Sunday, January 11, 2015

6.1 Dailies and You, and Me, and Why?

One of my favorite features of Warlords of Draenor is that it has a ton of straight forward gameplay that appeals to longtime WoW players, but mostly veterans who haven't been back since TBC/Wrath.

* Quest your way to 100
* Enhance your Garrison and your Followers for high level missions
* No flying.  Unless you're an engineer jumping off a cliff.
* Profession materials and patterns are straight forward and available via CDs
* No required dailies

That last one is important to me. 

Dailies were introduced in The Burning Crusade as a means of adding a way for the broke population to somehow collect some extra gold by means of performing an activity.  Initially, they had a cap of 10 per day.  They offered reputation, vanity items, and a decision element that tasked you with picking only 10.  This cap was great because it governed how much gold input we saw into the game.  Mind you, at this time, raiding was also a 4-5 day per week affair, so doing them was interesting on your days off.

Somewhere along the way the lines got crossed and it went from a simple means of collecting extra gold and vanity items to unlimited dailies and the actual game itself.  Witness MoP if you will - several BIS items became available via dailies for the average raider and if you wanted access to your profession's patterns, you were performing them for several weeks.  In reality, if you were a casual player with no access to anything beyond LFR, this was your "content".  What a horrible design decision and it was one that I heavily disagreed with.  And before you cry "Zero, you just don't like content!" I will tell you to shut up, sit down, and understand that I was one of those that actually did the stupid grinds across all profession alts (in some cases several times) just so I could make your little 28 slot bags, leg enchants, and throw down Dancing Steel and Jade Spirit in the AH for exorbitant prices.  How you think I got rich?  Wishing?

Bashiok assures us dailies are not the devil incarnate, and essentially THIS time they'll get it right.  I've been hearing from Blizzard apologists saying that they are sorely missed.  Additionally, you can group with friends to do them!  /happyhappyjoyjoy  I have friends that quit the game in MoP over the daily situation, should I partner with them?  I bet they're just waiting on me to ask.

People absolutely miss repeating the same low-end, bottom of the barrel content that gives them a reason for waking up everyday.  Sounds like a job, right?  Go to it and do the same thing everyday.  I already have a job, this is Warcraft and I pay to be entertained.


No.




Here's how to get it right and leave the people busy with Garrison CDs, Missions, and maintaining raid schedules alone.

1) No gear item awarded from dailies should exceed the quality of item available in the Normal raids.  This means, everything offered from a daily should be the same quality as that you would receive raiding in Normal.  Additionally, the items offered should NEVER, EVER be a trinket with a proc that benefits some classes.  Mandatory casual play content is trash content.

2) No recipes or profession materials can be accessed with them.  I'm sick to death of performing dailies because I need something to sell to the people that should be doing these dailies to give me their gold in the first place.  I end up doing the dailies and the broke players don't do them anyhow.

3) If you include a reputation with the rewards, the reputation should be available via other methods besides completing quests.  Tabard time.  Give me a choice, too.  Either Daily Dungeon for all my rep or complete the dailies.  Forcing me to log in or miss out on my 1500 rep for the day is crap.

4) In fact, I don't want to see any gear rewards at all.  LFR is your gear reward, dailies should offer nothing beyond tabards, pets, mounts, and titles.

5) Dailies should be another blue ! on my screen that I get to ignore if I want.  I should never, ever feel compelled to have to do them.

Timeless Isle was the perfect example of how daily hubs should work.  Content that appeals to both raiders and casual players alike.  No recipes gated behind 3-4 week grinds.  Oh, let's play example time:

Isle of (QQ) Conquest - Missing a JC recipe that didn't drop in Mount Hyjal?  No problem, grind to exalted and you can have them all.

Molten (Farse) Front - Only 28 days and you can craft these scopes or bags.  Absolute trash that a BIS craftable was gated this far back.

MoP - Pick a faction here outside of Anglers.  Yeah, that one.


Hey, what's missing here?  Wrath of the Lich King!  They actually had it right with the Tournament Dailies.  Zero beneficial items and lots of flavor items.  The other factions were completed via tabards, which was absolutely fair. 

I would prefer they didn't even introduce the recipes rather than gate them behind dailies. Grinds for recipe items outside of dailies are welcomed.  Make me work for it via turn-ins.  Make me have to buy things to boost my way with the rep.  Make me mindlessly run around an island or zone competing for kills?  Screw that.

Now if you're a person that loves dailies, the quest hubs, and grinding the same quests over and over for weeks, I pity you.  But please, comment below and let me know the reason this is the best content 15 bucks a month can provide!  As always, defend your position articulately, especially if you're an apologist.

By the way, dungeon dailies are great, they focus on playing the actual progression game.  I also ignore these.


Thanks for stopping in!

Zerohour is currently rolling around in gold, having completed 11 100s and their garrisons/followers.  He can usually be seen on Tuesdays dancing around with glee.

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