The Panda Grind or: What Finally Made Me Cancel My World of Warcraft Subscription

Panda!

         I had planned a piece that would be more interesting to a general audience for my first post here, but for the last couple weeks something has been really bugging me.  I apologize in advance for the barely-coherent rant that's about to come.  Now, with that out of the way:

            For years now people have been heralding the coming of the wow killer.  They claimed that Warhammer Online would knock WoW off its throne.  It didn't.  People were SURE that Age of Conan would finish WoW off , it had BOOBS in it!  That wasn't enough.   All the cool kids were looking forward to Guild Wars 2 finishing WoW off as it limped away from its drop in subscriptions over the Cataclysm expansion.  I mean, come on!  Guild Wars 2  DIDN'T HAVE SUBSCRIPTION COSTS (it also didn't have robust endgame content, who knew people liked that sort of thing in their games?).  This is the point where I should also mention Star Wars:  The Old Republic...   but I'm not going to, as I'm doing my best to repress those memories.  All those games failed to knock WoW off its throne, though Recently I've started to think that maybe the true WoW killer has already descended upon us, but we're just not aware of it yet.

            A short time ago a new title was released.  This game wasn't billed as a challenger to WoW, but the more I play it, the less excited WoW seems to make me.  This game has succeeded in dimming my enthusiasm for WoW, where so many previous challengers failed   I see people asking:  What spectacular exemplar of computer gaming genius could lessen my years long love affair with World of Warcraft?  My answer to that brilliant question is:  World of Warcraft:  Mists of Pandaria (gasp!).  So then, we get down to it - is it possible, that where all these would be challengers failed, WoW itself is going to succeed?  Could the great WoW killer be... WoW?

            As with most things that achieve a certain degree of popularity, it has become quite fashionable to bash on WoW these past few years.  In every new online game that I've tried, public chat is littered with people eager to prove their online gaming cred by condemning Blizzard and WoW.  As such, I think it's important to point out that I was genuinely excited about the MoP expansion.  New WoW expansions are currently my favorite thing in video games.  I was completely undeterred by the various cries of:  "LAWL, Pokémon and kung fu pandas! LAWL!" as if pointing such game aspects out counted as deep insightful criticism.  I was happy to see an Asian themed setting, as Warcraft's fifthhand Tolkienesque backdrop is about as quintessentially stereotypical "fantasy" as they come (you mean Elves live are hyper-attuned to nature and favor archery?! SHOCKING).  It was with this excited mindset that I stocked up on my favorite snacks, and prepared to stay up to MoP's 3:00am "midnight" release.

The Jade Forest In All Its Splendor!  (Also some Troll)

Verticality In Action!

            And it was everything that I had hoped it would be.  The new areas are beautiful;  they do a great job of showing off the bells and whistles that Blizzard had pasted onto WoW's aging graphics engine far better than any of the areas in the previous Cataclysm expansion.  I enjoyed the new locales and quests.  Much like in Bethesda's Skyrim, Pandaria has a very nice sense of "verticality" to it, with winding mountain paths, misty valleys of bamboo forests, and verdant terraced farmlands.  I haven't bothered to engage in any Pokémoning, but The titular Pandaran are well animated with lots of personality to their movements.  Panda animations are good, almost to the point of being jarring when compared to WoW's older racial models.  Progressing through Pandaria makes for a great ride, culminating beyond its version of the Great Wall, in the otherworldly Dread Wastes.  Unfortunately the ride has to end, and what awaits yodu isn't quite of the same quality, kind of like water sliding into a wading pool of used syringes...  and cat vomit.

That's...  A Lot Of Daily Questing.

            So!  Once you reach max level, then what?  Well, that's when you gain access to the Mists of Pandaria daily quests!  Not coincidentally, this is also when WoW took my desire to log on, and strangled it in the backseat of its car.  Daily quests have been a staple of WoW gameplay for several expansions now.  They're usually accompanied by a specific faction, and doing dailies for that faction makes them like you more.  Once a faction likes you enough, their vendor will show you where they keep the really good stuff, and you can buy nice pieces of equipment and other fun goodies from them.  If the idea of repeating the same series of activities every day for several weeks sounds unappealing (or like a job that you don't get paid for), the last two WoW expansions prior to MoP allowed players to purchase tabards from faction vendors, which while worn would grant reputation points for fighting in dungeons.  Tabards made the daily grind completely optional, as there was a secondary means of gaining reputation with a given faction, aside from quest repetition.  Personally, I had always viewed dailies as a means for gaining reputation at a faster rate than just running dungeons while tabard-clad.

            Prior to MoP's release lead designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street had the following to say on his "Developer Watercooler" blog:

"Inprevious expansions, the head enchants from the faction vendors served to force players into specific content. Youcouldn't even choose which reputation to pursue-- you had to pursue the one with your specific head enchant. Our design intent for Mists of Pandaria is to giveplayers options in how to play, and our previoushead enchant design wasn't compatible with that." 

            In that post, Ghostcrawler is specifically referring to Blizzard's reasoning for axing faction based head enchants, but I found the way he was speaking regarding factions to be particularly encouraging.  Looking back now, I see that my mistake was assuming the game would actually reflect his statements (crazy I know!).  In MoP Blizzard made three changes to the ways daily quests work that I find to be particularly horrible:  They removed faction tabards, they "gated" several necessary factions behind attaining a specific level of reputation with a third faction, and .they reduced the reputation points earned per daily quest.

            Despite Ghostcrawler's comments to the contrary, dropping the faction tabards actually LIMITED player options.  Prior to MoP, faction dailies were completely optional.  You could do them if you wanted to reach exalted (maximum reputation) faster, but if the idea of doing them left a bad taste in one's mouth, it was perfectly possible to just skip them entirely and rely on the tabard granted faction points.  This ties in well with what I think was the second major mistake:  Golden Lotus faction.  Of the four factions that actually matter for buying epic level gear, only the Klaxxi is completely independent.  Anyone interested in buying items from the Shado-Pan or the August Celestials is flat out REQUIRED to grind out Golden Lotus faction until they reach revered level (the second highest faction level).  I'm sorry, but this setup really doesn't feel like it's giving players "options in how to play."  If you want to gain access to a full HALF of the important MoP factions then you are (once again) REQUIRED to do endless quests for Golden Lotus.  This situation is further exacerbated by the fact that Golden Lotus dailies are especially tedious, even when compared to the other daily quests available from other faction.  It's like the player base is being told that:  "Sure, we've got tons of options for you, as long as do you exactly what we say, in exactly the order we've proscribed."

Polishing The Old Helmet For The Sons Of Hodir

            I believe it was in that seminal classic, "Young Guns 2" where it was proclaimed that "The bad news is there's horseshit for dinner.  The good news is there's plenty of it!"  There's that third aspect that I mentioned left to touch on - that MoP's dailies actually give fewer reputation points than similar series of quests did in expansions past.  I went back and checked how the dailies associated with "necessary" factions in previous expansions stacked up to the current crop.  The Sons of Hodir were "required" (I keep putting words like "necessary" and "required" in "quotations" because really, nobody HAS to do any of this stuff) in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, as increasing your reputation standing with them unlocked enhancements to your character's shoulder slot items.  Sons of Hodir dailies awarded the player between 350 and 500 reputation points per quest completed.  Move forward to the next expansion pack, Cataclysm - the Therazane faction performed the exact same rule that Hodir did in the Lich King expansion (shoulder enchants).  Therazane dailies awarded between 250 and 350 reputation per completion.  So we move onto my favorite whipping boy - Golden Lotus (because they suck) the average Golden Lotus quest awards 100 reputation points per quest completion.  So then, Golden Lotus has a TON of dailies available, that cycle every day, so the odds are you won't be doing the exact same series of quests on a daily basis (taken by itself, that was actually a good idea).  But of course, since those buttloads of dailies are worth less than similar quests have traditionally been, the player is stuck spending more time, doing more quests for less of a payoff.  I have a friend who raids 25man content.  As such, he's interested in advancing his character as much as possible.  Between his raiding schedule and his hours long daily questing regimen he doesn't really have the free time to even run heroic difficulty dungeons, much less level alt characters (which is one of my favorite WoW pastimes).

            Apparently people have flocked to WoW's official forums to defend this new abomination that's been forced onto the player base.  I wouldn't know personally, because I've made it my life's mission to stay off those forums, after I made the foolish assumption back in 2004, that reading the warrior forums would actually impart useful information regarding the warrior class.  I can't rightly think of a reason why people would defend a mechanic that FORCES players into a very specific activity set.  Unless they're laboring under the (incorrect)  assumption that a willingness to put up with tedious bullshit somehow raises them into a select upper echelon of WoW's player base.  Don't mistake me here.  I'm definitely not asking that Blizzard hand out epic level items with absolutely no regard to the effort required to obtain them (I raided in Molten Core, when 40 people would kill a boss for two drops, I think Blizzard has been giving away epics for years).  I just don't think that willingness to suffer repetitious, tedious tasks should be the skill that they're testing. Blizzard has added an additional hurdle for anyone who desires to maximize the potential of their character (read:  anyone serious about raiding).

Kill One And Zone Out!

            Adding in extra unpleasant obstacles seems contrary to the direction WoW has been moving since its release.  One of the secrets to WoW's success was that it wasn't afraid to strip away the unpleasant conventions of the MMO genre in the interest of providing a better experience for their player base.  WoW implemented ideas that would seem CRAY-ZEE to a longtime player of older style MMOs, like Everquest and Final Fantasy XI (such as myself).  WoW had no experience penalty for death.  WoW allowed players to reach max level easily, through solo play.  These things seemed anathema to what the traditional group based MMO experience grind had come to look like, but Blizzard didn't care - doing it their way was more FUN.  The current situation feels like one big-ass stumble backwards on Blizzard's part, because at the end of the day, mandatory daily quest grinds aren't fun.  Blizzard even has a history of moving AWAY from mandatory daily questing in pervious expansions, which suggests that some point somebody thought that was a good idea.  When WoW moved away from obligatory daily questing for frost badges in the Lich King expansion, and instead adopted a weekly pool of valor points, that was a step in the right direction (a step that they held in place for an entire expansion cycle after Lich King).  Why are they moving away from that paradigm now?  I'll grant that some people DO enjoy dailies (even though I never have), once again my issue lies with making dailies a sole avenue towards an end - forcing players into a specific task, rather than giving the player choices, as was done in previous expansions, and as was stated as one of Ghostcrawler's design directions for the expansion.

            In my opinion, Blizzard has somewhat indirectly admitted that the new daily structure if flawed.  The first major patch of the expansion, 5.1 mixes up the reputation gain scheme a bit, by increasing all reputation gains with a given faction, across your entire account, once you have a character who has attained revered level with them.  I guess this is a step in the right direction, but I still feel that this addresses a symptom of the problem, and not that actual illness itself.  The enforced daily quests grind is still right there where they left it, now players just won't have to spend as many days doing it.  Hooray?  Really, removing the reputation requirements on purchasing the various pieces of valor point gear that the faction vendors have would go a long way towards making the daily grind feel less compulsory.

Cataclysm's Dragonmaw Dailies - Exalted In Less Than A Week.

            So there you have it:  Trying to keep up with the daily grind has cooled my post expansion pack release enthusiasm MONTHS earlier than usual for me.  I gave up getting my "main" deathknight to exalted level reputation with the four core Pandaria factions, just because I couldn't stand several more WEEKS of daily grind that was required to make that happen.  This expansion still has some good ideas in it.  I don't want to give the impression that I hate everything it has to offer.  Ironically, the NON-essential factions (the Tillers and Anglers) that have dailies associated with them are quite pleasant - a far cry from the shitslog that is Golden Lotus questing, and even the August Celestial dailies are succinct and over quite quickly - it's just unfortunate that if you want to have access to them, you have to close your eyes and wait for Golden Lotus to finish having its way with you.  I'm still curious regarding the behind the scenes decisions at Blizzard that led to this situation going live.  Hubris, maybe?  After so many would-be challengers failed, perhaps Blizzard simply decided that being World of Warcraft is enough to guarantee sufficient subscriptions to turn a profit?  I know at least one longtime wow subscriber who's spirit has been so crushed by the daily grind that she no longer feels like logging on at all some nights, let alone dealing with the daily grind.

            The MMO landscape is scatted with the bones of failed wow-killers, many of which I played, and some of which made exactly the same missteps that Blizzard is making now.  If this is the direction that we can expect future content to take, then for me at least it's entirely possible that WoW may end up joining them:  killed by its own hand.