Mists of Pandaria

[Paelos]

I did like that as well. Plus it created server pride. You got a sense of community with the races being posted on tracking sites. That's something they should do more of.

My idea would be that dailies open 5 mans, 5 man turnins open up raids.

[Rokal]

The races were shit though. Farming 20,000 raptor flanks on your faction? Nobody wanted to do that, and even trying to contribute by killing a few hundred each day was agonizingly boring. I don't know that dailies or dungeon runs would feel any less tedious. Seeing those huge quotas you had to reach just made it feel like such a grind, regardless of your individual contribution. Having your server turn in 25,000 daily tokens would be just as obnoxious.

The AQ patch was a cool concept but it was loaded with problems.

I think the size of AQ40 wouldn't be as big of a deal today as people think. Due to the way the dungeon was designed, they could remove a few of the larger tunnels without really changing the landscape of the instance much. Give players super-fast bug mounts at zone-in and portals after each boss (for wipes) and I think the instance would be fine. They'd could remove the three optional bosses, and they would probably scrap Huhuran since that fight really had nothing going for it aside from a resistance gear check. That leaves the raid with 5 bosses which is fine for a dungeon.

[Paelos]

Given our past history though, the fact you thought it was a terrible leads me to believe that most people would love it.

In all seriousness, though. The reason they stopped doing it was because it pissed off the raiders at the time. WAAAAAAAAAAAH WE WANT OUR CONTENT NOOOOOOW WE DON'T WANT TO WAIT ON SHITTY NORMALS TO FARM SHIT!!!!

Given that more people are involved in 5 mans and dailies anyway as it stands, I think you'd see a much larger acceptance and enjoyment of the potential project than you did back then. Hell, at that point in time, hardly anybody was raiding with any consistency besides the uberguilds.

[Azazel]

I did like that as well. Plus it created server pride. You got a sense of community with the races being posted on tracking sites. That's something they should do more of.

My idea would be that dailies open 5 mans, 5 man turnins open up raids.

Yeah, I was exceedingly proud to have the chance to contribute to opening up a raid I would never see so the uberguilds could go in.   

[Zetor]

The #1 uberguild on my server held raffles - you'd send them eleventy billion raptor butts and linen cloth, and they'd pick 10 winners in the end -- those winners would get the privilege of attending their standard weekly Molten Core run and getting all the loot they wanted!

It was just like one of those things on TV where the lottery ticket winner can stand in a money booth with $1-5-10 bills floating around him and grab as many as he can in a minute... only a lot more pathetisad.  


edit: since daily quests were mentioned, I would like to take this opportunity to say fuck daily quests. Thank you, that is all.

[Azazel]

Sadly, that's actually more attractive than what we got. We only got "server pride". Well, actually, you could sell Linen for a fair whack of money for the brief time. So that all that the grand AQ opening had for me. Something for all players!   

[Ragnoros]

I thought is was kinda neat the way the daily questing hub on Sunwell island opened up for the whole server piece by piece back in TBC. I don't recall it feeling grindy.

[Azazel]

The thing about that was by that stage there actually was a point to non-raiders doing it. Money, rep, items. Bunch of dailies in a reasonable amount of space that you could run in a bunch. Even if you would never see Sunwell (I've still never been in there, how many years later?)

[Setanta]

Also, the whole "bug" thing never really made any sense at all.

This.  I hated the AQ patch in vanilla.  I give Bliz an A for effort in creating some original content coming off the RTS series, but the actual content itself was poor.

As a hunter in AQ40 in vanilla, I remember farming Maudaron for that bloody nature resist gear that was massively sub-par, just for the nature resist. That had to be the worst part of AQ40. Trash was apalling and Twin Emps the ultimate measure of a raid leader's sanity. Farming to open AQ was pathetic - worse than the rep grinds today. No rose-coloured glasses here.

[Rokal]

In all seriousness, though. The reason they stopped doing it was because it pissed off the raiders at the time. WAAAAAAAAAAAH WE WANT OUR CONTENT NOOOOOOW WE DON'T WANT TO WAIT ON SHITTY NORMALS TO FARM SHIT!!!!

The problem with the AQ gate opening event wasn't that it slowed raiders down, or that most players didn't raid. It was that activities like farming 20,000 raptor flanks or 180,000 light leather were tedious and awful. That you think they stopped doing events like the AQ gate opening was because raiders disliked it slowing them down, rather than that the event itself was an awful and boring failure for every player that played WoW for entertainment, shows how crazy you are. Most raiders didn't even bother to wait for 'normals to farm shit', they just let the event auto-progress itself when it became obvious what a boring grind the event actually was.

There is no situation where farming thousands of level 17 mobs on your level-cap character would be seen as fun gameplay. Ever.

Having your server farm 25,000 daily tokens would be met with just as little enthusiasm. Giant grinds like that just don't work for a game as old as WoW.

[Malakili]

Also, the whole "bug" thing never really made any sense at all.

This.  I hated the AQ patch in vanilla.  I give Bliz an A for effort in creating some original content coming off the RTS series, but the actual content itself was poor.

As a hunter in AQ40 in vanilla, I remember farming Maudaron for that bloody nature resist gear that was massively sub-par, just for the nature resist. That had to be the worst part of AQ40. Trash was apalling and Twin Emps the ultimate measure of a raid leader's sanity. Farming to open AQ was pathetic - worse than the rep grinds today. No rose-coloured glasses here.

Yeah, solo farming a level 40 instance for the newest end game raid was a blast .   I've always hated resist fights though.  The trash wasn't bad until after Twin Emps though.  I have nightmares about that trash.  At least Blizzard realized it was hard enough that your progress was actually saved when you left.  On the other hand, I think C'thun was my favorite fight I ever did in WoW.

[Paelos]

The problem with the AQ gate opening event wasn't that it slowed raiders down, or that most players didn't raid. It was that activities like farming 20,000 raptor flanks or 180,000 light leather were tedious and awful. That you think they stopped doing events like the AQ gate opening was because raiders disliked it slowing them down, rather than that the event itself was an awful and boring failure for every player that played WoW for entertainment, shows how crazy you are.

Malakili brought it up that he enjoyed it and I agreed with him.  Once again you've fallen into the trap of assuming because you didn't like something that it was horrifically awful. We've proven over and over that your idea of fun isn't even close to the majority. The reality was that it wasn't awful, nor was the idea awful. They even improved the idea in Sunwell openings to include the daily quest thing. I'm not suggesting you go back to collecting 25000 bear asses, as that wasn't even the implementation they tried last.

Doing dailies and dungeons to progress something larger isn't exactly a horrible oppression on your players. It's EXACTLY what they do anyway currently in the game. Attaching a larger unlockable goal to it, in addition to providing rep stuff and rewards for those participating, wouldn't be that egregious of a change. Attaching it to battlegroups for LFD options would add to it, instead of just locking it to servers.

[Fabricated]

Paelos, I think we might have a different perspective on this since we were on a half-aussie, half-american release-day server packed to the brim with people 24 hours a day. We crushed everyone on the War Effort AND on the Sunwell stuff. We only missed getting the first AQ opening because our server kept getting crashed repeatedly during the opening by 2000 fucking assholes making level 1 alts to go watch or intentionally crash the server.

[Paelos]

Paelos, I think we might have a different perspective on this since we were on a half-aussie, half-american release-day server packed to the brim with people 24 hours a day. We crushed everyone on the War Effort AND on the Sunwell stuff. We only missed getting the first AQ opening because our server kept getting crashed repeatedly during the opening by 2000 fucking assholes making level 1 alts to go watch or intentionally crash the server.

That probably plays a part in it, agreed. Certainly being involved in something like that and watching the race was, as many things are with this game, only fun if you were actually involved in it.

I think a lot of that could be opened up more by making it about battlegroups instead of servers. The simple rules of cross-server LFD wouldn't let us isolate things on servers anymore, really.

[Rokal]

Malakii mentioned that he liked the gate opening event: the end of the grind. It's easier to appreciate that concept (the whole server fighting back an army across a bunch of different zones at a specific time) than the grind that led to it. Even that event wouldn't be realistic today, as the technical limitations that led to server crashes for AQ are still a hurdle, and a scheduled event that only lasts for a few hours alienates all your customers that aren't available on that time/day (See: 1st Rift world event).

I don't think the Sunwell dailies would fly these days either. The event didn't have quite the same feel of your server working together towards a goal, and people liked it because at the time dailies were still fresh. It was a great way to make gold with some faction rewards attached. The fact that it unlocked the Sunwell raid was meaningless to most players, as shown by the continued popularity of the daily quests after Sunwell opened and the fact that less than 1% of players actually did anything in Sunwell. Dailies are old hat at this point, and there aren't any alluring gold sinks at this point (like flying mounts/training) to make people want to do them.

It's not hard to imagine how this would have worked in Cata: The Hyjal dailes for 4.2. People already felt that the gated dailies as your faction assaulted the entrance to the Firelands were too grindy and artificially slow. That's non-raiders saying "dailies to unlock gated content kind of sucks". Having people unlock Firelands when enough of your server completes the dailies wouldn't have made the process any less tedious/boring than it was.

[Fabricated]

I was "eh" to the AQ thing. I just used it to make a bunch of money.

The Sunwell dailies were kinda fun since everyone was on the island and you could just chain-form groups for MgT; also our server destroyed everyone else on the grind so we had the vaunted armory and its overpowered badge gear several days before anyone else.

[Malakili]

I didn't mind the actually collection part of the event, just to clarify.  I was originally talking about the gate opening event - but as far as I am concerned part of the reason it was so awesome is because as a server we put so much effort into it.  We also had nightly pre-raid collection for those which was fun.  Keep in mind that it might have been more fun for me because I had a built in group to do it with that I was close with (we had a very tight knit raiding guild).   I was playing WoW like a fiend at this point though, its unlikely I would enjoy such an event in an MMO as much today, I was very personally invested in that game at that point and I didn't mind grinding things for raids.

[Merusk]

I thought is was kinda neat the way the daily questing hub on Sunwell island opened up for the whole server piece by piece back in TBC. I don't recall it feeling grindy.

It wasn't, because the server worked to open it up as a whole and it didn't involve farming old shit.    They then changed that with Trial and Firelands to individual unlocks.. which really sucks and feels grindy as hell now.  Particularly once you're on alts and starting at the whole grind again.

As for AQ40, no, it was horseshit.  We had the #1 US guild on our server and the #5 US guild.  The competition, stealing, backbiting and other bullshit surrounding it was enough to make it unenjoyable for the whole server.. Then they did the unlock at 2am because that's when the first guy got all the stuff and since he was racing he had to do it ASAP.  So the rest of the server never even got to see the unlock event.

[Rendakor]

I thought the AQ unlock event was cool, and I was playing a level 45ish character at the time. Those low level bear ass turnins rewarded you with city rep, which meant getting a cross faction mount was MUCH cheaper/faster than turning in only Runecloth; I managed to get my dwarf a mechanostrider very quickly doing the AQ shit, and made a boatload of cash to boot. Seeing the guilds competing to open the gate, the crazy battles during the ceremony, etc. was all amazing. Even though I didn't set foot in AQ until sometime in WOTLK, that whole experience of the server working together is one of my favorite memories of MMOs. Things like that are what I wish we had more of, instead of everything being designed only for 5/10/25 people.

[Sjofn]

I enjoyed being a giant war profiteer during the AQ event, but I can't say I "liked" it. I was mostly indifferent towards it, as the thing we were working towards had nothing to do with my non-raiding ass. I liked the Sunwell lead up much more.

[Paelos]

Just to be clear I'm not advocating we got back to the exact AQ style of event.

I think the overall lessons of a larger goal of unlocking with a cool event could be implemented in a better fashion, which then utilizes things we already do regularly in the game.

[Ingmar]

Sunwell unlocks, cool. AQ40, retarded.

[Azazel]

It's not hard to imagine how this would have worked in Cata: The Hyjal dailes for 4.2. People already felt that the gated dailies as your faction assaulted the entrance to the Firelands were too grindy and artificially slow. That's non-raiders saying "dailies to unlock gated content kind of sucks". Having people unlock Firelands when enough of your server completes the dailies wouldn't have made the process any less tedious/boring than it was.

I just unlocked Firelands the other night, and the dailies inside. As far as I can tell, there's a half-dozen or so dailies and the only thing to spend the tokens on is a bag for 30 tokens that might (5% chance or so) have a pet in it. Is there any more to it? Because I found it extraordinarily underwhelming and left without doing any of them.

[Azazel]

My word. I just read up on it. I'm not sure if it's worth the pain in the arse of a solid month of daily grind (so realistically, two months since I have other things to do) with Pandas a couple of months away. Maybe once with my mage "to see it" and then skip it for all alts for ever and ever onwards.

Actually, that's how I feel about playing any alts through Cataclysm zones. And I've only been through Hyjal so far.

[Malakili]

I'm sure part of my fond memories from the AQ event have to do with the fact that I just quite enjoy world events in general in MMOs.  I liked the invasions in Rift, especially the huge major ones.  Maybe I'm weird but it generally makes me enjoy games more even if I'm not online when they happen.  Just the fact THAT they happen makes the entire experience more interesting to me.  Now, I was pretty involved in the AQ opening event, but just  seeing what progress had been made since I last logged in was the kind of thing that made me excited to log in.  Its the same thing which made EVE and WW2O my two favorite MMOs I've ever played, and it is something I am hoping Guild Wars 2 manages to inset a bit more into that style MMO.

[Fabricated]

My word. I just read up on it. I'm not sure if it's worth the pain in the arse of a solid month of daily grind (so realistically, two months since I have other things to do) with Pandas a couple of months away. Maybe once with my mage "to see it" and then skip it for all alts for ever and ever onwards.

Actually, that's how I feel about playing any alts through Cataclysm zones. And I've only been through Hyjal so far.

I did it for some spare money and few of the items like the melee-hit ring and tank trinket.

[FieryBalrog]

At the time I was on a herpaderp server that my friends picked at complete random, so our AQ gates didn't open till after BC had just come out. Partly because the horde on our server were idiots and held the unlock hostage.

I didn't contribute to the war effort in any way, but I had the amazing serendipity of being in Silithus when the gates actually opened (and I had no idea they were going to open). So I was basically running around Silithus questing, when I see huge statues coming to life and bugs flying out from every where, and all hell is breaking loose. One of the coolest moments in WoW for me.

[Azazel]

My word. I just read up on it. I'm not sure if it's worth the pain in the arse of a solid month of daily grind (so realistically, two months since I have other things to do) with Pandas a couple of months away. Maybe once with my mage "to see it" and then skip it for all alts for ever and ever onwards.

Actually, that's how I feel about playing any alts through Cataclysm zones. And I've only been through Hyjal so far.

I did it for some spare money and few of the items like the melee-hit ring and tank trinket.

I could see doing it for more than 1 character if Pandas wasn't just around the corner. I've actually been levelling up not only my Mage and Warrior, but my Hunter, Lock and a little of my Rogue as well. While I'm sure I'd like the items, the thought of that kind of time-locked grind puts me right off the idea of doing it more than once. Ever.

It's why none of the newer-levelled characters have a Netherdrake.

[FieryBalrog]

I liked the Hyjal dailies more than the TB ones, though that's not saying much. They also take forever, though if you don't have a hippogryph already, this is one of the more doable ones while also being better looking.

One cool thing about the questing is there's some semi-phasing that happens for the Firelands portion of the quests. As you unlock the various factions they show up and gradually nature-ize the starting area where all the NPCs are. You unlock the "fill the moonwell" part, the moonwell gets filled and some trees and shit show up, etc. Yet, this doesn't put you out of phase with the other players there. My one complaint is they could have taken it further, especially when you finish, and just phase it fully at that point since you're pretty much done with it.

Another nice touch is the steam vents that let you jump further and faster and are integrated into a bunch of the quests.

Finally, during the questing, you run into a bunch of boss mobs (and some regular mobs too) with fight mechanics that, while not mind-blowing, are a little more fun for a solo player than grinding endless regular stuff.

[Sheepherder]

Then they did the unlock at 2am because that's when the first guy got all the stuff and since he was racing he had to do it ASAP.  So the rest of the server never even got to see the unlock event.

Just do it cyclically.  Like darkmoon faire, except instead of a derpy little fair not many care about, a big fucking Horde vs. Alliance siege rotating through one capital city every x weeks, with the normal city workings phased/relocated/immune/green to the opposite faction as appropriate to prevent lowbie griefing.  Or, worst-case scenario, the entire city and it's surrounding zone reconstructed in a cross-server instance.

Part seasonal event, part MOBA, sprinkle in some random ganking.

[Fabricated]

My word. I just read up on it. I'm not sure if it's worth the pain in the arse of a solid month of daily grind (so realistically, two months since I have other things to do) with Pandas a couple of months away. Maybe once with my mage "to see it" and then skip it for all alts for ever and ever onwards.

Actually, that's how I feel about playing any alts through Cataclysm zones. And I've only been through Hyjal so far.

I did it for some spare money and few of the items like the melee-hit ring and tank trinket.

I could see doing it for more than 1 character if Pandas wasn't just around the corner. I've actually been levelling up not only my Mage and Warrior, but my Hunter, Lock and a little of my Rogue as well. While I'm sure I'd like the items, the thought of that kind of time-locked grind puts me right off the idea of doing it more than once. Ever.

It's why none of the newer-levelled characters have a Netherdrake.

Well, I also just came back and used some of the items to pump my item level enough to get into LFR. LFR honestly? Kinda boring, especially as DPS. You basically just DPS the boss and swap to adds 99% of the time. You hit a button for one gimmick, and move out the way for like 2 others and that's about it.

[Setanta]

I've found heirlooms + L25 guild boost + rested means that you can skip 80% of the content and just run dungeons, explore and gather to hit 85. Hyjal I did maybe to the wolf questline, followed by maybe 15% of Deepholm (got the first fragment I think), A tiny bit of Uldum and didn't even get to the Maw in Twilight highlands on my mage.

On my rogue I haven't even bothered with Deepholm as she has inscription and she's 83. I actually dinged 82-83 exploring and herbing while waiting for instances to pop (and yes, I hate those 2 instances with a passion)

She's also the last of my 10 'toons to hit 85 and I can quite happily say that I never want to do a Cata quest again. It's shit, it's boring and the linear nature of each zone bites big time.

One thing I have noticed is my lack of patience. I don't run my DPS through the 3 new instances as I CBF'd waiting in a queue. I run my 4 tanks and have to put up with retards instead. I hope that the ability for more classes to tank is more than a pipe dream because I want to play a DPS class without the wait - and I'm more likely to switch the game off than play it - and I've only been back playing for 2 weeks after a 3 month break.

[Sheepherder]

One thing I have noticed is my lack of patience. I don't run my DPS through the 3 new instances as I CBF'd waiting in a queue. I run my 4 tanks and have to put up with retards instead. I hope that the ability for more classes to tank is more than a pipe dream because I want to play a DPS class without the wait - and I'm more likely to switch the game off than play it - and I've only been back playing for 2 weeks after a 3 month break.

They should do (at least) three things:

1. Give every class where it's justifiable a tanking option and/or healing option.
2. Unfuck CC, like they promised to do at the Wrath launch.  Not with glyphs.  Not with talents.  Just innately make CC capable of lasting through moderate damage.
3. a) Stop pretending the low threat ceiling of the initial pull and (in general) generating threat is a fun metagame for more than 5% of people.
or b) Make your melee and pet class DPS innately capable of tanking one or two mobs consistently.  So you could do a 4DPS + healer group as long as everyone tanks a target or two.

[FieryBalrog]

I would agree with 1 & 4. 3 really isn't necessary with the threat changes, it just isn't much of a factor, and at this point every 5 man except the Cata 4.0 and 4.1 heroics is already a faceroll.

[FieryBalrog]

Some more info about pet battles.