To Many Quests

I'm on vacation this week.
For years I coveted this week because at the office is a ghost town & I I was always part of the skeleton crew that kept the light on.
But at long last I've earned enough rep to have this week off.
And my wife who is an absoulute goddess let me have yesterday to just play WOW. I had done all the RL quests that she had asked of me. It was really a rare treat for me ^u^

So I played a lot. But I will say that I really don't understand people who can do that all the time.
I mean the world is so very complex & to put all your effort in somthing virtual seems well rather escapist.

For me, yesterday was a virtual to-do day. I set a goal (reach level 76, complete zones HF\BT\DB) and got nearly all of that done.

I also scored the dalaren sewer rat (FINALLY)

All I can say is that blizzard has packed the new expansion with an incredible amount of quests & they all link together. I'm really enjoying the flow through. Blizzard has outdone themselves this time.

Why Wrath Of The Lich King Kicks A$$

A Couple of days ago Game Life on Wired.com posted a review of WOTLK. One of the comments the blogger made was that he knew people were going to flame his review as being a PR piece for Activision\Blizzard.

But the blogger is right WOTLK does kick ass. Yes you can level to 80 in a couple days if you do nothing else but grind & run dungeons. At the same time though you can just smell the flowers and enjoy the sights sounds & quests of northrend.

Like I am. How else could I get a screenshot like the one above?! It was such an awesome moment!!!

Until Later

The Musing Moonkin

A Memo To Blizzard

As I write this my Tauren Druid sits a mere 60K from level 58 & the glory that is the outlands. While on one hand I feel a certain joy of reaching my accomplishment that I set out to do back in the beginning of June I also feel a certain malaise about returning back to the expansion zones that I fled @ the end of May. This feeling came over me around level 55 as I reached the dead zones.
What I mean by dead zones is the end game zones that are no longer populated by any players. Whether it's the Eastern Plaugelands, Western Plaugelands, Winterspring, Burning Steppes, or Silithus. Players go here just long enough to do their quest level their toon & jump through the Dark Portal. This also extends to the various old world end game dungeons that are never run anymore. And I put this blame squarely on Blizzard.
When the Burning Crusade was launched back in January 2007, Penny Arcade made a joke (and a funny t-shirt) that said "Green is the new purple." This gear reset was a flood that evened out the playing field and allowed WOW to continue to grow, gain market share, & keep it's player base. While some old school players bemoaned that their hard won gear from MC\ZG\AQ20\40 & Naxx was devalued, for many players who couldn't invest the time into the old world raids this was a boon of titanic proportions. I was amongst that crowd that felt the same. I came to Outland on Neren. Creamed my pants over the gear & never paid attn the the complaints of the old schoolers.
But now I can see their issues were valid. I've compared gear from level 56 old world drops & level 58 outland drops and they are more powerful by a factor of 3. Which if I was an old schooler who had put in hours & hours only to be swept aside by outland gear I'd be pissed to.
Therefore I have the following suggestions
1.) Create a gradual gear curve from 45-58 that doesn't cause the gear angst issue.
2.) Create new dungeon quests that link outland to the old dungeons (consortium rep, orcs looking for gear in UBRS etc.)
3.) Make going to outland an attunement. (we need brave souls to go forward) nothing impossible, but something that feels earned.
If you implement this as future expansions are released you will not have players leave due to gear resets
Regards
Neren\Greathoof

On Leveling...Part 2

My first post covered some of my thoughts on leveling Greathoof. (Yes I'm outing my horde toon) I know I have alliance friends who read this so if you see me wave & say Hi! There were some other items that I didn't cover that still needed to be put to the digital page.

Item #1

New Players: Believe it or not new players are still out there. I've encountered some on my leveling journey. I thought them to be myth, but several indicators alerted me to their newbie status.

1.) No Omen. By far the biggest indicator of a new player is whether omen is loaded or not. All the end gamers w alt's have it loaded. The 2nd indicator is if they don't know what Omen is.

2.) Where to quest: Again a reliable indicator of level is do they know where to quest & where not to go. Granted I had to shake off my cobwebs but I remembered that feralas is for level 30-40, shimmering flats for 35-40, Stranglehorn vale covers 30-45 etc. etc.

3.) Threat: again something I discovered as I learned feral tanking. Players with alt's know about threat, new players however don't understand the math behind it.

4.) Gear: This one screams new player vs. alt\new server transfer. New players have gear that's a mis-mosh. End gamers\New on Server have gear that's built with bc in mind. That is to say. I will level up but as I do I will get the best possible gear that is available.

Item #2

Patch 2.4.3: In Patch 2.3 Blizzard upped the xp from quests by 30%. This was designed to allow end game players to level characters quicker than before. The feedback was this was not a great a boost as intended because of travel time from quest to quest. With Patch 2.4.3 the level that you acquire your mount will be lowered to 30 & the cost of the training will be lowered to 35 gold (without faction discounts.)

Now at first I viewed this as blasphemy, as sacrilege. But I came to my senses & understood that things change & this is a good thing. This will allow players to get through those large zones that usually are reserved for the level 30-40 players.

That concluded on Leveling...Part 2

On Leveling Pt 1.

As I've posted previously after the dissolution of Utopia on Fenris, I became depressed and disillusioned with my NE Druid Neren. I was stuck in a rut due my spec & my lack of options that it left me with raid progression. I also had reached a point where guild drama had made coming home & playing wow not fun, but as much of a chore as work. Luckilly I had rolled a tauren druid & transferred a trust fund of gold over to the horde side of the fence.
That was around Memorial Day, it's now almost 4th of july. I think since then I've logged onto the alliance side maybe three times since those events occured.
Over the last couple days I've been mulling over some thoughts I've had while Leveling. Since I didn't have an end game toon on the horde side, The experience has been close to what it was like when I leveled Neren. which is to say I don't have the feeling of juggling my time between my main character & my alt. Regardless though I've done it before so I have the blessing of experience.
Here are my thoughts.
1.) Smell the flowers: Blizzard has stated that WOW is about the journey. You start out a level 1 noob & end up a level 70 L337 toon w phat lewtz. The point is that while your on this journey smell the flowers, explore the world, see what's out there.
2.) Blues vs. Greens: This was something I forgot, and I think a lot of end gamers lose when they're spending all their time in raid dungeons. Old world gear is on a different scale than outland gear. Blues last a long time compared to their outland counterparts. If any Blizzard Developers read this blog, I would recommend that the gear be tuned so that moving to outland is a smoother process.
3.) Quest rewards: Again another item I noticed that may be in the works with the developers. The old world quest reward system is built for a game universe where the players don't have access to large sums of gold. The rewards for completing kill x trolls etc. were designed so that a player who's broke could get by on quest rewards.
Now we have a game universe where players have access to large sums of gold, and the majority of low level character are in fact end game players who are leveling an alt, so this enviroment renders the system broken. I find that overwhelmingly the gear I get is sold within a couple of minutes.
From where I see it there are two options.
1.) create a system where players are 'taxed' for transferring gold to lower level characters.
2.) update the reward system so that players have more than one choice with gear rewards.
This concludes part 1 of 'On Leveling'