Tobold's Blog: Good dailies, bad dailies

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Good dailies, bad dailies

Apart from raiding, heroic dungeons, and achievements, the life of a level 80 player in World of Warcraft consist mainly of doing daily quests. Unfortunately all dailies aren't created equal, there are differences in both rewards and how fun the quest itself is. Which is okay if the quest isn't fun and the reward is bad, because then you just skip that one. But some quests have "must have" rewards, and are badly designed and annoying to do.

My least favorite daily quest in the game is Blowing Hodir's Horn, a quest in which you need to kill 5 Niffelem Forefathers and 5 Restless Frostborn. Sounds easy, you say? Well, it would be, if not every other player on the server would be needing the quest too. The Niffelem Forefathers don't have a fast respawn rate and are usually completely overcamped. And because everyone needs the Sons of Hodir reputation this quest gives, there is an enormous amount of killstealing going on. So much that I decided the best change in patch 3.0.8. for priests will be that if you pull with a debuff, the mob will now count as tagged for you. No more me pulling with Shadow Word: Pain, and getting the mob killstolen away from me. You know a place is bad if the priests start pulling with Shadow Word: Death. The Hot and Cold quest nearby isn't much better, you can even see people stealing the smoldering scraps another player has cooled down (bad design that this is even possible).

Good daily quests are those with useful rewards beyond money, and which don't involve competing with other players directly. The cooking and jewelcrafting dailies for example are well done. Not only are there less jewelcrafters than players, but the quests ask you to "kill any Northrend iron dwarves" or other mob types, and you can easily find a place not already camped. And then there are the fun quests, like Overstock, where you have to construct a minefield to blow up an invasion, or The Way to his Heart, where you have to mate a sea bull with a sea cow. Those only give money, but at least they aren't the usual kill 10 mobs quests, and you're not fighting other players for some mob spawn.

So, which are your favorite daily quests, and which are the dailies you hate?
- posted by Tobold @ 6:30 AM Permanent Link

Comments:

The Way to his Heart also gives Tuskarr rep. I did that & the other 2 Tuskarr daily quests in order to hit exalted and get my penguin pet, so I became well acquainted with the art of sea cow mating. Definitely one of my favorite dailies that came with the new expansion.

-Del

# posted by

Anonymous : 30/12/08 06:49

They're supposed to be changing the relics of alduar to be turn in for rep next patch. Also, believe it or not, it's worth spending some time looking for frost shards, as almost everyone is doing dailies, but not everyone really remembers to look for little blue shards. After about day 5 i gave up doing dailies and just focused on ice shards, and finished my rep that way. Took a few days, but it felt so much easier to just spot a shard, run down grab it, turn it in, and start my search again.

# posted by

Anonymous : 30/12/08 07:36

The Kill X quests can be completed in a group. You can invite everyone in your faction who want Forefathers and kill them together. Or you can go there with buddies. Or you can skip the whole thing and go inscriptor. Or skip the whole thing and use Aldor/Scryer exalted enchants. The possibilities are limitless.

# posted by

Gevlon : 30/12/08 07:45

Every time I am on a Horn daily, I am trying to invite other players of my faction on the same quest, and almost always find that they are not in a group yet. If you have like 3 people doing this quest, it becomes trivially easy without much killstealing. Unfortunately, cant be done with Cold Metal daily, so it is most annoying daily for me.
My favorite daily so far is the one where you must kill blue protodrake, dodging its claws, poking it with a harpoon, and trying not to fall down.

# posted by

Anonymous : 30/12/08 08:18

Any dailies annoy me. Even the dragon dogfighting one from Wyrmwrest tower, which I thought was the coolest one up to that point. Any quest becomes annoyig no matter how easy it is, or how quick you can complete it when you've done it 5000 times. I'd much rather do even PvP than redo the same quest time after time. I only do em when I need money for repairs, potions, whatever for raiding. Of course this is why I'm still flying a slow mount, but that does not bother me that much. (Although it does occasionally bother those who I am grouped with as I have to catch up) It's just a cheap way of making you sped more time in the game than you want to. One guy I knew had 8 70 toons and would religiously do 20 or so dailies on each of them, and only then could you get him to come raid or even 5 man. Of course he had more money than Bill Gates, but cmon, it's a game. If I want to do the same mindless task over and over, I could go to work and make real money.

Remove dailies, make it easier to get cash or reduce the need for it (make repairs cost less, or eliminate them completely) and let people play the game.

# posted by

Anonymous : 30/12/08 09:10

Sons of Hodir quests are the worst in my opinion, thankfully my main character has Inscription so I could skip them. I've been doing them casually on my Death Knight but if it's camped I just skip the area as there's a lot of killstealing, spitting etc going on. Farming relics with a view to handing them in next patch is more enjoyable than dealing with the bad attitudes.

I think dailies have a place in the game, many people really enjoy them and for those who prefer solo play over instances or raids it's a way of obtaining rep which is far better than the old 1.x-style grinds which were awful.

However I think dailies could be further improved by having a set of say 8 quests for each faction and only allowing 2 of them each day for any player, either random selection or letting the player pick. That way you'd only have a quarter of the players going to a certain spot, easing any camping issues.

Another option would be to allow all players of the same faction to gain credit for any kill in a limited area regardless if they are grouped or not. This is similar to the way some named mobs drop an item on the ground that any player can use, regardless if it was their kill or not. It can be seen as encouraging people to just AFK in the area, but as it's still competitive against the other faction I think most would participate actively to get it done as quickly as possible. It would - shock, horror! - actually give a sense of faction co-operation instead of the usual feeling that other players are the enemy (ie kill-stealing, node-stealing scumbags).

# posted by

Anonymous : 30/12/08 11:41

I'm surprised that they didn't randomize the Argent Dawn dailies in Zul'Drak and Brunnhildar Village dailies to help spread the load.

# posted by

schroey : 30/12/08 11:59

The Alchemist quest in Zul'drak has got to be the nastiest..... it's a neat quest, but the timer is so unforgiving that running to the wrong side of the room for any ingredient totally screws you up. (And yes, I know there are add-ons that allow you to cheat your way through it).

# posted by

Andrew : 30/12/08 13:51

I find all Sons of Hodir quests annoying, so I just do the "kill x mobs" quests because they're the least annoying ones. Funny how all the good ideas they put into making "unusual" quests turned out for the bad this time, at least for me. Of course it'll make it take longer until I get the "good" enchants, but it's not worth the frustration. I'm glad there's virtually no killstealing on my server (at least for the quests I bother doing). I'm saving up relics anyway for the patch.

The daily quests I enjoy the most are the Ebon Hold ones on Death's Rise, they're hardly camped at all. It's not like I need the reputation, but the cash is good and they're still fun, so it's worth it for me. When I found these daily quests I expected Onslaught Harbor to become the new Isle of Quel'danas, but that hasn't happened yet thankfully.

I just wish there was more demand for the Mechano-Hog on my server, I could've made a killing selling it if people didn't have the "it's too expensive lol get the mammoth it has vendors" attitude.

# posted by

Anonymous : 30/12/08 14:12

@Fremskritt: Given a choice between blowing between 16kg and 19kg on a mount that can carry two others and/or vendors, or spend more than that on a mount that can carry one other and no vendors, the price:utility ratio is extremely clear.

As for the post...yeah, I hate the Hodir dailies. Generally, as well, I won't do dailies that don't give rep as a reward, at least until I'm done with most of the rep I want. I get gold from the rep dailies, too, so I'll do those first.

# posted by

Justin : 30/12/08 14:20

Back in BC WoW I loved daily quests on the Isle. I had four 70's and would romp through about 10 daily quests on each. Getting around 400g a day if I had nothing better to do. I did this SO many times that I don't want to do dailys every again. For now I am leveling alts to earn money. My DK is level 73 and has about 3500g, however I will need to spend 2k gold at 77 to get flying. By then I hope to have closer to 4500g. Next up will be my 70 mage who already has epic flying, and two gathering professions. Bringing my mage from 70-80 will probably net me 5g. Then my 70 lock and 70 rogue. I'm only spending money on my main(protection pally w/ enchanted gear already) so my alts won't end up costing me money like they did in the BC when I got them all enchanted/gemmed. In the end I hope to have about 20k g.....and then maybe I'll get a few enchants from running dailys again. Not the fastest way to earn gold but I end up with level 80's and that is a much better reward then just gold.

# posted by

Anonymous : 30/12/08 14:46

Something you need to know Tobold: the Son's of Hodir quests are tedious by design.

As a faction which can't be bought up (yet) it is like the Netherwing Flight - the higher reputation you get, the more daily quests unlock. The daily quests at higher reputations are much more fun, are not kill quests, are much faster, and have greater rewards in gold and rep.

For example check out the quest, "Thrusting Hodir's Spear" where the player must ride a drake to defeat it in 2 phases using new special abilities, and rewards 500 rep and 16 gold. Only takes a minute to complete, and simply having access to it is one of the rewards of getting higher rep doing the tedious quests.

# posted by

Zode : 30/12/08 14:51

Just wait till patch if you can so you can turn in Relics for rep.

Son's of Hodir gets better when you open up more quest. You can chain them pretty easy. Sometimes I skip the Horn and Hot and Cold quest, just not worth my time when lots of people are doing it.

My favorites so far are the ones for the White Polar Bear. Really easy quest. You get to beat up some slaves, mount up and fight other bear handlers, or just kill 6 mobs right by the quest giver.

# posted by

Unknown : 30/12/08 14:51

I've been surprised by the number of quests that don't directly involve your character's ability to kill mass numbers of mobs. Vehicle quests, and not as many quests asking to kill more than 10 mobs at a time. It would seem healer spec'd characters have a good share of dailies they aren't nearly as disadvantaged in compared to the old Sunwell dailies.

# posted by

Anonymous : 30/12/08 15:41

Think it depends on your server too, dont assume all populations are overcamping the same mobs in the same place. On my fun ride to exalted with the Sons, I had almost no trouble with kill stealing or camping. Dont generalize your own personal experiences to everyeone else, and then make conclusions about good/bad design based on them.

The Sons quests are not tedious by design imo. They're awesome. Short, fun and a good variety. I got to exalted in a (relative) blink of an eye. Errrr did you ever try grinding argent dawn rep???

# posted by

Anonymous : 30/12/08 17:16

No matter how unique and exciting they make the daily quests eventually most players are going to tire of them. Except Sea Lion procreation...that one never seems to get old for some reason...

# posted by

Anonymous : 30/12/08 23:13

The one I like is the alchemist one for the argent dawn. I dunno why but it just appeals to me. The only way it could be better would be if you had to beat him at bejeweled ;)

# posted by

Copperbird : 31/12/08 16:35

Blowing Hodir's Horn tells me they NEVER learned from Netherwing Ledge.

Faction everyone wants + limited spawns + annoyingly long spawn timers = fail.

# posted by

Anonymous : 31/12/08 17:51

In my opinion, one of the best dailys is also one of the more messed up ones. Its a quest from the Kalu'uk that involves stealing the wolvar kids away from the den mothers in the Dragonblight. I have never been more ashamed when doing a daily. Every day.

# posted by

Peculiar : 27/1/09 19:44