Blizzard tries to nerf catassery

[Daydreamer]

WoW Beta Patch Notes

So they ripped SWG rest system, making it affect XP rather than performance, and kicked the timer up to 8 hours to become fully rested.  Depending on the size of the bonuses and penalties involved, this could go in one of many ways, we'll have to wait and see.  No decent articles from the trenches out yet, though its only 2 days old or so now.

I wonder how many forum topics were created to bash the system between when the notes were posted yet before the servers came back up...

EDIT: Thanks AOFanboi.  This is what I get for posting at 3am after 5 hours of mind numbing burger flipping.  Apologies all.

[AOFanboi]

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/patch-4-13-04.shtml#reststate

Other way around and sans the quotes: WoW Beta Patch Notes

Judging by the forum threads (not being in the beta I cannot post there though), a lot of "hardcore" players complain loudly. With "hardcore" I mean "apparently want to spend 24/7 whacking mobs to level" to which I would really want to reply:

[*]If you cannot tear yourself away from rat-whacking for eight stinking hours, see a doctor ASAP. Sleep deprivation is not healthy even when you are a willing victim.
[*]Go download Progressquest instead, no rest time there.[/list:u]Now, this is exactly why developers don't put interesting ideas in their games, they get shot down by the conservative crowd of powerlamerz who don't want anything interfering in their search for a better Diablo.

[Soukyan]

This begs the question: Does this really help the casual player? Or rather does it just enforce unneccessary downtime across the board?


Catass_001 will play 3 different characters on a rotation and have them to uber status in a relatively short period of time.

Casual_001 will play one character and end up having slowed progress due to experience rate lowering.


Their attempts to combat catassing are poorly thought out. A catass will always beat the system merely because they have the time to do so. The only way to slow the catass in the game would be to limit the number of hours allowed to be played per account. But see, then folks would just buy multiple accounts. There's always a way around. ;)

[Sairon]

It seems like a decent system to me. I mean the catasser can only play 1 char at the time anyway, and when the catasser reaches end game with all of his 3 chars, a somewhat casual player with only 1 char shouldn't be very far behind.

However, I can see a problem with people which only plays on weekends, but plays a lot on those occassions.

[Sloth]

Blizzard has fundamentally errored in their rationalization. They have based their rest system on daily hours played. They say a casual player plays 2-3 hours a night. But all this is based on playing every night. You can actually play less hours than 3 hours a night for 7 days by just playing 8 hours straight on Sat and Sun. And under blizzards rest system the guy playing for 16 hours on the weekend is going to be penalized despite playing less time overall than what blizzard defines as casual player.

Their system isn't designed to stop power gamers its to slow down everyone without making the level times longer. They've worded it so people think they are helping casual players, but what they've really done is turn the 24 hour MMOG into a 2-3 hour MMOG. Basically WoW might as well only be up from 6pm to 10pm M-F. Which is Blizzards way of controlling how fast people level.

Its really just limiting by scheduling.

[HRose]

This is a draft I'll post soon on the beta forums:

There's a mistake in the system as I'm trying to explain everywhere.

The behaviour of your players don't depend on their craziness. It depends on what you offer. If you offer a treadmill you get catassing. In a way or another, even the system about "rest states" will be catassed.

That's the endgame, that's what the players will try to reach. And that's why the system is broken. You built the system to push the players to grind less and diversify their experience:

It reduces the pressure for every area to be perfectly balanced experiece/balance wise. For example in EQ, it was common during any level range to go to the "perfect" grinding spot. With rest states and questing, the world should stay more evenly distributed.

Ok? That's why the exp from quests will be untouched.

The wrong part is that the whole thing is worthless. If the game is solid, real and valid, you don't need anything to show this depth to the players. The game stands on its own. And the questing system already demonstrated this. I never grinded anything in this game, I just played it and had fun. No interest about having fun at level 5 or 15 or 30. I'm just going through the game. I'm not looking to the clock to surpass some record, I'm not playing a race. I don't care at all if millions of players will reach the end months ahead of me. Their problem. I'm having fun, I pay and that's what matters here.

The big mistake here is to balance the time you spend between the levels based on a fucking "general theory of mmorpgs", instead of balancing it on what's in the game.

The time is to be balanced considered on what you can offer. If you don't have anything to offer the growth must be quick or I'll be bored after an hour. This is the logic. Nothing to offer = moving on something different. Something different isn't present? Serious problem. Deal with the problem for god's sake, do not try to cover it and make a big smile.

The more interesting things you offer to the player the more you can expect him to pass his time in the game. The more you offer the more the treadmill can be slow. Because you have plenty of fun things to do. And you don't care about the treadmill in the first place.

INSTEAD till now mmorpgs had nothing to offer. A big pile of nothing (and crap). The treadmills became the only way to HIDE this. Treadmills exist mainly because there's nothing behind them and you hook the players (stupid herd of sheep) offering them the hope of something fun in the future. A future that WILL NEVER HAPPEN!

EverQuest here is an exception, clone it and you'll finish with a Big Failure (see what will happen to EQ2 and laugh with me, please). You can fool the players once with a shiny void, but it won't work again. Even the (clueless) developers are becoming so dumb and they just try to grind the mmorpg genre. No more ideas. Just stupid loud discussions about the time, about the balance, about the economy and so on.

These discussions happen for one reason only: There. Is. No. Game.

When the game is empty and faked peoples start to babble about the void around it, the treadmills, the timesinks and so on. When this happens the game has already FAILED. Big time. Perhaps it can still be somewhat succesful (because the market died long ago), but it hasn't anything to offer aside an embellishment of the void. A hole. Anus. It sucks life from everything. The players' brains. Ideas. Everything. It's brainwashing, not about creating something with some ambition and value.

Please STOP ranting about the time. Start talking about what you want to do with that time. About what the game offers (and should offer), not about what the game enforces. If the game is good it won't need a way to push the players in the good direction. The players will flock toward the fun. No matter how stupid (or young) they are.

This is valid even for the devs, not only for the players. Devs need to start working on "where's the game". The "endgame" but not in its stupidest sense. Not at what you do at the end. When the void of the treadmill is exhausted. But WHILE you go through the game. The "endgame" is always mistaken with something at the end, in the future. But it's about something FROM THE START TO THE END. NOW and THEN. The endgame is ALL. It's about the first and only question: Why I'm spending time playing a game sitting on a chair for many hours?

Someone is able to provide a good reason? Or we are just fooling each other?

Hint: Who is writing thinks there are valid answers to the question.

To conclude I still quote what Blizzard said about this:

We KNOW that power gamers are going to get to max level in a fraction of the time of everyone else. We KNOW that we need plenty of end game options available. We INTEND to provide these when we release the game, not buy ourselves an extra month or two to get them done.

I think they chose the wrong time. First they need to offer different advancement paths, then they can start thinking about directing players in the right direction. And I still think that once the game works you don't need any kind of enforcement.

[stray]

Whatever you do in the Final Draft, DO NOT remove the word "Anus".

[ajax34i]

Not in beta, was undecided about the game (it has pros and cons for me; I won't list them), now I don't really feel like buying the game due to this change.  Hate having restrictions on my gaming.  Just like I hate the MB limits on supposedly unlimited internet access.

But, regardless.

One thing I didn't see discussed on the boards is what effect this has on grouping...  It could be almost impossible to find a fully rested group, when you're fully rested.   The cleric could decide to leave cause he's tired. Etc. Etc.  Does grouping not happen much in WoW?

Anyway.

[HRose]

One thing I didn't see discussed on the boards is what effect this has on grouping...  It could be almost impossible to find a fully rested group, when you're fully rested.   The cleric could decide to leave cause he's tired. Etc. Etc.  Does grouping not happen much in WoW?

Grouping is per quest basis, in general you hang for a bit then the group dies and you move to something else. I've read players complaining on the forums about peoples leaving because they are tired, though.

[ajax34i]

Oh I see.  Thanks for clearing it up for me.

[Merusk]

Read the posts from people in the beta who are actually looking at the system instead of whining, "OMG SO UNFAIR!1!!!"  The take Haemish posted from Penny-Arcade is a good place to start.  It shouldn't affect anyone too drasticaly and the only barrier is the one in your head.  I like it, if only because it's to discourage "grinding" and encourage more questing.

 There were already people posting that leveling was too fast because of questiong.  That they go so much XP while persuing those quests that the zone would turn 'grey' before they'd finished all the quests in it.  This, IMO, is a good thing.

Also, we've already had the discussion that a powergamer is less valuable than a casual one to the bean counters. This is one way to start to ensure you're getting more profit than pain from a subscriber.  I expect more MMO companies will do things like this in the future rather than raising prices.   $15 is a breaking point for a lot of people, regarless of how you analyze the value logicaly. Psychological barriers like to ignore logic like that.  Besides, it's limit subscriber login times or put Pepsi and Doritos ads into your fantasy MMO. (Perhaps Depends would be better for the crowd that seems to think MMOs are a lifestyle rather than a hobby.)

As to the "But this hurts the 16-hour once a week 'casual' player."  If you do ANYTHING for 16 hours in one day, it's not a casual experience.  It just means you have something else to do the other 6 days of the week that prevent you from doing that activity 16 hours on those days.

[Comstar]

8 Hours is too much, but I can understand the system.

Casual players who DO want to spend a day playing are screwed. They only have one characater.

In conclusion, the rest game mechanic is here to stay, but will be reduced to something more casual, proabbly 4-6 hours.

[Sloth]

As to the "But this hurts the 16-hour once a week 'casual' player."  If you do ANYTHING for 16 hours in one day, it's not a casual experience.  It just means you have something else to do the other 6 days of the week that prevent you from doing that activity 16 hours on those days.

Blizzard defined casual player as someone who plays 2-3 hours every night. If you play 16 hours over 2 days you are still under their total time spent playing in a week. It doesn't matter if you binge on two days, the point is that the rest system is penalizing someone who falls under the casual hour limit which is what the Rest system is based on.

The theory behind the rest system is to help people who have less time to play, BUT under the system its not helping everyone who has limited time to play, it only helps those who have limited time to play over a week.

Thus the error in the system. And why the system is really about scheduling and controlling the leveling speed and not about boosting casual players.

[Disco Stu]

Blizzard defined casual player as someone who plays 2-3 hours every night. If you play 16 hours over 2 days you are still under their total time spent playing in a week. It doesn't matter if you binge on two days, the point is that the rest system is penalizing someone who falls under the casual hour limit which is what the Rest system is based on.

Uhh am I missing something? They defined a casual player as someone who plays 2-3 hours a night. Not under 20 a week. If you play a game for 8+ hours a day 2 days a week I wouldn't say you're a casual player. Besides the number of players who do play 16 hours on weekends and not at all during the week is probably no where near high enough for them to have to worry about.

[Merusk]

Blizzard defined casual player as someone who plays 2-3 hours every night. If you play 16 hours over 2 days you are still under their total time spent playing in a week. It doesn't matter if you binge on two days, the point is that the rest system is penalizing someone who falls under the casual hour limit which is what the Rest system is based on.

The theory behind the rest system is to help people who have less time to play, BUT under the system its not helping everyone who has limited time to play, it only helps those who have limited time to play over a week.

Thus the error in the system. And why the system is really about scheduling and controlling the leveling speed and not about boosting casual players.

All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.

You pick what you're designing for and ignore the abberations.  As Stu said, they defined casual as 2-3 hours a night. I imagine to ignore splitting hairs as fine as you're attempting to do.

Now, if they balance the number of hours to max out your level based on the xp 'bonus', then yes, the system is a package of lies.  If they balance the time for what they're advertising as 100%xp (which some people are choosing to view as 75%), then it's all roses and rainbows as far as I'm concerned and the cries of 'omg this is to slow us down, unfair' are unwarranted.

[Dark_MadMax]

To really help casual players they have to allow  play 6-8 hours on weekends without penalties . System like that imho would work:



Players characters  have “advancement points” –they gain them regardless of time spent in game. -Effectively their characters start gaining those advancement points as soon as character is created. Multiple characters on same account share same advancement points pool. Player cann allocate advancement points to one character or another – depending on which one he wants to level .  Gaining of advancement points is completely automatical and is the same for all players , regardless of how much time they spend in game. Total amount of advancement point is fixed –its effective cap of players level. Advancement points pool and gaining per day is set according to how much devs intend  player to spend time on developing his character to high-end . Those advancement points can be spent on players character to gain new abilities/skills.

That would be an actual leveling mechanism .By having fixed measuring of how much each player can advance we can effectively plan  for powergamers and casuals to be on the equal footing.  As I plan actual PvP game – I wouldn’t set the time to gain all advancement points for too long – month or two imho is enough to ensure necessary accountability and draw –in period for  new players.

Players can’t though spent their advancement points right  away, without doing any – in-game stuff. But in order to do so player should be able to have some amount of “experience points”.   Player can get as many experience points as he has unused advancements points .  Gaining experience points worth of one day of advancement points would be up to developers to balance and decide ,but I would set it to about 1-2 hours. – So casuals can steady level during the week ,or catch up during week-end ,or any time later.  Powergamers on the other hand won’t be bale to advance any faster than preset amount .

[HRose]

Okay, I have here the proof that my post won't have any effect.

[tanandae]

it's bedtime. Time to rest .. but thought I'd post here first.

Today, I dropped below well-rested ::gasp::

Played one character all day, with breaks for meals and stuff here and there. Probably 9 - 10 hours of intermittent gaming. When I hit the 150% xp point, I pouted a little bit, thought about it, and kept playing for another couple hours. It didn't interupt my enjoyment of the game at all. I rarely look at the xp bar anyway.

[Bstaz]

Okay, I have here the proof that my post won't have any effect.

See even the players are so focued on the catassing they can't even see the game...

I thought you post was good, and I would hope one dev out there would read it and take note.  Like you said, when players start bitching about the "void" you know your game doesn't exist.

[Sloth]

Blizzard defined casual player as someone who plays 2-3 hours every night. If you play 16 hours over 2 days you are still under their total time spent playing in a week. It doesn't matter if you binge on two days, the point is that the rest system is penalizing someone who falls under the casual hour limit which is what the Rest system is based on.

Uhh am I missing something? They defined a casual player as someone who plays 2-3 hours a night. Not under 20 a week. If you play a game for 8+ hours a day 2 days a week I wouldn't say you're a casual player. Besides the number of players who do play 16 hours on weekends and not at all during the week is probably no where near high enough for them to have to worry about.

Are you trying to say someone who plays 2-3 hours a night which is 21 hours a week is casual, but someone who plays 8 hours on Sat and Sun for a total of 16 hours a week is not casual? That makes no sense at all.

You seem to be basing casual play simply on consecutive hours played. If that is the case, what do you call someone who plays 2 hours every 4 hours? He'll end up with 12 hours a day, but because they aren't consecutive he must be a casual player. Your logic simply doesn't hold water. Casual play has to be defined as cumulative hours per week, it can't be a day by day basis because no one plays every night. People often skip multiple nights and play when they have the most time.

[Soukyan]

30+ per week is "hardcore"
15+ per week is average
15 or less per week is casual

That's my definition of each type. I fall under casual and I play MMOGs less than 15 hours total per week, usually on the order of 8 to 10 hours. Anything more than 15 hours is not casual play regardless of the increments that total up to your amount of hours. If MMOGs (or games in general) are your hobby, then chances are you fall into the average category as a regular hobby will often take up as much time as a part time job (if not more), no matter what that hobby is.

[Disco Stu]

Are you trying to say someone who plays 2-3 hours a night which is 21 hours a week is casual, but someone who plays 8 hours on Sat and Sun for a total of 16 hours a week is not casual? That makes no sense at all.

Yes it does, and no I'm not baising it in consecutive hours played. I'm baising it on number of hours played in a day. Its the same as drinking. I'd say someone who has a couple of drinks a day is a casual drinker but I wouldn't say someone who has 8+ drinks 2 days a week is.

And again I'm not sure how this is at all important. No Blizzards system does not cover every single possible playing style however it doesn't have to. It works fine for the vast majority of players and thats all that matters.

[Sloth]

Are you trying to say someone who plays 2-3 hours a night which is 21 hours a week is casual, but someone who plays 8 hours on Sat and Sun for a total of 16 hours a week is not casual? That makes no sense at all.

Yes it does, and no I'm not baising it in consecutive hours played. I'm baising it on number of hours played in a day. Its the same as drinking. I'd say someone who has a couple of drinks a day is a casual drinker but I wouldn't say someone who has 8+ drinks 2 days a week is.

And again I'm not sure how this is at all important. No Blizzards system does not cover every single possible playing style however it doesn't have to. It works fine for the vast majority of players and thats all that matters.

You aren't talking time with drinking you are talking quantity. In terms of time you'd have to say how long it takes you to drink something. Like One beer takes you 2-3 hours or 8 hours. You can't compare two different concepts like time and quantity to the same scale. Binge drinking and casual drinking are different types of drinkers, neither would probably classify themselves as alcoholics.

It is important because most players are likely to play for long periods of time on the weekend than on the weekdays. Blizzard is basing the rest system on the principle of Hours Per Night. Most people do not play every night. You seem to be forgetting that only 10% of the user base is on at any given time. Now if everyone logged in every night, it would be far greater than 10%. So what happens? Most people play in bursts. They play 6 hours on Monday, 4 hours on Thursday, maybe 8 hours on Sun. They aren't logging in for 3 hours every night to meet Blizzards pre defined quota.

Blizzard's rest system is flawed because it says 2-3 hours a night is casual, but the schedule is inflexible. If the rest system says 21 hours a week is casual, then you should be able to divide up those 21 hours however you want. As it stands, they are pre defined as 3 hours a night. And if you fail to meet it, you'll be penalized despite playing less time overall.

[Disco Stu]

You aren't talking time with drinking you are talking quantity. In terms of time you'd have to say how long it takes you to drink something. Like One beer takes you 2-3 hours or 8 hours. You can't compare two different concepts like time and quantity to the same scale. Binge drinking and casual drinking are different types of drinkers, neither would probably classify themselves as alcoholics.

I'd say someone who plays for 8 hours a day is a binge player. Maybe Blizzards want to put a stop to that as well. The inflexibility of the rest system is not a flaw. It was put there intentionally. And apparently you have some magical data that I'm not aware of but if you could share it I'd love to take a look at it.

And of course there is also the fact that you can play for more than 2-3 hours in a row and never leave the top tier state. In fact from what I understand players have played up to 10 hours of non stop exping and have only droped down to the normal state.

[Soukyan]

And of course there is also the fact that you can play for more than 2-3 hours in a row and never leave the top tier state. In fact from what I understand players have played up to 10 hours of non stop exping and have only droped down to the normal state.

Then why even implement the system? Are they trying to save someone from dying of playing 24 straight hours? Shouldn't marathon gaming be the players choice? Can't we allow the herd to be culled and rid ourselves of some more of the idiot people that are bred? Heroes in CoH never get tired. Why must heroes in a fantasy setting always tire? Beowulf? Beowulf?

Dev teams, here's a tip: If one of your team members pipes up in a meeting and starts a sentence thusly, "But in real life, yada yada yada..." Fire them on the spot. No questions asked. If you're making a fun game and some Jackalope wants to add realism and it involves some mechanic like fatigue that diminishes the fun... don't implement it. Fun = good.

[Mesozoic]

This is an overeaction.

After 9-10 hours of gaming in one 24-hour period, you finally start to see a reduction in XP, but even at this point there is no reduction in quest XP, which by all accounts is a large portion of the overall XP gained.  

Woo.

[Soukyan]

This is an overeaction.

After 9-10 hours of gaming in one 24-hour period, you finally start to see a reduction in XP, but even at this point there is no reduction in quest XP, which by all accounts is a large portion of the overall XP gained.  

Woo.

Then why even implement the system in the first place? You probably don't have the answer to that, but I'd sure like to hear it from Blizzard.

[Mesozoic]

I assume that it was to create a perception that constant mob-pulling is unproductive.   We all know that given a choice between what is fun and what is productive, players will gleefully pick the productive thing, then complain about the lack of fun.  

This is a brute-force attempt at pushing players towards the fun.  In a perfect world, where quest scripts fall out of the sky and competent programmers would put them into the game for free, WoW would have so many great quests that simply pulling a monster and killing it would gain 0 XP.  All XP would be gained only after the character had been supplied with an in-game motivation to kill said mob.  

But thats asking a lot from quests, and this is a kind of half-measure.  Allow players to go "mobbing," but discourage them.  In this respect it has nothing to do with catassing, it has everything to do with steering players towards the strongpoint of the game (quests), and away from the boring things that they're accustomed to from other games (mob-pulling), and then, of course, blaming the devs for the boredom.

This frees up time for exploring other aspects of the game without penalty, such as tradeskilling and social activities, and helps players avoid level-grinding.

I don't know if we could actually expect Blizzard to say "This will pwn the catass," but the quote above suggests player steering, not catass crushing.  We already know that WoW follows the "Theme Park" model, for better or for worse.  This is part of that.

[Merusk]

Shouldn't marathon gaming be the players choice? Can't we allow the herd to be culled and rid ourselves of some more of the idiot people that are bred?

Until the US courts start taking the position of personal responsibility is greater than corporate culpability in all cases, then no. (Hell, do they even have that luxury?) All it would take is one dead catass whose parents had enough money to make this a problem. So until the court system changes it will be the various MMOs responsibility to police the players I imagine.  But that's a side issue, and not the reason this was implemented.

[Soukyan]

Until the US courts start taking the position of personal responsibility is greater than corporate culpability in all cases, then no. (Hell, do they even have that luxury?)

I despise this country. I <sarcasm>love</sarcasm> how personal responsibility and consequences of your choices can be shirked off and then be blamed on others. "But your Honor, the cocaine was just so addictive. How was I, as a consumer, supposed to know I would end up like this?! It's the dealers fault, not mine. He should have to pay my medical expenses and any future funeral expenses should I die from continued use, even if I die from a completely unrelated incident." Caveat Emptor?

But that's off-topic. So now Blizzard is trying to control playstyle to funnel people toward the fun. I'm sorry, but I don't agree that ALL players will pick the grind over the fun. But you're probably right in that a large majority would just because it's there and because it's what they're used to doing from previous MMOGs. And that majority that would pick the grind would blow through Blizzard's content (or what would appear to be a lack of because they would skip the questing and claim there's nothing to do but monster bashing) and then sit at the top whining for more and for raising the bar to a higher level. All within the first month.

Nah, not likely.

Why?

Because Blizzard has made sure to tie uber loot to the quest system. The catasses of the world aren't going to pass that up, but they will certainly rip through quests as quickly as possible on their level grind to glory.

[HRose]

I'm sorry, but I don't agree that ALL players will pick the grind over the fun.

/clap
As I said this is a gameplay problem. If peoples took the grind path it's because games just offered that till now.

It's so simple that noone is able to understand this.

[Mesozoic]

I think that the player tendency that I mentioned (grind & gripe) is pretty well documented.   Players have been conditioned to do this by previous games and its understandable to fear that players would do it in WoW through sheer habit.  Step two would be deciding that the WoW grind is no more fun than the EQ grind or the DAoC grind, and Step 3 would be slipping back into those two games.

[ajax34i]

This is an overeaction.

After 9-10 hours of gaming in one 24-hour period, you finally start to see a reduction in XP, but even at this point there is no reduction in quest XP, which by all accounts is a large portion of the overall XP gained.  

Woo.

Then why even implement the system in the first place? You probably don't have the answer to that, but I'd sure like to hear it from Blizzard.

That's because the system is not tuned right now.  They put it in place, but left it so unrestrictive that it wouldn't generate much comment after the initial outcry.  Next push, it'll take one hour of play to get from well rested to exhausted.

[El Gallo]

On topic:
The people who get screwed hard by this are the weekend warrior types who play little or not at all during the week and then binge on the weekend.  The 2-hour a night guy gets 100% of his time at full xp, but the 7 hour saturday/sunday guy spends a considerable amount of time under the xp penalty.

People who think that "quests" are somehow magically different than "grinds" are misguided.  Whether I spend 4 hours hitting hotkeys killing bunnies or I spend 1 minute telling an NPC "Yes [I will kill bunnies]" and then 3 hours and 59 minutes hitting hotkeys killing bunnies I am doing the same shit.

Off topic:
Also, the point that people only grind because other "more fun" methods are unavailable are misguided.  The old-fashioned pull-low-bues-to-camp xp grind is successful because (a) it provides the stability (and time to chat) necessary for community that the RUN RUN CLICK CLICK RUN RUN "fun" dungeon crawl does not and (b) it makes it easy for people to AFK when needed or to swap characters when someone logs, which again is difficult to pull off in the "fun" game.

The basic problem here is that a lot of people think MMOGs are what people do instead of Counterstrike.  They think that MMOGs therefore need to be more like action packed video games.  On the other hand, I tend to think of MMOGs are what people do instead of going fishing, which is more of an excuse to socialize than an action packed event.

[El Gallo]

In a perfect world, where quest scripts fall out of the sky and competent programmers would put them into the game for free, WoW would have so many great quests that simply pulling a monster and killing it would gain 0 XP.  All XP would be gained only after the character had been supplied with an in-game motivation to kill said mob.  

Why is that perfect?  Why should slaughtering orc pawns for their shot glasses because Bily the Bartender asked me to be rewarded with enormous xp welfare while me and my group taking on a tough dungeon just to say we did it or to see what is at the bottom are brutally punished?

People act like MMOG quests are like reading The Odyssey for the first time.  They aren't.  Even in magic Blizzardland where your PC grows arms and massages your feet while you play.

PS- I have read of people who do groups in WoW dungeons getting fatigued much, much faster than 9 hours.