Why I like dailies

I haven't had much time to play WoW lately due to work-related stress (which also explains the slight drop-off in posts here), but I noticed that the one thing that I do without fail if I have any time to log on at all, is do a couple of daily quests.

To be honest I don't understand why they have such a bad reputation. I mean, occasionally I see another blogger mention that they actually like doing dailies, but even then there is usually some acknowledgement that this is weird and out of the ordinary. In comments to blog posts everywhere I mostly see people state that they hate dailies. From personal experience with guildies I get the impression that a lot of people do them, but only when they are in desperate need of money, as a sort of last resort. At the same time goblins look down on dailies as a sub-optimal method of money-making, because they only reward you with so much gold per hour.

Maybe the difference for me is that I don't look at dailies primarily as a way of making money, but rather as an incentive to guide my play into a certain direction. I mean, I like running instances. Which one should I do today? Hm, Gundrak is the daily heroic, which means that I get an extra reward for doing it and that it will be easier to find a group for it - let's do it!

Or to give another example, I also like fishing, but only in small chunks at a time and when I know that I have a good chance of fishing up something useful. So I always talk to Marcia Chase in Dalaran to see what's the fishing daily for any given day, but only when it's Dangerously Delicious do I actually go out and do it, because then it's a great opportunity to level my alts' fishing skill, get fish feast materials for the guild bank and get paid for it at the same time. How awesome is that?

Basically I look at dailies as a way of providing additional rewards for things that I wanted to do anyway. Since I want to do those things anyway, there's no reason not to do them every time I log in, and so I just "happen" to earn more money than I actually need as a side effect, never finding myself forced into a position to do things that I don't want to do just to earn gold.

I really don't understand why there aren't more people that play this way. In this day and age there's a daily for pretty much anything: killing mobs, gathering stuff, PvP, running instances, and in the next patch there'll be a weekly raid quest too. Hell, every couple of days an NPC will offer you a reward for what's basically just running around Dalaran, which you're probably doing anyway! So really, there's no reason not to get paid for the things you enjoy doing as it is - unless you really enjoy neither PvE nor PvP, but what are you playing WoW for then anyway?

My favourite and least favourite capitals

Pilgrim's Bounty is one of those holidays where getting all the related achievements requires you to pay at least one visit to every capital city of both factions. Doing Pilgrim's Peril the other night brought back all kinds of memories, especially as I haven't actually played Alliance for quite a while, and it made me think about what I do and don't miss about the various capitals now that I don't see them as much anymore, even more so as all roads lead to Dalaran these days (figuratively anyway).

I think that my favourite WoW capital in the history of ever is still Stormwind, though I'll admit that a large part of my affection for it is probably pure nostalgia. Which WoW player could ever forget the first time they walked into a big city?

My very first character in WoW was a human paladin, and when I created her I had never played an MMO before. I remember wandering around Northshire and being quite impressed: Wow, this really is like a little world, there's this abbey and some caves and a brook and a pumpkin patch... Then I left the starter zone and Elwynn Forest seemed huge in comparison, it just seemed to go on forever! Then I got a quest to go to Stormwind and... yeah, my jaw just dropped when I crossed the bridge, beheld the massive statues and the epic music started playing in the background. That really put the "massive" into "massive multiplayer game" for me.

Also, while I had never played an MMO before and thus had no particular expectations of what a city should look like in one, I did have this general idea that I was playing in a fantasy world, and it certainly helped that Stormwind fits the cliché of many a "fantasy town" (sort of medieval, only cleaner and friendlier) to a T.

Later on I discovered less pleasant sides to the city as well, like lots of dumb players clogging up the auction house, dancing on the fountain and generally spouting stupidity in /say, but it never managed to quite ruin my love for the place.

My second favourite capital would have to be Darnassus, probably because my second character, and the first one that I played up to the level cap, was a night elf. It wasn't just that though, I also liked the serenity and beauty of the place, grass and trees and critters everywhere, and the houses so open and welcoming! (Though that kind of makes you wonder about night elf standards for privacy.)

The only reason I like Darnassus less than Stormwind is that it's simply an incredibly inconvenient place to be. Located at the very northern tip of Kalimdor, it's an awful starting point for pretty much any journey, and even within the city itself many frequently used services are simply too far away from each other. (No other city has the bank and the auction house that far apart for example.)

My favourite Horde captical undoubtedly has to be Thunder Bluff. Tauren and night elves are united in their passion for druidism and their love for nature, and it shows in their cities as well. Another green and peaceful place, also located in a gorgeous zone. (I love Mulgore.)

In terms of taking care of "necessities", Thunder Bluff is also unrivaled in regards to how close together it places important utility spots: Which other town has the reagent vendor wandering right past the bank and a forge and anvil only another three steps away?

I suppose it also helped that my first Horde character was a Tauren.

Thunder Bluff's biggest problem in my opinion is that it's located somewhat off the beaten track - not quite as bad as Darnassus, but it still requires a detour to get there from anywhere really.

The Exodar, the Alliance's newest capital, has a special place in my heart simply because I love the Draenei and adore their starter zone. The Exodar fits right in and that's ace in my eyes, even though it's not a proper city, just a crashed spaceship with a couple of funny-talking vendors inside.

In terms of being in an inconvenient location it's worse than Darnassus and Thunder Bluff put together and thus pretty much almost always abandoned, but on my Draenei mage I loved to go there by teleport whenever I needed the auction house. There is something to be said for the serene atmosphere that isn't unlike the one in Darnassus. Or maybe I just like the colour blue.

Orgrimmar, despite of being the Horde's most important capital, is already a little bit down the list. All the frequently visited NPCs are reasonably close together and it's a great starting point if you want to get anywhere in the old world, what with being located in central Kalimdor while also having a blimp connection to the Eastern Kingdoms right in front of the gates.

I think the main reason I don't like Orgrimmar all that much is simply its architecture. I remember rerolling Horde and coming to Orgrimmar for the first time, expecting to be awed in a similar fashion as I was by Stormwind. However, you guessed it... I wasn't. Orcs and trolls come across as somewhat primitive to be honest, and this is reflected by Orgrimmar's buildings being rather plain and crude. Orgrimmar is probably about as large as Stormwind, but not nearly as grand.

I have to say that this is one reason for me to not completely dread the rumours about Orgrimmar receiving a makeover by Garrosh in Cataclysm. I don't like him any more than the rest of the Horde population, but I have to admit that when I first set foot into Warsong Hold I was impressed. If he can make me feel the same way about Orgrimmar that will finally be something that I can actually say in his favour.

The Undercity is a place whose gloomy atmosphere I actually find weirdly appealing, but it traumatised me very badly back when I was new to the Horde and bad first impressions are hard to overcome sometimes.

I was still relatively new to the game when one day my main server was down for additional maintenance and I did what many a WoW addict does under such circumstances: I rolled an alt on another server, an undead warrior in this case. I happily quested away in Tirisfal Glades for a while until I got a quest to go and see someone in the Undercity... and proceeded to get horribly lost. I think I managed to get inside the city actually, but then I couldn't find my way out anymore and eventually despaired and logged off.

You might laugh at that now - I do for sure - but for someone who isn't used to playing games in three dimensions the Horde capitals can pose a serious challenge during the first visit. All the Alliance cities are more or less completely flat, not counting the fact that houses have upper floors, which you kind of expect.

The Horde cities on the other hand require you to think in three dimensions: Orgrimmar has the Cleft of Shadows as "basement", there's that path that's level with the rooftops in the Drag, and the Valley of Spirits is one floor up from the Valley of Strength. Thunder Bluff has the three central rises which appear to be on the same level on the map but aren't in practice, and can only be accessed via the spiral staircase in the centre or by circling around the outside via the bridges. And the Undercity... well, if you've ever been there you know what I mean.

Ironforge is my least favourite Alliance city simply because dwarves and gnomes are my least favourite Alliance races and I absolutely can't identify with this whole "living inside a big, dark cave" thing. I used to have my hearthstone there pre-BC because the proximity to Menethil Harbor made it the most convenient place to get around, but I always missed my night elven home.

Dalaran is a pretty city, similar in style to Stormwind, but in my current situation I can't like it very much simply because my PC isn't very good and it's a pain to do anything there with the way it bogs down my frame rate. I always just try to take care of business there quickly and then I'm off to somewhere else.

My relationship to Shattrath, the Dalaran of the BC era, has changed a lot over time. I remember when I got there for the first time and found out about the portals that allowed you to travel all over Old Azeroth easily - at the time I thought that this was an absolutely amazing feature, though more convenient travelling options all over have diluted its value since then. Towards the end of BC I started to get a bit jaded with it since it started to become annoyingly laggy at peak times, and people were parking their bloody netherdrakes all over the place, making it hard to find anything. And nowadays... nowadays it's simply a ghost town, which makes it slightly creepy. The NPCs are happily chattering away about the Aldor/Scryer conflict and the war, but nobody's home to care. /shudder

Did I forget anything? Oh yeah, Silvermoon, without a doubt the capital I care about the least. Even though I play one myself I'm still not too crazy about blood elves, and their city is so out of the way of everything that it's hardly ever worth visiting. In terms of architecture it's overly pompous, and the layout just feels impractical and unnatural - I feel that no matter where I want to go, I'm constantly forced to make weird U-turns. Also, to this day I'm not sure where the reagent vendor is, but I don't think I care anymore at this point.

You know what needs updating?

So many things in WoW are constantly being changed, nerfed, updated, and yet we still have this:


The ugly default portraits for party frames. Did female tauren ever look like this? In the early beta maybe? Hell, the male tauren doesn't look all that much like its current live version either.

I still remember when my friend and I formed a party while being apart for the first time, back in our early night elf days, and how horrified we were by the way the other one had apparently suddenly acquired a zombie-like complexion and bright red hair.

Never mind nerfing cooking, this is the kind of stuff that needs looking at!

Icecrown gating and difficulty

There's been a lot of hubbub in the blogosphere about the news that the release of Icecrown Citadel will be slowly staggered and that people will only have limited amounts of attempts on several bosses even on normal mode. I understand that the top raid guilds are annoyed by this, but personally I don't think it will affect me much. My guild is not the kind to push for server firsts, and if running out of attempts forces us to stop for the week or to go back and farm Trial of the Crusader some more, so be it. Waiting a few more weeks to kill the Lich King won't make or break the game for me.

What amuses me slightly about this whole development is that it's basically a sign of Blizzard doing some massive backpedaling from their initial WOTLK raiding policy. Personally I thought that BC raiding was fine with its continual increase in difficulty and attunement requirements, but for some reason the developers thought that things needed to change and that it would be a good idea to make all the WOTLK starter raids super easy and immediately accessible to everyone. The result? People cleared everything really quickly and then asked: "What now?"

Seeing that this wasn't working as planned, Ulduar was designed to be harder again and to keep players busy for longer, though judging by how quickly some of the encounters were nerfed again, Blizzard soon had regrets about that too.

Along comes Trial of the Crusader, going back to super easy mode (though with a "make this really difficult" switch for the hardcore raiders), but not releasing all the bosses at once to make sure that nobody cleared the whole instance in the first week. And now we get more of the same in Icecrown, trying to make everything really accessible, yet at the same time not immediately accessible, like it used to be in BC because of attunements.

The difference with this new system is that it basically rewards long periods of inactivity. In BC things went like this: Want to kill Prince Malchezaar? Better get cracking and work on that Karazhan attunement! In Icecrown it will be: Want to kill Arthas? Well, wait a couple of weeks and he'll be unlocked automatically. Wait even longer and you'll get a powerful buff to defeat him more easily! It's like... rested XP for raids, except that there's no choice to keep going unrested. I think Blizzard have overshot their goal of appealing to the casual player if they make content that actively prevents you from playing more.

Also, it leaves me concerned about the difficulty of normal mode Icecrown. Surely if it offered a decent challenge you wouldn't have to erect such heavy artificial barriers to hold people back? Hard modes or not, if normal mode Arthas turns out to be as much of a pushover as Anub'arak, I'll be disappointed.

Anyone remember how at the start of WOTLK, Blizzard said that they would make the tiers coming after Naxx progressively harder when people complained that Naxx & Co. were too easy? They said that they just wanted to make things a bit more accessible overall, which I thought was fair enough, considering the insane difficulty of Sunwell at the end of BC. Ulduar lived up to that promise, but with the release of Trial of the Champion it all went out the window again. Sure, Trial requires somewhat better gear than Naxx (to make sure that your tank doesn't go splat on Gormok and your dps can kill Anub'arak before he enrages), but mechanics-wise it's a huge step backwards from Ulduar again and pretty much on par with Naxx. The impression I got from this is that Blizzard has kind of stopped caring about logical raid progression and just makes everything really easy so everyone can do it, adding a "really difficult" option for the hardcore, and leaving all the middle-of-the-road raiders in some kind of black hole where the normal modes offer no challenge and the hard modes are too hard. I guess we'll all just have to level some more alts instead then?

Remembering Azshara

Last night I took my shaman fishing in Azshara, to help with getting her cooking skill up to Outland standards.

Azshara is a strange zone. It's sad and desolate, full of elven ruins and completely devoid of players most of the time. Yet it's also hauntingly beautiful, what with the weather appearing to be perpetually stuck on a sunny autumn day.

I remember the first time I went to Azshara on my night elf priest. One of my friends had somehow stumbled across the quest Arcane Runes in Ironforge, which sends you to Azshara to investigate some naga-infested ruins and then call onto an NPC on a small island off the coast. So we set off to find this Azshara place... and then proceeded to get lost a lot. The zone really lends itself to that, what with all the cliffs that make it very easy to fall off somewhere and then find yourself stuck in some ravine with no easily apparent way to get back up. We also barely escaped death by murlocs and other wildlife more than once, what with all of them being three or four levels above our own at the time. We didn't get a whole lot done I suppose, but it felt like a truly epic adventure at the time.

On my mage I went to Azshara to do the quest to get Polymorph: Pig, a bizarre venture that required me to sheep naga and then kill lots of weak little sheep with arcane explosions... Imagine my surprise when I first found out about Archmage Xylem's tower! A whole freaking tower that I hadn't even known was there! And yet so easy to miss if you don't happen to talk to a certain elf NPC sat in the middle of nowhere...

Much later I remember coming to Azshara on one of my Horde characters, I think it was my priest, falling off a cliff somewhere while exploring and randomly landing next to Captain Beltis, who gave me a little stand-alone quest to protect her crew from a naga attack. Certainly not what I expected to find at the bottom of a random cliff.

Oh, and all the level fifty class quests that lead you to Azshara of course! I thought the hunter one was the worst. Hello there, wavethrasher scales with a horrible drop rate. Hello there, wavethrashers with a horrible spawn rate. Ugh.

Anyway, all this left me with the impression that Azshara was very big and empty, but held a lot of secrets if you only knew where to look and followed the right quest chains. To an extent that's true, but not entirely. There are some quests there, but still a lot less than in most other zones. Plus there are a lot of things that just scream "unfinished content", like the locked gate to what looks like another section of Timbermaw Hold, or the instance entrances with Horde and Alliance flags that were apparently meant for a battleground that never went live.

Even Blizzard basically acknowledged that the zone isn't what they want it to be right now, and that it will thus receive a drastic overhaul in Cataclysm. If I recall correctly they said that the goblins will build a settlement there, and that it will be turned into a zone for a much lower level range (twenties or so). I'm quite looking forward to that, picturing an Azshara that is less sad and more alive.

However, my inner explorer is also a little disappointed once again. There is something to be said for a zone that very much feels like just a place. A place where you can go explore, pick flowers, go fish and discover a secret here and there, but not somewhere you go just to knock out the next ten levels (because it simply doesn't lend itself to that kind of thing). I'll try to appreciate that while I still can.

Instance Review: The Blood Furnace

Behold, my first review of an Outland instance.

1. Accessability

The Blood Furnace is part of the Hellfire Citadel, located smack in the middle of Hellfire Peninsula. You're pretty much bound to come through here when you're roughly in the right level range for the local instances, and none of them is more than a stone's throw away from Thrallmar and Honor Hold, which is very convenient.

About the worst problem you could have is that not all members of your group might be able to find the entrance right away, or at least that used to be an issue back in the days before flight was available at level sixty. The thing is that the summoning stone, the portal to Ramparts and the one to Shattered Halls are all conveniently located on the same ledge, but getting to the Blood Furnace door without flying requires you to loop around the southern rampart and climb up some stairs west of the place, which is a bit counter-intuitive.

2. Atmosphere

Personally I find Outland instances in general less atmospheric than most, but Blood Furnace doesn't do too badly. You can believe that this is where some mad science is going down, what with the shady technicians, evil warlocks and corrupted orcs in cages.

3. Story & Quests

Both the Alliance and the Horde get two quests for this instance, one to collect blood from the fel orcs and one to "investigate" the furnace. Both of these quests require you to have completed pre-quests in the Ramparts but give pretty good rewards for the level.

As far as story goes, the Blood Furnace probably has one of the best ones of all Outland instances, and one that immediately egaged me the first time I did it. Basically both Horde and Alliance are wondering what's going on with all those fel orcs in the area and send you to the Furnace to find out, where you get to discover that - spoiler - Illidan has trapped Magtheridon in the basement and is using the pit lord's blood for his own nefarious purposes. Le gasp! (Though I have to admit that it took me many, many runs until I noticed that you can actually look down on Mags from where you kill the last boss.) So... that's pretty cool.

4. Length

Blood Furnace is what I'd call "standard Outland instance length", which means it should take somewhere between half an hour and one hour to complete, assuming your group doesn't run into any major problems. I always found that a pretty pleasant length, but your mileage may vary.

5. Layout

Like all Outland instances, Blood Furnace is very straightforward in terms of layout and it's completely impossible to even take a single wrong turn. Some call this "Shattered Halls syndrome" and deride it for being boring. I kind of see their point, and I think Blizzard has taken a step into the right direction by creating some more interesting dungeon layouts again in WOTLK, but I'd still take a straightforward instance like this over something as hopelessly confusing as say, Maraudon, any day.

6. Trash

The trash in the Blood Furnace is pretty damn brutal. It can be tricky enough on normal difficulty, but oh my god, heroic mode. Stealthed rogues are all over the place, waiting to pick off any clothie who dared to run too far ahead or somehow fell behind. Shadowmoon Technicians throw dynamite and put down proximity bombs which still hurt somewhat even at level eighty. Certain warlock mobs summon felhounds and succubi, and if that summon isn't interrupted you're in for a world of trouble. Oh, and who could forget those massive felguards with the random charges and aggro resets? This is the kind of instance people remember when they say that the trash mobs in Northrend instances don't put up enough of a fight.

7. Bosses

The first boss, The Maker is pretty uninteresting to be honest, just some tank and spank guy with a mind-control gimmick. The last boss, Keli'dan the Breaker isn't terribly interesting either, despite of being Magtheridon's jailer. Though I have to admit that he'll always have a special place in my heart, because back when I played WoW in German, fighting him always meant that I got to listen to the most awesome voice acting in all of BC ever.

The most interesting and memorable boss in the Blood Furnace is undoubtedly Broggok, or rather the "cage event" leading up to him. You pull a lever and four cages full of enraged fel orcs open one after the other - and they all hit very hard and stun. Oh, the wipes I had there... good times.

8. Loot

Being the Outland instance with the second lowest level requirement, Blood Furnace is pretty awesome for loot, as you'll likely still be wearing some levelling gear that you already would have liked to replace twenty levels ago. If you look at the loot table, it also seems that the designers went through some sort of checklist to make sure that there was truly something for everyone among the drops. There are of course a lot of snazzy caster drops, but also something for rogues, caster druids, caster shamans, hunters, and the obligatory odd paladin item.

It's also worth noting that for many people these will be their first items with sockets, and they are more powerful than ever now that you can cheaply stick some uncommon Northrend gems in there that are better than even epic quality ones were back in BC.

And then there are the quest rewards of course.

Overall I have to admit that Blood Furnace isn't an instance that I'd like to run over and over again, even now, but it's definitely worth visiting at least once during your levelling career, if just for the story and quests, plus a shot at a good drop or two.

It's unfortunate that it can be quite hard to find a group for this instance these days, as there aren't even sufficient amounts of levelling death knights around anymore. The increased levelling speed in Outland also means that it's quite possible to sit in Looking For Group for a few hours just to realise that you already outlevelled the early Hellfire instances while questing in the meantime. Hopefully this is something that will be alleviated by the arrival of cross-server LFG in patch 3.3.

Advanced general battleground strategy

Dear fellow battleground participant,

if you're reading this, I assume that you already understand the basic idea behind each battleground. You know that you can win Alterac Valley by killing the big dude at the other end of the map, and you know that Warsong Gulch is all about capturing the enemy's flag while protecting your own.

If you're reading this, I also assume that you actually care about these objectives and are interested in winning in battlegrounds (as opposed to say, aimlessly running around somewhere in the middle just to gank people).

Where you might still fail however, is understanding the bigger picture and stratetic implications of a battleground. You're the guy who makes a macro with some "guaranteed winning instructions" and spams it at the start of every single match. You're the guy who blames every loss in AV on someone tagging Stonehearth graveyard.

Let me tell you something: There is no one-size-fits-all guaranteed winning strategy for any battleground. Even in Warsong Gulch, the smallest and most basic of all battlegrounds, there are multiple ways of efficiently going about defense of offense, which are conveniently summed up in this article on WoW.com. And they can all work or fail, depending on the circumstances.

The thing with the enemy team in a battleground is that it's not a raid boss. You can't discover one way to beat them up and then repeat it in exactly the same manner week after week. The enemy team consists of thinking human beings, and while they may not all be very clever, sometimes it can be enough for a single one of them to smarten up, fight back and counter your strategy, rendering it completely ineffective. The proper response to this is not to stick to your original plan and try over and over again, or to insult others for not doing what you want, but to wisen up yourself and find a counter to their counter.

To give you an example of what I mean: A few weeks ago I tried to do the daily battleground on my priest, which happened to be Isle of Conquest on that day. In the first match I joined, someone immediately spammed a macro instructing everyone to rush to the docks and use the vehicles from there to take down the western gate of the Alliance base. It would be a guaranteed victory!

As it turned out, it wasn't, even though the whole team had faithfully followed the macroed instructions. We had only just taken down the west gate when the message popped up that the Alliance had won. I re-joined for another attempt and the exact same thing happened.

When I ended up in the same battleground as the macro spammer for the third time I decided that it was time to speak up as soon as he went through his pre-battleground routine again. "Dude," I said, "we did exactly what you said in the last two matches I was in and the Alliance always beat us horribly. They just rushed to cap the hangar and then parachuted into our base on masse. We've got to do something about that."

To my delight, several members of the team agreed, and when the gates finally opened, about half the team set out towards the docks, while the other half went for the hangar. Having fewer people at the docks didn't harm us at all, as the Alliance had long given up on even trying to cap them, but the sudden resistance at the hangar significantly slowed them down there because they hadn't expected it. Guess what? We won. Not because sending half the raid to the docks and half the raid to the hangar is a guaranteed winning strategy, but because in this particular case it was an efficient counter to what our enemy was doing. This is what you have to keep in mind.

Or to elaborate on the Stonehearth graveyard example mentioned above: in general, at least in my battlegroup, someone tagging Stonehearth graveyard will always lead to abuse from someone else in battleground chat. Supposedly it's stupid and makes our side lose. But have these people ever thought about why that is?

When you first rush forward to the Alliance base, it is indeed a bad idea to tag this particular graveyard, but not because there's anything inanely wrong with owning it. What happens is that attacking it means that the Alliance will only be in possession of the two graveyards at their base until they make the first cap of their own, which then in turn means that every single enemy that you kill during that time will resurrect back in their base, creating massive resistance in Dun Baldar. These are usually the matches where the Horde loses by reinforcements while vainly trying to fight its way across the Dun Baldar bridge while most of the Alliance team sits behind it. Not good.

However, once the Alliance has taken for example Snowfall graveyard, attacking Stonehearth will make little difference for their defense while giving the Horde forces a place to res further north. In longer matches that's not such a bad idea at all. And yet you still see people indiscriminately yelling at anyone who tags it, accusing them of "making us lose" and distracting people from things that actually matter.

In summary: Don't be that guy. Look at what happens around you and react to it, that is more key than following any predetermined plans that might not live up to expectations anyway.