I'm not saying that Cataclysm wasn't huge, because the Old World revamp is easily the best part of the expansion. I've given them credit on that time and time again, but when it comes down to it, Pandaria is gigantic in terms of manpower. The amount of art and new assets in the game is incredible, and from what they've reported, the continent has as many quests as the Cataclysm revamp did, and the new zones are beautiful and packed with stuff to do. Cata Old World didn't really have that many new assets. A couple of new armor sets for questing greens, but mostly everything new in the expansion, artwise anyway, was contained to the new zones and the instanced Kezan/Lost Isles and Ruins of Gilneas. Almost everything "new" in the revamp came from BC or LK assets, or those two starting zones.
Pandaria has new art and assets everywhere - there's very little that's been recycled. Even when it's something like the stags or great cats that have had models since Vanilla, the ones in Pandaria are actually redone, retextured and just look nicer. The raids themselves, while they have their share of generic bosses, are still pretty remarkable in scope and style. I can't honestly look at Mists and say they did any less work than they did for Cataclysm, it's just more apparent in different places. Even the redone Scarlet Monastery and Scholomance have new architecture and assets in them, something that was lacking in Cata's Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep.
But you're right, no matter what good they've done, the fact that we've been waiting around nearly ten months makes everything else seem irrelevant. Some day we'll probably look back on Cata favorably, but until then we're bored out of our minds and hate every second of it.
