Mists of Pandaria: Quick Update and First Impressions

I've been meaning to post about the my pre-expansion woes, namely trying to decide my class for Mists of Pandaria. It's a long, drab post that noone should be forced to read, so I'll give the summary here.
I was going to roll the hunter first, but realized that not only did I want to heal, but I was probably going to need to. I'm extremely unhappy with the state of druid heals, which was also complimented by the fact that I don't care for any of the other specs. The problem with the hunter is obviously that it is a dps only class. I have a priest, but we already will have a priest, and I have a shaman but we have two shamans. I know it sounds silly to base my choice on rounding out our group composition, but the truth is, we have such a small group, I can't help but think about these things.
So in the end, I did decide to reroll Monk. So far I am completely satisfied with the decision. The healing is quite unique and will take some getting used to, but I hope to challenge myself and eventually own at it. I also really enjoy the dps play style and love a lot of the abilities given to me.
#MistsLaunch
 Because I live in California, I did go to the Mists Launch event at the Irvine Spectrum. It was much less crowded compared to the Diablo III launch. This is probably why I got so much free loot. Not only did I walk away with free t-shirts, a Steel Series mouse pad, and two MegaBloks Chen Stormstout Jade Figures, but my boyfriend managed to grab one of the free Intel Solid State 520 Series Hard drives. Yeah. Totally worth it. Here's a picture.

/Loot!

   The event was much better handled too. While I completely admire and respect the artwork that the Blizzard team does, having to watch 30 mins of them draw wasn't as fun as watching two Challenge Mode groups. I often times forget how much I love eSports. I was watching the SCII finals at BlizzCon 2011, and I had no idea what was going on. But it was incredibly intense and so much fun. Same with the Arena tournament. Having an MC tell you what's going on helps a lot. And even though the Challenge Mode MC was mostly talking about "clutch heals" the entire time, it was still one of the more exhilarating events of the night.
It was fun seeing Felicia Day. She's always a pleasure and I'm excited for her career and the new season of The Guild. And hearing Chris Metzen talk in his non Thrall voice was nice for a change. The cosplaying was alright. After they showed the people they brought in for it, the extras they added were difficult to see from my vantage point. I'm still always amazed at how people are able to make these costumes. More than I could ever do. And just when you think you've seen the best, someone else shows you that you're wrong.
Overall, it was a wonderful experience and well worth it. I was extremely excited for MoP and being surrounded by people who also were was just as exciting.
The Mists Part
So, first thing I did was roll a monk. We had one level 80 from our RAF play, so we needed to get my monk to level 41 at the lowest. With triple experience, that really isn't hard to do. My boyfriend rolled a pally so we could tank/heal our way through dungeons. It was funny because that seemed like everyone's plan. We actually got better queues with him as a dps, and we ended up in groups entirely comprised of monks. That was no surprise but it still hurt my eyes to see so much jade green. The class color for monk really hurts my eyes.
I had prepared somewhat extensively for my 80 monk pre-expansion. I made bags, all the available glyphs, and had to gather some proper iLevel greens. It's harder said then done; I actually just recently, in MoP was able to find trinkets that were of appropriate level, and a lot of greens were outrageously priced. Damn you transmog.
So I spent the last night leveling my monk through Cataclysm.
Man. Do I hate Cataclysm leveling.
I don't really know why. It's much more linear and easier than, say the Burning Crusade. But man....I just hate it.
Despite that, I was able to bite the bullet and make it to 85 in one night. It helps that the Monk's class quests give them a 50% experience buff, and there is a daily to redo it. Since I could do the quest at different levels I just made sure to have the buff on the entire time I leveled. Despite my mediocre gear, my DPS was high enough that I didn't struggle and rushed through 80-85 in about 4 hours tops.
Afterwards, I finally got to go to Jade Forest. I have to say, I really enjoyed the opening quests. I felt like I was thrust into a war, and it felt exciting. Explosions everywhere, killing Alliance, jumping off airships with ropes. I could get used to this. Of course, it did settle down a bit, as quests focused more on exploring Pandaria and introducing its inhabitants.
My boyfriend mentioned last night that he felt they had added extra voice acting because of SWTOR and GW2. There are also a considerable amount of cinematics and scenes where you play out a part in a skit. They are entertaining and although I've spent a fairly small amount of time with them, I've enjoyed the company of the small Horde contingency that you work with in Jade Forest. The voice acting is good; I particularly liked the undead female. While of course, the "storylines" are nothing new; we saw a lot of that in Cataclysm; the extra voice acting definitely is.
So far, I love Mists. You can truly tell that Blizz put a lot of content in this expansion. I truly think they learned a valuable lesson in Cataclysm, and it shows in this new content. The more things I discover, the more I realize that there is just so much to do. From rares, to rare items, scrolls, factions, leveling, dungeons, gearing....I don't know when I'm going to have time for this.
At the moment...
I'm almost 89. It's amazing to think I'm almost level cap and have done barely 3 areas. Once that is over, I need to get my monk's professions and reputations going. It's back to the daily grind. I'm almost going to post my thoughts on monk healing so far, sometime in the near future. I'm not doing well at this blog update thing lately >.<