Breakfast Topic: What parts of the game are most underappreciated?
by Josh McGee 
Jul 16th 2011 at 8:00AM
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.
Many things in the World of Warcraft go unappreciated by the community as a whole. In such a large game and such an extensive world, it is easy to overlook small details without which the game would be much more difficult and frustrating or just less pleasant to play.
The first thing that comes to my mind that is underappreciated in WoW is the music and sound effects. I know so many people who play with their sound down, and while I can understand muting my sound for a few quests or specific zones or while fighting certain monsters, I cannot believe that so many people play this game completely muted and listening to their own "thrash metal" or whatever it is the kids are listening to these days.
I've been playing a priest lately. I've been doing the Tol Barad dailies every day, and I am absolutely loving the Jedi mind trick ability Mind Soothe. Yet I know that 90% of priests out there don't even have it on their action bar ... and I'm sure some have never even heard of it. Mind Soothe is like a lesser but group-wide stealth! You can skip entire trash pulls in heroics with it, or just run past that certain monster that you don't wish to fight.
With all your love of the game, what aspect of it do you love that you think not enough other people appreciate? Share your thoughts, and show some appreciation for the little things that Blizzard's team has put hard work into!
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
jbgolsong Jul 16th 2011 8:07AM
For me it would have to be the spell tooltips, whenever I have to write up a new macro or gear set I always take the time to peruse the tooltips too try and find the perfect one!
Gendou Jul 16th 2011 8:22AM
Do you mean the icons?
Or the actual spell tooltips themselves?
jbgolsong Jul 16th 2011 9:03AM
The icons yeah!
thepiratester Jul 16th 2011 11:30AM
The best part of the game that I feel is unappreciated is the old content. I point @ Blizz for making it so. There are real cool zones that they have created for us to play in that become dead zones with every passing expansion. A few Ideas that I think would help fix this issue is to have the local faction of the zones revive upgraded items that can only be purchased by doing x-amount of repeatable quest for them. It would require rep as well as some sort of token you receive for every daily completed. Even if the items from past faction groups are simple recipes im sure the zone would be alive with heartbeats.
Just my 2-cents
/cheers
Dudeslice Jul 16th 2011 5:01PM
I totally agree! It seems like such a waste. Blizzard spent so much time and effort redesigning all that old content for Cataclysm, yet sadly those areas of the game that had had been vanilla WoW are still just ghost towns.
I believe its Blizzards own fault, though. Even if you did start a new character at the start of Cataclysm we now level so fast that entire areas of the content is never seen before we hit 58 and head into BC content.
woecip Jul 16th 2011 8:14AM
That picture looks like it from the PA Ren Faire.
zach.l Jul 16th 2011 8:18AM
in a way i think addons are...and i mean that they are underappreciated by blizzard cause some of the ones you get you would think blizzard would have thought about having that and implimenting it. like an addon to sell all your grays or an anti-spam addon. while they do end up catching on and adding somthing it still feels like they would prefer not to touch that type of stuff
Gendou Jul 16th 2011 8:21AM
The books scattered around the world. Sure, they serve no in-game purpose, but they're great fun to read and have a lot of interesting lore.
Similarly, I like chairs and benches. Being able to sit down for no other reason than just sitting down is great.
aerrae Jul 16th 2011 10:47AM
They do have an in game purpose, its part of an achievement!
Gendou Jul 16th 2011 11:17AM
The books existed well prior to the achievement.
Besides, I'd wager the fraction of achievement-seekers who actually read the books rather than just clicking through them is passingly small.
snarkygoldfish Jul 16th 2011 11:41AM
I love those books. When I first started playing, a friend and I RPed our way through the old instances and places so she could use them to "teach" my shaman more about the world she'd just been crash landed on. (It was a great thing for me, too - as I was at that time unfamiliar with WoW lore!)
Years later, I'm just sad that with the exception of the DK starting zone, there haven't been any more of these added. :(
snarkygoldfish Jul 16th 2011 11:43AM
Oh, I forgot about the ones in Dalaran for that achievement...and the "translation" book.
Point still stands - more books in the old world!
Rhornez Jul 16th 2011 3:40PM
i only skip through them if i already know the lore >:3 but yeah those bigs are a good read, I read them wayyy back in 2007 when i was in scarlet monastry while the group was pulling i would read one then charge then read them again
eclipse Jul 25th 2011 3:57AM
They should make them voice narrated - and once you've read a book once you should be able to read it again from the achievements panel.
Angrycelt Jul 16th 2011 11:48PM
Totally agree. There's a reason I still sport my Loremaster title. Not just from the crazy number of quests I did back before quest helpers and low level tracking, but from all the books I've read and the huge amount of backstory that I enjoy.
Maybe it's just from all my years of running D&D campaigns, but I always appreciate when you can see the amount of foundation built even before the stories are told.
Rezai Jul 16th 2011 8:35AM
Zepplins, boats, portals, anything and everything that lets you cover a short distance quickly. One of the things I hate about leveling an alt is when you get a new spell you have to fly all the way back to a capital. My trip form the badlands to UC was awful (think god for hearthstones)
Wulfkin Jul 16th 2011 11:36AM
Such things are actually massively important, I think some people just don't realise because they haven't played a game without proper transportation. I'm currently reliving my Everquest days on their progression server, and unless you have someone with a teleport spell, you can easily spend over an hour running through dangerous territory just to meet up with your group! Not fun.
All hail the Zeppelins!
Samuel Jul 16th 2011 8:38AM
Some WOW Sounds are award winning, definetly. Grizzly Hills music is simply out of this world. I made a macro just so i can listen to it with i am in Stormwind or any other place.
lazymangaka Jul 16th 2011 8:42AM
You can make a macro to play music of your choice? Please, do tell more...
Gendou Jul 16th 2011 8:53AM
Macros for playing music files:
http://www.wowpedia.org/PlaySoundFile_macros_-_other_music_sounds
http://worldofwarcraft.mmocluster.com/mmogirl-gorefiend/blog/how-to-use-macros-to-play-wow-music