If you could skip Draenor, would you?

Let me start out by saying, I know this won’t happen. While on one hand I like the idea, it isn’t practical for numerous reasons.

That said, imagine the next expansion comes out and instead of leaving Draenor and adding 10 more levels from 101-110, it actually adds 20 levels, but they run from 91-110. What would happen is that when you were done with Pandaria, you could choose to go to Draenor in pursuit of Garrosh or you could head to this new area. Obviously, those that were already 100 could just start in the new expansion at 100 and go from there

Now, given the choice between an old storyline and a completely new, unknown one, of course you are going to choose the new one. But for alts after that? Yes, it’s going to be dictated by the quality of this new expansion, but what I want to get at is: is there enough of an enjoyable experience in Draenor to return there if you had other options?

Part of this is related to my last post about Warlords of Draenor and how all of the things I associate with it are going to stay with it.  The other part of it is that as an altoholic, I like having leveling options.  One of the things that Vanilla WoW had great about it was leveling options.  Two continents and often multiple areas on those continents that were close enough in level to quest in.  As it got to the tail end of things there were less options but still, overall, a lot of choice.

Burning Crusade had one single starting area but you could leave Hellfire Peninsula pretty early on and start questing in Zangarmarsh or you could finish Hellfire Peninsula and move over to Terokkar Forest.

Wrath had one of my favorites. You could start on either side of the continent and bounce around the various equivalent level areas.  In the end, there were basically two max level areas too.

Cataclysm had Mount Hyjal or Vashj'ir as your initial level 80 questing. Although the starting quest to Vashj'ir was such a terrible wait that sometimes it felt like you only had one.  Still, you could quickly move to new areas again or finish the original areas and skip to the "third" zone.

Mists of Pandaria was pretty railroad in the beginning.  It wasn't a lot, but a few quests were required to get things set-up but then after that it opened up pretty well.

Warlords of Draenor has continued on this strong on-the-rails trend for the starting area and then ostensibly opens up. But our "optional" garrison becomes vital and a fair amount of the quest hubs won't open up unless you progress the story.  Which is great for storytelling, but it feels a little too linear at times.

With all of the caveats of new story and quality of the story and etc out of the way, I do think that if I had the choice I'd probably avoid Draenor on most alts. Part of it is likely due to the Orc-exhaustion I've been diagnosed with (much of Blackrock Foundry and Hellfire Assault feel so much like Siege of Orgrimmar to me.) Part of it is of course would be going with the new & exciting thing.  But just overall, I'm just not very enamored of Draenor.

There are some beautiful sights and interesting things, don't get me wrong. And the leveling can be very smooth with good story and not too much fluff (although perhaps a tad too fast relative to the areas). But something about it just feels very...claustrophobic?  I'm not sure what word I'm looking for here but when I think of Mists of Pandaria I think of very open and the feeling of wide lands.  Very interesting and engaging.  Despite how pretty Draenor can look, I just don't feel that same way.  I wish I knew why. I'll be curious if having flying changes my thoughts on leveling and experiencing the content.

But back to you, what are your thoughts?

Warlords of Draenor feels ephemeral

When is the last time you changed the music on your garrison juke box?

When is the last time you actively sought out music rolls for your garrison?

When is the last time you collected the ore from your mine?  Flowers from your garden?

After your bodyguards hit max reputation, do you use them anymore?

Have you got to max rep on all of your bodyguards?

Did you get the selfie achievement?

After getting the achivement, how many people use their selfie cameras?


How popular is the twitter functionality?

What do we do with those toys that are only of use in Draenor?

What about those toys that somehow aren't really toys?

During the Wrath Timewalking weekend I ended up in the Halls of Lightning for one of my runs. After we beat Loken, I had the music roll drop from him.  It surprised me because I had completely forgotten about the jukebox in my garrison and about collecting the rolls for it.  I had meant to go back to get a lot of them later but just never got around to it.  (That was about the time that the no-flight thing was in full swing and it really curbed my enthausim for playing.)

It struck me as odd how quickly I had forgotten about this part of the game.  Then I remembered how others have said that the developers have said (2nd hand knowledge warning) that the garrisons are just for this expansion.  We won't be getting a new garrison in the next expansion and our followers won't be joining us.  It really underlined how self-contained this expansion is.

Think about Draenor as just leveling content, with no intent to do "end game". Any character that comes to Draenor after the next expansion is out probably won't have a level 3 garrison because why would they?  They'll level through the area fast enough to not need it and the benefits from it may not be enough to justify the time and resource sink that it is. If they don't have a level 3 garrison, they won't get a shipyard (okay, so there is an upside) and they wont' be going to Tanaan.  Even if they get to Tanaan, and assuming they didn't have a higher level character earn the Pathfinder achievement already, are they really going to take the weeks to get the rep to honored so that they can get the achievement? So new players are likely to never fly in Draenor.


Is this something unique to Warlords of Draenor? Is this really different than past expansions?  Am I being fair?  I guess something just feels different this time.  There are so many time sinks that when we come back to this content as pass through, it's going to feel very pointless to do a lot of these things.


I'm not sure of those answers but here are some other features that have stayed relevant past their addition to the game. These are not core gaming components, but they are significant enough to have developer time in patches and expansions after their introduction.

(I thought about adding flying to this but 1) I consider it a core part of the game and 2) I think others do too, and now Blizzard knows that.  I'm not sure if they'll try to remove flying again from the game, but I doubt it would be anytime soon if so.)

Pet battles

Only "recently" introduced, pet battling has become an identifiable main stay of the game. They've really only been here since Mists of Pandaria, granted that was around 3 years ago that they were introduced, but it did such a good job of taking something that had been around since Vanilla, revamping it and giving it a life of its own.  Some people hate it, yes, but the same could be said of PvP or raiding or crafting. The key thing is, it is popular enough that it draws people and isn't going away anytime soon.

Heirloom items

I had forgotten that heirlooms were introduced in Wrath of the Lich King.  There have been numerous changes to them, and with the latest heirloom tab it is even easier to use them. But they've been through 3 expansions and I doubt they'll remove them anytime soon.

Transmogrification

A Cataclysm update that had been requested in video games since the unification of Lower and Upper Egypt. Rough estimate.  Not only are they now creating gear that is solely for transmog purposes, but if it were to be removed, I'm pretty sure the transmog community might put the flying community to shame.  Their numbers are probably smaller than the pro-flying crowd, but though they be but little, they are fierce!

I have no doubts that there are other things we could point to and argue about as additions or content and I welcome any additionally thoughts.  The bigger thing for me is that the stuff I associate with this expansion, is stuff that is going to stay with this expansion, good or bad.

As to my questions from above: 

As I mentioned, I forgot about my jukebox.  After I get Pathfinder done (almost there, a few more days, when I can find the time) I may go back on do that, although to be honest, looking for those rolls feels like a nothing-to-do thing for me.

I generally still harvest my flowers for a few reasons: as a tailor, some of the flowers are needed for my daily cool down. My spouse has an alchemist so I send along the others I don’t use. And I typically get the food buff fruit for when we play, so while I’m over there I grab the flowers. Also, my druid has a storehouse, so I can easily and quickly drop the flowers in my bank. But other than that, no, I don't do it often. The mine I do even less.

I only have one bodyguard up to max rep, so I have a ways to go on that front before this is an issue. But I do know that I doubt I'll be getting wingman on more than my main and one alt.

I think I've taken 4-5 photos with the selfie camera.  I might do more.  I'm not inherently against it, it just doesn't really appeal to most of my characters, so I don't do it. But it isn't a draw for me.

Never used twitter, doubt I will. If I do, it will never be in game.

I hate that so many toys from Draenor are specific to this world and doubly hate the ones that take up space and for all intents and purposes seem like they should be toys but somehow aren't.

Current Statistics | Race | July 2015

Being a nerd, I have calculated the breakdown of my characters in various demographic ways. Level, primary roll, off-spec, class, profession, etc.  But today, I'll start off with race and side.

Quick note: "% of total" means percentage of all characters on this active account.

Here is where I currently stand with the race statistics of my characters:

Alliance

Race	Human	Night Elf	Dwarf	Gnome	Draenei	Worgen	Pandaren
Number	9	9	2	3	6	2	1
% of total	18%	18%	4%	6%	12%	4%	2%

The Pandaren is under the Alliance races because he chose the Alliance.  The Human and Night Elf were generally unsurprising.  Between the story and classes available, they had a strong advantage. Also, back when racial perks were bigger, I liked their two perks a lot. Draenei being so high was a bit unexpected. I expected Dwarves and Gnomes to do better. Worgen and Pandaren suffer from being late racial additions and having railroad openings. I like them and the story they have, but having to run it many, many times would have been too much.

Horde

Race	Orc	Forsaken	Tauren	Troll	Blood Elf	Goblin
Number	3	3	4	2	4	2
% of total	6%	6%	8%	4%	8%	4%

Again, no real surprises here. I think Blood Elves had one of the more engaging starting areas for Horde, and they had a lot of classes available to them. But lore-wise, I think I actually enjoy the Tauren the most of any Horde. I want to enjoy Trolls more but they just don't gel with me. I'm not sure I really like Goblins, however their personalities are so strong and the two I have are so...let's just say they survived early deletion based a lot on attitude.

So if we look at that by conflict side:

Side	Alliance	Horde
Count	32	18
% of total	64%	36%

I wonder if I just lost Navi & Kamalia :(

Of these characters, 18 are, more or less, solo play. The remaining 32 either have an assigned partner that I play with my spouse and always have, or are a floating character than can team with their semi-solo characters.

Some thoughts on motivation

Over at Alternative Chat, there is a post that I wanted to talk about. I'm not done with this post but I want to get it up now and come back to it.  Be sure to check the comments too. I generally agree with both of them.

First of all, she tricked me into thinking that she knew there was a patch about flying coming tonight. I should have known better but, alas, no flying yet.

But since I enjoy reading her blog when I can (need to add that to my list on the side), I read on. The thing is, there is a sentence that I feel misses something. Or maybe it’s that it misses me.

“The many who complained about not being motivated to leave their Garrisons were kept there by rewards that involved little or no effort at all…”

I’ve seen this idea bandied about and I’m curious how accurate it is. It isn’t for me and I’m not convinced it is that way for others. I’m sure there are some that feel this way but I’m not convinced it is a huge number of people.

This is just as anecdata as anything else but, there are a lot of reasons that I haven’t done much outside of garrisons and easy rewards and free materials are pretty low on the list.

1) Time – Both in order of importance and size of impact. It takes me a while to process the garrison chores. I don’t use Master Plan or any similar add-ons, so before the latest patch, I would have to wait for the animation to process through each mission. If I had stuff done at the dwarven war bunker, I would go and see what upgrade pieces I had and perhaps start the next work order for those. Then upgrade and reassign followers and send them back out, which took a little while as I was trying to find the best combinations for my missions. Then, I might want to go process my salvage, sell stuff, mail stuff to DE or auction. After that I might do a pet battle or perhaps my crafting. After those were done, off to collect my mine and herb garden. Okay, done! Now off to repeat on 4 more 100’s and 5 more lower garrisons.

2) Story – Yes, the stories in the areas while leveling tended to be good but overall, the story for this expansion is not very engaging for me. It is Siege of Ogrimmar, part 2, now with more Orcs! Blizzard has never been great about making their story flow for non-raiders, but this expansion is every worse. Stuff happens and I have no idea why. I really do try to read the quests and such but, in game, there is so little explanation of why we are doing anything.

3) Flying – I miss it. It made the content more fun at max level and it gave me something to look forward to. The lack of flying really killed my immersion. And when Blizzard, originally, said that there would be no flying ever in Draenor, I had little motivation to move forward. I never posted about it, but the biggest impetus to start blogging may have been to try to explain how flying helps immersion for me and my complete and utter bafflement at others that said it hurt theirs. I wasn’t discounting their view (although they often discounted mine), I was just trying to understand it. It wasn’t purely about flying at that point. It was also about how I felt in the game, as a player. This conversation over on Tome of the Ancient hits on it pretty well. (I was Lurking reader way back then)

The rest of the quote above is a different problem for me too.

“…and this is probably part of the reason why Ships now have a destructible element worked into the algorithm. Because a lot of people are now addicted to the notion of the 100% success rate, Blizzard have a problem. That means anything below 100% becomes pointless, and by definition this could include a fair proportion of all normal gameplay.

Fixing this problem however should be simple with the right rewards.”

One problem for me is that this is, essentially, out of my hands. It’s gambling at less than 100% which I don’t have a problem with, but that’s not why I play WoW. For the game mechanics of WoW, I want it to be about my skills and abilities, not random number generators. It isn’t about failure and losing things. It’s that the investment of time and resources that I’m gambling isn’t worth it.

Look at it this way. If I go to LFR, I can fail a lot of times, especially as I’m learning the fight. But, I can keep trying. I can look at what went wrong, pay my repair bill, and try again. With follower missions, if I fail it, I don’t get to try again. It’s gone. And the thing is, the only real control I have over that outcome is if I get my success rating to 100%. Beyond that, it is all up to the RNG. Not my skills or abilities or anything else. Just an algorithm.

When people say “Oh, you just want an ‘I win button’ ”, no I don’t. I want to learn and improve and earn. What I most decidedly do NOT want is a button that determine what I can do in game, is random, and I have no real influence over.

The shipyard just magnifies that problem. At least with followers if I fail, I don’t have to get a completely new follower, who will have completely random stats too.

Isn't this what she is saying?  Yes and no.  The point isn't that I have to have 100% success.  It's that we have two different games. The one I like to play and want to play is, mostly, based on my abilities. The one that I don't enjoy but am being forced to do if I want to get back to the one based on my abilities, is mostly up to an algorithm, and that isn't fun for me.

(just found out I can't change the permalink name.  Learning new things all the time)

An ode to Spellsteal

Grumpy had a post asking about mechanics in raids. I tried to add my little bit but, not being very knowledgeable or experienced, I could only add so much. In my rambling comment, I hit on Spellsteal and realized I needed to publicly profess my affection.

I love Spellsteal.

It is my valentine. It is my soulmate. I am solidly on Team Spellsteal.

When I see that little buff pop up on an enemy that I can take, I get so excited. It’s mine, precious!

Honestly, I love doing that more than anything else my mage can do.

It really can change the nature of a fight. If an add has some buff that heals them overtime and typically makes that fight hell, *zap*, mine! Now, I get healed a little and the fight goes quickly and smoothly. Or perhaps they have an aura that does damage, nope, *yank*, mine! No damage for my tank but perhaps I’ll run to some smaller adds or even up to the original add and give them a taste of their own medicine.

I have noticed how helpful it can be on certain enemies. When I run the content on my mage, I gobble up their buff for myself and we steamroll the add or boss. But when I’m on any other character, it tends to be a greater struggle. It could be a difference in the group or it could be that I’m slightly better on my mage than any of my other characters, but I think part of that being better is my love, Spellsteal.