11/09/2011

On Wings of Nether

I'm really burnt out on the Molten Front dailies, even though I only completed them on a single character. To be honest I was kind of surprised by the strength of my own negative feelings. I mean, I expressed some disappointment when I first completed them, but at that point I still thought that I would keep going back to finish up the achievements at least, but when it actually came down to doing it, the mere thought of it was just too repulsive. Same with the idea of doing it on alts - even though every single one of mine would benefit greatly from the gear upgrades from the vendors, it's really not something I fancy doing at all.

I think the linearity of it all is once again the biggest problem for me. If I could pick and choose... do just the dailies I still need for achievements on my main, and maybe kill spiders for the Shadow Wardens on my hunter for the skins or something - I'd be all over that! But there's no way of bypassing the earlier quests and it just becomes too grating.

Like I said in a comment to Nils' post on the subject the other day, I don't mind dailies in principle, I just think that they should never feel like they are absolutely necessary to advance your character. They should be just one option out of many. With the Molten Front making me feel too pressured, I decided to go back to doing other random dailies that I found fun: A Tol Barad quest here and there, getting some Champion's Seals at the Argent Tournament... and for the first time ever, I started gathering reputation with the Netherwing.

Considering how often I've said that the Burning Crusade was my favourite expansion so far, it may come as a surprise to people that there are whole chunks of content in it that I never even touched. In part, I think that was part of BC's beauty: that I always felt that I had things to do even without participating in every part of the game, and with no achievement system there was no meta game to tell me what I should or shouldn't do.

A lot of people were madly in love with the Netherwing back in the day, seeing how they offered the first dragon-like mount in the game, back before Wrath started handing out dragon mounts like candy. Personally, I just thought that they were ugly and thus wasn't interested. But that was okay!

I decided to go back to them for a variety of reasons. I wanted to keep doing some dailies that didn't feel excessively grindy to me and that had little to no reward pressure attached to them. I wanted to get my mount count up to get the Mountain o' Mounts achievement. I finally wanted to see the story. Certain aspects of it, like the Booterang quest or the Skyshatter races, have become pretty iconic and I wanted to experience them myself. And with me being fifteen levels higher than the intended audience, they were easy to do even as a healer.

I was surprised by how many other people seemed to be doing the same thing. Pretty much every day I ran into at least one other person who was also busy on the Netherwing Ledge, and it wasn't always the same guy. For endgame content from two expansions ago, I think that's pretty good going.

Reputation gains have been buffed considerably over time, and as the Grumpy Elf remarked recently, you could pretty much get to exalted within a single day if you really wanted to. I took it easy and only did most dailies once as they unlocked, just to see what they were about, and pretty much skyrocketed towards revered solely by doing that. After that I only did the Netherdust Pollen daily and the Booterang every day, which slowed my progress considerably but I didn't mind. It was nice to be able to trade faster progress for the ability to only do the dailies I actually felt like doing. (Yes, that was another jab at the Molten Front.)

What did I enjoy most? Well, even though they are not dailies, the Skyshatter races deserve a mention as something that I felt was quite unique and different. I felt like a bit of a cheat with my 310% flight speed, I can barely imagine how hard some of the later ones must have been back in the day! Seeing Wing Commanders Ichman and Mulverick reunited with a shared hatred of Alterac Valley made me crack up.

The Booterang quest was every bit as fun as people always made it out to be, because the disobedient peons are just too funny. Work is da poop! WHY IT PUT DA BOOTERANG ON THE SKIN? WHY?

I loved doing the Netherdust Pollen daily because like many gatherers I'm quite obsessed with removing all those little yellow dots from my mini map, and I had almost forgotten how much I enjoyed there actually being daily quests for it. I think I got at least one character to exalted with the Shattered Sun back in the day purely by doing Gaining the Advantage every day. I wonder why they don't make quests like that anymore? Gathering professions could definitely use some love like that.

Most of the other dailies honestly didn't seem that great to me. Flying all the way to Nagrand just for a daily quest in Shadowmoon? Eh. And the mines must have been a veritable death trap back in the day considering the sheer amount and density of mobs in there. But hey, maybe someone else enjoyed them - once again, there is value in having a choice.

Today I finally hit exalted, on a bit of a whim really - after doing my "usual" dailies I realised that I was only missing a little bit of rep to max out, so I did the mine dailies as well just to complete the whole thing. The final quest was striking in its simplicity, a lot less flashy than what we're used to these days for sure, but it still evoked a solid sense of "you're finished, well done" from me.

When it came to picking my personal mount in Shattrath, I was a bit taken aback. These weren't just random mounts, these were sentient creatures that wanted to be my friends! That struck me as quite touching. Nonetheless I couldn't resist having a little moan in guild chat about how their quest text claimed that I could pick only one, at which point a guildie informed me that I could actually gather the whole set if I visited a vendor in Shadowmoon afterwards, a Dragonmaw orc.

Now that felt like a weird ending: "Okay, I choose you to be my best friend, Zoya! And now I'll go buy the rest of your mates as slaves from our mutual enemy! Muahahaha!" Not to mention that I still think that they are ugly. But I'm still glad that I did the whole thing. I wonder if I should work on the Terokk quest line next, as that's something I never did back in the day either... not sure if there's much point though, as I did get to see the final fight multiple times when I helped friends with completing it and I'm already exalted with the Skyguard anyway.

10 comments:

  1. I haven't even bothered checking if the Molten Front dailies are necessary to do. Are they? I haven't done a single one on any character, in fact I haven't even visited the area to see what it looks like. I figure, the less I know about it, the less I will be bothered about the fact that I am completely uninterested in doing them although they might be good (if they are, don't know). And no one has complained yet so... I'm going to continue ignoring them for as long as possible.

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  2. I did them all until I got what I was after - pets! I've not been back since and don't intend to. Well, I might if I get a bit low on cash because they were quite a good money earner, but since I have enough gold to buy most things I want it's highly unlikely :) I think I'd rather fish - at least I can chat and fish.

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  3. @Zinn: It depends on your definition of necessary. To a raider, they aren't really necessary as I believe they don't give any gear that's better than what you can get from raiding. Depending on your class and spec, some of the items might just give your character a bit of a leg up for those of us who are still progressing through normal mode.

    However, if you're not raiding, the Molten Front rewards are pretty much the best gear you can get for many slots. Because of the structure of the quest progression, you can't just focus on getting what you want and have to do most of it just to unlock all the vendors. And if you're after achievements, you have to do a lot of quests that are not related to the achievement over and over again just to access the achievement-giving quests, if that makes sense. Those are the bits I don't like, where I feel like the dailies are treated as a necessary prerequisite for other things.

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  4. I didn't quite love the Netherwing dailies. But I couldn't hate them either. They were saved by an important aspect: being entirely useless, giving nothing but cosmetic rewards rather than needed, or perceived as needed, gear.

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  5. I loved the Booterang quest. More dailies need to be like that: gleefully, evilly FUN!

    I haven't gone back to Molten Front in a month. Part of me wants to, if only to finish up Ready for Raiding II and get the Flamebreaker title, but I'm just so worn out by the linear aspect of it.

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  6. Forcing people to do a number of dailies to open up other dailies has been the biggest problem with the Molten Front. The Forlorn Spire/Into the Fire quests should obviously have been one-off quests, but are now daily cock-blocks instead. Finally, as someone trying to do all the achievements in the Molten Front, I have amassed over 300 tokens that are completely useless to me. At least give me something decent to spend them on, Blizz.

    I did the Netherwing dailies back in the day. The pollen collection quest wasn't so simple, because there was a good chance that one of the big mobs would appear before you had a chance to take off, and would flatten you into the ground. As for the dragon mount, you could only have one mount back then. It's a bit sad that you can buy them all these days.

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  7. Shintar, instead of getting them as slaves, think of it stealing them out from under the Demon-tainted Dragonmaw.

    I think that the Cata leader of the Dragonmaw would have approved.

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  8. > And the mines must have been a veritable death
    > trap back in the day considering the sheer amount
    > and density of mobs in there.

    Not really, you were lucky to find a mob still alive in there... The mines were filled with mages spamming AE.

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  9. As you I'm pretty burned up with the MF dailies. Got them complete on three chars and two are pretty advanced (one and two vendors missing respectively). I also did the Netherwing dailies time ago on two other chars (since I already got one with the drake back in BC times) but the rep grinding back then (I'm talking about Wrath times) was a pain too. Nether Eggs were the fastest way, but locating the little buggers was very time consuming. So I did all the dailies except the one that sends you to west Nagrand (unless I was close to get to exalted).
    Yes, the Booterang is a classic. It never gets old. Adn the best part is doing it while you're being chased by several booterangs. I'ts a challenge to keep as many booterangs flying behind you as possible. The races were hard (ecept the 3 first oens) back then in BC, now the only difficulty is losing the racer out of sight (specially the last two ones).
    And the mines weren't that hard back then. Yes the place is packed, but wasn't really annoying, plus you always had two or three people around, so we had to compete for mobs or ore veins.
    I didn't know you could buy the rest of drakes! I thought you only could stick to the one you choose. Now I know what I'll do today when I get home :)

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  10. Oh ho ho. I'm glad you enjoyed the Skyshatter races.

    I remember when i reached epic flying, watched myself going at an insane speed while sreacming of joy, and in the following week being bombarded with the quest hub which only players with the epic flying skill could use at the time. So i was kinda lucky (even though at those times my gold gathering skills were so low i took two months saving for the 5k).

    I loved doing them as well during the old times, and loved the challenge. The trickiest one though was the final race, in which his loops and turns were so wicked i couldn't even follow him with my eyes. Luckly, the raid signals (skull, diamond, etc) were introduced around this point (if i remember correctly), and once i've tagged Captain Skyshatter with an orange circle, my navigation problems were over, and won the race in the 3rd trial.

    I'm glad ppl still remember the races. I still have the trinket from those times.

    I just hope that, when Blizzard comes to remodel Outland, the zone remains intact as it is, to allow others to enjoy.

    Best wishes to all,
    Rodmin at WoWhead

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