Fewer Daily Quests for WoD, Good or Bad?

When they announced that there would be almost no daily quests when WoD was released it actually bothered me.  I actually like dailies, always have, but that is beside the point.  What worried me was that blizzard was stepping into the trap they dig for themselves once again.  They do have quite a track record of doing that.

They make a mistake with something and then they over compensate for it.  Kind of like how when the expansion came out the drop rate for cloth was insane, you could level your first aid with the cloth you picked up before you even got to your 5th or 6th quest hub.  I know because I did on my main.  By the time I reached 90, some hours later, and sent all the cloth to my tailor, I was able to make over 300 bolts, just from leveling one character.  They were way over board with their drop rate on cloth so they made an adjustment with cloth drops, which was needed.

When I leveled my first character after the cloth adjustment I hit level 90 having had collected 37 pieces of cloth.  Excuse me?  I understand lowering the drop rate but making it almost non existent is swinging the pendulum a little to far to the other end.  They have since adjusted it to a more reasonable rate but that example is the perfect example of blizzards knee jerk reaction to everything.  They do nothing in moderation, they push full on with everything.

It happened with herbs, it happened with ore, it happened with purple drops from raids, it happens all the time but none of that really matters, all that stuff can get fixed on the fly and adjusted as the expansion goes.  But bigger things, things that are hard coded in and can not be changed on the fly, or they do not like to change on the fly, need to be thought out a little bit more instead of swinging the pendulum like they do to one extreme or another.

Daily quests fit what I mean.  They wanted to give us more ways to gain valor this expansion, so they gave us dailies.  Awesome.  They wanted to add something to allow us to get extra rolls on items, so we could collect them through dailies.  Awesome.  Then they decided that because they were giving us that option they should try to make that option last and give us lots and lots of tiered dailies and make everything tied to dailies and that is when they took a good idea and swung the pendulum too far.

Saying you needed reputation to buy valor gear and the only way to get it was from dailies was pushing it too much.  Saying you needed those lesser coins if you wanted the extra rolls and the only way to get them was from dailies was pushing it too much.  Putting certain recipes behind reputations and needed another reputation before you could even start working on that reputation you needed to get them was putting that all behind a double, effectively triple wall, of dailies to get to it was most defiantly pushing it too far.

They took a good idea and went to extremes with it.  After cataclysm when people said they had nothing to do they decided to give us stuff to do, and a reason to do it, and more rewards for doing it like valor and lesser charms.  Awesome.  But they went too far.  The lets the pendulum swing too far, just like they always do.

As it turned out, later in the expansion.  When you could get reputation from your first scenario and first dungeon of the day, when you could get reputation from your farm, when you could get reputation from tokens that dropped off of rares, it all came too little too late because that reputation barrier was already long gone as that gear was now dated. It would have been the perfect design that way with real options if it started off like that.

As it turned out, later in the expansion.  Where you could get lesser charms through pet battles, through killing any random mob, to being assured at least 1 from a rare mob and sometimes more, even much more when timeless island came, that was good, and was how it should have been from the get go instead of making the only way to get them tied to dailies.

Dailies make for an excellent option, but make for horrible funnels where you feel you are being forced into doing them if you want to do something.  If you wanted to get valor gear, you had to do them.  If you wanted extra rolls in raids, you had to do them.  If you wanted the enchanting patterns you had to do golden lotus before you could do AC and SP to get reputation with them to get them.

When dailies are an option, they are fantastic content.  When they are the only way to do things, you get community rebellion.  That is exactly what happened.

So blizzard might very well swing the pendulum the other way in warlords and that would be as horrible of a mistake as the golden lotus was this expansion.  They should learn from things.  This is not something that can be quickly adjusted like changing the drop rate on cloth or the spawn rate of herb nodes.  You need to get this right from the beginning or it takes forever to fix, like it did this expansion.

If there were multiple ways to get reputation from the get go, there would have not been backlash from people feeling that dailies were "mandatory".  If there were multiple ways to get lesser charms from the get go, there would have not been  backlash from the people feeling that dailies were "mandatory".  And then there was the golden lotus quest design problem.  Making people have to do GL before they could do SP or AC was an issue.  What if someone just wanted the enchanting patterns or the bag pattern and did not care about reputation or valor or getting coins for extra rolls?  Having to grind 2 reputation to get to it and one being the most hated one there was ended up with a huge "mandatory" backlash.

And the golden lotus quests themselves, all six thousand four hundred and nineteen of them each and every day, or it felt like that, which you needed to do every single day if you wanted to get the most from them was a little much.

Look at tiller design, a daily hub people liked.  A few quests, usually in one area, usually one or two that were super simple like collect some money or stomp a marmot or pick up a flower or pearl quest, ended up being quests people did not mind doing.  They were quick, sometimes fun because who doesn't like stomping marmots, and there were only a few of them. 

Even now there are still people that do the angler ones.  Why?  Because there are only 3 of them and they are usually quick.  Unless you do not have fishing leveled and get one of the fishing ones.  Ouch.  But three quests is nice.  How about the august celestial quests, small hubs, never heard anyone complain about those, well, except the torch one, but you get the idea.  Small daily hubs are nicer, people like small daily hubs.

So what could blizzard take from that?  Small hubs that are not the only way to get what they offer are the way to go.  Not the announced version of almost no daily quests.

I fear that blizzard is going to swing the pendulum the other way.  Give us no daily quests, or not many.  So options for valor, reputation, lesser coin (if they still use that format), will be limited once again and we already know people do not like limited options because that is why they did not like the dailies to begin with, because they were a limited option, the only option at the start, for reputation and those coins, and if you wanted gear and rolls, you needed that reputation and those coins.

Will a design with fewer dailies work?  I don't think the "active" world approach of timeless island can work over an entire world map.  People are already getting bored with it on timeless island and frustrated from missing things that die 5 seconds after they spawn and it is just one little place.  They will get bored and frustrated if they have to run, literally as there will be no flying, all over the world to try and get to these things.  If they drop the new version lesser charms and that is the only way to get them, like the one option mistake they made this expansion, getting to these events will become "mandatory" and people will backlash.  But a nice collection of dailies, small hubs of 3 to 5 dailies in various parts of the world can help that.

Dailies are a great form of content, and if done correctly they can be a fun and easy way for people to get the stuff they need be it valor, rep, coins or what have you.  They are even, for many, the number one source of income.  People that do not know how to make money otherwise can always make money doing dailies.

Dailies are good for the game, if done correctly, not like they were when this expansion started.  I don't think it will be good for the game if they take a backseat, like is expected, in warlords.  Like the timeless island with its one daily.  It just doesn't fit.  There should be at least three.  That kill elite one, for its 50 valor would be nice if it was supplemented by a kill any (tiger for example) and collect (crane meat for example) quest for 10 valor each.

I believe they should not almost completely abandon dailies like it seems they are intent on doing and I am not saying that just because I happen to be one of the people that like doing dailies.  I am saying it because I believe that dailies work well as cheap and easy to design repeatable content, as long as people do not feel forced to do it.

I still do dailies from time to time when I need some valor.  But I still hate than when I hit 90 on an enchanter and I "have to" do them to get the enchanting patterns.  See, there is a difference, make dailies an option and people will do them, make them feel like they "have to" do them, and they will hate them.

Add dailies in warlords I say, add lots and lots of them.  Hubs of 3 to 5 of them wherever you can.  Let people do them when they want to and people will do them.  As I said, they are probably the most repeatable content in the game.

Do you think fewer dailies will be good or bad?

I think it will be bad.  I think they could add a lot of them as optional, really optional, not just saying they are optional like this did this expansion, and people will love to have them there as an option only, even if they never touch them.