I finished unlocking the last part of the Molten Front dailies the other day and got my Flameward Hippogryph in the mail, but I have to say, it felt rather unsatisfying. Malfurion sent me a letter to tell me how awesome I was, how I had helped to really strike fear into the hearts of Ragnaros's minions or something like that... but nothing looked different.
I talked about really liking the much-touted "personal phasing" before, but I have to admit I really expected a little more to happen until the end. Okay, the tree grows - great. More NPCs appear - fine. But that's it? It's hard to believe that we really made that much progress into the Firelands when the base still looks like it's on the verge of being overrun every day. And we keep helping the Druids of the Talon and the Shadow Wardens to push forward, yet every day they need to start over from scratch. I feel like Sisyphus, watching my boulder roll back down the hill every night. This is worse than not seeing the environment change at all: seeing it change for only a day and then it resets again, forcing me to start over from scratch. Rohan observes that it looks like the zone was designed for "proper" phasing, and I can't help but agree. The personal progression idea was neat, but I don't think that the way they implemented it here works very well.
Aside from the constant resets, it also doesn't really seem to go anywhere. I thought that there would be some sort of big showdown quest at the end, but the Leyara chain ends about halfway through the whole ordeal and then... nothing.
The linearity of the questing is also really starting to tick me off. I've got a couple of the achievements left to do that require you to do the Druid of the Talon side, but to access those quests you always have to go through the whole intro sequence of killing X fire elementals, saving Y wounded Hyjal defenders, going Into The Fire and so on and so forth, every damn day. Feels like a lot of busywork just to keep you away from the dailies that you really want to do. Whoever thought that making daily quests a long linear sequence instead of a big pool you can pick and choose from was a good idea deserves a smack over the head in my opinion. I don't know if I'll have the stamina to continue for much longer, seeing how there is nothing of interest to buy with the spare marks I'd get.
I kind of miss the times when dailies were just a convenient way to make money. There was little pressure to do any of them because there were always other and more efficient ways of making gold; it just depended on how you liked to play. Personally I was happy to work for the ogres of Ogri'la while I saved up for epic flying back in the day, because the alternative was trying to farm elementals as a healer with no dual spec, and playing Simon Says was a lot less stressful.
To be fair, Blizzard has shown that they can use dailies to tell exciting stories, whether it's a whole server slowly taking over the Isle of Quel'Danas through combined effort or one of your characters raising their very own mount in the jungles of Un'goro. The whole thing has to come to some sort of conclusion though, which the Molten Front dailies didn't, not really.
I wonder if the item rewards at least worked out for some people. The Argent Tournament never really told much of a story either, but it had so many reputations, titles, pets and mounts that everyone could find something to work towards there. (In fact, I know some people who still go back to do the dailies there even now.) The Molten Front had no gear to offer me as a holy priest, and while I bought a couple of pets and trinkets, I only really did that "because I could", basically. The vendor was already unlocked and the reward was right there. It wasn't something I specifically worked for though, so it felt quite meaningless.
In a nutshell, I thought that the Molten Front started out quite fun and promising, but the further I progressed, the more annoying and less rewarding it got. I guess if you've got a non-raiding alt for whom you'd like to buy a specific piece of gear from one of the vendors it might be worth working towards that, but other than that I see little reason to go back to the place.
10/08/2011
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I'm still doing AT dailies because I faction changed and lost the achievements on my achievement toon, and that Bothers Me. And now we're considering going back to allies, but the thought of redoing them AGAIN makes me want to throw things.
ReplyDeleteI still do the AT dailies too! I had all the pets and mounts, but they are kinda fun, the badge from the "bag" rewards is now guaranteed and not RNG, and the pets sell well. Plus, saving Kul never gets old. Or it got old on day two, and I hasn't gotten any older. I'm not sure which.
ReplyDeleteFirelands I completed the dailies but I won't do the achvs other than the ones I did already, so 3 or 4 will never be done. Actually, I find Firelands hurts my eyes. Northrend was bluey or greeney or generally a bit easier on my eyes than Firelands, which is all RED and BLACK and ORANGE and ANGRY.
Therazane was better from that point of view, a few fun dailies, and a couple random ones for easy achievements and a nice pet. Firelands could have done with a Wrathgate style cinematic at the end for more awesome story progression, and a moderate re-phasing and an end to say 3-4 of the quests. After all, you don't need all 15 dailies once you cleared the place, you don't need the tokens any more, so why not leave just 4-5 dailies that are more suitable.
Anyways, nice post, I agree!
I agree with you on the Molten Front ultimately being a bit of a let down. Especially in light of how exciting it seemed. I was genuinely impressed the first time I stepped through the portal and realized I had to help Malfurion kill the fiery elemental near the entrance; dodging its attacks was a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteI was hoping that the Molten Front would have been a bit greener in the end, or even better if there had been a bubble of sky blue atmosphere immediately surrounding the tree to offset the fiery red of the rest of the zone.
I was kind of stressing out about the achievements from the Druid of the Talon side as well, but eventually I realized that I would never get the far more annoying "Fiery Lords of Sethria's Roost" achievement, so I just gave up on them all. It was a big relief.
I'm not sure, though, that I agree with your opinion on the linearity of the quests. I'm not sure exactly what Blizzard had in mind, but I felt as if breaking up the quests into linear chunks did a great job of limiting the number of player's who's toes I had to step on while completing quests.
@Zaralynda: Ouch, that sounds really painful. Sucks that they aren't converting those achievements over when you faction change.
ReplyDelete@BoxerDogs: I don't do the Argent Tournament myself anymore, but I quested my way to the Crusader title on five different alts or so during WOTLK because it felt fun.
@Anonymous: Forcing players to spread out a bit is a good point, but I'm not sure that it would have been considerably worse if people had been allowed to just spread out on their own and pick their own favourites.