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The Daily Grind: Do you bring MMOs into real life?
One of the aspects that I like about MMOs is the sense of accomplishment when it comes to achieving specific goals. Maybe they're my goals or maybe they're goals set by the game, but checking things off a list and knowing that I've made progress is satisfying. That's why I often look at real world chores like an MMO quest log these days, filling my to do list up before knocking them out. I'm only slightly disappointed when victory music doesn't play when I turn in a quest to my wife. Mental note: Must buy wife a kazoo. Anyway, do you ever experience moments where your passion for MMOs bleed over into your real life? Do you grind reputation with your boss at work? Have you found yourself opening up a fridge and wondering what kind of epic consumables are inside? Did you strip to your skivvies and dance on top of your mailbox until the neighbors complained? Is all of this a cry for help? 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!
The Queue: Pet battles, Caverns of Time, and the quest log
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. I have no idea what's being said in this song, but it sure sounds neat. evoxpisces asked: I was fooling around with the pet battles system in beta on a character I copied over. Then I made a new monk and was able to use pet battles right from the start.... does that mean that we only have to pay the fee once? And that pet battles are universal as opposed to specific to each character? All the pets I have are the exact same pets across all characters, and not different versions of the same pets?
Enter at Your Own Rift: Pre-launch checklist
I'll just come out and say it: The month or so right before the launch of a highly anticipated MMO is simultaneously ecstasy and agony, full of love and loathing. The waiting sucks, but the anticipation is delicious. The enthusiasm from the community is electric, but the heated emotions can be toxic. The discussion is fascinating, but the know-it-alls are annoying. Personally, I kind of wish we could be at launch-plus-one month right now, just so that the frenzy of insane opinions will have died down and we can just, y'know, play the game without feeling as though we were in the middle of a verbal rugby match. Like any MMO, RIFT's going to have its positives and negatives, but I feel that this launch is going to be something we haven't seen in a long time: a solid, stable MMO that offers up a complete package. That pleases the Justin. Since I can't whip out my magic remote control and fast-forward to April, I propose we do the next best thing. Let's open up our imaginary quest logs and run down a checklist of seven "To Dos" and a few "To Don'ts" to help us prepare for RIFT's release. Planning can be fun! Shut up, it can be!
Breakfast topic: Quest detritus
Anne talked recently about all the bits and pieces that tend to accumulate in a packrat's bank vault, and I'm one of the guilty parties. I'm a hardcore collector of feral staves, tier sets, tabards, and assorted items that I just can't bring myself to delete (Seal of Ascension -- seriously, why do I still have this?). Unfortunately, the tendency carries over into quests as well. Over the course of doing Loremaster, I knocked off most of the older quests littering my log, and now I'm left with two. One's a nightmare to finish -- The Good News and The Bad News, which is part of the Scepter of the Shifting Sands line and an enormous pain in the ass due to the 10 Elementium Ores required. I've resigned myself to the quite-likely possibility that it'll be there for months to come. The other one, much like the stuff clogging my bank, is something I can't force myself to drop. Echoes of War sent people to the original version of Naxxramas, and was required for the tier 3 questline. Incredibly enough, it was even shareable when Wrath came out, and our early Naxx raids at 80 had a good laugh over it. But I'm afraid to turn it in -- not just because the follow-up quest probably isn't there anymore, but also for some reason I don't think I can articulate very well. If I turned it in, I guess I'd feel like another little piece of old Azeroth was gone forever. Do you have any quests like this sitting around in your log, and what keeps you from turning them in?
Patch 3.3 PTR: Quest tracking feature
The new quest tracker was released as part of Thursday's PTR build. This is different than the one that they included last time they made an attempt in this area. Previously, they used various types of icons to tell you what type of quest was in that area. This time, they've gone with a simpler approach. Instead of using different types of icons, you simply get a numbered circle that matches up with the same number in a quest window attached to your map. If the quest objective is scattered across a larger area a little glowing overlay is put up covering that area. It also puts a question mark on the map marking your turn in location. We've put together a smaller gallery showing these features for you all to enjoy. %Gallery-77572% Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
A look at LotRO's Book 13 LFF and group questing improvements
The latest developer diary at the Lord of the Rings Online site provides a detailed rundown of the fellowing and quest log improvements that will be included with Book 13. The quest log itself will be getting a face-lift, but the proposed changes aren't just skin-deep. One of the handy new features will let you see which step group-mates are up to in a particular quest chain, and also if they are ready to hand in a quest (as noted in the diary, the constant spamming of fellow chat with quest completion status will be a thing of the past).As well as these things, actually finding people to help with a quest should be a great deal easier, with a feature that will allow you to flag a quest with a new "Find a Fellowship" button. Other people that have the same quest flagged will be able to see that you're interested and easily get together. From what we can tell, it sounds like you will only be able to flag a single quest at a time, which is a little disappointing, but it's still an excellent feature.
New and improved Trade Chat spam
I stumbled across a new feature in patch 2.4 that I hadn't noticed in the PTR patch notes while snapping in and out of a nap on the horribly long flight that is Ironforge to Quel'Danas.You can apparently link quests and spells in select channels now. This doesn't work in General or custom channels(without a mod of some sort) but it does work in party chat, raid chat, tells, the Trade channel, guild chat, and things like that. Basically, if you can link items in the channel, you can now link spells and quests.The quest link is pretty neat, it gives a brief description of the quest you're linking and a list of its requirements. The color of the text also reflects what level the quest is. Grey quests will have grey links, red quests will have red links. Shiny!The spell links are pretty simple, not much to them. Light blue links, and simply includes the spell's tooltip. Not as useful as quest links, but that doesn't mean it isn't shiny!
A New Year's quest log
Everyone has New Year's resolutions, including MMO players. Here is a two-page list of resolutions we found on a particularly busy player whose list is in a particularly accessible format that any quest runner will understand.
WoW Rookie: Quest wrangling 101
It's no coincidence (just in case you thought it was) that when you first log into the game, the first thing you see is an NPC in front of you with a golden exclamation point above their head. Quests are a fundamental part of this game, not just in terms of lore and story, but also in character advancement (and earning all of that gold and XP that you're going to be doing). A good part of the game (in fact, the major part of the game up to level 70) is just handling all the quests and tasks you've got to do. From FedEx to kill quests, and from huge multi-part quest chains to simple fetch quests, handling all of those tasks is extremely important from the moment you enter the world of Azeroth.So today on WoW Rookie, we're going to give you a few tips on how to handle this most important of missions: figuring out where, who, and what's up with all the missions you get in the game. Keeping track of what you're supposed to do is sometimes just as important as doing it, and so after the jump, we've compiled a few tips for getting your Azerothian to-dos done.
Something that is working as intended in the new patch
The wrong stuff is dropping in raids. The LFG system is hated by many, loved by some. There are 201 problems with 2.0.1. The servers haven't really been stable. The arenas are nowhere to be found.Yes, if you want to find the negative in 2.0.1, you can find it. But thanks to a reminder from one of our fine readers, I am going to focus for a minute on something about this patch that is actually working and I am pretty darn happy about. We can now have 25 quests in our logs! I can't tell you how many times, especially in the 40-60 area, that I have a completely jammed quest log. With so many quests requiring travel, stacking the quests for efficiency became a pain. This allows more quest stacking, and stops the dropping of quests you'd like to complete, but need to abandon to free up some space. Until you hit 25 quests that is. Come to think of it, why not expand it to 30? So during this week of some disappointment and lack of quality game time, it is good to know something is working as intended. So go and fill up your quest logs![Thanks Rocklands!]
