The long awaited, newest event in World of Warcraft (WOW) just went live on May 16th, 2024, and it already seems to be huge hit! The Timerunning: Mists of Pandaria (MOP) event is the first major event of its kind, allowing players to experience old expansions of WOW in a fast-paced, new way. Unlike Classic WOW servers, the MOP event brings players back to the original expansion with Dragonflight class design, dragonriding, and other retail features. It is truly a fresh take on the MOP expansion and is giving players ample amounts of content to get through the content drought that Dragonflight season 4 is turning out to be for many people. Let’s get into why Timerunning MOP is so fun and interesting.
Upon logging into retail WOW, players are prompted with a pop-up to create a new character for MOP. One of the most appealing things about this new character is that after the MOP event is over, it will be transferred (for free) to retail WOW as playable character. It is essentially a new way to level a character if nothing else, but there is much more to it. Any achievements, cosmetics, mounts, pets, and toys earned by a character in MOP will be transferred to retail WOW once the event is over. This allows players to go back and collect the now rare mounts at the original increased drop rate of MOP at its release. All that being said, the Timerunning MOP is only available for three months as of May 16th, so time is limited to get in and experience MOP in a new light.
Once a character is created, they are placed into a short questline at level 10 to explain the story concept of the Timerunning event. Once that questline is over, players are given their timerunning cap which infinitely scales and are released into the original MOP zones to level up to 70 however they choose. Whether players want to experience all the original quests; rush to max level my running dungeons; or for first time ever – running raids which now provides level experience, no matter what players want to do, they can do it as part of their progression to max level.
Through all these means of level progression, players are also increasing the stats of their cloak and earning gear, as well as gems that have a lot of fun effects. Some gems just provide basic stats, while others provide completely new abilities or give abilities from another class. There are so many different gems that the possibilities are nearly endless in how a player can build their character. Each piece of gear player is equipped with has between one and three socket slots where these gems can be equipped. All the while, players are earning a new type of currency, Bronze, which allows them to upgrade their gear, unlock new gems, or purchase original MOP cosmetics.
Finally, there are capstone achievements involved with Timerunning MOP too. Just like in retail, beating all the content on heroic difficulty provides cosmetics and more gear that empowers Timerunning characters even further. For example, beating all 11 MOP dungeons on heroic provides an epic trinket that is not earnable by any other means. Other pieces of gear are earned by completing all the heroic raids, scenarios, reaching level 70, and finishing entire zones worth of quests. While this all seems like a lot, the infinite scaling nature of the cloak and the powerful gems that are earned from doing these activities make the process of getting these capstone achievements pretty easy and a lot less time consuming than one would think.
With this Timerunning MOP event well underway, there is a lot of content to be had in retail WOW. It is all accessible with the regular retail WOW installation with an active subscription. If this event pans out like Blizzard is hoping, the community should expect similar events like this featuring other expansions to come out in the next year or two. So what content are you looking forward to most in the new Timerunning MOP expansion?
