f13.net

So I'm level 19 running around the shire killing shit for traits. Lag is terrible and I slide down a little tiny fucking hill and take a little bit of damage. and I rubber band and slide down it again. And take more damage. And rubberband. And slide down the hill. Repeat and I'm fucking "defeated" before I know it. From sliding down a fucking 10 hille near Hobbiton. So much for my fucking Undying title. It pissed me off so fucking much I've cancelled.

The moral of the story: Their way of handling lag fucking sucks shit. Cunts.

Weird.  In my experience, falling gets you either a speed debuff with no damage, or you fall too far and die.  I've never fallen for "a little bit of damage." 

Sorry, that sucks...

There was a campfire there. The damage might have been from going into the fire over and over again. Anyway, thanks. I'm just pissed because I was really enjoying the game/traits/getting an Undying title and that wrecked it in one fell swoop.

Please tell me you didn't seriously cancel the game because you didn't get the undying title?

Yup. Within a minute of realizing what happened. The reason I'm only level 19 is that I've spent the time being insanely careful in everything I do. That title was pretty much all I wanted. Sooooo badly. If I'd died to a bad pull, my own stupidity, or even lagging out in combat I would shrug and start over. Dying because of rubberbanding, repeating damage though is the end for me.

They don't call him Angry.Bob for nothing.

Most likely not going to get a GM response on that one either.  Sorry bout yer luck bob, heard a few horror stories of people nearing the undying title and something terrible happening.

Game isn't ready for that title yet, won't stop me from trying again though.

What will stop me is not being able to play for 5min without CTD, and now the graphical bleed is impacting other apps, such as WoW.

Something about this game is hard on my hardware.

I've found three things that generally crush my system: fancy shadows, dynamic or spec lighting, or fancy water.  Take them away and I can run it on pretty much max settings - even EQ2 or Vanguard.

What level do you need to get to to get Undying, anyway?  I've heard more than a few wailings and gnashings of teeth over that one.

You need to get to 20.

And, apparently, not have a sandy female region.

Does it award you with anything other than a title? If not,  :rofl:

Getting bent out of shape over it is seriously weak. How long would it have taken to level another toon to 20? A couple weeks?

Another toon to twenty? You could probably do it in about 12 online hours.

Christ. I mean I want to feel your pain, but you cancelled because you didn't get the title?

Isn't that kinda like admitting that you want people to see your giant e-peen? Or maybe I'm just bitter because I couldn't even get to 19 without dying; I died at 8 :)

Heh, I was also dead at 8.  I discovered the "you really can fall to your death" thing early on.

The title was the biggest part of it, but the thought of re-killing all those wolves, bandits, orcs, and etcetera that were half my level for traits was the nail in the coffin. I had even done the advanced Slug Killer one. 90 slugs in one session. It wasn't as bad as people made it out to be, but I'm not doing it again. Especially not since my dying had nothing to do with me. I ground out 19 levels on stuff half my level to guarantee I didn't die once... never again.

It just doesn't make sense to me why you would throw away all of your game just because you didn't get one little whistle.

Oh well, to each his or her own.

Bob, give it a break. Come back to it later or not. Hell a bad group at the boss spider just out of the newbie zone can kill you quick. It is just a game. If it is not fun, do not play. Do something that is fun.

I bought the game about a month ago and have been playing off and on. I'm not going to renew past the free month... it was fun, and I don't feel I've wasted my money, but I'm not paying a monthly fee for this. It's an absolutely gorgeous game to look at, even if there's not much worth listening to, but I am tired of playing.

As has been stated before, there's nothing new here... and much of what's old has been done better elsewhere. The sluggish muddle of a combat system drives me nuts. The strange skill distribution and obtuse, worthless crafting system are just sour icing on a bitter cake. Grouping is both necessary and dizzying... everyone has debuffs and skills that interact with eachother, but nobody can cast them fast enough to actually trigger those intractions. The instances feel both cramped and endless.

Nice job on the quests and storylines... deeds are a time-waster that almost feels productive. Almost. Replay value is virtually nil. Monster play would be more fun if I could play an effective monster instead of a gimpy one who struggles fighting mobs two levels his junior.

It was nice to see a lot of the locations from Fellowship of the Ring. It was fun to watch how the storyline runs parallel to the events of that book. It was not fun, however, to play long enough to care how the storyline ends. Also I have yet to find a Great Barrow group who can complete it. Yargh.

Ah well. Back to waiting for a game I was actually looking forward to.

The whole undying title thing is so lame IMO. It's like active encouragement to play as a total pussy. No risks, no exploring, no pushing your limits at all? For what? A title that tell everyone you managed to play like a pussie for 20 levels?

I like CoH's attitude more. That game gives you a badge if you gain and work off a certain (very large) amount of exp debt.

/agreed

I think they should have the following titles for not dying

lvl 5- The Wimp
lvl 10 - The Pussy
lvl 20- The Sissy
lvl 30- The Craven
lvl 40- The Gutless
lv 50- The yellow Belly


On the other hand as pointed out sliding down a hill either kills you flat out or makes you limp a bit, you can "sit" on the middle of a NPC's campfire ad no damage will occur. I think the OP is pulling our leg here.

I've found that one of things about the first death is it's very liberating - you no longer care about being careful any more.

Bob, you're insane. 

You make it sound like you had to play this way.  You do realize that if you chose not to fight stuff half your level in pursuit of a bunch of generally meaningless titles you would have eliminated most of the grind from both a "repeatative action" AND "time spent" standpoint and right?

Honestly, would that one title have given you enough enjoyment to justify the investment of what appears to be "not fun" game time?

That's the Dogma about why permdeath is a bad idea. EVERY form of it.

That quote should be in a MMO textbook.

I doubt there are players who bought LOTRO because of that feature. But I'm sure there will be some who will close subscriptions because of it.

Yeah, permdeath.

A wicked player-conditioning process to not have fun.

Get out of the LoTRO forum if you're going to troll, HRose.

It's not permadeath.  Maybe you're saying "this is why people would hate permadeath," but you sound like a blowhard just trying to push his point (from some blog) that nobody here has any involvement with.

I do need to make one more post on this topic. I have to join in and say 2 things Bob:

1) While I usually love your posts and respect your opinion most of the time this post reeks of sandy vagina.
2) If you're killing things half your level to get a silly title that's pussy.

Now that you've died, go and enjoy the game for real.

Dunno, if I ran into yet another instance of Turbine rubber band lag, I'd quit right there.  Never saw that in beta, but I still have the scars from AC1&2.

Way to address the point. Hope the circle-jerk is at least good.

Way to contribute nothing to the thread. The titles are nothing but cosmetic.  Missing one due to something goofy is nothing on the order of permadeath.  Frustrating, yes.  The permanent end of a character?  No.  Get a grip.

Adding permadeath to a game not designed for it is stupider than adding PvP.  A game with permadeath would rightly be designed for it, most likely by having a quick character development and fun leveling.

Playing LotRO like a pussy rather fits the lore, I think.

Turbine! hire this man. :)


Ya maybe a troll attempt? Never seen Bob troll before but this doesn't fit the mechanics of falling damage in the game remotely.
You just can't take damage the way he described.

Bob's not a troll. I suspect there was something else going on. Maybe a mob hitting him he didn't see because of a weird lag issue.

Well, he also could have meant the falling damage debuff. They go in increments of 6, and stack. Fall x feet, get 6 seconds. Fall 2x, get 12. Eventually you just get "defeated" by your falling wounds. I bet that's what went on. If he took real damage then I've no idea since fires do not deal damage, not even the giant open-face lava in the dwarf capitol.

Most are titles actively sought though. They work well with the present MMOG tech because as with almost all things DIKU, you're either progressing or you are not progressing.

But the undying title is the opposite. This is probably one of the hardest titles to get in any MMO that has them, because it will absolutely affect absolutely everything you do in the game world. You know how hard it is for someone on their first character in a new MMO to not die all the way to the endgame? I don't give a rat's ass how many titles one has played. Every one is different enough that whatever you did in one can't be replicated in another. And only part of that is due to the game mechanic being tweaked. The other part is the integrity of the back end system.

Yea yea, some'll say "yea, but that's playing wimpy". That's just another stupid subjective label that ignores the basic premise that within these worlds, you are allowed to try to be different. If not dying is fun to achieve, particularly when there's an ingame reward for it, then how's that different from attaining all the "killed all Spiders" badges? Because of playstyle? Yea, I can see that... because getting that Spiders badge is a fuckload easier to do.

Getting killed by Wights, having lost some progress along the path of killing 50 of them, is actually easier to take than watching the game go all haywire and shutting down that path for that character for good.

Would WoW be a better game if you couldn't respec your talents? If you don't care about raiding, you could still solo to 70 with nigh no ill effects. Would that make WoW a better game? I say no. MMOs are all about character development. If you can gimp your character then by definition you can't develop your character to be ungimped, regardless of how minuscule the difference is.

There is NO difference between having the title and not having it.  None.  It's not a matter of being gimped.  If you feel that lacking a bit of text next to your head (that has absolutely no functional effect on the game at all, none) gimps your character, then I don't know what to tell you.  It sure as shit ain't gimping it.

I understand the frustration, no matter how "useless" we deem the title to be, angry.bob was working through to get that title.....and was cheated out by some bug.  You can call it a "pussy" title, but we all play MMOs for different reasons. That is the beauty of it.  To quit however, still seems a bit drastic..but I totally understand the frustration.

I understand the frustration. I even tried to get the title. Then I died. Said "well fuck!" and kept playing.

I lost my chance at the title last night at level 11, after killing a bandit, and having it continue shooting me.   I was bummed, but it only took a couple hours to get there, so it's not as if I couldn't start over.

Yup, was planning on trying it myself.  That is unil I encountered that quest in the shire under the willow tree in which you have to fight off bees and bears.  The quest was completely underconned, or should have required a small group.

I saw a dev posting where they were going to review some of the quests to make sure they correctly indicated small group.   I remember I got the level 8 or so before my first death, I thought about starting an alt just to try getting the title but the play style needed to reach it is just completely alien to me.  You know I'd like to see a title for sacrificing yourself trying to save group mates who run around in circles screaming when they draw agro.  Good Lord how hard is it to remember RUN TO THE TANK AND STOP WHEN YOU DRAW AGGRO (in caps because caps make it so or so I've been told.)

What kills me a lot in early levels is #*(&(&$ runners running off to other groups and agroing them when I try to stop them. Why the hell have run away code in the game when not one class gets any sort of snare spell at all. That's just mean.

Burglars get snare. 25% reduction.

Someone needs to tell all the burglars I've grouped with then. On that subject, has anyone noticed LoTR seems to have found a whole new crop of newbie gamers or something? I've had some of the worst pickup groups since WoW in this game. It's really killing my enjoyment of the game when my book is full of group quests in the mid 20's and I can barely find a competant group to finish ahy.

Hunters also have shots and stances + shots that give them a couple of run speed reductions as well. I don't know if they stack with the burglar snare ability, but it at least slows the runners down.

Granted, as a hunter, my main goal is to drop the damn mob before it gets to melee range, but sometimes you gotta go toe-to-toe.

Games whose main selling point is a particular IP or niche gaming market typically are flooded with more noobish players than a game whose main selling point is that it's a great game.

Worst example I ever experienced first hand was city of heroes at it's first release, flooded with comic fan bois with little to no game experience. I still remember them crying on the forums about why tankers, the class with the highest defense in the game, didn't also have ungodly damage output. People like me, would be like "doesn't it sound weird to you to have the class with the highest defense in the game also have the highest offense?" and then they would say something like "but omg, superman would totally kick daredevil's ass!"

I think you're experiencing the tolkien LARP crowd in LotRO.

--Zedword, considering taking his LotrO out of the packing finally.

Maybe it varies by server? I'm on Landroval (RP nerd server) and the groups have been fantastic. Even with weird group makeups we're kicking ass for the most part. (by weird group makeups I mean groups without the holy trinity.) I killed the final boss in the Barrow downs with me (Champion), 3 hunters, and 2 minstrels for pete's sake.

FWIW, Loremaster's have a snare (slow attack and run speed) and a stun.

Must vary with server On Silverlode tonight we had 2 minstrels, a lore master and a burglar in a pick up group and were taking on yellow con elites 2 at a time. Since release I have had one shiitty group where there was a pair of ninja looting assholes and I dropped them and mapped out just before they got to the boss mob in a instance, the moral being don't piss off the healer.

Must vary then. I'm on Nimrondel and damn if half the groups I get in have half the people not even reading group chat (and no they don't have voice chat on either), wandering around where ever their curiosity takes them and pulling agro back to the group. I had a group last night in Lonelands doing Our greatest find or whatever that quest is in the elite goblin area and we fucking failed it, after training ourselves repeatedly finally wiped the group.

I'm also really starting to hate elite mobs in this game. Outdoors low-20 elite mobs are worth maybe 20 xp more than normal mobs the same level and take three times the work to kill.

Come play on Silverlode then with Toha and Trebo. We're both ~19ish and it would take you all of three days to get to group with us. Even better, if you play a leather user, I'm a master journeyman tailor (tier 2). I'll show you what a good burglar is all about.

The difference is in future potential. Turbine could be stupid and add a quest that's available to only those with the title. MMOs evolve. It's a bad idea to not allow your character to evolve with them.

Riiight. Well, if we're living in "Turbine could fuck up land," they could also auto-delete everyone WITH the title's characters. 

This does not evolve a character. It doesn't. It is not a trait that gives stat bonuses. It is text. That floats next to your head. 

Are you really that daft or are you just a contrarian asshat?

Going to have to agree with Slack here for sure. I have not found a way so far to fuck up your character beyond repair. You can waste your time grinding for Will traits when might/vitality will suit you better, but at least you're getting experience from the deed and you aren't forced to use the traits. Literally all you get is floaty text. I can't understand how the hell that makes your character worse.

I'd argue maybe 5% of the people on the game made it to twenty without dying. Plus, there are cooler titles to be had. Slug Squasher is way cooler than Undefeated anyway.

Shire Brewmaster > Undying or Undefeated or whatever.

Beer > epeen

motivation? in MY vagina?

I don't get it. What are you trying to say here? ><

nothing, I just wanted to reference centipedes

I was going to back up angry.bob but I am way too late for that, so.

I don't know, I don't think there really is a defence to quitting your subscription simply because you didn't get a title. It doesn't take a lifetime to get to twenty in this game, so I don't think deleting and starting over is too traumatic.

Does it have a monologue?

Blatantly stolen from Woopie.

if angry.bob set his heart on getting the title and slow death by rubberbanding denied the ability to achieve that goal when he was so close, I will posit that it is perfectly acceptable for one as angry as bob to not continue paying for something subjectively deemed "not fun"

Fair enough. I still think it's stupid. My vagina is angry.

Well..he IS named angry bob after all

Yeah, and stats are just bits in some database. So what?

"These stone tablets I got, they tell which bits are important. The rest are insignificant!" That about sums it up.

Death is so meaningless in LOTRO, I use it for travel. They need a 'Sir Dies a Lot' title.

I believe that would be "the White".

Well, the difference is that the game design and code pretty much dictate which bits are important. Titles are fluffy, fuzzy things that people like to cuddle and squeeze and call George.  I am quite proud of my Shire Brewmaster title. However, it provides no in-game benefit. I just think that describing lack of what is at best a nostalgic/emotional reward as gimping a character is utterly moronic and obtuse.

See, stats are different because, you know, they impart an actual in-game benefit. The code and design make them important. The function of titles is purely nifty and therefore is not as key as the function of a stat or trait or whatever.

MMOs are about growing your e-peen, right? We can argue whether your e-peen is not worse off aesthetically if you don't get the title. We can't argue whether an MMO where your e-peen growth in certain direction can be stumped permanently is not worse than a one where your growth can only be stumped temporarily; the latter is objectively better.

I disagree with your central premise as to the point of MMOs.

Well now, that doesn't bode well for my point, then.  :evil:

What I find amusing is that everyone has dozens and dozens of titles. Titles aren't unique or special anymore. In fact, its near impossible to read individual titles when everyone is bunched up in the auction hall or in some dungeon. Even if someone does get the No Death Till Level 20 title, no one is going to notice it.

Naw, I just find that my own reason for playing MMOs has little to do with my peen, e- or real. I play them for fun. If being unable to get the trait == irrevocabally unfun for someone, then so be it. However, from a purely mechanical perspective, there's no way that being unable to attain that title leads to being gimped.

Pie-Eating Champion. That's the best title. Especially since I play a Champion. And I like pie.

Please forgive me for this but, quitting a game because you made your own play experience pretty fucking miserable and then had a bit of bad luck that negated that entire miserable experience is the brightest shining example of being a whiny-ass piss-baby I've seen in quite awhile (Paris Hilton not included). I can completely understand that you really wanted that title, but you seem to have made it your end-all-be-all of self worth within the context of the game. So, in effect, getting that title became your endgame. I think that soon after getting it, you would have quit anyway, seeing as how you had already done everything in the game you had set out to do.

I personally go for the "Champion/Defender of the <zone>" titles as achieving those usually unlocks an Advanced version that leads to some really nice Traits.

And btw, damn the Minstrel and their One Class Trait. I know not every Minstrel eats that slot with Medium Armor. But I don't prefer to kite in this game (way very possible with Minstrels though it is) because I inevitably hit some new spawn. So I'm sitting there eating damage from 2-3 mobs at a time (assuming I've been able to fear one away). I needs me my better armor for the better stats that let me do this.

It's important because some people play these MMOs to collect.  I was pretty upset that I missed out on a newbie title in City of Heroes that you can get from killing 200 of the infected in the newbie zone, and that you had absolutely no way of knowing about it as a new player, thereby gimping your character if you wanted to play with a "Gotta Catch 'em All" mindset.  If I lose the ability to catch them all, then that severely hampers my experience and may even do so to the point of quitting.  If I lost out on Undying because of a situation similar to bob's, I'd probably quit too.

There was a newbie mission I really wanted to complete that wasn't working in Beta of Earth and Beyond.  I waited for the game to go live and the quest was still a broken piece of shit, and wasn't able to be completed if I leveled past it (because for some reason having too high a level restricted you from even accepting missions), so I contacted CS, they couldn't help, and quit in disguist.

It's important that if you have a collection aspect of your game that you don't gimp it by making something permanently unattainable.

So for undying it would reset the counter at each death until you went 20 levels without dying.  Maybe you die a couple times on your way to level max and have to wait out an expansion, but you still have that (faint) hope for all time that maybe this time will be different. 

I'd still delete and reroll, since I'm lazy and it looks like a lot more work going from 18to to 38th without dying than another go at 1-20.

This could seem to go against the grain of roleplaying though: iirc there was a quest in the Trials of Obi-Wan addon for SWG (sorry, lowered the tone!) where you had to make a choice at the end of a quest.  Each decision would grant a different title but you couldn't get them both.  Great for roleplayers (well, great in a it really doesn't make a difference) but "gimps" gameplay for collectors.

What's interesting about the undying title series is simply that it is so un-MMOG.  In every other metric - in every single other way your character is measured - you can attain whatever you like simply through persistence.   Every quest can be re-tried after a failure.  Any amount of repair debt can be worked off eventually.  Even a spastic 5-year old can kill 120 orcs given enough time.   

But the undying titles?  Die once and its over.  It won't happen.  You can't try again.  Move on.

MMOG players are not accustomed to being told "no."

Yes, I know.  It explains a lot!  :roll:

That's perfectly fine.  As long as a player is able to collect X of X titles, where X equals the total number of collectible things *possible* for him.  X would be a value of 1 for a series of titles that you could only obtain one of.  I saw the particular title you were talking about when browsing the title list with my SWG character I recently started up.

It'd be annoying though if those unclaimed titles remained on your "possible" titles list.  If I collect #2 title of a set of 3, I'd like #1 and #3 to be removed from my list.


So imagine if you had 150 possible Pokemon and you could only collect 148 no matter what you did.  That would really hurt the "Gotta Catch 'Em All" aspect.

I actually hated the Undying title something fierce.  It creates more conflict for people who have to be super careful about their deaths for the first 20 levels and potentially biting the dust in a cheap fashion (as bob did and I almost did during the Beta) rather than a good reward for playing the game skillfully.  It would have been more prudent to do something that wasn't tied to your levels.  Death in an MMOG with a permanent consequence like that, ESPECIALLY in the earlier levels, could leave a bad taste in someone's mouth.  For some people it doesn't matter, but for those that do, you create a potential to irk.

Actually...  I think some of the "protect/free such and such person" quests are one-shot.  I goofed "freeing Dori" when I tried to solo it,  and that removed the entire book from my quest journal.

Holy crap. That sounds rather like a bug to me. Hell, of the three racial quests at that part, Dori is the toughest, IMO.  I know I've been able to repeat the "save so and so" quests you find in goblin camps and such. It just makes no sense to kill your Book 3 and make you start over (or worse yet, keep you from advancing to book 4, which I thnk requires the triggering quest from completing Book 3).

You just have to go back and find the person who started the quest. As you wander from person to person in involved quests, sometimes (rather than receiving an experience reward) you'll just have a request that you continue to some other person. The button at the bottom even says something like "confinue quest" rather than "finish". You cannot return to those people and expect to find the quest again, only the person who initiated the quest can give you the quest.

Trace your steps back and you'll find a ring over somebody's head. No quest is a one-off. I ran into this with Falco's Garden when I failed to protect Constable Bolger. Bolger himself had no ring... nor did Falco. In fact it was Gammy Boggs who began the quest.

...

While we're on the subject of bad quest design, motherfucking wolves in the old forest. Everyone starts trying to kill wolves and gives up because wolves are a random spawn which can also spawn other things... bears, oak roots, bats. There are quests -after- the wolf quest that require the killing of bats and bears, but nobody gets that far because they give up while hunting wolves. Dozens of people starting the quest are always killing every wolf they see and -avoiding- the bats and bears because they're a distraction towards their goal: Killing wolves. So eventually the forest fills with bats and bears and oak roots.

Two quests from Adso's camp also require killing wolves for pelts and hides. There are numerous nearby bears and boars (the other quest requirements from Adso's) but the nearest wolves are in the Old Forest... and that is where the quest-givers direct you. The "kill 25 wolves" quest is a considerable distance away in Buckland. Indeed, human players will likely not encounter it until after they've completed Adso's tasks. MORE wolves they have to find and kill. Yawn.

Worse yet, there are specific places in the Old Forest that have specific and numerous spawns of bats, bears, and the last quest goal... spiders. There is no place with such a spawn of wolves... so the players who ARE looking for bats, bears, or spiders simply go to those locations rather than clearing the random spawns of non-wolves. The wolves just can't compete... so nobody does that sequence past the wolf-killing phase.

Grrr.

There is a quest on the innkeeper at the prancing pony called trouble in buckland that,  I believe, sends you right to the quest giver.

This to me is less of a bad quest design and more of a way we have become accustomed by WOW to everything being served in correct size portions exactly where we expect them to be and to be done in a fairly linear fashion. Yes, the quest is frustrating. I finished it with my minstrel while doing a bunch of other old forest stuff. I never touched the old forest quests with my guardian. One of the things with LOTRO is you will leave a lot of quests unfinished. The dire wolf pelts north of Dol Dinen is another one that's similar.

Load up on quests and if something gets frustrating, move on. A lot of these Kill X quests seem to be oriented around running into a bunch and maybe finishing it and maybe not, but don't seem to be "destination quests."

Unless you play a hunter.

Then the kill X quests feel almost required. After all, you CAN track them. Even done that way, it takes a hecka long time to get some of them done.

In the dumbass category, there's a quest in northdown that require killing wolves. The only problem is that they share their spawnspots with elite non agressive aurochs that nobody needs to kill (actually there's a quest but it doesn't require ethnical cleansing on the bovines). Of course, the followups for that particular quest eventually leads you to kill other wolves.

You're talking about wargs, right?

Just had this quest grey out on me lastnight.  Interesting about shared spawn points, seems to happen too much in this game - takes me back to pulling my hair out finding slugs. They should have a similar quest for bats, or roots to counteract this.  I thought I was just searching the wrong areas of the old forest.

Yes, wargs/wolves end up in the same category in my brain.

Shared spawn points are fine if you're dealing with a family of creatures, but should be the lower percentage of your spawns while fixed spawns are the greater.  So you'd have 30% wolves, 30% bats, 30% bears, and maybe 10% of all three thrown in for good measure.  That way you aren't playing luck when looking for something basic.  I believe WoW uses this model, and they tend to use it more in areas that are filler and not spawning for areas of interest.

Or, you could design a quest that targets a family of creatures. "Kill wolves, but any wolf will do", and your spawn points have a 60% chance to spawn a Lv. 10 Wolf Pup, a 35% chance for a Lv. 11 Wolf, or a 5% chance to spawn a Lv. 12 Wolf Matriarch, oh and let's say the Matriarch has something special on her.  But killing any will do for your quest.

I like fixed spawns though.  It puts the experience of how the area plays more in the control of the game designer and doesn't leave a player's experience to chance. Chance means you can have an optimal experience or worse when it comes to spawning.  Having it more fixed means it stays closer to optimal.

Ya the worst shared spawn quest I've not done so far was the boar meat and stomachs quest in E Lonelands. After 2 or 3 passes through that area only seeing 1 or 2 boars up, and the drop rate on stomachs sucking monkey balls, I just deleted the damn thing. By the late 20's early 30's there's so many damn quests it's not hard to dump one or two. At least for a while until they all dry up and turn into group only quests.

Well maybe they were trying a weak dynamic spawning system.  Kill a bunch of wolves, and more of the other creatures spawn.  That won't be optimal if your creatures are quest targets though, and only leads to player frustration.

Oddly enough, before this patch, all of the LL boars worked for that quest.  I found this out after spending about six hours of combined playtimes tracking and killing the number required to complete the quest.

The trouble is there are quests to kill bats and bears, but they FOLLOW THE WOLF KILLING QUEST. Since everyone gives up on the wolf killing quest because wolves are killed as soon as they're spawned and the bears, roots, and bats that spawn with them are ignored or avoided (it's dangerous enough in the Old Forest without attacking stuff on purpose), nobody gets to the quests that require the bats and bears. The spawning system randomly picks one, and wolves are the only ones that get killed so the other ones pile up until there are hardly any wolves at all.

That's bad quest design. More specifically, it's bad quest management. Set them all up concurrent rather than consecutive and everything's fine.

What would have been wrong with one gigantic "Kill 25 wolves, 25 bats, 25 bears, and 25 spiders" quest? Or one hobbit directing you to four other hobbits who give you individual quests (which can be picked up simultaneously) and then gives you a big reward once you finish all four of their quests.

...or something.

Tailors need to kill those Aurochs for a quest to up their tailoring level.

Lol, there is a kill an auroch quest for L20 tailoring but you are directed to look for a specific named on that is specially delevled to be soloable. I find with LoTR the only answer you need to remember when asking these kinds of questions is "but it would make too much sense."

I've been playing a lot of different MMOs, and most that I've come across seem to have just friggin' retarded quest design.  I really wish more people looked at the subtle design elements of what WoW is doing and not just the obvious "Oh hey quest-oriented gameplay works!"

Maybe there is a disconnect between the spawners and the quest designers? Or maybe the spawners are the quest designers? I don't really know.  Professional and quality quest design seems to be an asset unique to Blizzard, unless someone can cite an example in another game.  But even then, what I'm looking for is consistent quality, not "Oh this one quest chain is great but the rest are bogus."