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The Daily Grind: Do you buy from a vendor?
In your average, run-of-the-mill themepark MMO, you'll encounter waves of NPC merchants tucked away in their own little market districts, offering everything from consumable potions to crafting materials to weapons, armor, and more. But often times, what they have to sell is nothing compared to the rewards you get from quest-givers. With the exception of a few necessary crafting components, I think it's safe to say that NPC vendors can be ignored, as long as you complete the area's quests successfully, which brings it down to a question of playstyle. You can ignore the quests, not craft a thing, and buy everything from a vendor... if you can somehow raise the money without doing quests. That's up to you. So our question for you on this Black Friday is this: Do you buy your wardrobe and arsenal from the NPC merchants, or if given the chance, would you rather make the items yourself, buy from other players, or earn your keep through quests? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Details on the new minimap tracking system
In addition to letting us know about the new hunter pets in Patch 2.3, Mania's Arcania (of Petopia fame) has also written up a pretty detailed explanation of how the new minimap tracking system works, with helpful screenshots and everything. We've mentioned this before, but now here are some of the new details she has uncovered for us: The "!" and "?" quest-giver symbols now show up on the minimap very clearly. Clicking on the new magnifying glass button gives you a list of all the different things you can track, including existing tracking abilities, as well as places to repair, buy ammo, aucions, banks, and so on. Flight Masters you haven't met yet will always show up, whether you are tracking them or not. Quest-givers' "!" symbols disappear from the minimap if their quest is too low-level for you (which is too bad if you are going back for more reputation). For hunters: the various creature-tracking abilities now distinguish between neutral and hostile mobs, via yellow and red dots, respectively. Special tracking-assistant addons like Gazmik Fizzwidget's famous TrackMenu may no longer be needed.
A little extra XP for your trouble
Mystic Worlds has a post up about some cool features coming in Warhammer Online that she wishes were in WoW. Basically, it boils down to the fact that WAR will reward you for killing quest targets even if you haven't actually grabbed the quest yet.That would be darn helpful-- there have been times in Azeroth where I've killed 20 boars (for example) and then found out there was a quest to kill them that I just hadn't grabbed yet. MW says she worries that a system like this will mean random, indiscriminate killing across the landscape, but I already kill stuff indiscriminately as I'm wandering around-- it'd be nice to get an extra reward for it.And while we're on the subject, I'd love to see some player-driven quests in the game. Something like 5-10k XP per week that can be awarded by your guildleader, just to keep you busy. Say, "win 3 AVs" or "run Shadow Labyrinth five times." Not only would it let GLs guide what their guildies were up to, but it would be another nice bonus for people leveling up, and considering there's 70 levels to get through now, quicker leveling is always good.Finally, Mystic Worlds says she's also excited about their XP handouts for exploration, which Blizzard already does to an extent, but it'll be interesting to see how it's done in WAR. On one more (kind of) related note, someone in the guild recently suggested an awesome idea: see how far you could get a character just by finding all the discovery XP in the game. He said level 20, I say no more than 15. Anyone want to find out?
