Grinding
Latest
A(nother) return to Azeroth, and all that grinding
Clive Thompson is probably my favorite technology writer -- I really enjoy everything he writes (lots of his stuff appears regularly in Wired), and he's got a real talent for not only tracking technological trends, but then explaining them in a way that's interesting and easy to understand. So I was pretty excited to see that he's back playing WoW, and just like a few of us here at WI, he enjoys the regular grind of it all.I don't know whether it's a result of all the Wrath beta news coming out lately, but it seems to me that we're already experiencing a resurgence of players around the expansion. Burning Crusade brought a lot of players back to the game, and it seems like things have started early for the next expansion -- people are returning to level their alts, get their epic mount dailies done, level up their professions, and just generally get back into the mix of things.And Thompson's piece is really about grinding -- like "obedient workers in a Soviet collective," he says, we return to mindlessly killing boars, or ravagers, or Ethereals, or whatever else it is we need to hit that next level of experience or reputation or profession. Why? Because we're rewarded for it. Increasingly, we live in a world where time invested doesn't always equal reward returned. But while grinding in a game like WoW, it always, always does, and that's why we love it so much.
The joy of grinding
I couldn't agree more with Mystic Chicanery -- despite the fact that most players consider the "level grind" to be the most boring part of the game, a stodgy run towards the much more interesting endgame, I've found that I tend to invest myself more in my character while actually leveling up, strangely enough, and it seems to me that endgame is the much more boring part of the equation. While leveling, you get a constant meter (literally) of how much your character is progressing, but after 70, progression becomes much more nebulous, and you have to do a lot more poking around for things like enchants and gems.Of course, the main complaint with the level grind isn't doing it the first time, it's doing it again and again, and thankfully, as Mystic notes, will bring us ten brand new levels to roll through. But maybe I have a bad memory, because even when I do hit 70 with a character, going back to the beginning with a new class or a new faction is a new experience. And Wrathgoing through the same content a second time makes it faster and more interesting to me -- I already know where the hard quest targets are, and I can catch up on lore or secrets that I may have missed.Each to their own, of course -- maybe you've already leveled all nine classes to 70 and couldn't imagine going back and running through Stranglethorn Vale or Hellfire Peninsula one more time. But I've found that I almost prefer the leveling "grind" -- it seems more core to me, improving the character constantly with an XP meter, than the current method at endgame of raiding your way through the instances for gear upgrades.
Ask WoW Insider: Ding before Outland?
Welcome to today's edition of Ask WoW Insider, in which we publish your questions for dissection by the peanut gallery -- now with extra snark and commentary by one of our writers. This week Houldlum writes in:I'm wondering if it's possible to hit level 70 before ever heading out to Outland. I've been working through every zone trying to hit every quest, even if it's grey (they do give a bit of XP). So far I've only skipped the dungeon quests and any group quest I can't solo. My goal is to hit 70 before Outland so I can maximize the gold return from those quests... and to see if I can do it. I have managed to get to 63 on my Alliance Rogue before I hit Outland, but I skipped several Zones. What are your thoughts? Thanks, Houldlum (Falsehould, Fatherhould)It was a light week on questions, so I'm going to dig down and use this one. Short answer: I'm pretty sure you can't. Long answser: Why the heck would you want to? Even if you got xp from anything in the Azeroth, even Cartman would think that grind was nuts.So, anything out there -- at all -- that will give him or her xp until 70. Got questions? Don't wait! Send them to us at ask AT wowinsider DOT com and your query could be up in lights here next week.
"How I made 100,000 gold"
A player by the name of Kunzite recently submitted to us that he had released his gold-making guide, subtitled "How I Made 100,000 Gold." With a title like that, I had to check it out, and it has some very interesting tips in it. It is extremely long, which makes it all the more surprising that it's free. A lot of the tips are along the lines of playing the auction house, but there are also some helpful introductions to concepts like opportunity cost (a vital thing to wrap your head around in WoW), and detailed lists of what crafts you can turn a profit in (if only by disenchanting them), and so on. I know I'll be coming back to this site – I haven't read it all yet, but it is a very nice resource, and who couldn't use a little more gold? I've already implemented one of his suggestions and found it to be quite lucrative: farming for Fel Armaments and Marks of Sargeras from warlocks at Legion Hold. My previous go-to gold-making strategy (fishing in Nagrand) was getting me 200-300g an hour typically; Legion Hold would be more like 400g if I sold everything, and I need the Aldor rep anyway (so I'm selling the Armaments and turning in the Marks). The best part about Legion Hold is that the mobs there are perma-spawned: there are always at least certain number alive at a time, so no matter how many people are farming there, you never have to wait for spawns. Kunzite's guide, like Jame's killer leveling guides (Alliance, Horde), is astonishingly high-quality – and completely free! Go check it out if you have any interest in better ways to make gold. And to Kunzite, thank you for making this great resource available to the community.
The future of Heroic attunements
Eloren over on WoW LJ wonders if Blizzard didn't go far enough when they reduced the required reputation for Heroics to Honored level. Personally, even though I'm much closer to the casual end of the spectrum, I never had a problem with Revered reputation -- with my normal questing to 70 and a few instance runs in each zone, I didn't really have a problem grabbing most of the Heroic reputation keys. But even with Honored, some people with different playstyles (solo players, for example, since lots of reputation comes from running instances) are still having trouble.The good news is that Eloren is basically going to get her wish -- as we talked about last week on the podcast, Blizzard is planning to mix up the ways you can get attuned to a Heroic instance. Heroic Countenance is the first example -- to get attuned to Heroic Magisters', all you've got to do is run the regular once.In fact, I would be surprised if they didn't play around a little bit with attunements -- for one instance, they might require reputation, for another, turn-in tokens, and for another, a good old-fashioned quest chain. Most of the attunements in Burning Crusade were based specifically on reputation, but there's no reason that has to be the same way in Wrath of the Lich King -- why not give players lots of different ways to reach the different Heroics in the endgame?
Officers betting against the raid
After the 20th Supremus kill the game can get a tad boring. There's no doubt about it. Raiders know well that you have to spice things up to keep it fun. One way to do that is to have a lively bunch of people you raid with. With them things can get "interesting" at times. The fellow officers and I in my guild have decided to make things interesting by betting on the number of people that will die during Supremus.For some reason Supremus always manages to kill a few too many people. Not too many that we can't one-shot him, but enough that it makes you scratch your head. No one dies on Illidan, Council, etc... but Supremus? Run for the hills!So to keep the fight interesting someone picks a number, say nine. That number is "the line." Myself and a couple others will take under the line, and a couple others will take over. If less then nine people die, each of us gets 20g. If more than nine die the other folks get 20g each.Is betting against the raid like this a good thing?
Player vs. Everything: Starting over
Most of us have spent a lot of time playing our favorite games. Chances are good that unless you're totally new to the MMOG world, you've got at least one character at some ridiculously high level, armed to the teeth, sitting on a big pile of gold amongst the trophies of your slaughtered foes. You might even be part of a guild and still play that character with your guildmates on a regular basis to go topple foes of ever-increasing power. It's good to be a dragon-slaying, world-destroying, gold-hoarding demigod of awesomeness. That's why it's so tough to start over, sometimes. Whether it's rolling up an alt on your current game or picking up an entirely new game, it can be really frustrating to go from a bloodthirsty, battle-hardened warrior who wades into combat swinging an enormous, glowing two-handed sword to some level 1 nobody with a leather jerkin and a knife. All of your accomplishments on your old character seem pretty far away when level 3 wolves are having you for a light afternoon snack, and a brand new grind stretches out interminably before you. Is it any wonder why plenty of players don't even bother with having alts and stick to the game they like?
Breakfast Topic: Have dailies replaced old fashioned grinding?
One of the stated goals of making daily quests so vast and varied in WoW is to help out those people who would rather quest for money than grind primals all day and night. A good goal, and definitely one that I support. Questing is usually a lot more entertaining than grinding out piles of motes.However, to me it doesn't seem like dailies have replaced grinding as a way of making money. It works fine as an alternative, but it doesn't quite stand up to other ways of generating gold. Dailies make it easier to get money, but it doesn't seem to me like it's the best source of income, contrary to what most people say about daily quests. Dailies allow you to make one hundred gold in an hour, but farming the right primals can get you quite a bit more. Even Fishing in the right places, as Eliah pointed out to me, can double or triple what you could make in that time through daily quests. Let's not forget that the gold generated by daily quests has inflated the market on some items required in crafting, making it even more profitable to grind out the raw materials.What are your thoughts on daily quests as a replacement for old fashioned farming and grinding? As an alternative? Have they done their job well as another option for generating gold, or have they just thrown the market off? Is it possible for anything to actually usurp grinding raw materials as the number one money maker?
MMO MMOnkey: Age of Conan reinvents the early game
Like a damsel in distress, MMO players have been held captive by game openings that have relied heavily, much too heavily, on bounty quests of the "Kill twenty of these and then come back to me" variety. Trapped in chains of tedium, experienced players blitz through early levels to get to the point where something interesting starts to happen while gamers new to the genre often wonder why anyone bothers to play these games before they quit from boredom. At least that's the way it used to be. Lord of the Rings Online took a giant step toward freeing the damsel when they placed the player in a solo instance at the very beginning that gets the player immediately involved in the story that drives the game while also providing instruction in basic game play. It is a terrific way to begin an MMO and the people at Turbine did a great job with it. LotRO weakened the chains but did not quite free the damsel. Now Age of Conan has arrived and by incorporating LotRO's approach into an extended opening that is innovative, immersive and exceptionally well implemented Conan has rescued the damsel by reinventing the early game.
Breakfast Topic: Daily chores
Some people really seem to enjoy repping up with various factions. I am not one of them. I've known people who complete the maximum amount of daily quests on multiple characters. It's fantastic that Blizzard has opened up opportunities for relatively easy gold and reputation, but I wish there was a little more variety in the experience. Prior to Patch 2.4, when the limit was ten, I don't think that I ever completed more than four or five dailies per day. Now that we've been bombarded with Quel'Danas dailies and the limit is twenty-five, I do up to eight on rare occasions. I almost always complete the daily battleground quest, but that's about it most days. I know that they're an excellent source of gold, but they feel like such a chore to me. I find daily questing to be almost as much fun as washing dishes and doing laundry. If it means I never get epic flying mounts on my characters, so be it. How many dailies do you do and what keeps you motivated to do them?
Average Conanite will reach level 80 in 250 hours
Age of Conan game director Gaute Godager said at the launch event in Norway that reaching level 80 will take "on average 250 hours of gameplay," according to videogamer.com.The first few levels will come lightning fast, but the bulk of them up to 60 will be comprised of between two and three hours of gameplay. After that, it will get a bit slower, thanks to some input from beta testers. By our math, that leaves five hours per level including and after 60, but who knows how that will be distributed.Whether this ends up being faster than competing games like World of Warcraft and The Lord of the Rings Online by the end probably depends on your play-style. He said "on average," so does that mean the hardcore achievers will reach the top in 90 hours and the casuals will mosey on up there within 500 hours? There's been a lot of chit chat and speculation in the Massively office about this news. We suppose we'll get a good sense of it by midway through the summer.
Totem Talk: Resto questing
Totem Talk's Matthew Rossi has had a small Horde renaissance this week, and decided to take his slightly dusty Resto shaman out for a spin, healing a heroic MgT run and then running about the IoQD doing the dailies. Turns out he learned a few things in the process. He wrote a little song about it, like to hear it? Here it goes. Okay, I apologize, but there will be no singing. Tell you what, if enough people demand it, I'll belt one out on the next WoW Insider Show I'm on.I've posted in the past about how to quest, grind and otherwise solo on a Restoration shaman, but I didn't go sufficiently into detail as the post ended up being about the odd things people think about shamans. So this week, we'll go more into detail. There are basically two ways you can go about doing this, thanks to the recent changes Blizzard made to healing gear: you can go out and quest in your regular healing set or you can also have a set of DPS gear. Unlike a priest and more like fellow hybrids like druids, you have a choice of what kind of DPS gear to wear. You could have a set of Enhancement mail and a big 2h weapon (since Resto shammies can't dual wield but can use 2h's now) and run around hitting stuff, or you could go for the spell damage gear and imagine that you're a powerful Elemental shaman. My own personal preference (due to that fact that my shaman has a lot of Enhancement gear) is to go the whackity whackity route and Windfury up a 2h. But in the interests of experimentation I tried both spell damage gear and my normal healing setup, and I found that my personal preference is in fact the least effective of the three for the gear I happen to have. I'm sure no one is surprised.At any rate, let's talk turkey. Isn't turkey delicious? Druids can turn into humanoid-turkey hybrids. None of this has anything to do with Shamans of any spec soloing anything, but I've always wondered about the phrase 'let's talk turkey' and how anyone could resist saying "yay, I love stuffing!" after it. I'll get a hold of myself now. Actual details of Shaman soloing behind the jump. Whee!
Age of Conan's raiding treadmill
Race to the level cap. If you're too slow, you lose. If your gear sucks, you lose MORE. The people who got there first have your number and know where you live. You finally struggle to max level -- but you need to raid to get the gear to continue. The game may be built around PvP, but you have to raid in order to get the gear to PvP. You need to raid to get the gear to do more raiding. Then comes the first expansion, and all your old gear is trash. Rinse and repeat. Thus goes the raiding treadmill. Invented by EverQuest and polished to a mirror-finish by World of Warcraft, the raiding treadmill is no stranger to MMOs.Does it really have to happen again? To see all there is to see and partake in all that can be partook, must we jump on the treadmill and, Red Queen-like, run as fast as we can, just to stay in one place? In a recent blog post, Keen looks at the Age of Conan news that performing in the top echelons of PvP in the Border Kingdoms will depend on grinding out mini-games and doing a fair amount of raiding for the gear to compete. In the end, he decides to purchase the game, despite indications he will not be able to fully enjoy the game. Must modern games still reward fanatical devotion so highly? Is there a way in which casual and hardcore players can both enjoy all the game? We'll know in May if Age of Conan's PvE-gameplay can satisfy gamers who don't wish to climb upon the raiding treadmill.
WoW Rookie: Azeroth Reputations
WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know. Grinding for reputation is a part of the game. Think of it as leveling up with different factions. Last week we looked at the levels of reputation. This week we'll examine some of the reputations that you encounter in Azeroth. Each of the major cities represent factions reputations that you can grind up with by completing quests and donating cloth. Increasing your reputation with the cities of your faction gives you the opportunity to purchase their racial mounts and tabards, in addition to discounts from vendors. For example if you play a Human, you can rep up to exalted with Darnasus in order to get a Nightsaber mount. Be warned, though because of scaling restrictions some models may not have access to all racial mounts.
Blizzard may be considering granting levels to recruit-a-friend users
We've been wondering for months now what Blizzard is holding back. Wrath of the Lich King seems like a very competent, well-planned addition to World of Warcraft, but it's all so samey. More zones, more loot, more content, the usual. The addition of the Death Knight and a PvP-focused overland zone are interesting, but hardly revolutionary - Burning Crusade changed so much about the game that it's been hard not to be a little dissapointed. Now Massively's sister site WoW Insider offers a hint that perhaps there's more to the expansion than the company has let on. WI reports on a post to the MMO-Champion site, from a forum-goer who found something intriguing in the newest 2.4.2 patch notes. Buried in the code are several programming strings that hint at big changes to the WoW Recruit-A-Friend program. At the moment all the program offers is a few days of extra play time if your companion opens up a subscription. The strings, though, suggest that someday your referred friend may be tied much more closely to you. Hints are there that you'll be able to teleport your friend to you, that recruiting a friend may increase your reputation with certain in-game factions, and even that you may be able to grant levels to your friend's character. If these additions to the game are to be believed, this system will have limits; you won't be able to teleport your friend around beyond a certain level, and characters that have leveled past a certain point will no longer be able to have levels granted to them.The notes also imply that your own character's level is somehow tied to the number of levels you can grant a friend; perhaps some sort of metacurrency. This is fascinating news, if true, and hints at the possibility of even more changes coming to World of Warcraft in coming months. Certainly here at Massively we've been talking enough about subjects related to this; it's wonderful to see Blizzard coming at the problem of the endless grind from such a unique angle.
WoW Rookie: Introduction to Reputation
WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know. As a social game, it's fun to make friends in an MMORPG environment. In World of Warcraft, you must also make friends (and sometimes enemies) with members of various faction groups. Reputation (rep) is gained through killing a faction's enemies and completing quests to assist a particular group. Obviously, killing member's of a particular faction reduces rep. For example, killing Bloodsail Pirates increases rep with Booty Bay (Steamwheedle Cartel), while decreasing rep with the Bloodsail Buccaneers. There are many reasons why we may increase or decrease reputations. You may be asked to do so to as a quest objective or to gain particular rewards. By gaining exalted reputation with the major cities you have access to purchase their racial mounts (provided your they may be scaled to your racial model) and their guild tabards. Higher levels of rep also allow discounts on goods and repair services from vendors, and higher prices for selling useless items. For the next couple of weeks, we'll be taking a look at the ins and outs of reputation on WoW Rookie.
First Impressions: Last Chaos
How would one make an expansion to a game called Last Chaos? Second-to-Last Chaos? We-lied-there's-more-Chaos? What would you do? Seems like pigeonholing to me. The title of Aeria Games' free-to-play MMO, Last Chaos, might seem a bit misleading. There is plenty of the usual fare running around: knights, mages, rogues and ... purple horses? While it may not be chaotic, Last Chaos is certainly a little different and by different, I mean in the way that your distant cousin is a little "different". You know the one. Last Chaos may not be grabbing any big headlines lately but that doesn't mean there isn't a game here. The people at Aeria Games know what they're doing. They've certainly done it enough and while Last Chaos might not sweep you off your feet, the game is worth taking for a spin. Especially if you've ever said to yourself "I'd really prefer to run through this dungeon in a leather miniskirt and some fishnet stockings." If that's the case, Last Chaos is for you. Let's enter the last chaos you'll ever enter ... again. %Gallery-20202%
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Aftermath
The Care and Feeding of Warriors plays catch-up this week with Patch 2.4. Matthew Rossi has been tanking the new five man, doing badge runs, and being obscenely lucky on drops this week, to the point where he's almost embarrassed about it. The word 'almost' was used advisedly.So this week I've been running around doing as much of the new content as I can, dailies, the new five man, an abortive run into Sunwell Plateau (no matter what your friend in the Illidan guild tells you, you cannot heal that instance in Karazhan gear, not that I really expected to survive) and of course the usual raiding, which includes our badge runs into Kara and ZA. As primarily a tank, I usually pass on DPS gear unless no dedicated DPS players need/want them, so while i have a few good pieces it hasn't been my main focus.This week, however, the loot fairy came along and just threw gear at me. On Wednesday night, our usual SSC clear netted me World Breaker, a mace I've always stared at with wonder. First off, I've always loved the model. Check it out, that thing is wicked. I never expected to get the weapon... like I said, prot spec... but nobody else who could use it wanted it. So I snatched it up greedily and made cooing Gollumesque noises about it and went on with tanking. Since I have some decent pieces for my chest and legs but lacked any plate helmet, shoulder or glove option for whackery, I ran out and picked the new Savage Plate gear for those slots and enchanted/gemmed them up. I knew I wasn't going to set the world on fire but I thought I could have some fun in BG's.Amazingly, it turned out that I was right.
Blood Sport: Hitting the brick wall of 1800
V'Ming - who thinks that gnome warlocks are travesties of nature and need to be KOSed - shares thoughts and ideas on becoming deadlier at the Arenas. He also dabbles in the dark arts in Blood Pact.You've formed your ideal Arena team. You have great expectations and diligently put in time and effort to claw your way up the ratings. You dust yourself off after defeats and trudge on, knowing that great things will come your way if you persist.Gradually your team rating improves, and the sweet taste of victory more than makes up for the disappointment of defeats. You move past 1600, and 1700 eventually. You notice that victories are becoming scarcer, and defeats seem a lot more painful. Your team hits 1800 - woot! - and suddenly match wins seem to all but dry up - and your weekly matches start to feel like exercises in futility.Welcome to hardcore Arena - where your opponents are much more likely to be decked out in full Season 3 gear and less likely to give you an "easy" win. You start to run into a lot more cookie-cutter comps - you know, the ones you read about here. The queues are long but the matches are short - and you've run out of encouraging or witty things to say to your team while waiting. It's almost an awkward, seething silence between matches, and the game becomes a test of patience. "Did I sign up for this?" You ask yourself.
Breakfast Topic: The price of flight
As recently reported, Kharmen EU Talnivarr has reportedly paid 20,000 gold for the Amani War Bear. Kharmen reportedly raised the cash for the enormous land epic ride on her which raised questions about how much gold grinding would trigger a gold farming alert. The 20,000 price tag seems pretty outrageous considering I'm still puttering along, like many others, on my regular Windriders on all of my 70s. If the Artisan Riding Skill were important to me, I'd make more of an effort to save the 5,000 gold for the mount, but I find it to be low on my priority list. There is no indication that the cost of epic flight will be reduced in the future.
