enough to complain on the scenario blog entry. Admittedly the tabard is something to keep around and I'll get it on all my 85s. But .. yeah.