What is Non Raiding Content?

Someone pointed out that the comment about consuming content too quickly had to do with non raiding content and thinking about it I am left to believe they are absolutely right.  When it came to non raiding content this expansion, it was all done way to quickly.

By quickly I do not means it took a few weeks I mean it took a few days.  No matter what Blizzard likes to tell us, like the 70-80 leveling experience is roughly the same as the 80 to 85 experience, they are full of shit, for lack of a better word.

The 70-80 experience is still twice as long even with the reduced experience needed to level and rested and more heirloom gear than the 80-85 experience.  This is coming from a person that had leveled three characters through northrend and then to 85 since the expansion.  So I speak from first hand knowledge. 80-85 takes roughly the same amount of time as 76-80 and if you read my old posts, I always called 76-80 the easiest leveling point in the game.

So their new content is lacking in time investment and also lacking in areas to do so.  This leaves us with the feeling that there is less to do.  That feeling is completely justified.

Questing is the number one non raiding content.

One way or another most non raiding content is connected to questing.  For any player that likes to quest and is effective at it once you are done with your 80-85 leveling you can go back and do all the other quests in two days or less and by two days I do not mean 48 hours I mean two 3 or 4 hour play days.

This went by way to quickly.

Add to the fact that questing is now linear it means that there is little to no exploration needed to find where your next quests might come from.  This makes questing much more efficient which is nice but it also means you finish it a lot faster by not having to look around for quests to finish an area.

The second way questing is the number one non raiding content is in the style of dailies.

For the most part the only dailies one might need to do are the cooking dailies, to get tokens for recipes, the fishing dailies, for achievement or skill points or items that come in the bags, and the TB dailies if you want to get that rep.

No other dailies in the game are needed.  The tabards cover the rep you will need and if you even do as little as run one dungeon per day with a tabard on you will be exalted with every faction so fast it is crazy.

This means that the dailies lose their attraction really fast.  Even the one grind you need to do for rep being it does not have the tabard to make it even easier, TB, goes fast.  If you happen to get lucky enough to get a server that has TB during your play time every day, getting to exalted is super quick.  On my server we never have it more then twice a week during my play time and I still got exalted in no time at all.  If we had it every day it would have been faster.

So quests where indeed consumed to quickly because there were too few of them, there was no need to seek them out and their was no need to do dailies when a tabard got the job done faster.

This is why the content was consumed so fast.

What they need to do is bring back grinding if you want to limit the time needed for consumption of content.  Grinding is the key to keeping people addicted and it is the key to keeping content from being consumed to fast.

The Ogri'la faction is a perfect example of a long grind that did not get consumed to quickly.  With three (or two if you did not do the color one, like I did not) dailies with small rep gains meant that there was a need to do this for a very long time before you felt as if you had consumed all there was from it.

The tabards have also made it useless, unless someone wanted to rush it, to do rep grind dailies.  Why do the two Ramkahen dailies to get rep when you can jump into a dungeon and get more rep then they give combined just from the trash before the first boss.  Okay, I'll admit it, I have been exalted since the first week and I still smash those pygmy guys every time I am there just for the fun of it, but I do not need to.

They need to go back to the BC way of things.  Tabards are a thank you from a faction for becoming exalted with them, they are not a means to an end to get there.  Tabards are part of the reason that content is being consumed to quickly.

If they really want to let you get rep from a tabard, lower the gain to 1 or 2 per trash kill and 25-50 per boss, so you do not get exalted so quickly.

Now lets look at another grind.  Standard rep and where it leaves you.  Doing Hyjal quest line will leave you at almost exalted if you happen to be a human and have the guild bonuses and even if you do not meet those requirements you will be well into revered.  This is way to much to start off.  They would have been better served making you be honored at best when done and making the bear toss and maybe two of three other of the quests people found fun into dailies that give 100 rep each.

This would mean that if you did all of hyjal you would still need to do dailies for a while without the tabard.  Even if they removed the tabard and did the daily thing content would still be consumed to quickly because you would get exalted so quickly based on the fact you where half into revered just after questing.

To much rep straight out from quest lines helped make content get consumed to quickly.

I think that covers the questing standpoint of why content got consumed so quickly.

Some people do dailies for gold, more people do dailies to attain something else.  Some like to grind it for the rep.  Some like to grind it for the items.  Some like to grind it for the enchants.  All will do it if there is something they want from it.  Making it take time would be a way to make content not be consumed so quickly.

Lets just use the argent tournament as the perfect example, I still do it, three people I know of in my guild still do it, one of my commentators yesterday mentioned they did it, that is the perfect example of content not getting consumed to quickly.

It is outdated from a previous expansion and many people still do it.  Design things this way blizzard.  There will always be pets to buy from there that you can then sell or send to alts.  This is enough to keep some people interested even after they got everything they wanted and are exalted.  Someone on the design team was really thinking with their head here, where did he go?  Hire him back please.

What else is there that is non raid content?

PvP?  I don't think so.  PvP is the same now that it was a 60, at 70 and at 80.  Maybe different skills, maybe different effects, maybe different life totals, maybe different battlegrounds, maybe different arenas, yet it is always the same.  Player vs player.

We can not blame Blizzard for this one being stale.  It is not possible for them to breath life into something that they have no impact over.

Whereas a new raid encounter can be build that people need to learn, the only way a PvP player gets new content is my facing a different player.  If there are no different players with different play styles then PvP gets stale.  Blame for fellow player for that one, do not blame blizzard. (not even touching on balance here, lets pretend everything is balanced)

Blizzard can however make PvP more interesting by making more achievements for world PvP.  Example.  Kill 1 person of equal level in xxx, Kill 10 people of equal level in xxx, kill 100 people of equal level in xxx, 250, 500, 1000, 2500, 5000, etc.  xxx could be every opposing faction town.

This would encourage PvP players to hang out in non city towns looking for world PvP.  Achievement hunters will do it for achievements, PvPers will do it for the fighting, everyone benefits. And the requirement of same level means it will not encourage lowbie ganking, even if that will happen.

Kill 10,000 guards, kill 25,000 guards, kill 50,000 guards, kill 100,000 guard, etc.  Guards offer no honor.  Most people try to avoid them being they are a waste of time.  Lets at least make an achievement for killing them.  You can keep increasing the number needed for the next level of achievement, this keeps extending the content that can be consumed is as easy as adding a 250,000 kill achievement once most people have 100,000.

PvP world events  Arenas around the globe would be considered sanctuary until battle time.  Everyone that enters will be flagged but can not attack.  Once the hour marker hits the doors are locked.  No one can get in, no one can get out.  If you die you can not release until the battle royal is over.

Last one standing, wins.  Give them an achievement, Win battle royal at xxx arena.  Win 10 battle royals at xxx arena.  So forth and so on.  This creates more PvP and even if just for achievement sake, and/or the 100 conquest points it awards each time you win one, it will encourage people to participate in them.

While Blizzard can not do anything about the content of PvP, so to speak, it will always be you fighting someone else, they can not create content for that, they can create content that gives you a place to do it and a reason to do it in that place.  I am not much of a PvP player but I would love some of these and would join battle royal battles even if I know I am not even close to good enough to win one because it sure as hell sounds fun.

Okay, we covered how to make questing and rep grinding consumed slower and PvP more involved meaning it is more interesting for more people and the achievement added it to to make it more time consuming so what is next for the non raid content?

Gold making.

Nothing for me to say here.  Gold making will take care of itself.  There is always a way to make gold, people will always find a way to make gold, people will never have too much gold.  Hoarders will be hoarders.  That content is the only content that did not get consumed quickly because there is no end to that content.

Questing has a end, once you got everything you want from it or did them all it ends.  PvP has an end unless you continue to make attainable achievements so people have something to aim for and brag about.  Woohoo, I just got my 10,000 trolls killed achievement. Gold has no end, you can always make more and more is always good.

What else for non raid content?

Not much you can do for exploration, once it is done it is done.  All that is left for non raid content is dungeons.  Once they are done and you got everything you want from them all that is left is grinding for points, whichever you want.  Unless there is a complete overhaul there then there is nothing that can be done for them either.

I think the answer to content getting consumed to quickly is not to make more content and release it faster even if I like that idea, I think the answer is to make the content last longer.  There is no reason that you should be done with all quests and all rep grinds in a week of hitting 85.  Content wore out so fast because they let it.  It is their fault.  To late to fix it now but they can learn from it and not let it happen again.

Last but not least... do not underestimate the power of achievements as a means to make content.  Just as I mentioned with adding PvP achievement to give PvP players more reason to PvP and to get out in the world to do it you can use achievements as a way to make content and it is probably the easiest of things to add to the game to create content.

[Fish 100 fish up from open waters in Ashenvale]
[Fish 250 fish up from open waters in Ashenvale]
[Fish 500 fish up from open waters in Ashenvale]
[Fish 100 fish up from pools in Ashenvale]
[Fish 250 fish up from pools in Ashenvale]
[Fish 500 fish up from pools in Ashenvale]

Make one for each area, make a 1000 achievement and 1500 achievement when you need to add more content.

Make a meta for when someone that gets all of both types of 500s achievements from every area in game that awards a 525 fishing pole.  Next expansion, just continue along with a meta for getting the 1500 achievement in all for a 600 fishing pole.  See, content created easy by means of achievement.

Other ideas... [Kill xxx Humanoid in xxx], [Kill xxx Beasts in xxx], same idea, for all types in all zones.  Content created, easily.

It might be lame content, but it is content none the less and many players, people like me that blew through the things to do, would be the idiots out there fishing up useless fish in Ashenvale because I want the meta to get my 525 fishing pole.  It would take me longer to consume this meta alone then it did for me to consume all non raid content released this expansion.

Never underestimate the power of achievements for a way to make content.  Something to do it something to do even if it is a lame something to do.