Things to do in Azeroth when you're 60
by Jennie Lees 
Jan 18th 2006 at 9:00AM
The official site's recently been updated with a helpful page telling us all about high-level options: the various factions you can grind reputation for, the battlegrounds you can grind honour in, and the professions you can farm materials for. There's also an overview of the high-level dungeons and world events as well as some other tips to try (Tried an "Alt"?).
However, the page looks more useful to those who've heard about WoW's endgame and are currently sitting in the level 40-50 bracket wondering "What's the point?" -- it's great that Blizzard are trying to supplement WoW's endgame by providing a handy page of "Things Level 60s Can Now Do", but it all seems a bit desperate to me.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
L'Emmerdeur Jan 18th 2006 10:37AM
You could always go to Denver.
/slap
Note how the three major options use the verbs "grind", "grind" and "farm". Sounds like fun!
I recently posted in the Professions forum about how Blizzard increased the drop rate on Essence of Air, making it (potentially) less profitable for alchemists who transmute water to air. Until 1.9, Horde alchemists could use a trick of getting the buff in the troll village in Durotar, hearthing to Tarren Mill, and riding to the structure outside Scholo where you could buy the transmute (along with the major mana potion recipe) from the ghost there. Normally, this could only be done by completing a quest series in Scholomance.
The debate got somewhat heated, as some believed this to be an exploit. According to them, I should have these transmutes and recipes taken away by Blizzard, because I didn't "work" for them. Of course, the dozens upon dozens of hours I've spent reading forums and WoW websites to get this information is not considered "work". I spent a LOT of time studying all of the professions before choosing herb/alch - mostly because I never did this with my old pally main, but instead entered the game blindly, without reading up on the strategies for playing him properly and for making money. But to these people, only those who spend their lives farming and grinding in WoW should be rewarded. To them, the meritocracy of WoW should only reward one merit: time invested in the game. This is the same argument made by people IRL, that a factory worker should make more money than a Wall Street banker, because "he works harder", implying that only physical labor is "real" labor, and ignoring the relative profitability of their activities.
It seems like the game is definitely being re-engineered to remove all activities that are not timesinks, and create an environment where the only option is brute force at the expense of using one's wits. The opening of AQ is the perfect example of this - making whole servers farm to open instances where only the most hardcore guilds can venture (guilds whose only real advantage is the amount of time they have available to farm these instances).
More importantly, there are quite a number of players who consider this appropriate, and consider it "unfair" when someone else used their brains to get something that they achieved only by spending countless hours farming/grinding.
As to the desperation ploy here, I believe we are reaching that point where the truly talented 60s - players who are actually GOOD GAMERS, and not just players with too much free time - are tiring of the grind, and looking to new games to challenge them. This will only accelerate as Blizzard implements more changes geared toward turning the game into as much of a farm/grind timesink as possible.
I know I'm waiting for Oblivion, and hoping it is good enough to cancel my WoW account.
Mike Jan 18th 2006 11:28AM
I absolutely hate the word "grind" used in reference to this game. "Grinding" is the game! The game is "grinding"! Yes, the actions that are taken to advance in level, gain trade skill levels, earn reputation points, earn honor, and increase wealth are all very repetitive and formulaic. So what makes some aspects of gameplay "grinding" while others aren't? It seems to be all very arbitrary. The beauty of the game is that there are those many different ways to "grind" and that you can do them in many different locales under different circumstances and with different people. So just stop referring to it as "grinding" already. If you don't enjoy "playing the game" (previously referred to as "grinding") then stop playing.
Tazrach Jan 18th 2006 11:31AM
It needs to be said again because some people cant seem to get it through thier heads. Everything you do in life is basically an effort vs reward propostion. Sometimes we are trapped by circumstance, need to work to eat for example, and have to do things where the equation does not really balance as much as we'd like.
WoW is not one of them. If it stop being fun, or the non fun bits you have to do to get to the fun stop appearing to be worth it. Stop playing and quit. Dont clutter the message boards with angsty "i'll miss you and the game crap", get msn and keep in touch if you will miss your friends chances are you'll meet up again in another game down the road that way.
Dont try to read too much into it. Blizzard is slowly documenting the game and adding bits to the site as they are done. One thing I love about the Blizzard games is the level of web support they get. The diablo2 website with items details was great and I hope at some point down the road Blizzard do something similar so we dont have to rely on the thotts and allas for the item info.
Ugkul Jan 18th 2006 11:49AM
Uh what's a 'good gamer' for WoW? Each person's experience of the game is different.
Silvertusk Jan 18th 2006 11:56AM
Yes, World of Warcraft has a lot of "grinding" to it. So does every other MMORPG. There is a reason for it - would you rather experience all the content there is instantly, with only a little bit of effort, never to be used again? Or, would you rather it be reusable and earnable?
I ask this, because all the things you do at the end-game are repeatable. Everything available took time to make - if it wasn't repeatable, but was instead instantly and once-only gratifying, players would burn through the content and be left with much less than before.
Of course, this also asks the question, "Why doesn't Blizzard just make a lot of instantly gratifying scenarios?" Well, if we lived in a perfect world, they could snap their fingers and lay it all infront of us. However, this is real: Blizzard can't work that fast, it is neigh impossible.
In short, Blizzard is going to continue releasing content at their slow pace, because they are tedious and very Canadian-like in their fashion of planning and stategising for this game (that is, probing a situation and trying to predict all possible things that can go wrong). While they're at it, they may as well make it have some measure of longevity, no?
L'Emmerdeur Jan 18th 2006 12:09PM
The part fo the game I most looked forward to when I first started playing was raiding the major cities and towns. I imagined two or three raid groups assaulting UC or SW, as an equal contigent defended with the NPCs. They destroyed that possibility, by creating civilians whose deaths penalized you in the new honor system, thus forsing pretty much all major PvP into BG.
Mike: wrong. I do enjoy playing this game. I love all the instances up to DM, Strath, Scholo and the various Blackrocks. They are fun, rewarding, and require good players to make them truly enjoyable. One weak player in an MC raid may make no difference, but in a 5-man-only DM run, one weak player invalidates the run.
It is in these types of instances where skill and brainpower actually make a difference. Grinding is standing in MC and hitting one button over and over again, with zero skill required, just a decent equipment set. Grinding is killing raptors and wolves to gain XP.
With my mage (I used to play a paladin), I try to avoid such things. My purpose is to have fun, not level quickly. I do only fun quests (none of the "kill 10 of these" types of quests, more of the kill this difficult mini-boss) and instances (an instance run can get you about 25% to 50% of a level in XP, btw). Unfortunately, after you reach 60 and exhaust your ability to upgrade items in the pre-MC dungeons, you are pretty much done with the conent that requires some skill and brains - the fun stuff.
And stop telling me to "stop playing and quit". I have the right to criticize the game, an if you don't like that, move to Cuba, communists.
L'Emmerdeur Jan 18th 2006 12:54PM
Silvertusk, I agree with you wholeheartedly.
I am not debating the concept of playing the same instance over and over. I am arguing that the large endgame raid instances are too formulaic, and leave little room for the outstanding players to shine and have a moment of glory.
Example: when I used to play my pally, I loved running DM with different mixes of classes/specs. Feral druid tanking with me healing. Me tanking and priest healing. I always wanted to try to do a 5-pally run, with diferent specs doing their own thing (heal/dps/tank).
You cannot do this in MC. The only thing that matters in MC are good leadership and following orders. bad leadership = failure. Some players don't follow orders = failure. Any other faults most likely will not affect the outcome. And if the raid runs into trouble, there is very little any individual can do about avoiding a wipe.
In the pre-MC instances (including the 15-man UBRS), I was able to switch from backup healer to off-tank to take a mob off of a squishie long enough to help them heal up and continue doing their thing. Sometimes this made the difference between wiping and winning, and people would congratulate me on "saving the day".
If they want to tie loot quality to time spent, then they could create instances that take much longer to finish, drop MC-level loot, but at much lower drop rates. Half of the timesink of an endgame guild is not the actual time spent in MC, but the amount of organization required to administer the guild. Instances for smaller groups could allow "casual" players to run 6-8 hour instances and get MC-level loot at a slower pace, without depending on PUGs, which are doomed to failure in any endgame endeavor.
Just an idea.
Mike Jan 18th 2006 1:55PM
L'Emmerdeur - I wasn't telling you to stop playing, necessarily. I was telling people who don't enjoy the game that they might want to consider not playing. Clearly, you enjoy a large part of the game. I'm just sick of people referring to killing mobs for minor quests/experience as "grinding" and performing essential tasks to increase trade skill as "farming". But maybe it's just semantic.
RighteousDork Jan 18th 2006 2:54PM
I think I know exactly what L'Emmerdeur is talking about. So much of the game is based around this concept of doing something over and over again as much as possible. Call it grinding or call it just playing the game. Whatever. I love playing the game but it really does seem to reward the people who have all the time in the world, as opposed to those of us who have full time jobs and responsibilities. I also think L'Emmerdeur is hinting at this idea of making parts of the game more skill-based as opposed to time-based. Why not put some puzzles in the game or things that really make you think? I only have time to play one character and after several months I'm only up to 30. I play at a slow pace and try to take in as much as possible. I actually read the books laying around in Inns. It would totally knock my socks off if Blizzard implemented some quests or mini-games in WoW that rewarded people on things like their knowledge of the world and so on. All of this stuff that's going on for The War Effort is cool but it really does show that time is apparently the most important thing to have in Azeroth.
L'Emmerdeur Jan 18th 2006 3:18PM
Mike, I was definitely not including such activities in my definition of grinding.
Here's an example: to get to Rank 14 in Honor and get the Epic PvP set, you can accomplish this in 14 weeks - one rank per week. You can probably do this faster, depending on the relative honor rankings on your server at the time you attempt to achieve this milestone. But you cannot do this slower. Any slower, and the 20% of honor that is shaved off of your total honor every Tuesday will take too many of your gains, and disqualify you from reaching the last few ranks.
During those 14 or so weeks, you would need to play at least 12-13 hours per day (if queue times in BG are not excessive), 7 days a week, to get to this rank. I'm getting these numbers off of a very very long thread where a bunch of people actually reverse-engineered this logic.
What about playing 6 hours per day for 28 weeks? Nope, probably will get you to around Rank 10, if you are lucky. This means that the only people who can ever hope to achieve such results are those who have absolutely no life - or people who will end up with no life (fired, failed out of school, dumped by gf/bf, etc.) if they attempt this.
This is what I consider a grind: 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for three-and-a-half months to get an Epic PvP set - and you have to be part of a PvP guild to avoid the mostly ineffective PUGs. I can assure you, many of the people on my server who have reached Rank 14 are known to be mediocre PvPers (and botters who sit out BG instances farming the HKs and rep). They are merely part of one of these hardcore PvP guilds, and take turns getting to Rank 14 to get their Epic sets.
Every single endgame goal requires similar unrealistic levels of commitment to the game.
What about the really awesome PvPers (and they are out there, and they can kick our purple-bedecked asses with their green crap)? This game does not reward those who truly shine at it.
Addendum: I don't criticize this game because I dislike it or find it boring. I do so because I want to see the awesomeness that is the pre-MC experience extended into the endgame. I wouldn't even bother hoping if it wasn't a solid company like Blizzard at the helm.
Leshrac Jan 18th 2006 6:31PM
Interesting thread, particularly since I only just recently started playing the game. I'm really enjoying it, but all of the complaints about the end-game are making me a little nervous. Then again, I don't think I'll have a problem simply quitting once the game gets boring to me (or until the expansion pack comes out). I actually played Guild Wars, and once I got through the main content and expansion, my time in the game pretty much tapered off. Sure, I was in a guild and did some guild battles, which was fun... and I've tried out some of the Lvl 20 quests, which are also great, but essentially, it just becomes too much of a burden to get to the extra "fun" aspects of the game.It's a really brilliantly designed game in my opinion and I look forward to it's next chapter, but for now, I've played it enough (I may try the second chapter preview this weekend). Again, I'm really enjoying WoW, but if the end game just gets too difficult to enjoy, I simply don't see myself having trouble cutting the cord until the expansion, or cutting it again once I'm done with the expansion.
As for the "fun quests" versus the "kill 10 of these" quests, I almost completely agree... the only quests that really piss me off are the "collection quests", where you have to collecting a trillion teeth or claws or whatever. These quests have several problems with them that the "kill x wolves" quests don't have. First, not every monster drops what you need. Second, if you're playing with people (I personally play with my girlfriend and roommate), these quests take way too long because EVERY damn person needs to collect the things. Figuring out a way to fix this would alleviate most of my problems with it... while it's annoying to have to kill 10 wolves to get 1 claw, it's even more annoying that it takes 20 wolves to get 1 claw for 2 people. How about making these similar to the "unique" drops from the "bosses"? Everyone in the group should be able to loot the "wolf" that drops a claw. The "kill 10 guys" are ok because everyone in the group gets credit for it, so these can actually be pretty fun and are not too much of a burden.
So, perhaps next time I create a character, I'll try to avoid doing most of the collection quests, at least when questing with other people.
L'Emmerdeur Jan 19th 2006 10:10AM
Leshrac, in the end, thos quests take a lot of time, for little benefit in terms of gold and xp. The time it takes to do around 3 of these quests, you could be running an instance, getting many times the gold, possibly a good piece of equipment or two, and many, many times the xp.
Until around your mid-40s, the average instance run will net you about 1/2 a level. After that, it goes down to around 1/3rd of a level, and in the last few levels, maybe 1/4th or 1/5th of a level. Time much better spent than collecting fangs and claws.
The only excepetion to this is if the quest has a good reward, or is part of a chain that leads to a quest with a good reward.