The Queue: Stark puberty

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.

Osha calling Bran "little lord" is suddenly really weird, now that puberty has hit Bran like a freight train. It's a cute pet name turned insult. The kid grew a foot, exchanged his voice with Barry White, and changed the entire topography of his face in less than a year. Pretty impressive.

I'm talking about Game of Thrones, for the confused.

SkarnWoW asked:

Why do people say that dailies are repetitive and boring, but dungeons are not? If you are chain running dungeons, you are running the same 5-mans over and over. 5-mans that you've done many times. If you are leveling your 3rd alt, dungeons you've done MANY times. Why is doing the same dailies boring, but doing the same dungeons not?

From my own perspective, I get tired of the same dungeons fairly quickly. When I know the place and know there is no challenge involved, I get very bored. So why do I prefer dailies? Control mostly. The ability to control my own pace, amount of mobs pulled and so on. I also find dailies more varied. Though they mostly follow the same pattern of "kill this and collect that," the differences between GL, Tillers, IoT and so on makes them more interesting than the differences between Jade Temple, Stormstout Brewery and Scholomance.

I think it's a little different for everybody, but even the people who absolutely love dungeons do end up getting tired of them eventually. For me, dungeons tend to have a longer shelf life because of the pacing involved. Since you're with a group and the objectives are generally straightforward, you move through the area fairly rapidly. If you don't keep moving, your group is going to leave you behind. Continuously moving isn't a problem, because there's no discussion to be had about what you do next. You know what you do next and you do it.

Solo questing, the pace is much slower, because you're the only one there. The slow pace will be engaging the first couple of times through, but after that, there's no impetus to drive forward with any sort of speed. You've seen the content already, you're all alone, and suddenly you realize there are other things you could be doing with your time. I love solo questing and I'm glad it's an option, but I'll be the first to admit that I get bored of doing the same dailies long before I hit exalted with any given reputation. Repeatedly running the same dungeon entertains me a bit longer.

This is something I've noticed in MMOs with public quest systems, too. I can grind out repetitive public quests for a long time before getting bored, because it's a group effort. Those systems automatically place you in a group (if you opt-in) when you're in a public quest area, and everybody gathered there works toward completing an objective. Your rewards are based on your participation, so there's a drive to cooperate with people in the area, even if you don't say a single word to any of them. The pace of such events are generally very quick and the combat is constant, so you don't have a lot of downtime to think about the fact that you're doing the same thing over and over again.

Basically, playing with other people adds to MMO gameplay in these cases, even if you aren't actively communicating with those people. Keeping pace with other people reduces your downtime (and thus boredom) significantly. I wouldn't want every MMO activity to be based around grouping, and there are parts of the game where the grouping is cumbersome and adds to downtime, but I do think WoW would benefit from a public quest system like we see in other MMOs. They're kiiiiind of poking around at that with the Battlefield: Barrens stuff in patch 5.3, but it isn't a new system implementation, and that's what the game could use well.

@Charles1642 asked:

If someone was returning after taking a year's break, would you recommend starting a new character or leveling from 85?

You can start from level 85. Mists of Pandaria hasn't changed very much to early questing zones, so jumping right in with your old max level character would work best for you. Unless, of course, you want to play a pandaren -- then you need to start from level 1.

@Xcalib00r asked:

was just wondering about Pets; can the Legendary Pets be caught, or are they only there to be killed?

They're only there to be killed with their associated daily quests. Can't catch 'em.

@ShaofHappiness asked:

What kind of cookies do you like?

Keebler Fudge Shoppe Coconut Dreams. They're exactly like Girl Scout Samoas, without that whole Girl Scout limited-edition million-dollars-a-box thing. I have nothing against charity, I just want to get the appropriate value out of my cookie dollars. Charity budget on the left, cookie budget on the right. If you stir them up together, it turns into a mess of value:expenses and that whole donation thing suddenly seems like a bad idea.

Much easier for me to set aside the money with no expectation of return whatsoever.

Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!