Breakfast Topic: Has lore prevented you from enjoying content?

From a purely game mechanics point of view, I should love Battlefield Barrens. One of my favorite things to do in Vanilla WoW was head out to the plaguelands and mindlessly grind scourgestones while I read guild chat or watched TV. Sometimes, you don't really want the dedicated direction of dailies or quests, you just wanted to get some progress done on your terms, when you feel like it. Battlefield Barrens, with the ability to grind resources to use for a single weekly quest or for currency for some decent gear and vanity items, would seem to be perfect for that.

But I can't go back to the Barrens, because I'm Alliance. When I go to the Barrens, I've heard from outside sources and little story snippets that I'm supposedly infiltrating the Horde to sew chaos and dissension. Despite that, the actual quest dialogue and gameplay tells a different story. From the moment I hit Durotar, I have to put up with trolls taunting me about the loss of Theramore and trolls threatening to kill me. Even Vol'jin makes me "earn his trust," and threatens to feed me to Sylvanas if I question him. To top it all off, it's not clear that I'm getting anything in return but the vague hope that Vol'jin's Trolls might kill an extra orc or two before the Alliance starts their main offensive.

Vol'jin hasn't offered me any concessions if his rebellion is successful and he or someone he supports is the new head of government. I haven't even done some real espionage stuff like, say, planning Rebellion daggers in Kor'kron bodies to provoke Garrosh into putting more pressure on the rebellion and less on alliance forces. No, all I do is turn in resources to the trolls the exact same way a horde player would, resources that the Alliance army could likely use, simply on an unbacked, unsupported, unprovable gamble that the rebellion might kill an extra orc or two for us and might, after we kill Garrosh, remember that it owes us one.

That doesn't sit well with me. I don't think it's worth the verbal abuse my character received, and it's not worth bolstering a group of Horde that are just as much my enemies as Garrosh's people. Vol'jin helped destroy Theramore too, after all. If I felt like I was doing actual espionage or that I was able to cow or negotiate Vol'jin into actual post-war concessions, that would be one thing, but all I'm doing is bolstering his army, an enemy army, with no attempt at securing any lasting benefits for the Alliance.

So, in short, I did the opening quest chain, I got my Ghaz'rooki, and I haven't been back to Barrens since. It's just not enjoyable for me because I cannot stand the storyline and how awfully my Alliance characters get treated for a little or no return, lore-wise.

What about you? Has there been content that, gameplay wise you like, but has become less fun or even unbearable for you due to the lore surrounding it? Tags: battlefield-barrens, featured, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, grinding, rep-grinding, scourgestone, voljin, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics

Filed under: Breakfast Topics

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The Queue: Original Content

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky (@adamholisky) will be your host today.

You know what I can absolutely say? That this Queue is original content, insofar as question and answer columns are original content.

Now that we've got that out of the way...

Demon Within asked:

What was the reason given as to why we cant cage wild caught pets? Id love to be able to give some of the ones I've gotten away to guildies who are just starting out in pet battling.

Blizzard wants you to go out and find pets, not just sit on the AH and buy them all day. You can still grab max level pets that way, but if you want to really get into it you're going to have to go out in the wild and search for them. Not just sit in a city all day (which was one of MoP's founding ideas).

Personally I like that there are things that are not able to go on the AH. I wouldn't mind even more world exploration and forcing people out into the open. It makes for quite a fun game.

Wowmynth asked:

I Know Why Blizz Lost 1.3M Subs.

Because of Wrathion's Legendary PvP quest.

What exactly the #@$% were those guys thinking? I know I am like, wayyyyy late for the party - but then I start my QQ when the damn thing starts biting me in the butt.

No. That quest might not be your cup of tea, but I'm sure that any significant number of people have not left because of it. Additionally there's not just one reason why people have left WoW (and it's not like the game is dead... some 8 million odd people play it), it's a bunch of small reasons for each person. I know some who have left simply because they don't have the time in their lives anymore, and others who are sick of the guild drama after eight years of gameplay.

It's not possible to just point to one thing and say "This. This is the thing that has damaged WoW." Because that one thing might be it for you, but it's something else entirely for the next guy or gal.

Also keep in mind that a game has never entered the territory that WoW is in right now. It's an eight year old game, millions upon millions of people are still playing it regularly, and they have no legitimate idea of what the population upticks and downticks are going to be like. Thus, they can't really play on things, except for the simple act of continuing to make WoW the best game it can be.

Don't let anyone fool you here either -- the only thing known is that more people will leave WoW eventually. No one, not even Blizzard, knows for certain how much or when. People can run statistical models, they can use cutting edge math and systems to predict rises and declines, but at the end of the day, only time will tell.

We all need to stop focusing on the face 8 million is less than 12 million. Those numbers, quite literally, make no different to the vast majority of the people.

Logan asked:

Hey Adam, say something controversial for tomorrow's Queue.

Chris Metzen doesn't like the Alliance.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em! Tags: featured, guide, qa, question-and-answer, wow-answers, wow-daily-answers, wow-daily-questions, wow-guide, wow-player-questions, wow-q-and-a, wow-questions

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Does Mists of Pandaria need new heroic five-man content?

While recording the WoW Insider Show this week, my two co-hosts Anne Stickney and Olivia Grace were discussing heroic five man dungeons and made the interesting point that, while Cataclysm used new heroics to help people catch up in gearing as new raid tiers were released, the advent of the Raid Finder might mean that it isn't necessary anymore. If you're running LFR as your primary way to see/experience raid content, then you'd simply run previous LFR's in order to gear up and collect valor points for the various reputation vendors. This would allow you to get geared enough for further LFR as new raid tiers are released, and keeps the previous LFR's relevant. If you're running the current 10 or 25 man raids, you can use the LFR's for those raids to bootstrap yourself appropriately if you're not already geared well enough from the previous tier of raiding.

Either way, you don't need new heroic dungeons for the task - between daily quests, scenarios and LFR, the Cataclysm model which placed new five mans in patch 4.1 and 4.3 might no longer be necessary. Challenge modes keep the heroics that launched with Mists of Pandaria evergreen, since you can't outgear them, but is that enough for fans of five mans? While both Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm introduced post-launch dungeons, Burning Crusade really only introduced Magister's Terrace in its last content patch. This makes me wonder if we really need any new five mans, and if we do, what would/should they be?

Dungeons for their own sake?

Let me be frank - I don't think we need new five mans for gearing purposes. We have enough ways to gear up a character with LFR and reputation, and I especially hope that the game slows down the gear cycle that got way out of hand in Wrath and Cata. I'm fine with people needing to run older content in order to gear up for newer content instead of introducing new heroic five mans to leapfrog over it - I'm okay with people needing to run the Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring LFR in order to run the new Throne of Thunder when 5.2 drops.

But that doesn't mean I don't want new five mans. It just means I don't want them introduced just to give us a place to go gear up. I would be fine with a new five man, or even a few, that didn't increase the item level of their drops at all compared to current five mans. Why would players run them? Well, for starters, they'd run them because they're new. They'd be a new challenge for Challenge Mode players because they'd need to adapt new strategies for them. And if a new incentive was needed, an increased chance to drop a 476 epic at the end could be introduced. The problem with giving new five mans increased ilevel gear is, as we saw in Cataclysm, people stop running the older heroics when you do that. With the de-emphasis on valor points as a main gearing strategy, introducing new five mans seems to me to be worthwhile on the merits of the dungeons themselves. The emphasis should be on giving players a cool new place to go, not on giving them a gearing shortcut when we have enough gearing options as it is.

The fun of the crawl

But I'm neither dogmatic nor arrogant enough to believe there aren't good arguments for either simply not introducing new five mans at all, or for using the Cata and Wrath models for new heroics and introducing them with new higher ilevel gear. My own belief is that with new LFR's every tier of raiding we'll have plenty of gearing options going forward, and that players who run five mans primarily will collect valor points that will eventually allow them to buy up to ilevel 496 (perhaps better as new patches bring new reputations with new rewards, such as the Sunreaver Onslaught/Kirin Tor Offensive in 5.2) but it could be that new dungeons just won't be compelling if they don't add higher ilevel items. Perhaps that means that they must have them, or perhaps that means that in the age of scenarios and LFR they're just not as necessary as they were and we can afford to only introduce them when we have a compelling story reason.

What I personally love about five mans is that old school dungeon crawl feeling of them. They remind me strongly of my days playing D&D, and even my early WoW experience where raids were rare and I spent the majority of my time in dungeons like UBRS and Scholo and Dire Maul. I certainly don't want that style of play lost.

Certainly patch 5.2 looks to be sprawling enough without one. But with faster patch cycles, a theoretical patch 5.3 could very well be built entirely around a new dungeon or two. It now falls to you to debate the issue - should we see more heroic five man dungeons this expansion, or less? Do we need them, or are we covered by newer options?

Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Tags: challenge-modes, content, dungeons, LFR, mists-of-pandaria, patch-5.2, raid-finder, scenarios

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria

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