daily-quests
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Patch 6.1: Trade Garrison Resources for extra daily quests
I find it amusing how Garrison Resources were so coveted at the beginning of the expansion, and now I simply can't spend them fast enough. Patch 6.1 is changing this with several new resource sinks. We've already talked about rush orders and follower reroll items which can be purchased with resources, and next on the list is Scouting Missives. You can buy Scouting Missives from your garrison quartermaster at a cost of 200 Garrison Resources each. Scouting Missives unlock one of the daily quests that reward 800 Apexis Crystals, e.g. Scouting Missive: Darktide Roost. These are separate from your regular daily quest, so you can do as many of them as you want as long as you have the resources to spend. You can see the full list of quests here. If you're using any of the Apexis Crystal gear this should help you fast track the latest upgrades (ilvl 670 in patch 6.1). I'll probably use them to complete the Securing Draenor achievement.
Garrisons 101: What are Strategic Assaults?
Strategic assaults are max level daily quests found within your garrison's Town Hall/Great Hall. You get to choose between one of two options every day -- a solo quest, group quest, or PvP quest. It appears that a solo quest will always be one of the two options. These quests are your primary means of obtaining Apexis Crystals -- 800 for the solo quests and 1000 for the group/PvP quests. Apexis Crystals are primarily used to purchase and upgrade armor but can also be used to purchase pets and mounts from certain reputation vendors. Each zone in Draenor has level 100 areas to facilitate these quests. The quests involve going to the designated area and filling up a progress bar by killing mobs and interacting with objects. They are fairly time consuming, but the advantage is only having to do one large quest instead of many smaller quests. Don't worry, completing a single strategic assault is nowhere near the time commitment of patch 5.0 dailies. This will be a 20-30 minute venture for the average player.
Scenarios, daily quests, and events in Warlords
It's true that scenarios still exist in Warlords of Draenor, but it's also true that their existence is radically altered - no more the easy three person content you can queue for at max level for easy rewards. Now, you may be trumpeting this as a grand thing, and in some ways you may even be right, but scenarios and heroic scenarios served a purpose in Mists and I'm starting to be concerned about their removal and the change in dungeons. One of the things to keep in mind is, with the removal of valor points and the conversion of many items to costing gold, we're essentially taking out the mechanism that once served as a consolation prize when it was first introduced back in The Burning Crusade. Furthermore, by removing scenarios as content players can essentially run whenever and wherever they wish, we're winnowing down options at endgame. The Timeless Isle model for endgame content has its flaws, and converting all of Warlords to it has some potential pitfalls. For starters, the heavy de-emphasis on daily quests combined with the lack of scenarios and the placing of heroic dungeons behind the proving ground barrier removes a solid amount of low pressure, easily accessed content. Considered separately these ideas aren't an issue, but when you put them all together you can start to see one problem - they remove choices for players, and in doing so offer no replacement. This may be by design. Some players lament that there's too much to do in Mists of Pandaria's endgame. Starved for choice is a real phenomenon, and it may be a good move to thin out those options. But it may not.
WoW Archivist: More beta surprises
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? As the Warlords of Draenor beta rolls onward, Blizzard keeps managing to surprise us. Recently we've learned about a huge overhaul to guild systems, random upgrades for quest rewards, and an extra-awesome core hound mount. In the last WoW Archivist column, we looked at the surprises from the original beta and the betas of The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions. This time, we continue with Wrath and also look at the surprises during the Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria betas. (As before, I won't go into storyline surprises here. And I won't cover surprises announced at BlizzCon outside of a beta. BlizzCon already has its own feature for controversial surprises.) Beta of the Lich King (continued) Goodbye, night elf Sylvanas. Through vanilla and TBC, the Sylvanas model looked like a night elf rather than an undead high elf. With Sylvanas poised to play a big role in Northrend, Blizzard clearly needed to revamp her model. Players worried that they would have to look at the old night elf model through all her lore moments in Wrath. A build in August 2008 gave her an initial makeover (middle image above) and lore-focused players breathed a sigh of relief. Clearly she still needed some work, but at least she wasn't a night elf anymore. A later build in September gave her the fantastic model we see today. The same build also updated the models for Varian Wrynn and Alexstraza.
WoW Archivist: Warlords of Draenor hates The Burning Crusade
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? In many ways, The Burning Crusade was the birth of modern WoW. Most of TBC's innovations are still going strong in WoW today and have been ever since their introduction. Looking back, it's striking how many key features of WoW were absent in classic, only unveiled during the game's first expansion. Even more striking, however, is how many of these innovations Warlords of Draenor seems poised to undo. Just as Garrosh will undo the transformation of Draenor into Outland, Warlords seeks to unravel most of what Blizzard innovated during TBC. The next expansion will take us through a portal into a very different WoW. Archivist has now covered all the major patches of The Burning Crusade: patch 2.0.1, patch 2.0.3, patch 2.1, patch 2.2, patch 2.3, and patch 2.4. Now it's time to review the expansion as a whole -- and explore how Warlords will make most of TBC's innovations disappear into the nether. Dawn of the quest hub The idea seems so obvious it's hard to imagine that classic WoW actually didn't have quest hubs, at least not in the strict sense. WoW was the first MMO to promote the idea of leveling mainly through quests rather than grinding mobs. So Blizzard had no model to look at when they were designing the original quests. In classic WoW, quests were put into the game wherever the developers thought they made sense, mostly from a lore perspective. Quests didn't necessarily guide you through a zone area by area. Quests were scattered, and their objectives were, too. They weren't breadcrumbs -- they were meant to be discovered. They didn't hold your hand -- they sent you on an adventure, like it or not.
Breakfast Topic: Do you revisit old dailies?
We're heading towards the end of daily quests, and while it's more than likely that no one will be mourning them, I've started to look back on them fondly since finding out they're going away. (But it's through the same aged haze of nostalgia that I look back on 40-man raiding with, so it's probably not to be trusted.) I've revisited the Isle of Quel'Danas, done past-expansion fishing dailies (I'm still trying to get those crocolisks), and done a ton of Cataclysm dailies. When I don't have to do them for advancement and I don't have to force myself into completing them every day, the dailies available really don't seem so bad. Some of them, like the Quel'danas bombing run or helping bear cubs in Hyjal, are even -- dare I say it? -- fun. But then again, that could just be the nostalgia talking. So today I'm wondering, dear readers: do you ever revisit old dailies? Do they seem more entertaining in hindsight than they did when you were on the reputation treadmill and grinding out dailies as quickly as possible? Tell us about it!
Age of Conan's January Director letter talks PvP gear, daily quests, and crafting system
Age of Conan's January Game Director letter delved into the game's most recent patch as well as the upcoming re-balancing of PvP armor, an update on the crafting system overhaul, and a look at new daily quests. Additionally, the next world boss to start rampaging through Hyboria (which will have more frequent spawns than those before it) will begin its menacing spree on February 5th. PvP armor will be receiving the same re-balancing treatment that PvP weapons recently got, giving newly level-80 players a fighting chance to land some good blows and dish out damage in PvP. As an update on the long-awaited crafting revamp, the letter notes that all existing items can be broken down into salvaged components for upcoming crafting recipes. And finally, new daily location quests will give players a reason (and rewards) for traveling across Hyboria each day and visiting different locations.
MMO Mechanics: Encouraging the daily grind
I've written before about how developers use clever mechanics to lower the barrier to entry in order to encourage more people to play MMOs, but how do they keep players interested after they have rolled a new character? More often than not, MMOs greatly benefit from hanging onto players for as long as possible, so encouraging regular play is a massive priority for development teams. As a genre that thrives on creating a connected and dynamic community, MMOs are strengthened by keeping up the number of players that log in daily. This also encourages longevity since players make meaningful connections with the people they are linked to through daily play. Utilising daily quests, creating an ongoing need for crafted equipment, and necessitating the farming of materials for the good of the collective are all very accessible ways to encourage players to log into their favourite MMO world on a regular basis. As useful as developers may find them, though, the appeal of repeatable daily content is hotly debated by MMO players. For some, low-octane daily content is a brilliant way to unwind that doesn't require a regimented schedule to complete, but many others find the repetition inherent in some daily content tiresome and uninspired. In this week's MMO Mechanics, I'm going to look at the various applications of daily content in today's MMOs while weighing up the pros and cons of several of these techniques.
The Daily Grind: What do you need to do every day in your games of choice?
My wife and I have been exploring Loot Island (or Timeless Isle, as it's more commonly known) in World of Warcraft as sort of a daily lark. It's not our main game (that honor goes to Final Fantasy XIV) and we don't really need to keep getting more gear, but it's a lot of fun for us to just partner up and clear our way through several Elites without blinking. Actual daily quests are a third or fourth priority for us; we just need to get in that little romp. Pretty much every MMO provides some sort of incentive for logging in every single day, but there aren't many players who actually use that as their to-do list. The question for today is what do you need to do every day? Do you want to get your daily quests out of the way every single day? Do you want to run at least one dungeon? Roleplay? Earn PvP currency? Craft? Even just stand in the center of a city and spam chat channels? 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 Mog Log: Making nice with beastmen in Final Fantasy XIV
I'm going to type a couple of words at the end of this paragraph, and I really need everyone reading to keep it together. I know these two words are frightening, believe me. But if you can just take a deep breath, I promise you it's all right. Ready? Here they are: daily quests. No, I -- sir, please put down the torch. Ma'am, stop eating your chair. That's not the exit; that's the window, and we're two stories up, and -- well, that went about as well as I had expected. Most of you are just shaking and silently screaming. While I'm definitely in the minority in terms of liking daily quests, that's mostly insofar as I don't find them vile anti-hope toxins. (I also was not around for the launch of Mists of Pandaria.) The addition of beast tribe dailies in Final Fantasy XIV might not set some people on fire. But the way these quests are handled not only is pretty darn good but might actually appeal even if you're one of the people fleeing in horror at the very mention of dailies.
The frustration of dailies and the cost of reputation rewards
There's been a lot of commentary, here and around the web, on why dailies become so hated during Mists of Pandaria. One aspect, though, that I feel most people haven't covered is the issue of reputation rewards. All through this expansion, almost every expansion reward has required either honor or valor points. Your reward for finally get Revered with the Klaxxi was having to run a few dungeons so you could actually buy the stuff you unlocked. That put an extra twinge of pressure on the whole thing. Not only were you trying to figure what faction to grind, there was a voice in the back of your head, "I'm nearly valor capped. I'd better do my dailies so I actually unlock something to spend them on." While getting valor from the dailies themselves might have got you part of the way there, you still felt like had one more gate before you could actually get the stuff you wanted. In Cataclysm, things were different. Once you hit exalted with the Dragonmaw, you didn't need valor points. All you had to do was head to the quartermaster, buy Boots of Sullen Rock, a raid-level piece of gear, and add them to your tanking set.
What if dailies weren't daily?
Alright people you'll have to bear with me on this one. In my quest to earn money on a near-dead server with a terrible economy and a glacial auction house, I've been making a farm. Playing nice with the Tillers, pretending to like Gina Mudclaw, that sort of thing. And suddenly, it's occurred to me that a big part of the reason why I dislike daily quests so much is the fact that they're, well, daily. What do I mean? Well, this is, of course, simply my opinion. The way I play is pretty grindy, so if I decide I want to do the Klaxxi rep right now, I could happily spend five or six hours just grinding it out watching TV or on Mumble with friends. What I really dislike is that I do my handful of quests, then all my impetus is lost as I have to wait until 3am server time, or whenever they reset for you, to continue. By then I don't want to. If I could do my five hours then lose interest for a couple of weeks, then come back, I'd like it a lot more.
What is World of Warcraft?
On December 23, 2004, I rolled my first character in World of Warcraft. It seems almost impossible to imagine that this was a little over nine years ago, but I still remember the day clear as a bell. A friend told me where to make a character and what faction to use, and offered me a guild invite the moment I logged in -- an Alliance guild that, to my knowledge, no longer exists. That began a journey that was a long, impossible at times, climb to level 60. Along the way, I made a ton of friends both in the guild and out, and when I hit level 60 it seemed like an incredible accomplishment. But as I shook off the haze of congratulations and cheers, I realized I had little to no idea what came after you hit level 60 -- and frankly, neither did anyone else. Ironforge was the place to be. If you were Alliance it was the only place with an Auction House. Players spent hours upon hours outside the front gates dueling each other. There was no PvP as we know it today -- Battlegrounds didn't exist, so PvP was relegated to long, drawn out battles between Tarren Mill and Southshore. The options seemed to be as follows: Run Stratholme, Scholomance, and UBRS to collect your blue dungeon set. Go raid either Molten Core or Onyxia's Lair. And ... that was it. Needless to say, my next option was to roll an alt and find a raid guild. What other choice did I have, at the time? As the game has progressed over the last nine years, those choices have expanded into a flurry of content that dwarfs everything that has come before it. And that makes me wonder -- just what is World of Warcraft, now?
Breakfast Topic: Do you still do your dailies?
Mists of Pandaria had a lot of daily quests -- a lot. We're sure you could traverse Pandaria and do every possible daily in a single day if you really worked at it... but would you really want to? This late in the expansion, I imagine a lot of us are exhausted of the same old dailies... or are just doing the ones they particularly want to do to up reputation or collect valor and other goodies. So tell us, readers: do you still dutifully do your dailies? Do you have a new alt that's started working on their own daily reputation grind? Or have you moved on and left dailies in the dust?
The Mog Log: Preparing for patch 2.1 in Final Fantasy XIV
All right, everyone, the time is nearly upon us. Final Fantasy XIV is about to unleash its first big patch. Please remain calm and take everything slowly. If necessary, painkillers may be consumed to reduce swelling. Anti-anxiety medications are not recommended. A friend of mine noted on Twitter that the presentation for this patch reads more like an expansion than just a patch, and I have to agree. There is a lot being added to the game with this patch, more than you would expect. I haven't been playing around with it on the test server thanks to the lack of a test server, but we've still seen enough information to have some idea of what comes next. So let's talk about patch 2.1. When it finally goes live, where will you go? What will you do? How can you get the most out of Final Fantasy XIV's major drop?
Breakfast Topic: Will you miss your favorite daily quests?
Daily quests... love 'em or hate 'em, they're a reality of our gaming lives -- though, to much cheer, there will be less focus on dailies in Warlords. But with the thought of fewer dailies in our future, we have to look back on the dailies that were and wonder if we might actually miss them when they're gone. After all, plenty of daily quests are entertaining -- at least the first time. It's the monotonous grind of it all that gets old. Lately, I've been going through a lot of Cataclysm dailies on my monk to pick up reputation that I hadn't bothered with while leveling and -- aside from the trek from Deepholm to Uldum -- there's nothing too tedious about the process, but in a few weeks I might be singing a different tune. So what about you, readers? Do you have a favorite, do-every-day daily? A hub of dailies you particularly enjoy (or enjoyed)? And with Blizzard posed to tone down daily quests, are you going to miss them when they're gone?
The demise of the daily quest in Warlords of Draenor
Haven't you heard? Daily quests are going the way of the dodo. There will be no such thing in Warlords of Draenor. This topic came up in the first WoW Source, but we also heard about it at BlizzCon. Dailies were first introduced in The Burning Crusade, and historically they've usually had reputations tied to them. The difference was, a lot of those earlier reputations were totally optional for things such as mounts or pets. The reason daily quests received such a bad rap in Mists was entirely the fault of the Golden Lotus and all of the things hidden behind that grind. It appears that the new solution for end game world content going forward is the Timeless Isle variety of gameplay. I would agree this is preferable to the 5.0 dailies, but that doesn't necessarily mean daily quests need to be phased out completely. I actually enjoy daily quests when they don't feel like a requirement. I thought the Isle of Thunder was a good balance between the two extremes. I could go and hunt for rares if I wanted, or I could get some guaranteed valor and gold with the daily quests.
The Mog Log: Everything but the endgame in Final Fantasy XIV's 2.1
I can't promise to anyone that this column will not mostly be about housing. I'd like to, but I just can't make that promise. Yes, it's time to analyze Final Fantasy XIV's upcoming patch 2.1 with an eye toward something other than the various direct endgame changes. Truth be told, I think all of these features will still have a pretty big impact on the endgame landscape, but they're not going to have the direct impact of new dungeons or the like. They're going to add money, they're going to offer story, and they're going to offer a place to congregate. Worth noting is that the Lightning event currently running in Final Fantasy XIV is running until December 9th. Does that mean that patch 2.1 is dropping then? I can't say that for sure, but it would make a certain amount of logical sense. So let's turn our eyes to the patch and start speculating.
The Queue: Back in my day
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. Time for an almost completely irrelevant history lesson, kids! EWOKinLA asked: I wonder how long it will take the playerbase to realize that without dalies, a significant source of gold making is gone from the game?
Breakfast Topic: Is the Timeless Isle still keeping your attention?
We're in the third week of patch 5.4 and the Timeless Isle is still buzzing, but the population does seem to have dropped somewhat. There's actual living mobs walking around for me to quickly finish the daily and I'm still working towards the achievement when I can, but I'm definitely not farming the Timeless Coins as fervently as I used to. I've instead found myself camping certain rares, like Garnia for the pet, while chatting and fishing with others who are doing the same. Overall, I like how the Timeless Isle turned out, but I think I may have gone a little bit too hardcore with it in the beginning, so I've decided to tone it down to avoid burning out. %Poll-84824%
