I’ve been leveling my shaman for a while now. She’s reaching the end of Outlands and I can’t wait to get to Northrend. I have been a little burnt out on BC dungeons this time so I’m doing more questing.
She did basically every quest in Zangarmarsh. That wasn’t too awful, they were fairly well spread out. Then she bogged down. Went over and did the Nesingwary and Ring of Blood stuff in Nagrand. I’ve always liked those. Especially when I can make my husband come and one shot Ring of Blood with his hunter.
But in general the BC quests have been like pulling teeth. Wisdom teeth. No anesthetic. I think I figured out why, too, when I was over in Terokkar Forest. I stopped by Allerian Stronghold and picked up a dozen quests. That in and of itself seems so odd these days; “modern” quest design gives you three quests, maybe, all related, that you do and turn in.
No matter. I had to collect seeds, kill Warp Stalker, collect wolf tails, kill peons, kill Arroaka…. the usual.
It was the wolf tail quest that got me. I was supposed to collect 12 of them. In “modern” design, that would mean that every wolf dropped a tail. In BC design, apparently the drop rate was about 40%. I had to kill over 30 wolves to get enough.
Then I went to kill Arroakka. I believe the quest told me to kill 6 of one sort and 20 of another. I had a quest to take out their leaders too. I flew up to the leaders, assassinated them, and killed their guards. Great; now I have to kill 17 Arakkoa Strikers or whatever they are. Oh – the other annoying bit was the leaders were in three camps, fairly separate, so I had to fly around looking for them. One camp was well out of the way…
Kill 20 whatevers isn’t that big a deal, but these days, I’d expect to see a quest that says “kill any 20 Arakkoa”, not “20 Strikers and 6 shaman”. I much prefer the mix and match sort.
Same with drop quests. If it’s a number greater than 6, I expect guaranteed drops. If it’s more than 20 I expect multi drops!
I would rather have three different quests requiring me to kill different wolves, than one quest that required 3x wolf death.
I doubt that revamping BC is very high on Blizzard’s priorities. Northrend was a lot closer to “modern” quest design if I remember right. But it does occur to me that Blizz has set my standards a lot higher. Any other game that comes along and wants to woo me had better do quests that are at least up to the easy and story level of Cataclysm.
Reversion tells me stories about other MMOs he played, Asian grindfests where literally all you did was go out and kill mobs until you levelled. I can’t even imagine that being fun. It occurs to me that a lot of our complaints about WoW are kind of silly when you compare it to other games. And the thing that makes me think WoW has more life in it than the naysayers think is that WoW improves itself. It reinvents itself. 6 years ago, “kill 20 whatevers” was state of the art questing and a huge improvement over all the competition. Today, “you and NPC Bob proceed through the zone, having an adventure and a story, while doing quests that support that story” is the new bar that any other game must meet.
TF is usually pretty horrible questing period. I try to avoid it as much as possible. Lots of bad memories there >.<
The part I can't understand are the people who claim to like the asian grind fests *cough*slice*cough* and view them as superior.
That just doesn't make sense.
It’s like WoW. But not actually any fun.
Eh you had to play it to understand….FFXI….i miss thee!!!!!
XP chain, skill chains, magic bursts, pulling mobs back to camp. Ahhhhh good times.
Only game where tanking was fun to me.
I miss my Mithra….
Ah yes, pulling mobs to a town. I use to do that in Lineage. Drag them in to the fenced area, pop my recall scroll and bug them all into a corner. Then I have 20 lizardmen in a corner standing there ready for me to pick them off. Fun. Boring but fun.
Terrokar Forest is pretty…lame. But the other zones I didn’t typically find that bad, except the kill 30 ogres.
There are things I liked and didn’t:
Dislike – low drop rates for quest items, quest mobs all over the place.
Like – ability to SKIP quests without major consequence or end of storyline
So there are things that are good and bad, I personally don’t like following dudes around doing quests, and sometimes wish by NOT doing quests there would be consequences as well, but then we’d all have such a phased world we’d never see each other. So it is what it is.
I hear you about skipping. Do I really have to run the whole dang Deepholm again for my next alt’s shoulder enchant? really? Some optional quests would be nice… and a clear way of knowing which are optional and which aren’t.
Agreed….I am tempting to make all next alts scribes so i dont have to do the shoulder grind again…
Roz is next in the queue for leveling. He is 82 and a scribe. He is totally looking forward to helping out the Earthen Ring in Deepholm .. and especially to seeing Pebble. I know, I know … I’m weird. But I LOVE me some Deepholm.
I expect they will make the shoulder enchants BoA at some point, like they did with the Hodir ones.
Sousa is a scribe and I skipped Deepholm altogether. At least with Sons of Hodir you didn’t have to do every quest in the zone to get to them.
Two of my three raid geared alts are rocking in Wrath shoulder enchants.
Since I’ve been doing the RAF, I’ve come to loathe gather quests. The drop rates, even in old world, are terrible. The best RAF quests so far that I’ve found are the Green Hills of Stranglethorn where you just have to kill X many of this, that and the other thing. It’s a little boring, but straight kill quests are definitely the best for RAF.
Grouping up and doing any quest that is a “collection” quest is un-bearable. Everyone should be able to pick up the loot.
it’s even worse with some of the frustrating drop rates. I was in Eastern Plaguelands earlier and had the quest where you have to get 10 blood samples from the hounds around the area. The drop rate was probably about 80%, but how the heck can it not be 100%. “Oh I killed that hound, but it didn’t have any blood” doesn’t seem likely. Blizz should fix some of those.
The kill, kill, kill grind brings me back to Dark Age of Camelot. It had a terrible leveling system when I played. Max of 50 levels and the last 10 look longer than the first 40 combiined. There was an Exp penalty when you died and to kill the mobs that gave good exp you had to group up at specifc locations out in the world and in dungeons, world dungeons not instanced dungeons, where your group would grind the same set of mobs over and over.
That sounds exactly what Rev has told me about… Shadowbane or Lineage I don’t remember which.
Analogue- I whole heartedly agree on Outlands!!! I’ve been trying to level Imbuff and play for maybe a half hour then I’m just bored with it and log off. We need to level together!
What level is Imbuff now? Anastrophe is 67 and ready to heal Northrend dungeons really really soon.
68 possibly 69. I like to wait to go to NR until I hit 70 (because then its easier for me to skip all the quests I hate in Dragonblight). But we could get you to 68 then head on out. Which reminds me- I should read up again on DK tanking – I don’t want to be one of THOSE DK’s 😉
Haydn is level 66…I think, maybe higher, I’ll go with you to dungeons.
Well cool, some point perhaps you me and Falahla will be online at the same time. We can run BC dungeons and kill things!
I should level one of my new 60’s a bit and join in.
I just went through all of that getting Loremaster, and I have very recent and painful memories of all those quests – especially the “wolf tail” quest.
And please, if one must kill 6 shaman, can’t there be at least 6 shaman hanging around instead of 4 so one doesn’t have to wait for respawns?
Think it took me more than 30 wolves to get those flipping 12 tails.
I still have nightmares… 😀
Hee hee – so it wasn’t just me who thought that set was particularly bad! Yay!