The Daily Grind: Will Pandaren lure you back to WoW?

@Acidbaron

Actually they have said they are bringing the game back into the world, just words right now, but I have a feeling the PvE Scenarios are going to play a big part of that, as is the renewed focus on Horde vs. Alliance conflict this expansion instead of another big-bad-villian expansion.

@heerobya One more thing they are doing is to make bosses drop loot that can be rolled on by only those players who have done, say, five daily quests before queueing.

@Acidbaron If you watched the Blizzcon panels, you'd have seen that they are bringing things back to the world. Pandaria will have an auction house, bank and traders, so we aren't limited to just Stormwind and Orgrimmar anymore which is welcome on my part.

Furthermore, they mentioned at Blizzcon the possibility of certain loot only being open to people in dungeons if they complete a number of daily quests out in the world. While this promotes more open-world interactions, I don't know if this is the right way to do it, personally. if someone WANTS to be more in the open, they are free to do so, but forcing people who want to gear up to do dailies? Mm, I don't know.

@heerobya

But aren't the PVE scenarios instanced anyway? Blizzard's other solutions to drawing the playerbase out into the world sound meager at best. If they can deliver on that front, all the better but I'm not getting my hopes up. They have backtracked a lot on decisions like this in order to appease certain players.

@Acidbaron it was my understanding that they decided to remove most of their instanced focus on this expansion because that is the biggest complaint of all the people who left, no random events, no nontaggable participation mob zones, no sense of urgency outside of the age old dungeon system. also, running dungeons all the time for everything is not what the modern player enjoys and they know that those who are still subbed are only holding on by a thread. I'm not going back because 1: they still use subs 2: they charge entirely too much for things like character transfers 3: they wait until they begin losing subs en mass before making any changes. these devs suck.

@Acidbaron

Blizz did state they are looking to get people out into the world more. They are bringing back world raid bosses etc.

@Acidbaron

Acid's on the ball. They ARE NOT bringing back world pvp from anything they mentioned. Sitting in 3 cities instead of 1 doesn't change anything since the players are in the cities queueing. Scenarios are instanced PvE battlegrounds/rifts. World bosses was a word slipped in, not something really developed, and WoW already brought a few back (if you didn't know this, it shows just how successful that's been). The only mention of a new pvp zone was during the LORE panel, and it wasn't even about lore.

Limiting flight till 90 doesn't increase world pvp, it increases ganking- world pvp gives you the chance to get vengeance on gankers. For those who didn't play BC or LK, nubs that actually organized themselves against a flying ganker generally had this scenario- team up, start hitting the ganker, ganker realizes what's going on and uses escape moves to mount up and fly away, lowbies are left standing there- they can't fly after him and make sure he doesn't land, can't parachute off their mount and DoT up the ganker, etc. You can wait till max level to do this, but by then the queues will be shorter and the ganker can escape the world and grind dungeons/battlegrounds.

The only new non-instanced content mentioned was the pokemon battles. I'm not sure pokemon masters hunting for new critters are the type to fight back when ganked. Pandas aren't a factor for me- it's gameplay, and I don't think I'm in the target audience.

@Acidbaron
"More open world conlfict both PvE - PvP. Less instanced more outdoors."

Blizzard can say I'm wearing Nostalgia Glasses, all they like. I disagree. I remember a time when the world felt alive, and you moved through it as if it was a world. You would go place to place like you would in real life, if you were on a holiday. Traveling roads and exploring cities, poking around strange hillsides, or discovering dropped quests on the coastlines, looking for and experiencing adventure every step along the way. There is way too much focus on "end game" raiding and dungeon grinding. I am sad that WoW is reduced to a dungeon rinse/repeat. I miss the days of grande scale adventure.

@BaronYiffington
ugh If what you say is true about the dailys part then i think they are going in the wrong direction with making dailys part of game content like they did with hyjal That burned me out. since i personally hate dailys and thats what drove me away from the game.

@Acidbaron

To reply to some of the comments given,

As a person who doesn't play WoW anymore, i don't follow it all that closely i read up on things but that's about it. The biggest selling point seems to be the new race and class with the appropiate new content.

That they are bringing more thing outdoors was just a minor point - i don't see it a flaw of mine if their marketing doesn't use that as a main selling point and let's be honest the majority of the discussions are not about that, so that to me shows how much development time is going to that.

Also adding Daily quests, first of i don't see that encouraging outdoor activities, we had dailies from TBC till now and all that ever happend was people just doing them solo quickly rarely grouping for them - simply an additional grind, a time sink we have seen and experienced before, this is trying to get those who ignore dailies to do them.

In otherwords the projected plan of linking daily quests to dungeon loot is simply done to stretch out content, as it extends the time the dungeon will last - the only otherway they could've done this was by reducing the drop rate and dropped items but that's too noticable.

I'm actually speaking of dynamic encounters and conflicts - things other mmo's are now taking a greater play on. One of the things Rift does well for example, despite its great flaws in PvP itemisation, i'm also not speaking purely of PvE or PvP but the both.

Also World bosses if being added aren't the answer, unless they give them a new twist like playerquests and rifts. With a contribution instead of a loot drop system - as with a loot drop system they are bringing back both the bad and good - while they bad can be trimmed with technology available nowadays.

Dungeons aren't bad either, however i'm really hoping more mmo's will go back a few pages where they missed the turn with open none private dungeons, where there's only another instance is created when a population cap is reached, Those coming from AO, EQ and DAOC will know what i'm talking about.

And i have to agree with that they only start to change direction a little bit when they end up losing subs, They are the biggest mmo company out there they should be pioneering and experimenting yet they remain stagnant. And i really don't see a major direction change, scenarios so far i can see are a minor point in the coming up expansion.

@Eamil

http://www.shawcute.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/winnie_the_pooh.jpg

@(Unverified)

When they add a stuffed animal race to the game, give me a call.

@Eamil

It's not the cuteness that bothers me...I wouldn't of rolled an army of Gnomes. It's more to do with a race similar to the Tuskarr and Gorlocs that now have become the main focus of expansion...something Blizz has never done before with WoW. In comparison to TBC, Wrath and Cat it seems highly anti-climatic at best and just plain silly at worst....

...where's the Emerald Dream, Blizz?

@Utakata

Then my comment wasn't directed at you. ;)

That's a fair point. I've seen other people say similar things and I can understand it. Personally I've wanted them to stop bringing back old villains and start telling a new story unique to WoW for a while now rather than tying up loose ends from the RTS, so I'm hoping this is the start of that.

@Eamil

I know it wasn't. I was more or less pointing out Pandaren cutenss factor driving way players is a bad arguement for dissing this expansion. Just saying. :)

@Utakata

Obviously the Emerald Dream is somewhere that should be higher level than Pandaria. /rolleyes

@JuliusSeizure

Yeah...well the better way of doing it as to make the ED this expansion instead, while still having Panaderan as a NPC faction similar to the Tuskarr in Wrath. Where players could rep up wih them to get a better fishing rods, leveling gear and tie them nicely into the Brewfest. (BTW, I really liked the Tuskarr for that reason. They where a fun distraction to be with in Wrath. But would of quickly became annoying if they became Blizz's sole focus.)

But also, Blizz still could of added the Monk's as a heroic class and redesigned the talent system as they're doing now (as much as I disagree with it). That IMO would of been far a better choice and the public would of taken the expansion and Blizz much more seriously. Helping them to potentially counteract the fiasco that Cataclysm has become.

@Eamil I'll see your http://us.media.blizzard.com/wow/media/artwork/wow-mop/wowx4-artwork-14-full.jpg
and raise you http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E63ExmhOk8g