How often should we do repeatable content?
by Mike Schramm 
Jul 30th 2009 at 7:00PM
Blessing of Kings asks an excellent question: how often should we be running repeatable content? Certainly Blizzard has considered this issue before -- they've gone with daily quests in the first expansion, and recently they've been rethinking just how often we'll be rerunning dungeons, too. But both of those time periods are fairly arbitrary to us: is it possible that we should start running things twice a week (once during and once on the weekend), or maybe do weekly quests instead of daily?BoK says: possibly. Rohan suggests a weekly quest that rewarded 70g instead of the daily 10g reward we usually get (not including the XP bonus which kicks it up to 13g). Players who don't have time to run every day, but do have the weekly availability (like me -- I play mostly on the weekends), would be able to still pick up the reward. I'll go one step further, in fact: what if we had an option? What if we could choose to run a quest daily (and get a bigger reward overall), or run it once per week, using up all of our daily chances for that week, and getting a smaller total reward? That seems to be the best way -- those who could log in every day would get a larger reward, while those who couldn't could still get more than just the single daily.
Rohan also says that Heroic and BG quests should remain daily, and on that we agree: those quests are perfect for creating variety every day, and getting people to run those instances. In fact, those would be fun to see expanded -- maybe Blizzard could create weekly series of daily quests that followed a small storyline across dungeons or BGs. Blizzard has done a pretty good job balancing out repeatable content periods, but it's always nicer to have more options.
Filed under: Fan stuff, Virtual selves, Odds and ends, Economy, Instances, Quests
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
AlmtyBob Jul 30th 2009 7:06PM
It's not that it's a bad idea, but it's just way overcomplicating the game to make another concession to players. The game is already extremely complicated compared to a couple of years ago. Imagine explaining to the casual players, who this sytem would be best suited for, exactly how all that works and that doing the weekly uses up all the dailies.
Sean Jul 30th 2009 10:15PM
Great point and one that is too often not considered by "hardcore" fans of WoW. Blizzard has and continues to go to great lengths to make the game as intuitive as possible.
A similar example to the proposed optional weekly quest system would be differentiating talents/spells between PvE and PvP settings. A lot of people have suggested this over the years, and for good reason as in one fell swoop the developers would greatly simplify the process of balancing classes. Their stated reason for not doing so has been that they do not want to complicate an already complicated game for someone that is just joining or who plays casually. Imagine trying to keep all of your abilities straight if most of them had different effects depending on if you were doing an instance or a battleground?
SarahTheGnome Jul 31st 2009 5:19AM
I agree with the two posters above me. I tend to play on a daily basis, but I am online 2-3 hours. Most of my weekdays are filled with RP events and raids, they take up my entire playtime, so I have no time to do dailies or anything else. During the weekend I catch up on everything, and that is fine. I am Crusader and such, I get exalted with stuff, it just takes a bit longer than for people who can focus on these things every day. I do not mind this one bit, I do not feel left behind, and I do not feel like I am disadvantaged in any way.
I understand the reasoning behind the article, but like the others say, please oh please can we stop making things so complicated to suit all.
I like the new raid changes, making things accessible to all, because there was a true need for that, to not lose a big portion of the customers. But there is no need for this daily changing stuff. I have tons of money, coming from my dailies in the weekend only and random AH sales, so there is no need for it in that respect. Reputation wise, also no need, like I said, I made crusader, anyone can make crusader. So I just don't see any justification for such a change outside of the 'ME WANTS' thing. Sure, dailies are boring to repeat, but they were on the isle as well, they were when I wanted my netherdrake as well.
newstuffs Jul 30th 2009 7:08PM
People would do the weekly version and then complain there's nothing to do the rest of the week.
Deadly. Off. Topic. Jul 31st 2009 9:43AM
How true that is. We already have people bitching about how there’s “no end content as it’s already been done” and this is just baiting the door for more complaints.
Why don’t they just do this: If player does daily quest they cannot do weekly quest, if player does weekly quest, they cannot do daily quest. This way those who can do the weekly quest can do it and not screw over those who can do the dailies and viceversa. (And to combat the why bother with dailies if the weekly quest is the same, there’s two ways to view this: 1. Oh well. 2. Make harder, more difficult/or make it easier and worth less. Ex: daily in a week’s worth of time would be 2200rep while the weekly daily would be 1800 rep.)
Liltimmy Jul 31st 2009 7:40PM
@deadly...Am I missing something, or did you just paraphrase the entire article?
SeanOr101 Jul 30th 2009 7:10PM
I'd love to be able to do daily quests once per week. I haven't logged on in the last 5 days because I'm in the midst of a bitchin' heat wave that makes it unbearable to sit upstairs on the computer for any length of time. I'd dig it If I could log-in and do all my dailies in a couple hours and be done with them for the week. Some (most, rather) I can't log on during the week more than a couple of evenings.
This would be a great change for the casual player.
Physis Jul 30th 2009 11:15PM
Are you in Seattle, per chance?
Jamie Jul 31st 2009 3:32AM
Well he's certainly not in England...
On topic however, I found the daily grind of multiple quests a real pain, it took out the whole hero aspect of the game for me.
Think about it you do numerous quests to grind up to 80, helping people out then it becomes groundhog day (despite how many options there are...), if we could have 1 weekly quest that'd mean I could do the various weekly quests on different nights of the week.
Monday: Fishing night, Tuesday: Cooking night, etc. It could even work in favour of social guilds who can organise theme evenings for their members to complete weekly quests together.
imsobuzzed Jul 31st 2009 11:56AM
But on the whole a weekly version of a daily quest should be some multiple times more difficult/longer to complete than the regular daily. Lets say for a theoretical cooking weekly it could have you complete 5 of the various cooking dailies back-to-back as the weekly and award the benefit of having done the 5 dailies. This confers a penalty for doing the weekly as opposed to doing the dailies for 7 days. Personally I would prefer to do a weekly quest and just have to spend more time and do more to complete it. But I suppose many others would to, even if they have the play-time to do the dailies every day. This could result in a greater influx of gold and disrupt economic conditions. All-in-all.... never going to happen, Just my 2 copper.
Elzreth 80 Druid Staghelm, Dravniev 80 Shaman Staghelm
elvendude Jul 31st 2009 1:09PM
@Physis: I'm in Seattle. It's been hellish. The only time I can even bear to be in the same room as my computer the past few days is between when I wake up and about 9am. So, not much time. Heh.
Thank god that heat wave seems to have broken.
Sleutel Jul 30th 2009 7:12PM
The whole point of daily quests is that the more effort you put in, the more money/rep/etc. you get out. Unless the weekly version of a quest was as involved as seven days' worth of the daily version, it would be unfair to the people who put in the extra time. Can't make it online every day? That doesn't mean you deserve a handout.
elvendude Jul 30th 2009 7:38PM
I was actually thinking more or less the same, Sleutel. Personally, I would be very happy if I could do one quest or a small quest chain at five to seven times the length and get my reward for the whole week. (JC dailies, I'm looking at you.)
stephen2553 Jul 31st 2009 6:24AM
This is kinda what I was thinking, up what you have to do for the weekly and give a slightly lower reward, if you can only do dailies say 3 days a week you would e better off this way but if you do them 6-7 days a weeks you get a bigger reward from the dailies.
Retropally Jul 30th 2009 7:12PM
Fishing/cooking dailies are great
The rest is boring
:(
Kemikalkadet Jul 31st 2009 5:56AM
They're the only 2 i do with any regularity. Occaisionally if i'm bored i'll do the argent ones or the grizzly PvP ones but it's so boring to do the same thing every day. And i havn't been near the sons of hodir since i reached exalted.
mark Jul 30th 2009 7:16PM
I disagree with the weekly quest concept. Dailies do not take that much time. I can complete about 10-15 daily quests in about an hour. The key is that they need to be properly grouped together as a quest hub, and completed in parallel with eachother. (take the Argent quests for example). Just like the Isle quests were all grouped together.Dailies are fine how they are.
There are also way more dailies to do than your alloted daily amount (25) so if you get bored with a particuar set, just switch it up. Go to Grizzly hills, or Ebon, or Icecrown or god forbid.. shatt fishing / mining dailies.
If you introduce a "weekly" in place of dailiy, even if someone only logs 3-4 times a week, they are going to be pretty bored after the first few hours.
elvendude Jul 30th 2009 7:41PM
"If you introduce a "weekly" in place of dailiy, even if someone only logs 3-4 times a week, they are going to be pretty bored after the first few hours."
See, I completely disagree. I don't do dailies because they're something to do. I do them because they're how I support my profession/AH habit/raiding habit. They make me money and allow me to make more money. If I could get that chore out of the way in one swoop, that would give me much more time to do the things I *want* to do. IE, leveling an alt, raiding, running dungeons, PVP. Dailies, for me, just take time away from those things.
Now, granted, not everyone plays like me, and for some people, your statement would be correct. I, personally, feel that that those people are not getting all they could out of the game.
Tobert Jul 30th 2009 8:04PM
@ elvendude:
` Ya, but if this gose through people like us could do the "Weekly" and go back to farming the rest of the week. The real money is in farming, but if i could compleet a weeks worth of dalys in an hour that would be some serous GpH.
Firestride Jul 30th 2009 7:20PM
I haven't played much WoW, and none at all on my main, in about two months, and the biggest reason is how many things it felt like I HAD to do every day, or I was missing opportunities, or even every week. Once I started stressing out about missing out on Heroic Emelon runs, I stopped having fun, so I stopped playing. I'm not going to log in until this arena season ends and the ~1000 points I have saved up get wasted. Symbolic freedom FTW!