Leafshine: Lust for Flower

How to Make Fishing Attractive in WoW

You know, they've made a lot of changes to fishing down the years in WoW. They've added achievements and better rewards and all sorts of things. So something as simple as daily quests wouldn't suddenly turn it into an addiction, would they?

No, certainly not. That's bound to happen.

OK, I am doing the quests, but they do net money, and reel in some Kirin Tor rep, too.

Leafy Likes: Varian Wrynn Kicking Butt

Ooooh, exciting:

I know it seems traditional to hate the returned king of Stormwind, because he's getting all aggressive with the Horde and because he's hatin' on everyone's favourite orc, Thrall, but I think he's great.

Why? Well, for one, I think his complete and utter mistrust of the Horde is completely justified, as Lorecrafted points out, in great detail. And that's without mentioning the fact he was enslaved and forced to fight by orcs, or him witnessing the Warsong Clan's atrocities in Ashenvale, or that he's just seen off one of the Black Dragonflight, who have allied with the Horde in the past...

Varian is very much Thrall's darker opposite. The War Chief has been repeatedly exposed to the best of human nature down the years, while the King has had the very worse of Orc behaviour thrust into his life. And his charge that Thrall doesn't have a good grip on the Horde is more than justified. We might not be comfortable with his actions, or his view, but they are understandable, and just possibly right.

And my goodness, we didn't have this level of plot advancement in WoW a year ago, did we? Blizz really have driven the narrative aspect of WoW forward with this expansion.

Are You A Process-Driven or Goal-Driven Player?

It's happening. I knew it would, and I've been waiting for it to happen for about 48 hours. And it's begun.

The guild is beginning to separate into the fast levellers and the slow levellers. People I ran Utgarde Keep with a week ago are plotting trips to Instances I'll be too low level for until early December at the earliest. And, surprise, surprise, sign-ups for the cutting edge content are over-subscribed, and those for the earlier instances are struggling to fill up. I shouldn't be surprised - I went through this both with the original game and Burning Crusade, but it's always a touch frustrating. 

The level differential is just going to grow, too. At the moment, I should break 72 at the weekend, but probably won't hit 73 until the end of the month. I imagine that several of my guildmates will be in their mid-to-high 70s by then. I would be surprised if we don't see the first guild 80 before I hit 75.

Now, partially this is a time issue. I really don't have much available play time right now. In fact, looking at my diary right now, I'm going to get a single evening's instance-running the whole of next week. And that'll be it for playtime. Every other evening I've got something in the diary, and a packed daytime work schedule as well. 

But it's more than that. I don't want to be levelling that fast.

The Lame Sun Offensive

So, we established yesterday that I'm bored of daily quests.

Now, let's imagine that I'm not. And let's look at some of them. And let's see just how lame they are.

Take, for example, the demon-killing one:

This was bad enough in Phase II, but in Phase III you can get dozens of people competing for, what, 10 demons? I am so bored of Mages running through, and AOEing until they tag a new spawn. Without Moonfire, I'd be completely screwed on this one.

And then, there's the boats:

There's about six Belfs on each boat. And three boats. 18 mobs for a daily quest that half the server is trying to do.

Did Blizz actually think about this? Sometimes the demon-killing in Blade's Edge Mountains was bad enough, but don't worry. They solved the problem by making the new quests more attractive and reducing the number of mobs. I believe the correct response is "WTF?????".

Roll on Wrath and some decent questage again.

Take Your Daily Quests and…

So, been a bit quiet around here, hasn't it?

*watches tumbleweeds drift past*

There's a reason for that. And the reason is:

Yes, Patch 2.4 has bored the pants off me. It appears that the new content model for the end game is to do the same thing again and again and again and again.

My goodness, I am sick and tired of daily quests.

I was really hoping that there might be a traditional quest line or two as part of the patch, but no. It's daily, daily, daily. And some of them are just bizarre. Is there any point at all to taking readings off an anomaly or six in Nagrand, bar the off chance of a Badge of Justice?

These days, when I go to login, I either think "nah", or go play one of my lowbie alts instead. The idea of spending an hour doing exactly what I did yesterday with Leafy just isn't appealing.

Blizz, I know you love yer dailies. But please, please, start giving us some traditional quest content with these patches.

The Latest WoWInsider Podcast is a Disaster

Usually, I quite enjoy listening to the WoWInsider podcast. It's not as good as, say, The Instance, but it makes my long commute pass pretty painlessly. But not the latest episode. This morning it had me yelling at my car stereo in irritation.

Oh, WoWInsider Show, let me enumerate the ways I loathe you:

1. The continued plugs for Massively. Yeah, yeah, we got that you're doing an "all MMORPGs" blog now. Please don't waste a minute of my listening time going on and on about it.
2. Glossing over the Warlock and Druid nerfs for 10 minutes of Mike QQing in non-specific ways about the state of Shaman. All I learnt from that 10 minutes was that (a) Mike plays a Shaman and (b) he thinks that Elemental Shaman need a buff. No reasons why. No details on what's wrong, or what could be done to address it. Just pure, unadulterated whining. And meanwhile, two of the most fundamental nerfs to classes in months go undiscussed, apart from some throw away line from Amanda about liking seeing Warlocks cry.
3. Insulting people who had e-mailed in. Don't do that. You're insulting your audience. Even if the e-mails were complete gribbly nonsense, insulting people who e-mail in is not going to encourage more people to do so, now, is it? And the people you insulted? You probably just lost them as readers and listeners. Good job.
4. Amanda's statement that "everybody has more than one 70 now". No, they don't. I have one. Many of my guild have only one. Not everyone has the time to level multiple toons.
   
5. The fact that nobody Adam and Turpster had to point out that the amount of time it would take to grind enough Badges of Justice to buy big chunks of T6 level badge gear would be prohibitive - and that no-one pointed out that you can't buy complete sets of gear - was just embarrassing for them.

So, let's see: they waste their listeners' time plugging their other paying gigs. They don't know about two major developments in the game. They waste time ranting about their personal peeves. They look donw on their audience. They don't understand their audience. And they can't think through the implications of recent news.

And Mike's co-lead of WoWInsider? Guys, well done. That podcast was so bad that I'm considering stopping reading WoWInsider, because you've destroyed any respect I have for your professionalism or knowledge of the game.