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DS Daily: Making time
Okay, we admit it. By the time you read this, we'll probably either just be finishing up our spankin' new Harry Potter book (spoilers are a NO in comments, by the way!), or sleeping off having read it in a rush, because, well, that's just how we roll. But thinking about that got us pondering something else -- sometimes, it feels good to set everything else aside for a few hours and just get lost in something, like a book or a game. Do you treat yourself like this? As many of us grow older, it gets harder and harder to find time to game, as much as we might want to. Sometimes, though, you feel like you've earned the right -- after a long week, or a particular accomplishment -- to shut the door, turn off the phone, and just get your game on. How often do you try to set aside a little personal time like that, and what are your favorite games for those long runs?RPGs tend to be a great way to wile away those large chunks of gaming time. If only we could reclaim all those hours of sleep lost to the Final Fantasy franchise! But online gaming is another way, and sometimes, even a good puzzle game can fill an afternoon. But we want to hear about your habits.
Daily quests for casual players irk the hardcore
As you may have heard by now, the faction rep grind for the Netherwing epic mount will require players to complete "Daily" quests-- that is, short collecting quests that can be done only once per day. When players first heard about that, a lot of them felt the same way that Oddig of Skullcrusher did-- they saw the time limits on the quests as just another way Blizzard was trying to turn WoW into a timesink, in order to make spend more time playing less game.Which is not exactly wrong, if you're a hardcore player who usually grinds rep for hours every day. But as Drysc says, the Daily quests are meant for players who don't have a lot of time to invest all at once. They're meant "to provide greater reward for smaller investments of time." Basically, this is their answer to giving the casual players their own content. Just like rested XP (which is a great idea that rewards you for not rushing through content), the rewards at the end of these "Daily" grinds can't be rushed to by hardcore players who play in huge chunks of time.When you put it that way, I'm all for it. Hardcore players still won't be happy, but it's there's plenty for them to grind away already-- if you guys have already grinded every single reputation in the game so far that these daily quests are the only ones you have to do, then try playing another game for a bit (I've been liking Titan Quest a lot lately). Some players argue that the casual players expected to do these quests probably won't have the 5,000g needed for the epic riding skill to even start them, to which I say-- err, good point.Of course the other note here is that, as players have noticed on the PTR, the quests seem to reset every time the server restarts. So if you're really hankering to get to that mount quickly, you don't really have to wait for every day-- hotfixes and restarts can give you a few more quests to do every week.
