sinnick
3421
I’m inclined to agree, especially as someone who tries to pay attention to the story.
Suppose you ding 70 in the middle of a good Outland quest chain. You are now faced with the choice of either dropping what you’re doing mid-story, or continuing, but with significantly less advancement as your reward.
More proof that WoW’s gameplay is disconnected from its story ;).
Kunikos
3422
You mean fluff, not story.
I really don’t see how you get a big fuck-you for it; the only thing you don’t get (possibly) is XP, you still get achievements, gear, money ,etc; sure, you could already be doing content in Northrend but nothing and no one forces you to do so.
If the issue is skipping content, then don’t skip or do them at a later stage; most people who want the loremaster achievement go out of their way to do quests which reward them with trash loot and insignificant amounts of money, still, no is forcing them to do them or not, it’s your choice.
Also, if the issue is wanting to continue a story arc or whatnot and know all the lore there is… what is stopping you? Keep doing them even if the XP rewards are low! Speaking for myself, I leveled a paladin recently to 60 and did lots of new zones, some which the quests were already grey (no XP reward) and I still completed them because I wanted to know more about that piece of lore; it’s your problem if you want the whole deal (XP,money,loot, lore, etc) and don’t want only part of it, not the game.
Plus, this isn’t due to the new xp gains, having levelled several chars to 80 I skipped loads of content in some of them, specially Outland content, and I had no heirlooms.
I don’t have experience with UPS, but absolutely call the facility as early as possible to let them know you want to pick it up, find out when you can pick it up and ask what you need to bring (driver’s license, tracking number, etc). If it failed to deliver because they have missing or wrong address info, then it probably will not go out for redelivery until they can obtain the correct information. If you still want to have UPS deliver it, you’ll likely have to call Amazon customer service and have them supply UPS with the correct information.
Now you’re talking about outleveling a zone, which is a completely separate issue from losing monster XP when you hit 70. If you don’t want to progress as fast, either remove your heirlooms or get used to leveling quickly.
Wait, didn’t you say it was a “good Outland quest chain”? So why would you drop it in the middle? Isn’t the story part of the reward? If the story isn’t important to you, then yes, your XP “reward” is reduced once you ding 70…but then again, if XP is your only reward, then you wouldn’t complain about leaving a quest chain in the first place.
But let’s just agree, for the sake of argument, that the XP is part of the reward. Why do you think that you get “significantly less advancement” once you ding 70? Sure, your XP from killing mobs dropped by 90%, but you still get full XP from the quests themselves, which is the majority of the XP that you receive in the first place (especially since, as you pointed out, you’re progressing through a quest chain). So instead of your XP dropping by 90%, it’s really dropping by 45% or less (assuming that quest XP is at least half or your XP, which is a very conservative estimate).
No, it just proves that if you separate gameplay from story, then they become disconnected, which is tautologically true. If I’m reading a book, and all I care about is turning the pages, I could argue that “the story is separated from the progression in the book,” but that’s only because I separated them myself.
>yawn< Seriously, if you want to ignore the story, then ignore it, but the story is there.
Kunikos
3427
No, really, it’s what the same thing is called in D&D which is also another gaming system in which people obsess over the nuts and bolts (or “crunch”) but which are sometimes drawn to it by the “fluff” (back story or game world details which don’t affect rules or gameplay at all).
WoW is even worse because the story isn’t even coherent between expansion packs.
(Don’t grey quests still give you some XP?)
Agreed. When I was 80, I went back and finished the Thrall questline in Nagrand, just because I wanted to see how that storyline ended. I got a tiny bit of XP from the quest, none from the mobs (I had to solo one of the Auchindoun instances to do it), and a pittance in quest rewards that I vendored. However, I am still glad that I did the quests, because the story was worth it. I’m currently finishing the Azshara quests on my level 20 troll druid even though they’re grey, for much the same reason.
If the story is important to you, then it should be important despite the XP, not because of it.
sinnick
3429
You make it sound like games can only be one or the other, but not both together. Is that your intention? I disagree…
Well, I was partly just baiting you, Mr. Bates :). But I do think it’s partially true. A player who enjoys the story could of course choose to keep doing the quest just for the pleasure of seeing the story, and I expect many will. But there’s no denying that the gameplay (ie: the XP mechanic) is pushing them away from the story they haven’t completed. The perception in the player’s mind is in there - “I’m not progressing as fast anymore”, whether it’s by 90% or 45% or whatever.
Yes, pretty much any game can be abstracted away from its theme, but that doesn’t mean that the theme is “fluff” or has nothing to do with rules or gameplay. Again, calling it “fluff” says more about your attitude towards the content than it says about the quality of the content itself.
No, I was just showing the extremes. If all you care about is story, then the XP reduction doesn’t matter, because the story is worth it. And if all you care about is XP, then the XP reduction doesn’t matter, because you’ll just move on to the next zone to get more XP. Obviously there is some grey area in the middle, which is where you have to decide for yourself what’s more important. I just take issue with the attitude of, “I have to move on, even though there’s story content I want to experience.” Well, no, you don’t have to move on; enjoy the story! Or, “I have to stay and quest, even though I’m not getting enough experience.” Same answer: No, you don’t.
Right, and that already happens in the game: You level past quests which no longer give you as much XP (if any at all), you level past mobs which give you no XP (because they are trivially easy to kill), and so on. And on top of all that, you get a 50% bonus for being rested, which I guess makes it a “punishment” when you play past your rested XP bar. The entire game is set up to keep pushing you towards level-appropriate content, otherwise you could get to 85 by just killing boars in your starting area.
If Cataclysm mobs are as tough as it has been suggested, then the gear is going to have to be a lot greater as well. So why should someone gear up in Cataclysm, then run back to Northrend and one-shot a bunch of mobs to gain XP? This is just another way to make sure that people are being challenged and not blowing through content. I don’t see how this is any different than rested XP or higher XP for Burning Crusade or quests turning grey when you progress past them.
So I get home, unwrap my Cata CE, admire the artbook, vow to rip the soundtrack to electronic format at an unspecified time in the future, flip through my new TCG cards, plop down my Deathwing mousepad, peel open that DVD case and punch in my license key, scratch off the TCG loot card and put that in (what a pain in the ass that particular process is)…and then I’m ready. Time to fire it up.
Earthen Ring is full. Only 900-ish people in front of me in line. 35 minutes to go.
Half an hour later, there’s 500-ish people in front of me and 80 minutes to go.
Then I try to window WoW so I can do something else with the computer while I wait. Oops. Glitches the fuck out and I lose my place in line. And all will to bother even trying to get into the game.
Fuck launch day.
wow seems to disconnect any time it loads and you shift focus to another app/desktop. Sucks since that’s when I’m most likely to want to switch. Glad I’m on a low pop server though.
My rogue DexterWorgen is pretty cool. Level 5 now, picked up my gathering professions and hoping by lvl 10 I can shift to/from werewolf mode.
Stupid exam tomorrow though is hindernig my ability to poopsock it to lvl 10 though
rei
3437
i just associated a catac key with my existing up-to-date wow install. do i have to download anything else? i don’t have the physical cd.
Ninyu
3438
I think there is a 300 MB patch if you didn’t do the trick to download it already.
rei
3439
i logged in and i didn’t see any download
Ok, the Goblin areas are cool. A bit hectic with all the people (on Tichondrius it’s a madhouse) but nicely crafted and very funny.
Does anyone know in Org where you can get the ability to fly around the old world on your new world flying beasts? That city is no longer something I’m even remotely familiar with.
