Posts with tag wow-issues

Sorry, new players, but we're all breaking out the rose colored glasses jumping aboard the nostalgia train for today's Breakfast Topic. Today we're looking back on our favorite game moments: specifically the quests and events we miss from WoW long gone. We're talking about things like the epic end to the Alliance Onyxia attunement quest, ending in Onyxia fleeing from Stormwind -- which, okay, we wouldn't actually miss very much if we'd had to do it recently -- or the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj world events -- which we wouldn't miss, either, if we could still remember all the peacebloom we had to farm.

It's not so much that we want these things to return as they were -- seriously, peacebloom farming -- but it seems a shame that these historic happenings have come and gone from Azeroth, never to be seen or experienced by new players. Because even if these events were annoying -- sometimes really annoying -- they had some truly epic moments that we'd love to relive. So, fellow gamers, what's the epic moment (or moments) you'd like to see brought back to WoW?

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In case you've been avoiding major cities recently, consider this your monthly reminder that the time of the Darkmoon Faire is once again upon us, bringing another month's worth of carnival games, prizes and fun. Never been? Start by heading to Goldshire or Mulgore, where a portal will take you straight there. If that's too much travel time, you should be able to find mages in all major cities willing to send you to your destination for a small fee. If you want to take advantage, act fast: it will only be here for a week. Once it closes up shop on the 13th, you'll have to wait another month.

So go on, check it out; we promise that this Breakfast Topic will still be here when you get back.

[hold music plays]

Okay, back? Great! Now we can get to talking about everyone's favorite Darkmoon activities. You do have a favorite, don't you? Perhaps it's the island's unique wild pets or a certain top hat. But maybe carnival games are more your style, like shooting yourself out of a canon or tossing rings onto a turtle? Or maybe you're just in it for the pets, mounts, and heirlooms you can buy for Darkmoon Prize Tickets. Whatever your reasons for visiting the Faire, you must have a favorite thing to do once you're there. So share!

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Oh, sure. WoW boasts great gameplay and features some magnificent art. The music is outstanding and the stories are pretty good. It's an awesome game. But these aren't the only to love about World of Warcraft.

For one thing, the community is pretty awesome. While the official forums do occasionally degenerate into a bit of trolling and name-calling, they're also some of the most polite, friendly, and welcoming gaming boards on the internet.

The game is relatively responsible about social issues. While things like murder, war, and torture obviously take place, you can't escape this lingering notion that there's social commentary happening underneath the story. Chain mail bikinis are largely a thing of the past. And even if the occasional midriff shows up, at least we're not sporting slave outfits. The game certainly doesn't make light of mental health issues or sexual assault.

Blizzard threw open the doors to the developers, sharing Ghostcrawler and others' insights on how the game is built, balanced, and developed. The community managers engage in meaningful, high-level topics that lend insight to their community strategies. Not only is it good for the game, there's information to be learned.

So while I obviously love playing the game, I love being involved with a game whose meta-community is better than average. It's a great place to be, and I thank you all for it. But, what about you? What do you love about the game, that's not strictly the game play itself?

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I'm not one to make a big deal out of a minor itch. Whether it's an annoying person, irritating behavior, or a frustrating situation, I can keep on rolling without interruption. But oh, there comes the inevitable straw that breaks the camel's back. For me in Mists, it was the ookin' dook flingers and dear Li Li (bless her heart) who tag-teamed to destroy my last nerve. Individually, I think I could handle them, but since the moment I found my quest logs on both factions simultaneously logjammed by the pair of them, I've cut a wide path around both. No more hozen. No more strident brats. So, so done.

Sometimes a new thing seems enjoyable at first, but after repeated exposure to it, it begins grating on your nerves until you just can't take another second. Beyond grating characters -- no more talk about annoying NPCs -- is there something else in Mists of Pandaria that's become the target of your own ire? Maybe it's a quest type that's worn out its appeal, a running joke that's lost its edge, or a trending group or raid behavior that frustrates you to tears. Is there some aspect of the game that you wish would quietly, completely wink out of existence overnight? Is there something prevalent in today's game that makes you clap your hands over your eyes and screech "Enough!"?

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Whether you're a guild officer guiding the collective bank storage of an entire guild or a banker alt managing a one-account guild vault, how do you keep things guild bank storage under control? What does it take? Chaotic guild banks have broken many a lesser volunteer who drowned under the unrelenting barrage of items. If you're a neatnik, please, please tell us. This organization thing -- how is it done?

Talk tabs with us. What tabs do you maintain in your guild bank? Your single-player guild bank? How do you keep guild members from simply hurling items into the bank wherever they find an open slot? What kind of maintenance is involved -- do you have a dedicated officer or a set amount of time to prune and organize on a regular basis?

Surely there's a method to the madness of guild banking, a way you keep your vault from turning into the Anne Stickney Home for Wayward Everythings. Help!

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Even a glance at WoW Insider's comments section will turn up hordes of devoted WoW-lovers and players who pursue the game with single-minded devotion. That's natural enough; that's what we're here for, after all. But how many of you play other MMOs? Despite the huge number of massively multiplayer online games available today -- enough to keep our sister site Massively a popular internet gaming destination -- do you even have time to indulge in more than one?



If you do play more than one MMO, how do you manage your time between them? What games scratch which gaming itches for you?

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Leveling in World of Warcraft is a rite of passage that we all must go through in order to reach max level where we can play with our friends. Though for alt-a-holics -- and I'm starting to think I may be one of them -- leveling is the whole point of the game. But whether you're leveling for the first time or the hundredth, whether you're speeding through or taking time to enjoy the scenery, chances are you have your own way of going about things.

So when you're on the leveling treadmill, what's your choice? For my part, I tend to quest through zones -- especially if they're zones I haven't been through before. But if I'm stuck in zones that I've been through before, perhaps many times before, things get awfully tedious, thus ending my life potential alt-a-holism. But do you quest, dungeon, subsist on dailies and rested XP, or something else entirely? Let us know, so we may commiserate about the leveling treadmill together!

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You might want to create a new comment profile for today's Breakfast Topic -- but if you don't, we promise not to hold anything you say against you. Very much. Now, scoot a little closer and let's dish.

Today's topic: dirty little habits and gameplay secrets.

• Do you skip reading quest text?
• Do you have unenhanced gear?
• Do you ignore performance meters such as DPS meters?
• Do you purposely slack in PUGs, doing just enough to get by?
• Do you read, surf the web, or watch TV or movies while you're engaged in group content?
• Do you select need for all loot without discrimination?

What other foibles lie beneath your stalwart Azerothian exterior?

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I'm a fairly methodical player. I dodge entire swaths of the game (pet battles and holiday events, I'm looking at you) because I don't have time to get sucked into the inevitable completionism. But despite a fondness for checklists and planning, I'm dissatisfied in a system centered on buying gear with tokens, points, or other currency systems. I'm a fan of throwing my fates to the wind and diving into an instance to see what luck may bring me. I like not knowing if or when a particular piece might come my way, and I'm fully open to the possibility that it might not ever come at all. (Although I reserve the right to grouse about it. That's part of the fun.)

For me, this bit of RNG design is part of what keeps the parameters of a game world feeling larger than the sum of my ambitions. The envy of seeing someone in town stroll by wielding the massive two-handed staff that I've always admired, the unchecked line item on my gear list ... I like knowing that there exist parts of this world that I can't manhandle into submission. After all, my dream gear list wouldn't be very dreamy if it were merely a shopping list.

We do need alternatives. We need ways to fill in holes for things that never drop, and we need drops for players who prefer not to run dungeons and raid content. (I wish more of that were based on player-made items, frankly -- but that's another Breakfast Topic.) Most assuredly, we need a selection of rewards for players whose souls crave predictable, regular infusions of upgrade juju.

I appreciate WoW's current mix of methods, although for my own tastes, things have slid a little too far to the predictable side of the equation. Knowing what my upgrades will be and when I will get them feels dully inevitable. I'd welcome a little more reliance on the RNG, with the opportunity for a little more chaos surrounding any given drop (and therefore a little more passionate hope beforehand and a little more unbridled joy afterwards). As Matt Rossi puts it, "loot is the carrot; not getting loot is the stick."

Open country vs. mapped road -- where do you stand? Do you prefer plotting your path to purple glory with gear that lies reliably in your path, or do you wish there were a little more crazy RNG splashed into the mix? Should the mix of gear acquisition methods balance differently in different areas of the game, and if so, do you think the game already does so with success? And most importantly, how has the mix of predictable vs. unpredictable gear upgrades worked out for you?

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Guild tag every last character? Of course not! As an introvert by nature, I value the ability to log in and play free from social or performance pressures. True, most of my time these days is spent leveling in a dedicated duo in a guild full of chatterboxes. But I also spend a good chunk of time on a level 90 who remains untagged and unknown. She lets me unplug from the social and work-related aspects of WoW to tool around at whatever pace I please. Her sister character on a different faction and realm is also unguilded; she's more of a PvPer and oh, does she enjoy letting off a little steam!

As you might imagine, I haven't availed myself of Real ID. When I can choose an appear offline option, I'll undoubtedly check it out. Until then, though, I like having the option to log in completely anonymously.

Do you have one or more secret getaway characters? If you do, would you consider your primary getaway character your main, an alternative main, or an alt?

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When I left World of Warcraft, about two years ago, if you wanted to talk to Blizzard, you didn't have many options. You could submit an in-game ticket if you had a problem or post complaints or discussion in the forums and hope for a response. But response time for GMs was typically slow and you could never tell if a Blizzard employee would jump on responding to your forum thread. Having a conversation with a Blizzard employee seemed like a rare thing -- that involved a heck of a lot of luck

And while there's still no way to guarantee a blue response, when I came back to WoW, I was most surprised by how much communicating with Blizzard had changed. These days you can find Blizzard and Blizzard employees on the forums and in-game, of course, but you'll also find them on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even Reddit. And they're not just there to talk official Blizzard business (though they certainly answer questions from time to time): you're just as likely to find them chatting and joking, just like anyone else on social networks.

So when you've got a burning question or a game problem that needs addressing, where do you go to talk about it? Do you stick to the classic official channels, or do you launch into a discussion on Twitter?

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As a (fairly) new monk, I have to say I love the fact that monks have their very own daily quest. Every day -- and an extra time every ten levels -- we can head out to the Peak of Serenity in Pandaria, where we train with our fellow monks.

If you aren't aware that this quest was daily, and only visited the Peak of Serenity for class quests every ten levels, you should get on board! It's easy to do -- just cast Zen Pilgrimage every day and spend a couple of minutes sparring with one of the monk trainers -- and the reward is very much worth it, not only giving you great XP, but also the Enlightenment buff that provides +50% experience from questing and killing. If you're leveling, I don't have to tell you how invaluable that kind of XP buff is. In fact, it's so invaluable, that whenever I've switched to another alt I really miss it. Leveling any other class, no matter how efficient you are with heirlooms and rested bonuses, is slower than leveling a monk.

And all I have to say is... where are the other class quests? Why don't hunters have daily target practice quests? Why don't mages have daily drills in fire, frost, and arcane magics? Why don't warlocks have daily demon duels? And what do you think, dear readers? Do other classes need their own daily quests, or would it just add to the frankly overwhelming pile of dailies we already have?

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In a recent Call to Auction podcast with WoW Insider writer and profession/economy specialist Basil "Euripedes" Bentsen, WoW Lead Systems Designer Greg Street and Professions Designer He-Rim Woo intimated that Blizzard might be toying with the idea of expanding the number of professions players can have. "We've even considered whether it makes sense to let characters learn more than two professions (or maybe even all of them)," they told Euripedes. "We have nothing to announce yet in this direction. It's just brainstorming at this stage."

Personally, I'm a huge supporter of a robust crafting system that's central to both the economy and player gearing. Crafted purples -- I love 'em. But strengthening the professions as a whole could mean a major overhaul to the difficulty and accessibility of what the game allows individual players to accomplish. If player-made items were to play a more central role in modern Azeroth, how should the scaling of professions and crafting change to accommodate that? Should changing professions be difficult? Expensive? Should you remember recipes if you drop a profession and then pick it up again? Or should you be able to learn as many professions as you care to put the time into training?

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