Posts with tag scenarios

Earlier this month, I penned an edition of The Queue that sparked a lively debate about Mists of Pandaria's scenarios. Some loved them and want scenarios to stick around in future expansions. Some didn't and wish they were gone. Some didn't care either way. That's how most mass debates turn out, but it was interesting to watch nonetheless.

Personally, I loved scenarios, even the super easy ones. In fact, especially the super easy ones. I've been playing WoW since it launched. As I get older, I find I have fewer days in a week to dedicate long hours to a game. I still get those days, just not as often. The days where my time is limited, it was nice to have something quick and straightforward to do that still contributed to character progression in some way. Should Blizzard design content with that playstyle in mind? Maybe not. If you design a game to be consumed in 10-15 minutes, wherein the player doesn't need to pay much attention to what's happening, it isn't much of a game. There are very good games that can be played that way, but they aren't MMOs. Still, it was nice to have the option available. Pet battles were the other available option, but didn't contribute to character advancement.

I'd like to see scenarios continue as a part of max-level group gameplay, but I'd also understand if they faded away. I don't want them to fade away, but I would understand it. What about all of you? Love scenarios? Hate them? Don't care?

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I do a podcast from time to time about World of Warcraft, and as a result I tend to talk about the game, instead of just play it or even writing about it. One of the conversations I've had about the game that I've never really sat down and explored is this - Mists of Pandaria has seemed like a gigantic experiment in terms of how we receive our content. From the original Golden Lotus daily questing hub, which in turn unlocked the Shado-Pan and August Celestials, to patch 5.1's daily quests that unlocked regular, one-off quests that further advanced the story, to patch 5.2's progression on the Throne of Thunder unlocked unique solo scenarios. Patch 5.3 brought us no dailies at all, but a short series of quests that led to an unlockable weekly quest that was, frankly, one of my favorite ways to get the Lesser Charm of Good Fortune in the numbers needed for my weekly raiding.

Now in patch 5.4 we've lost dailies (the Golden Lotus have been pared back to a few in the west of the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, now the Vale of Eternal Sorrows) and we've gained a content hub which is mostly about exploration and good old fashioned grinding in the Timeless Isle. Over the course of this expansion we've seen all sorts of delivery systems for content - scenarios, heroic scenarios, flex raiding - and we've even seen some complaints from players about older, tried and true systems like five man dungeons not getting the emphasis people might want. And this leads me to wonder what we've got in store for us down the road. How will the next expansion present itself to us? I expect there will be the usual leveling quests, they work pretty well overall and there's room for flexibility in their design, but what will the max level content look like?

A common refrain among casual players this expansion has been the lament for five-man content. Mists of Pandaria hasn't added any new five-man dungeons since it launched, and for fans of that format, it's a bit of a bummer. In fact, Mists of Pandaria marks the first time that Blizzard hasn't added new dungeons post-launch. In classic WoW, Maraudon was added in patch 1.2, and the Dire Maul set in patch 1.3. The Burning Crusade saw Magister's Terrace in patch 2.4, Wrath gained the three Icecrown five-mans in patch 3.3, Cataclysm had Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub retooled as 5-mans in 4.2, plus the Well of Eternity dungeon suite in 4.3. Yes, if five-mans are your thing, Mists probably has you feeling pretty glum right about now.

So maybe the following tweet from Ghostcrawler will cheer you up a bit:

@GersenKirth We would like to provide more 5-player dungeons than we were able to do for MoP.

- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) August 25, 2013

Instead of five-man dungeons, Mists definitely saw a focus on scenarios for casual group content. And while scenarios are fun, if you're a healer or a tank, you're not really necessary for them. I personally would love to see a bit more balance in the future between implementing scenarios and implementing five-mans, so here's to a WoW future where both will shine. What about you? Are you hoping for more five-mains, or could you do without them?

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Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Insert introductory text here.

HadenHenderson asked:

Whats going to happen to the MOP scenarios when the next expansion hits? Has Blizzard said anything? Will my higher level character be able to Q for them? Will they still be level 90?

• Patch 5.4 PTR patch notes
• Virtual Realms announced
• Datamined NPC, mount and pet models
• Moonfang, a new dire wolf boss for the Darkmoon Faire
• Ilvl restrictions lifted for item enhancements
• Siege of Orgrimmar's dungeon journal entries
• New pets and a new pet battle tournament
• Stromgarde Keep as a new scenario
• New Challenge Mode titles
• Proposed initial ilvl changes for new raid difficulties

Stay tuned for more patch 5.4 information, and keep your eyes peeled for the PTR.

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Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Return of the RIFT character header images! Run away!

MikeLinton said:

I have to seriously question the "super positive response" that you are seeing to scenarios. I only see my small slice of the WoW community, of course, but what I'm seeing tells me the opposite. The only people I knew that ran regular scenarios were for either daily valor or guild gold, and they didn't like doing it. Heroic scenarios are a little better because Blizzard made the rewards awesome and forced people to go in with a full group. If Heroic 5-mans were the same way, then they would be far more enjoyable to heroic scenarios.

I know this isn't a question, but I feel a need to respond to it. What I tend to see personally is that people who play only healers or only tanks dislike scenarios for the most part. People who primarily play DPS (like myself) enjoy them quite a bit. As a DPS player, queues for dungeons and raids are (were?) so absurdly long that I stopped bothering. Scenarios didn't have that problem, plus they give me much more freedom in how I played. Scenarios had me digging tools out of my belt that were never relevant in the tank/healer/DPS tinity, but made a big difference in scenario performance. Not being locked into the trinity is refreshing.

Behind the scenes at WoW Insider, we've been talking a lot about scenarios recently, for various reasons - some of which we hope to be able to soon share! In those discussions, I relatively quickly had to come out and admit, yeah, I kind of hate scenarios. It's not that I think there's anything actually bad about them. Maybe individual scenarios have certain annoying mechanics, I honestly haven't done enough of them to know. But I kind of dread doing them, and avoid them for the most part, and there is a very simple reason why: when I first go into one, I don't necessarily know what I'm supposed to be doing.

I cannot communicate how much I despise that feeling. It's why I love being a healer. Here is your job as a healer, in any dungeon or raid ever: you stay out of the bad stuff on the ground and you play Rejuvenation (or Holy Light, or Healing Wave, or whatever) whack-a-mole with health bars. It's great. It's structured and straightforward and it's always the same. Sometimes there are additional mechanics you have to be aware of but, here's the thing - boss needs interrupts? Not a healer's job. Mobs need kiting? Not a healer's job. Turtles need kicking? Not a healer's job. Boxes need clicking? Not a healer's job (usually).

If the words 'casual' and 'hardcore' ever had a useful role in determining the differences between players in World of Warcraft, and I am not convinced they ever did, they no longer do. A player who wants to have an alt of every single class at max level and makes that happen is not playing the game casually even if she never raids. A player who collects several hundred pets and levels many of them through pet battles, or has a similarly high number of mounts, or determines to go out and get every cooking recipe in the game (including Dirge's Kickin' Chimeraok Chops which you can't even get anymore but somehow he finds a way) is playing the game very seriously indeed.

Quite frankly, despite the fact that I raid a set schedule, I often feel like I'm significantly more 'casual' than many players who never raid at all. I know I play a lot less - I definitely do not log on every day, I don't run LFR unless I missed a boss in normal (because I want a shot at my Secrets of the Empire off of that boss) and I don't do pet battles, farm, or even do daily quests anymore. So with my roughly fifteen hours of WoW a week, 12 of it spent inside a raid and the other three futzing about older raids for transmog gear, am I casual or hardcore? And does it matter?

Ordinarily I'd explore the answer in the paragraphs to come. But frankly, the answer is no. It doesn't matter. It is so far from mattering that the light from it mattering won't reach us for fifty thousand years. What matters is finding out what players want to do with their time and letting them do it.

@stephenreis123 Hmm. I'd say two things off the top of my head. 1) We wanted to offer options but didn't offer *enough* options (e.g. GL).

- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) April 24, 2013

@stephenreis123 2) As many difficulty levels as we offered, it wasn't enough.

- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) April 24, 2013

@stephenreis123 I said 2, but also we didn't do a good job of providing direction at L90. Also wish we had added some dungeons in maybe 5.3.

- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) April 24, 2013

Firstly, one of the great things about Ghostcrawler is how readily he owns up to the team's mistakes here. There's no shame in getting things wrong, but maintaining that you're infallible is both irritating and generally untrue.

One of the more volatile announcements that we've heard so far from Blizzard regarding Mists of Pandaria is the fact that Mists will not include any more 5-man dungeons. In an expansion where new content seems to be rolling out on a much faster, tighter basis than any expansion prior this seems a little bizarre to players, particularly those that enjoy dungeon-based content. Yet one of the things Mists has been doing consistently throughout the expansion is delivering a wider array of things to do. In fact, there's such a variety in endgame content that players sometimes feel legitimately overwhelmed by the sheer amount of it.

But just because we aren't getting any new dungeons doesn't mean we aren't getting alternate ways to obtain all that sweet, sweet gear we know and love. Patch 5.3 will see the introduction of heroic scenarios, slightly tougher versions of the scenarios we've already seen this expansion. In addition to valor, the heroic scenarios will offer raid-finder level rewards for players that choose to participate in them -- better than any gear you'll find in a heroic dungeon at this point.

While this may seem pretty cool for some people, it does make one wonder -- what's the purpose of heroic dungeons?