the-missing-diplomat
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Breakfast Topic: What happened to the mouse?
TV Tropes is justifiably known as one of the most dangerous sinkholes on the internet, and recently I spent hours winding my way through the entry on What Happened to the Mouse? For the uninitiated, the trope concerns secondary or minor characters and plot lines that go unresolved. Some better-known examples include the remaining dinosaur embryos in Jurassic Park, Saruman's fate in the film version of The Return of the King, and what happened to the Libyans in Back to the Future. Probably the most famous unresolved story line in the history of WoW was that of The Missing Diplomat, which for years was an iconic Alliance quest in pursuit of the missing Stormwind king. You ended up in Dustwallow Marsh with Jaina Proudmoore's thanks for having tracked down one of the conspirators, and then ... silence. Until Wrath of the Lich King, players wondered what on earth had happened to King Wrynn. Blizzard seems to be wrapping up a few stories that had been eluding players for a while (most recently, where Maeiv Shadowsong went after the battle with Illidan), but others remain. I have two personal favorites: The quest that Chromie gives you in Dragonblight that strongly hints at something weird going on with Nozdormu (admittedly, Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects sort of addresses this), and a question cryptically answered by Chris Metzen and Alex Afrasiabi in the first round of Ask CDev concerning the ultimate fate of Frostmourne. Is there any mouse-like storyline or quest thread you'd still like to see finished in game?
The next level of questing
Elnia at the Pink Pigtail Inn has some excellent and interesting advice for Blizzard's quest designers (or whoever they hire for the current position). As big a component as quests are in the game, they haven't been innovated on much since the game's release. Blizzard has played around a little bit with allowing us to repeat certain quests, and they've streamlined the group questing mechanic, but other than that, quests are pretty much the same: pick up a task, do it, and bring it back for a reward.So how can it be done differently? Elnia has some great ideas: she asks for quests that span a little farther, that push players through a storyline that might even follow them all the way up to 80 (of course, there are quests like that, though they're few and far between -- and not all players have the patience to finish them). Rewards could be mixed up, too -- instead of the old gold and XP, how about some profession skill, or a tradeoff of badges based on certain quests done. Finally, Elnia suggests that every quest in the game become repeatable. Questing is paced to keep us interested in from 1-60, but we all know how the game works now -- why not let us do some of our favorite quests over more than once?I'd suggest we go even farther -- Warhammer Online offers Public Quests that are an interesting twist on the usual "go kill boars" mechanic. I'd like to see branching quests with more than one outcome -- maybe a moral choice to make that affects the storyline of the quest you're doing. And talking real pie-in-the-sky here, I'd like to see questgivers treat you different based on the way you look or maybe what title you've got equipped. If you've got "Jenkins," they might not expect you to do much, but with "Champion of Ulduar" over your head, they should probably be groveling at your feet.
Ask a Beta Tester: Dalaran coins, environment effects, and AoE tanking
I ran into two common questions last night on the Dalaran coin post, so I thought I'd start off by answering those here. I apologize if we haven't yet gotten to everyone's questions; most of them, like Gurluas' question concerning The Missing Diplomat and the high elves in Northrend, we're just not 100% sure of the answer to yet, but I'll keep trying. Keyra asks...Just curious...the gold coins all have "Use: Throw this coin back into the Dalaran fountain", yet I've seen people commenting (as well as the author) that they'll carry the coin in their packs. What happens when/if you throw the coin back in?When you toss a gold coin back into the fountain, you gain the "Lucky" buff for 2 minutes, increasing your chance to fish up any and all coins from the fountain (rather than fishing hooks or goldfish). You don't have to toss them back in if you don't want to, in which case they'll just occupy a bag slot like anything else, or you can sell them to a vendor (not for much). But most people throw the coin/s back in because fishing the coin up is enough to give you the Achievement for getting it. Particular coins would be carried solely for personal or sentimental reasons, i.e. I can definitely appreciate the irony and RP value of grimly hunting Arthas down like a dog while carrying a symbol of Sylvanas' wasted hopes.Rexigar asks...Question though, do we have to keep the coins for the achievement or does it count when we throw it back in?It counts as of the moment you've fished it up. No matter what you do with it afterwards, the Achievement's yours. The same mechanic is true of everything else; once the game "knows" you've done something and an Achievement's gained, nothing can take it away.
The return of Varian Wrynn
Is that him in the WoW comic book, or is he going to be in Northrend?The answer, according to Stormgaard of Se7en Samurai, may be 'both'. And to be honest, I agree with him. Not because of the strength of his evidence, good as it is, but because his argument makes sense. One of the things we've seen with World of Warcraft tie-in media like the manga series and novels is that they all flow back into the MMO, help develop and direct the lore forward. As much as players like to chant 'lorelol' it is clearly important to the folks at Blizzard, and Stormgaard's argument that the comics and movie may well be setting up a new age of hostility between the horde and the alliance centered around a new lore figure who is connected to, if not the 'star' of the Missing Diplomat quest makes a lot of sense to me.Plus, having the comic star a human who washed up without his memory on the coasts of Durotar... well, if you look at the map you'll see why that could well lead to the exact scenario Stormgaard posits. It makes sense to me. What do you guys think?
