The Daily Quest: Faire and fairness
by Anne Stickney 
Dec 9th 2011 at 2:00PM
WoW Insider's on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative, and entertaining
WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.
Darkmoon Faire is pretty cool, but the music on the island is absolutely amazing. Though some are grumbling about the length of time it's going to take to grind out tickets, one thing's for certain -- this isn't going to be content that you can blow through and subsequently get tired of in two weeks' time.
On the other end of the spectrum, the blogosphere's been abuzz with chatter about Raid Finder exploits and those who've taken advantage. Today, we've got a few posts that address both!
Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment, and you may see it here tomorrow! Be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW-related sites.
WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.
Darkmoon Faire is pretty cool, but the music on the island is absolutely amazing. Though some are grumbling about the length of time it's going to take to grind out tickets, one thing's for certain -- this isn't going to be content that you can blow through and subsequently get tired of in two weeks' time.
On the other end of the spectrum, the blogosphere's been abuzz with chatter about Raid Finder exploits and those who've taken advantage. Today, we've got a few posts that address both!
- Priest With A Cause shares some first impressions on the various features and personalities of Darkmoon Island.
- Gauss' Adventures in World of Warcraft highlights what was done about Raid Finder exploiting.
- Flavor Text plays devil's advocate with a fascinating piece in defense of exploiting.
Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment, and you may see it here tomorrow! Be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW-related sites.
Filed under: The Daily Quest
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Hurbster Dec 9th 2011 2:11PM
I know I'm gonna get down voted for this but I look at Darkmoon Faire and I just think - 'yay, more grind'.
andrews Dec 9th 2011 2:31PM
That's all it is now. I was happily pushing a bunch of alts through it and I realized it will take a good part of a year to get even one heirloom, since I am not doing all the other ways of making tickets.
As I noted in another reply, at least they could have made the pets and mounts BOA instead of BOP.
But it is still a big grind and not all that compelling once you do it a few times.
randyzilinski Dec 9th 2011 3:04PM
Yeah, it is another grind. People like grinds, heck, that's what most of the game is.
Personally I think this patch has brought a ton of new content for everyone, Blizzard is doing a much better job and I think it's a good sign for the "fix" of the problem that is Cataclysm.
Saeadame Dec 9th 2011 3:13PM
The entire game is grinding. You grind levels. Then you grind dungeon gear. Then you grind heroic gear. Then you grind raid gear. Then you grind heroic raid gear. Then you get a new raid and do it all over again. Then you get a new expansion and you grind levels again. Rinse and repeat.
I'm not sure DMF being a "grind" is really a criticism - everything in this game is a grind, so it's just the nature of the grind that makes the difference, and I find the DMF one to be significantly more fun than, say, some of the Vanilla and BC rep grinds.
More compelling than the Avenger's of Hyjal rep grind too.
Zapwidget Dec 9th 2011 3:58PM
I just wish you could play the games 7 times in one day instead of doing them once a day all week, similar to how Heroics were changed.
I work and raid 3 days a week, and occasionally do other stuff, like grocery shopping, on the days I don't raid so I don't always have time to take my main to the faire every day this week, let alone my army of alts.
Drakkenfyre Dec 9th 2011 9:10PM
One thing I have really gotten tired of is every holiday being made into a grind.
One holiday has a few events, and a handful of things, and if there's any kind of item which is used for the holiday, it's available easily and cheaply. And suddenly it gets revamped, and everything that wasn't on a vendor gets placed onto a vendor, and you have to grind currency to get anything. And the currency disappears after the end of the event, so no saving up for next year.
Then another holiday is done the same way. The random pets, drops, and other items get locked behind a vendor, with grinding required for the currency. And the currency expires.
Then another holiday gets put behind the same vendor thing. What was once a nice, casual (in the sense of no real time commitment required) holiday has now been turned into a grindfest, which requires you to work on the holiday almost if not every single day it's available, doing dailies, and buying things off a vendor.
RNG sucks, especially when it comes to holidays. Seeing 15 toothpicks drop at Hallow's End, while someone else gets nothing but candy but needs a toothpick, and someone else gets nothing but tricks, sucks. But it's almost as bad when you put everything behind a vendor, and have to grind everything out just to get an item.
I understand they want you to keep playing as long as possible, but I would like to have some in-game holidays remain as they were, holidays. Not a grind-fest which requires you to work your ass off just to get most of it done.
"Hey, this holiday came up. What's it about?"
"It's just a celebration of (holiday.) You just enjoy it if you want. You don't have to do anything. You get some nice bonuses, and maybe a few items, maybe a pet."
Instead of "grind, do dailies, get them every day or you won't be able to get half of the items available."
andrews Dec 9th 2011 2:44PM
On the exploit issue:
The whole thing has me concerned that I will get myself banned for doing something I thought was a fair part of the game. I don't pour over blue posts to know what Blizzard is and isn't saying, so I could even miss a warning to not "misuse" something.
That is a really bad feeling as an intense, but casual player. If Blizzard releases is a product with bugs, it is their fault, not the users of their product.
Saeadame Dec 9th 2011 3:09PM
Yeah, no. Blizzard hasn't banned those top-end guilds for multiple "exploits" over the years, possibly because a lot of them could be passed off as clever use of mechanics which Blizzard then went in and said "no, that makes it far too easy."
The rules for the LFR tool and loot were stated very prominently in FAQs and answers to questions about it, and even in-game, after killing a boss there is a "caution" symbol that will tell you which bosses you have already looted - implying, of course, that you cannot loot them again. Further, getting pieces of loot off a raid boss multiple times per week seems intuitively against the nature of a "raid," although that may not be obvious to people who are just getting their feet wet with the raid finder. Regardless, it was actually somewhat difficult to use this bug - all of the 25 people queuing had to be there before you queued. An extremely casual player who didn't really raid before the LFR would likely not have access to 25 individuals geared enough and in the proper roles to do it. You definitely had to do this on purpose.
In other words, I wouldn't worry. If it's something that can be exploited accidentally, or is not obviously against the rules, Blizzard has not (in the past) come down very hard on people. The LFR rules were clearly stated from the get-go, and the exploit was very definitely against those rules, and also difficult to do by accident, so Blizzard dropped the ban hammer. Whether they deserve it or not can be debated to death, but the fact is this was a different kind of exploitation than past ones, and so the punishment was therefore different as well.
andrews Dec 9th 2011 3:38PM
I never saw any "rules" clearly posted for LFR. I have still not tired it, so it doesn't matter for me, but text buried in some "rules" is not going to get much attention from anyone.
Putting a vague blurb in the limited area where you access LFR is insufficient to make things clear.
clundgren Dec 9th 2011 4:19PM
Seriously? Purposefully disconnecting after a boss but before the loot is opened so you don't saved to the boss even if you subsequently win loot, allowing you to run the same LFR for loot multiple times and completely gear up on the first day of the patch isn't an obvious exploit for you? You need rules spelling out that that is cheating?
Right. Butter won't melt in that mouth, will it?
Saeadame Dec 9th 2011 4:30PM
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/4023602/Raid_Finder_QA-11_29_2011#blog
Would have been front page of the community site, and one of the main questions is "how does loot work?" This Q&A, and an associated FAQ were both reproduced on both WoW Insider and MMO Champion. If you read anything to do with WoW, you would have had access to the information, and if you didn't, you probably didn't know about the Raid Finder anyway.
My response was to your note that "the whole thing has me concerned that I will get myself banned for doing something I thought was a fair part of the game," and what I'm saying was it's very unlikely that you will get yourself banned if you accidentally use a bug. LFR was definitely, obviously an exploit, directly against how Blizzard STATED the LFR loot system should work, and the people who did it were well aware of that fact.
There's different kinds of "exploiting" - there's unintentional exploiting that happens because Blizzard doesn't notice something and it might have the appearance of Working As Intended - which Blizzard typically doesn't punish for at all, then there's the "grey area" of exploits where something will make a fight substantially easier than it's clearly supposed to be - generally where Blizzard takes away gear and kill credit but doesn't ban, and then there's exploits where people know they are doing the exact opposite of what Blizzard has explicitly stated, and now we know that it's in this case where we see the bans.
Hih Dec 9th 2011 5:38PM
"Further, getting pieces of loot off a raid boss multiple times per week seems intuitively against the nature of a "raid," although that may not be obvious to people who are just getting their feet wet with the raid finder."
Eh, I disagree with you here. The LFR feels a LOT more like the LFD to me. It feels like a big 5 man dungeon that happens to have 24 other people in it instead of 4 other people. It doesn't feel ANYTHING like a normal raid to me. And people have this expectation after years of LFD that "you queue, you have a chance at loot, even if you've already run the dungeon that day because LFD ignores lockouts."
It still seems silly to me that you can't get gear more than once in LFR. You can only get VP twice, and there's only two wings. Once you've killed all the bosses once, there's 0 incentive to do it again until next week. LFR gear is intentionally a lower ilevel than normal, who cares if you can get gear more than once a week?
clundgren Dec 9th 2011 5:49PM
But Hih, it's not like people were just re-running the raid and getting loot, which is how lfd works. It's not like they were just requeuing. They were very specifically performing unusual actions to rig the system. It's absurd to suggest that they would have all been systematically doing so by accident.
andrews Dec 10th 2011 12:22AM
I read some WoW info, but certainly not all. Mostly this site in fact. Today was the first time I saw any specifics about this issue. All the others were of the "we're not going to say how" aspect.
Maybe my concern is unnecessary, but it remains. Blizzard's method of handling it and lack of looking for exploits on their own prior to release, is a big cause of that problem.
Getting annoyed about wasting time in Darkmoon Faire is another aspect of my annoyance.
Little things add up.
djsuursoo Dec 9th 2011 3:32PM
darkmoon is interesting and fun. the once-a-month aspect of it means that every few weeks i get a nice break from other dailies i might be doing to do some that are fun and goofy.
and the cannibal food makes me a VERY happy fellow. my DK snapped up a few of everything.
now i just wish i could trade it to other people...
me: 'here, i got some food to spare'
new guildie on his first raid: 'hey, awesome! neat effect too. what is it?'
me: 'smoked night elf'
ngohfr: *spits and freaks* 'cannibal!'
me: 'technically, YOU'RE the cannibal...'
Bynde Dec 9th 2011 3:56PM
Some of the music reminds me of Pee Wee's Big Adventure.
All in all, I like the crazyness feel of the Fair. Or Faire.
durandal Dec 9th 2011 6:44PM
Actually, I feel very much reminded of a Tim Burton soundtrack. Very fitting, anyways.
clundgren Dec 9th 2011 4:15PM
How is this "content that you won't blow through and subsequently get tired of in two weeks' time"?
I blew through the content in about 30 minutes on the first night. Grinding dailies for the next two years isn't content. The games are trivial.
Zapwidget Dec 9th 2011 4:38PM
You seem a bit too reward oriented to be able to appreciate the idea of going to a fair. It's a fair(e). You go there to have fun. If playing the games isn't fun for you, then don't play them.
I go there just to play the games. A few rounds of Whack a gnoll and a run on the Steam Tonk course is far more entertaining than hanging out in trade chat.
djsuursoo Dec 9th 2011 5:07PM
what it really is is 'special content that's available every once in a while that any and all characters can access for a change of pace from normal activities' content.
i booked through the content in a half hour on the first night too.
then i hung around, looked at the neat stuff, saw there were some things i wanted to buy(GOD I WANT TO TRANSMOG THE NERFSWORD SO BAD), stayed for the l90etc show, which was the first of the patch and turned into a huge mosh-pit-o-fun, and then left.
i go back for 20 minutes while it's up, per day, boom hyper easy dailies that are really just for variety over all else(takes away from the grind, you see), and it's festive.
not to mention the food vendor in the woods is a great source for filler food/drink. cheap, high-gain that scales to level, who cares if it has a buff or not, it's great for leveling and as in-between food buffs food.