48 dailies are 48 dailies too many

Matt Rossi recently posted about Vaneras' blue post regarding questing and dailies. If you didn't catch the original post, here's a rather edited version in the interest of brevity containing just the sections I'm talking about today. Do hit the source link for the full version if you want to.

I want to draw your attention to the last line: "48 daily quests available on any given day." Forty-eight daily quests. Of course, the daily cap has also disappeared in Mists, so you can do those 48 quests every day! Lucky, lucky you. And there are 300 or so in total, so they won't be the same every day; you'll get something like one in six, although hopefully it won't be quite that predictable.

Why has Blizzard done this? Well, they want to increase the amount of max-level content available to the playerbase. It's an admirable goal, but I can see a few downsides with the daily quest-focused approach they've taken.

Getting your daily bread

But first, the nature of the dailies and their rewards. Anne wrote a great piece on one particular set of dailies and their stories, and I have to say they do sound better than any I've done before. I gather from another article that some of the dailies also reward valor points, and this is where it starts to go wrong for me.

It should be borne in mind that there is no pressure to hit the valor cap every week, apart from the pressure that you apply to yourself or that is applied by your guild and the like. That's avoidable if you want to avoid it. It seems that the valor gained from dungeons and challenge modes is relatively low in Mists compared to what it is now and that daily quests are designed to supplement that.

So if you do put that pressure on yourself for whatever reason, you not only have your dungeons to run, but potentially, depending on how the caps work out, dailies to do as well -- another "job" to add to the list of things you don't have to do, but feel you perhaps ought to be doing if you want to progress. You feel like you have to log on every day and do your dailies, or you'll be missing out on rewards -- not only reputation rewards but valor to buy them with.

To me, that's a bad thing. Gameplay shouldn't be something you feel you have to do; it should be something you want to do. And to me, daily quests are never something I want to do.

Repetition leads to boredom

In the interest of clarity and fairness, I've never liked daily quests. Even if there are 300 to choose from, they will inevitably become boring and repetitive. Even in Anne's aforementioned piece, she says that the quests are dull -- and she'd only been doing them a few days! I just don't see how daily quests can ever remain fun for any length of time.

Maybe you think I'm totally wrong, and if you do, I'd love to hear your reasoning, because I literally can't wrap my head around it. I've done them in the past to get my reputation up far enough for the certain reward I was after, then immediately stopped. I will go any other route available to get reputation with a faction. But maybe that's just me.

And if you want to get the rewards in the fastest way possible, you might not have much of a choice but to do the daily quests. Will your guild let you be on the raid team if you don't grind out your dailies? Will there be the same frustration with those who refuse to do them that there was with those who didn't do enough dungeons to get their justice or valor cap every week? Feasibly, especially from progression guilds.

I don't only think that the daily quest focus is not a positive aspect in Mists, not something I'm looking forward to, but I think it's an active negative for the reasons above. And I definitely don't think it's the answer to making max-level gameplay more interesting. Furthermore, how on earth will part-time players find the time to do these quests every day? And those who want to grind out old reputation for whatever reason, how will they fit it all in?

On the plus side, there are many other things that will make max-level gameplay more interesting. You have Pet Battles, challenge modes, potentially tillers and farming, serpent racing, and various other little bits and bobs (including, of course, dungeons, raiding and PvP). Maybe some of the dailies will be fun, too. You never know, I guess.

But tell me your thoughts. What do you think? Will anyone be doing 48 dailies a day?

It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!