quests
Latest
PTR Notes: How much extra quest XP?
One of the features of patch 2.3 that I'm very much anticipating is the hastened leveling curve for characters between level 20 and 60. In addition to the XP required per level being reduced by 20%, loot from leveling dungeons improving, and "many" outdoor elites being made non-elite (not including Hogger, thankfully), the patch notes list that "the amount of experience granted by quests has been increased between levels 30 and 60". Which is nice, but the math lover in me wants (nay, demands) to know precisely how much the increase is.Fortunately, Tekkub is on it. He's compiling a spreadsheet with quest XP changes over at Google Docs, and he needs your help to collect more data. If you want to help, you'll need a character on the PTR in the affected level range (30–60), and you'll need to go do some quests and note down how much XP you get from them. Then just email Tekkub (his email address is on the spreadsheet) with your data, and the collective information base of the WoW population will be increased! Ah, science. Personally I'm not seeing much of a pattern on the spreadsheet yet, but I'm sure there is one, and we will figure it eventually.
My day in Dustwallow Marsh on the PTR
I finally managed to do some poking around on the PTR today after two days of trying to get my characters transfered over, and so far it's been a pleasant surprise. My alliance shaman hasn't made it over yet, but my horde paladin, shaman and warrior all did, and so I spent some time exploring the new quest content in Dustwallow Marsh. The Shady Rest Inn quest chain is finally completed!So far, any fears that there aren't quests for the Horde in the marsh are overstated. I've found plenty on my Belfadin, between quests to blow up oozes with electricity, quests to wrangle raptor feathers, escort smelly people on flowerpicking expeditions, and kill Grimtotem Tribe who are acting suspiciously. There are suspicious hijinks afoot, let me tell you. (I'm trying to avoid spoilers here.) The quest drops are about dead-on for the level, decent greens that seem to plug up some itemization holes (including a nice mail chestplate, featured in the screenshot, that a newly 40 enhancement shaman would like as well as a nifty pally sword for up and coming paladin tanks) and while they're not crazy or overpowered, they're about just right for their level all told. Starter greens, yes, but solid ones.Hopefully I'll get my alliance on soon, I want to follow up the Missing Diplomat quest chain. (Note, don't follow that link if you don't want to be spoiled.) So far, Dustwallow seems to be shaping up nicely for those of us looking for new mid level content.Update: As my draenei has just popped into existence on the PTR, I have an awesome change to report: the boat from Menethil to Theramore now has a crew, complete with a vendor who even sells reagents. This, my friends, is really awesome.
.jpg.cf.jpg)
Breakfast Topic: Daily Quest design
I've been doing the daily quests a lot lately (for time invested vs. reward received, they are great), but I kind of agree with a comment one of you readers made earlier this week-- sooner or later, they just feel like a job you're doing. I'm still glad Blizzard is down with the idea-- patch 2.3 is going to bring cooking and PvP daily quests to do.But I still the idea is missing something. So this morning, we're giving the mic to you-- what would your perfect Daily Quest be? It has to be interesting enough and varied enough to keep doing day after day, and yet it has to be simple enough to do in a short amount of time. A good daily quest can't be anything that epic, either-- a daily quest to kill just one guy over and over would be a little strange, but it has to be epic enough that you want to keep doing it every 24 hours. Taking out the trash is too boring for us adventurers to call a "quest."So if you were designing the perfect daily quest, what would it be? What day-to-day jobs in Azeroth would make for a good task for players to do for a reward every day?
Got your ram yet?
Did you get your Brewfest ram yet? I have to say, ashamedly, that I haven't-- I moved to a new apartment last week and was without internet long enough that I wasn't able to start Brewfest right away, and now I fear I'm too far behind to even get started. You need 600 Brewfest tickets to get the ram, and with all the quests (despite the bugs), you are supposed to be able to pick up around 100 tickets a day (30, if you're good, from the two keg runs you can do every 12 hours, and 40 from the Bark for the brewery quests). Add the tickets from the one-time quests for that, and you're looking at just under a week of grinding to get the Racing Ram for yourself.Unfortunately, Brewfest is shutting down on Tuesday, which means even if I worked like mad until then, odds are I wouldn't be able to get 600 tickets in time (not to mention I need some training-- I just did another keg delivery run, and only picked up a little over 20 tickets). So if, like me, you're starting late, you're probably out of luck this year.However, Aeus has good news-- Brewfest (and the ram racing) will be back again next year, and you can save all your tickets until then. Of course, next year, considering the popularity, they'll probably have even cooler prizes to spend tickets on, but still-- if you're left in the lurch with Brewfest tickets, stick 'em in your bank and wait until next Brewfest. Hallow's End is next!
Seeing low level quests again
Tenehuini over on the EU forums has an excellent point: currently, higher level characters have no way at all of seeing which NPCs, at a glance, have lower-level quests for them. What we need is another set of exclamation points, a toggled way of showing which NPCs have quests for us, even if they're below our current level.Aeus says it's a good idea that just hasn't been acted on yet, but I'll add my voice to the crowd asking for action. Before, when lower level quests didn't grant XP or rep, this wasn't that big a deal-- if you were going back to do a certain low level quest (for lore or completion purposes), you probably knew where it was anyway. But since reputation has been buffed on lowbie quests, there's value in knowing where quests are. And there's really no reason for Blizzard to hide that info, anyway-- the quests are viewable right after you talk to the questgiver, so why not throw a exclamation point up there?The only question, then, is what color. Later in the thread, Readbeard comes up with a whole list of exclamation point colors-- green, yellow, orange and red for quest difficulty, and black and gray for pre- or post-level status. As good an idea as that sounds to us WoW veterans, my guess is that Blizzard won't vibe with it-- explaining all the different colored exclamation points to a new player might be a little tough. But still, a toggle-able lowbie quest exclamation should be easy to implement, and would help those folks headed back to the starter areas to pick up experience, rep, or whatever else they want.
Leveling improvements for Patch 2.3
Are you in the midst of leveling a character between 20 and 60? Well right now is the time to stop everything, rush over to this forum post from Blizzard, and sing a happy song while you hurry up and wait! That's right, in answer to the crying pleas of casual alt-oholics everywhere, Blizzard is finally speeding up the tedious leveling curve for old world content in patch 2.3, adding in a bunch of new quests, nerfing a lot of the nastiest bad guys, and buffing a whole bunch of the items they drop.Here's a summarized list of the changes, with the full post by Vaneras copied for you beyond the link below. Amount of experience needed to level reduced by 15% per level between 20 and 60. Experience gained from completing quests increased between levels 30 and 60. Outdoor elite quests will now now be soloable, with the same (or better) rewards. About 60 new quests and a new goblin town based in Dustwallow Marsh (levels 30 to 40) Level ranges for old dungeons to be narrowed down a bit (so that if you are high enough to start them, you are high enough to finish them too) Increased questing experience for dungeon quests. Buffed up item drops from dungeon bosses. As Vaneras says, "Though we've given you a few examples of the things to come, we think everyone will pleasantly surprised when they see the full extent of the changes discussed above." Keep reading to see all the juicy details.
Players want more mid-level content!
I was intrigued to read the results of the poll over at Kinless' Chronicles. Before they moved from their old blog hosting provider they started a poll asking what people wanted the most in World of Warcraft.Of all the poll results, I was most interested by the fact that 64% of respondents wanted more level 20-60 content and only 15% wanted more end-game content. Also of note is that only 12% wanted more races in the game. So in other words, people don't want new "starter areas", they want alternatives to the "grinding content" that they've run so many times they can do it in their sleep.I pretty much agree with all the poll results and wonder why Blizzard seems to have turned a blind eye to the obvious. I think it's fair to say that most of us have one or two high or maxed-level characters, and a handful of lower level characters we "mess around with" trying to find something we like. So why don't they develop new mid-range content?What format do you see new mid-level content content being packaged in? New zones? New quests? New instances? What about just new items? Personally, when I played The Sims, I always loved the "item packs" that gave me new items to play with in-game. They weren't a content expansion, they were pretty inexpensive, but they offered some new items to spice up gameplay. I think this could be a cheap way for Blizzard to throw the mid-level people a proverbial bone without spending a lot of development time.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Protection
The Care and Feeding of Warriors narrowly avoided a prophylactic joke in the title this week. Seriously, Matthew Rossi actually went to sleep chuckling about how funny it was going to be. Thankfully, when he woke up he realized he had been tired the night before and the joke was stupid, so he decided not to make it. Of course, by telling you this, he gets you to imagine all sorts of jokes that he may or may not have actually made.We all know that changes are coming to just about every class in 2.3, and one of those changes is one that is intended to increase the solo play ability of dedicated healers. This is great news, of course, because it shows that the folks at Blizzard are interested in making sure that all specs have at least some viability for the aspects of the game that are necessary to prepare for instancing and raiding, namely farming for mats and questing for the repair money we all need without having to level another toon to 70 just to do our farming for us. That's why we checked the upcoming changes to warriors to see how they addressed solo prot warrior scaling.Sound of a lot of crickets chirping.Well, they nerfed mace spec. That'll help prot warriors solo and quest because... it will upset PvP warriors? No, that doesn't seem like it would help. Devastate combines the effects of sunder armor? Well, I mean... good for tanking, but not really a tremendous boost to soloing unless the DPS of the attack is going up considerably. As it stands, devastate does half weapon damage, basically. It was briefly doing enough damage to be viable when it was changed to let it hit with both weapons if you were dual wielding (many prot warriors dual wield when trying to do damage because of the spec's increase to one handed weapon damage) but then that was changed back and they were left up soloing creek without a boat, as it were.The tactical mastery change? Does nothing at all for or against prot warriors.Disarm immunity gone? Well, Weapon Mastery is an arms talent. I fail to see how nerfing the top tier of an arms talent in any way helps protection warriors solo content or do daily quests. I guess I'm just blind.Seriously, I am always for a class getting buffed as long as the buffs don't make them too powerful, and the changes to healing on gear don't strike me as overpowered. I'm not angered by the changes to healing spec soloability. I just want to know why warriors are the only class expected to so thoroughly eviscerate their own soloing capacity in order to tank.
Totem Talk - Where do they get those wonderful totems?
Totem Talk talks about totems this week, in a stunning and entirely unexpected turn of events that no one could possibly have forseen even if said non forseeing types were actually Farseer Nobundo himself. Well, okay, he probably could have seen this coming. Matthew Rossi once again apologizes for the incoherence of the introductory paragraph. He didn't see this coming.Okay, so you have decided to roll a new shaman. You start off in the starting area, fresh faced and ready to run around dropping totems only to discover you haven't got one yet. Confused, you run around with a mace hitting things until you reach level four, when the questgivers suddenly remember Oh, right, this class is supposed to be about dropping pointed, decorative sticks into the ground and you get your first totem quest.The totem quests are a fun, sometimes easy, sometimes challenging way for a new shaman to get a handle on the class. Well, I think they're fun, anyway. Except that water one, that one is hard for a horde to pull off... well, to be fair it's not much easier for alliance, really. As you might expect, horde and alliance shamans have different questgivers and as such different quests in (mostly) different zones. The horde ones require a bit more travel than the alliance ones, which were put in for the expansion and, in my opinion, are slightly better in their design and play. But that's to be expected as Blizzard put the lessons they'd learned designing the original quests into play for the new ones.Anyway, we'll talk about the horde quests first, as is fitting for horde shamans have been around longer.
Captain Blackbeard's favorite piratical quests
Yarrr maties! It be me, ol' Cap'n Blackbeard, here ta tell ya about some of of me favorite quests in Azeroth! What, ye don't think us pirates are noble enough t'go on quests? Well, ye're right-- obeying is for landlubbin' scallywags. But we'll do anything to get piratey treasure, so occasionally yer pirate captain assists in a quest or two in between his normal piratical duties (those being combing his luxurious black beard, and makin' landlubbers walk the plank).And when that happens, it's only best pirate quests for your blackbearded leader! Here's my favorite pirate quests in the game, in no particular order, ye scurvy-ridden dogs!Pirate Hats Ahoy! Pirate hats ahoy is right! There's no bigger humiliation to a pirate than stealin' 'is hat, and those Southsea scallywags are askin' fer it! Go to Steamwheedle Port in Tanaris at level 40, and talk to Haughty Modiste-- she'll send you south to a secret pirate cove where it'll be time for fisticuffs! And don't forget to grab Southsea Shakedown while you're there, too-- you'll need to kill the same lubbers for that one.Deep Ocean, Vast Sea The ocean, she's a mean mistress, and ye can't know Davy Jones' locker until ye been down in it, fightin' fer yer life! At level 12 in Darkshore (at Auberdine), Gorbold Steelhand will send ye on the hardest journey ye've ever seen-- some say the hardest in the game! I don't know what ye mongrels are caterwhalin' about. Just swim down there and get the chests! And when you get back, scrub the deck until yer cap'n can see his handsome face in it! Finish the job or get fed to the kraken!
Long, exceptional, and hidden questlines
A query on the forums for what the longest questline in the game might be brings up this amazing page over on WoW Wiki-- a great collection of "long, exceptional, or hidden questlines" in the World of Warcraft. We've covered pretty much all of these quests before (including this cool compendium of quests you've got to do if you haven't done yet at 70), but this is a great and well-written guide to (mostly) higher level quests that have to be done to be believed.As for the actual longest questline, it appears to be the "Fallen Hero of the Horde" line (that Alliance can do as well)-- it starts around level 50, and rolls all the way around the world and up to level 60. But I actually agree with some of the other posters in that thread-- while Fallen Hero is actually a great quest, the longest, most annoying questline in the game is probably the Dungeon Set 2 quests (also known as the Tier 0.5) armor. Back in the days of 60, Blizzard wanted to give players a way to obtain Epic armor without raiding, so they invented a long, grueling questline (with multiple branching paths) that would let you upgrade your first set (Tier 0) armor, piece by piece, into an Epic, eight piece set. I never made it any farther than the bracers, although I know for a fact that lots of folks got the whole thing done (and this was after completing the eight piece Tier 0 set in the first place). As long as the Fallen Hero questline is, I believe the Tier 0.5 questline wins, if only because it seems so much longer.
Immersion in the story is just icing on the cake
Chris Metzen and Alex Afrasiabi discussed with players at BlizzCon their desire for the World of Warcraft to be more immersive, for the characters to be more believable and relevant, and for the story to be more at the forefront, right alongside gameplay. So now a professional screenwriter named Cocles submitted a suggestion on the forums as to how that feeling could be created, by letting the world's characters react to you in a more believable way. Here's one of his examples:Think of how immersive it would be if you were to step into Outland and have Nazgrel look at you and say, "When I sent word to Orgrimmar that we needed more troops, I never dreamed they would send the slayer of C'thun himself to aid us. You will be a great asset to us Cocles, and I am glad to see you here!"Had I not killed C'thun, or done anything else of note, Nazgrel could instead look me up and down and say, "Well grunt, let's see what you're made of." Check out Blizzard's response beyond the jump...
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Gearing Up
Every week Matthew Rossi writes The Care and Feeding of Warriors, and while leveling three warriors to 70 he has spent a lot of time grinding for armor. It's the curse of the clanking classes. He's ended up wearing that wolf hat from Terrokar more than he would have ever thought possible.Eventually, you'll get up to 70 if you keep playing your warrior. And when you do, you'll find yourself starting a whole new game. The difference between leveling up and preparing for the instance you'll be expected to run is that you can no longer simply go off and grind and hit the AH for the gear you'll need to fulfill your chosen role, be it tanking, PvE damage or PvP. (You can use the AH still, but most of what you're going to want is dropped in instances.) I was talking with another warrior about what gear you should be working to acquire before raiding seriously, and he reminded me that you first have to get the gear that lets you get the gear, so to speak, and so I thought I'd discuss a few easily obtained starter pieces and then what's out there to upgrade from them.As always, there are going to be differences of opinion as to what gear is an upgrade depending on what your personal preferences are. For instance, I love +hit on my tanking gear. I hate to miss when I'm tanking, it makes it much more likely that you'll lose aggro. But how much is that +hit really worth? Partially that's a matter of opinion. If you don't feel that you miss often enough to hurt your aggro, then you might prefer a piece with more dodge or block over a piece with +hit. I've decided to err on the side of caution and list alternatives so that everyone can try and find that piece that works the best for them. This column, we'll be looking at various breastplates you can get and how to get them.
A guide to BC pre-raid goals and how to achieve them
I'm a little compulsive about finishing every quest in a zone. Ok, ok, I'm certifiably compulsive about it. I love exploring all the various corners of a zone and learning their dangers and rewards. Because of this, I barely got through half of the Outlands solo content before I hit L70. After thoroughly enjoying Hellfire Peninsula, Zangarmarsh, Terokkar Forest and having just a taste of Nagrand and Blade's Edge, I hit the level cap. Why should I continue?Starryknight of the Executus server has an excellent answer: completing every Outland quest and running through every dungeon will net you the 5,000 gold for your epic mount, gain the necessary reputation to access later parts of the game and get you keyed for both the Heroic dungeons and Karahzhan. Essentially, you will be ready to jump into the raiding game, if you so desire.To achieve this, he wrote up a general guide on what to do in every Outland zone with links to more specific information about the quest chains for each area. For me, this is what I needed to push on and continue exploring the wonders that Warcraft still has to offer for people already at the level cap. Even if you don't intend to raid, the goal of buying an epic mount is reward enough. Check it out, it may be what you are looking for to refocus your goals in the game if you find your motivation has flagged.
Liquidor's rep calculator works for US realms, too
Ask and you shall be given-- the other day we posted about Liquidor's rep calculator, and lamented that it was EU only, and now only a few days later, he's updated it to not only include US realms, but he's completely revamped the design.Sure enough, I punched in my character from the US realms, and I got the nice readout of where I'm at for all my reputations, and one click access to what exactly I need to do to move up a level (apparently I need to keep running Shadow Labs, grrr). Seems like it pulls everything directly from the Armory (where else would he get it from?), so all the info is as up to date as it is on Blizzard's official site.There's also a checkbox now for "TBC Reputation only" that when unclicked gives a warning that says "Soon!," so apparently Liquidor is working on including Old World Azeroth rep as well. Just like we said the other day, this is a terrific tool for working on those all important rep grinds. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm LFG Shadow Labs. Anyone? Please?
Addon Spotlight: QuestsFu
In previous weeks we've looked at Lightheaded, which helps you understand how to do your quests, and Fubar, which can present all sorts of information concisely. Today's addon is a Fubar plugin that can work with Lightheaded to show you everything you need to know about your quests without having to click a lot of buttons or obscure your screen with your entire quest log.QuestsFu presents you with a handy quest list in two ways. First of all, you can hover over its space on your Fubar and it'll give you a collapsable list of all the quests you're working on in a tooltip. In addition, you can have QuestsFu put up its own little quest tracker to replace Blizzard's standard tracker. The advantage to either of these color-coded quest lists is that you can just click on any of the quests themselves to open up a little window with all the quest information in it (pictured on the right). This is great for when you're in the middle of a quest and you don't want to stop moving, but you still forgot where exactly you were supposed to go or what the quest rewards are.If you have Lightheaded installed too, then you can arrange an additional Lightheaded comments popup on the other side of your screen, and get hints about your quest without opening the big old quest log. There are other quest managers out there, but this is my favorite because it feels so light weight, looks so attractive, works together with other addons so nicely, and also has such nice features, above and beyond what I've already mentioned: Edit the questlog on the fly, adding or removing quests with ease. Display quest levels, difficulty, zones, and objectives clearly. Put objective info into monster and item tooltips Show the quest level before you accept the quest Show other party members' completion of quest objectives (if they have the addon too) Optionally (I have this turned off) notify party members in /p chat when you complete a quest. Check out QuestsFu at WoW Interface.
Know Your Lore Special: The top ten lore quests, part 1
Questing in WoW can be a dull experience. Go out and kill ten harpies, go out and retrieve ten elephant tongues, go deliver this letter to a guy standing five feet away because I'm a lazy ass and can't be bothered to move. Eventually, you get bored, turn on Instant Quest Text, and start following objectives instead of storylines. But, as Amanda pointed out in June, sometimes it pays to read the story. Many of the quests mentioned in that article's comments are miniature lore storylines in themselves -- Rakh'likh the Defiler, Linken's quests, all the really annoying chains in Eastern Plaguelands that I never finished because I enjoyed wearing the Scarlet Crusade disguises too much. A lot of these don't have much to do with the main lore of Azeroth. But sprinkled in-between are a couple of quests that really get deep into the heart of WoW, bringing in heavy-hitting lore figures and major events in the Warcraft universe. They're the quests everyone should do simply to see what happens. And so, Know Your Lore presents: The Top Ten Lore Quests in World of Warcraft!
It came from the Blog: Questalicious
Yes, once again it's time for our weekly(-ish) IcftB get together-- our guild over on Zangarmarsh is still hopping around like toads eating jumping beans, and it seems like there's quite a few people hanging out almost every day now. But we still want to try and keep up the events, because it's always fun for us to get together as a big group and make a splash.So our next guild event is going to be next Monday, July 16th, at 6pm server time (I believe that's 8pm Eastern). We're going to be doing quests of all kinds-- elite quests, group quests, instance quests, solo quests, lowbie quests, chain quests. You name it, we're going to do it. If you've had a quest sitting on your IcftB character for a while, but haven't finished it, Monday night will be the time to get it done. Or if you're interested in helping out some of the other characters with finishing their quest (and catching up to your level-- I'm looking at you, Feralpuppy, who's somehow level 65 already!). Of course, some quests will be in instances, so we'll also do some instance running. And there will likely be some BGs in there as well, as long as I can make it to 29 by then.If you haven't joined us on Horde side Zangarmarsh, please do (just send a tell to anyone in guild), and hopefully we'll see you Monday night for some questin' good times.
Your daily dose of questing
It's been a while since the daily quests were introduced with patch 2.1 on the live servers now, and most players have had time to at least give them a try. So what do you think?Personally, I really like them-- it gives me a chance when I log in to spend just a few minutes picking up a nice, guaranteed chunk of gold and rep. When we first heard about them, hardcore players were unhappy that they'd be forced to follow a daily schedule, but ten daily quests seems like a lot to do a day anyway (especially when you consider everything else there is to do in-game), and most hardcore players have probably finished all the daily quest rep grinds anyway-- I know a few of my guildies already have all the mounts and rewards available.Have you not touched the daily quests yet, or do you do them every day? And which ones are you all working on-- I've liked the Fires over Skettis eggsplosion quest (and I get better at dodging those dumb birds every day that I do it), but I'm looking forward to staring up the Netherwing herbalist quest next. How are daily quests working out for you?
The coolest quest
And so, in my quest to level my warlock, I found myself soaring high above the lakes of Zangarmarsh, transformed into bird-form for the quest As the Crow Flies. Not ever having had a high level druid, I haven't known the thrill of flapping my own wings traveling through the sky. At least not until now. There are so many fascinating quests in WoW it's hard to pick one. Up until I rolled a Draenei, I wouldn't have been able to put a finger on my favorite quest. Once I learned the furbolg language and took of in search of the Totem of Yor, I was won over completely. For the moment that is by far my favorite quest. But I haven't experienced everything in the game. All my Horde characters are below level 25, so I don't know the quest lines for that faction all that well, but I am sure there are some wonderful ones awaiting my shadow priest in It came from the Blog whenever I get her to that level. I would love to hear what you would vote as the coolest quest in the game so far. Is there one particular quest I should look out for as the ultimate in cool?
