[WoW] 4.0 - Cataclysm

[ArkturusMaximus]

Originally Posted by Starsailor

Come on now, Vanilla WoW wasn't like that. The amount of travelling around some of the quest lines was ridiculous..

Oh yeah..that scholomance key...head over to the other side of the world to chat to a goblin..then head to another zone (ungoro)..then back...

Linken? Oh yeah...go to winterspring..then ferelas...then tanaris...then ungoro..then felwood...etc etc...

Even 'normal' quests (ie not chain ones) were like that..for example the egg/feather ones from Ferelas and Tanaris requiring you to go to the hinterlands.

The zones were too wide in level as well, so you simply couldn't go to one zone and complete it.

A revamp of all of this would be welcome in my book.

What makes you think that they are getting rid of the Scholo key quest and Linken quest chain. Those had very little to do with leveling, you certainly didnt need to do them to hit 60. There's nothing wrong with quest chains that take you all over the world, some might argue that helps to make them feel more like quests and less like tasks.

Leveling was rarely about having to travel 20+ minutes to get to some zone in order to continue leveling. The only runs that were really "distant" (for Alliance at least) were the runs to Desolace and the Shimmering Flats that were done in the 30's when you didnt have a horse.

I dont really care about the changes they are going to make, but to say that the old quest-path to 60 was inefficient is comical when all the server-first 60's were questers on the post-launch servers.

[Nairbog]

Yeah, there were of few quests out of thousands that required ridiculous amounts of traveling that were completely optional. Don't see the big problem with that, though I'm talking about area progression, not the few quests that required substantial traveling.

For what it's worth, I didn't mind the Linken quest chain. I always made sure that I had some other things to do in the different areas to break up the traveling, so I finished the chain over a span of several levels. Wasn't bad at all, I don't think it was intended to be done all at once. As Arkturus said, it felt like a true quest. I wouldn't want to do quest chains like that often, but I enjoyed the variety it offered.

[Flight]

Originally Posted by ArkturusMaximus

What makes you think that they are getting rid of the Scholo key quest and Linken quest chain. Those had very little to do with leveling, you certainly didnt need to do them to hit 60. There's nothing wrong with quest chains that take you all over the world, some might argue that helps to make them feel more like quests and less like tasks.

Leveling was rarely about having to travel 20+ minutes to get to some zone in order to continue leveling. The only runs that were really "distant" (for Alliance at least) were the runs to Desolace and the Shimmering Flats that were done in the 30's when you didnt have a horse.

I dont really care about the changes they are going to make, but to say that the old quest-path to 60 was inefficient is comical when all the server-first 60's were questers on the post-launch servers.

Guessing you never did the Warlock pet or Totem quests ? They were a pita and low level.


I was first 60 on Terenas at launch (Flight - Hunter). I was grinding way more than questing. 19-22 on the Orcs, 22-26 in the spider cave (go gadget mining) and 27-32 in the Raptor cave all in Wetlands and 55-60 in one session purely on Winterspring lake, for example. Even had time to max my trade skills while I was doing it, though I can't imagine a worse trade skill system than WoWs.

[Azrayne]

The thing that annoyed me about classic levelling, more so than the travel, was the sparse questing spread in many zones. You'd often enter a zone, level for 1/3 of a level, then all the quests were orange/red so you'd have to go do another zone for another 8bars, then another zone, then go back to the first one next level. There are so few places where you can just enter a zone, start questing there, then leave a few levels later with the zone cleared and move onto the next one. It's a very frustrating process.

[Pyros]

I quested and was one of the first 60s(I actually lost quite a few spots cause I ended up having to grind 1.5lvl at 58 and didn't want to so it took like 3days), but I had played beta extensively, and I have a pretty good memory so I knew most quests and already had a quest path memorized(including when to switch to other zones so quests wouldn't turn grey and which quest to advance to get the steps for the new zones before moving there).

It was extremely innefficient all around, and some quests were simply bad, as you said, warlock pet(felhunter specifically was terrible with the wetlands orcs as a horde character) or water totem which involved swimming around. I think Linken wasn't that good for example, because it forced you into a lot of backtracking, and even doing it over a few levels, you were still forced into zones you had nothing else to do in, like feralas AFTER winterspring/ungoro. It was an awesome quest though, I loved the story, but it involved a lot of afking while flying/running around places. It's a bit like original horde onyxia neck quest, with the back and forth shit, killing a dragon then going back to dustwallow to turn in and get another quest to kill another dragon again, all over the place, the blasted lands questline asking you to go swim all over azshara or one of the most worthless quest, the tower east of darkshire with the undead asking you to kill shit all over the place including fucking desolace for basically no fucking reward.

And simply many quests had a quest giver in a totally unrelated area where you had very little chance of finding them unless you knew from leveling other chars/compiling thottbot. Stuff like azshara blood elves from the guy at orgrimmar battleground building(which before that was just the warrior trainer building), the guy for raptor horns over the alchemist shop in orgrimmar, the azshara vial quests down the alchemy area in UC and 50% of the dungeon quests.

[Starsailor]

Can I just add the stupid alliance SM quest? Why the hell we had to go to desolace and kill 30 skellies just for the fun of it I do not know. Especially as it was mainly to do that at or before lvl40.

Not to mention getting to SM as alliance has always been a pain in the arse. Either going from Southshore (and skirting UC), or taking a trip though the Plaguelands if you were feeling brave.

A reworking of all those things would be good.

[Ukerric]

Originally Posted by Runnen

...to replace Malygos (perhaps Arygos, if he ever decides to exit the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj).

Metzen has been dropping 10-ton hints for some time that the next Aspect of magic isn't going to be a dragon.

[Ukerric]

Originally Posted by The Ancient

Someone didn't roll Orc.

You mean, "someone will use the race change service shortly after the faction change", right?

[Palum]

Originally Posted by Azrayne

The thing that annoyed me about classic levelling, more so than the travel, was the sparse questing spread in many zones. You'd often enter a zone, level for 1/3 of a level, then all the quests were orange/red so you'd have to go do another zone for another 8bars, then another zone, then go back to the first one next level. There are so few places where you can just enter a zone, start questing there, then leave a few levels later with the zone cleared and move onto the next one. It's a very frustrating process.

Actually, not even that bothered me so much as the retarded back and forth in many low level zones. Duskwood, for instance, is a constant run between Darkshire and RHC. A newbie going into that zone trying to complete each quest one at a time without optimizing would literally travel back and forth at least 15 times. Also, I tried barrens right after release on a horde char. Yea, no fucking way.

I'm sure it's slightly better now that you get mounts at 20 now but it's still obnoxious and just bad quest layout.

[Tuco]

Wow, people have really gotten spoiled with how straight-forward questing was in WotLK.

In my opinion the leveling up process should have straightforward quest hubs with long, involved quests that give them blue items as they level up. Frankly I think every new content patch with top-end PVE gear should have Benediction-like quests in them.

[Fadaar]

Well that's why the quest grind is infinitely better in the expansions, especially in WOTLK. Live and learn.

[Brad2770]

When i first played WoW, there were still groups of people that just grinded through levels instead of questing. I felt the travel for the quests helped level out the experience gain from the quests.

Basically you could grind or quest. In the end, you pretty much leveled at the same speed.

I preferred questing because I was so burnt out on grinding from EQ. And I was also leveling as a Holy Priest (before I understood how the game worked and switching specs), so it would have been an even slower grind. Even though leveling in Vanilla was still tons faster then EQ.

[The Ancient]

Originally Posted by Tuco

Frankly I think every new content patch with top-end PVE gear should have Benediction quests in them.

fixed

[Zehn - Vhex]

I imagine this is one of the areas where WoW could really benefit from differentiating between 'quests' and 'adventures.' Just have a second tab in the quest window for adventure. Explain to the player in game that adventures will have them traveling all over the known world doing shit and that they can expect a decent reward at the end for doing it but it takes more time.

I enjoyed quest chains like Myzrael and Linkens and so forth. But it would have been nice to know at the time I'd be traveling all the fuck over. And once they nerfed the Spirit of Aquementas or whatever the reward is it just wasn't worth it anymore. A blue, or in this day and age it's almost have to be an epic, quest reward would get me doing it, but I'd know I could sideline it till I finished with my quest/grinding session.

[The Ancient]

My biggest gripe about Linkens and quests like it wasn't the travel, it was the bag space. It was a huge penalty not to do the quest immediately because you'd have 5 stupid reagents burning an hole in your inventory.