It is the Key to the Palace of Lei Shen I am talking about in the title and yes, as of the last time I checked when talking to someone about it a couple of weeks ago, I had 286 of them saved up across all my characters.
I know I have been slacking when it comes to collecting them. I rarely if ever go back there to get my weekly key but when it was current content I made sure to grab them on at least a few characters each week. Also whenever I would go back there for whatever reason, like when helping someone with nalak, or just for the sake of it to kill a few rares when I was bored, I would make sure, absolutely sure, to grab my key on each visit. In all truth if I were not so lazy I would easily have over 800 keys no doubt. But it was no big deal. I was not using them anyway and I had forever to come back and get more, right? Nope.
There was a reason I was not using them. There was a reason I was saving them. There was a reason I was hording them. Well, besides the fact I am a pack rat. I was saving them because I figured it would be a nice little way to keep some extra gold without actually having it. You see, each trip through can net me between 300- 600 gold a run and at my current 286 keys if I use the average of 450 per run that would mean I had an extra 128,700 gold just sitting around waiting for me to collect it.
This way if I were ever bored, needed a little gold, or just wanted to do something as a change of pace, I could go back and spam the solo scenario and have some mindless fun. It seems, as per a recent twitter conversation which I found referenced, but could not find the direct link to, from one of the blizzard twitheads, moogle, the old keys will not be removed but we will not be able to get any more. Sorry, not good enough, how about don't remove the keys at all because there is no reason to remove them in the first place, that sounds like a better solution to me.
Being able to run them even after we can no longer gets keys solves one of the things I was upset about. At least now I will not feel forced to run it 286 times over the next week, which could very well end up being very time consuming when you think it is 5 minutes per run. 23.833 hours, not counting travel time for all the characters to get there, for those people wondering. But it still does not address the bigger picture.
What if I wanted to keep going and keep getting my keys, what if I wanted to get to 500, 1000, 2000 keys. What if I wanted to keep collecting and saving them. Is there really a reason to remove this, a reason I do not see other than blizzards complete obsession with removing content like I recently wrote about?
There is no reason to remove this, none what so ever. Sure I can easily count up over 100K gold if I decided to run all of these now but it is not like it did not take me a fair deal of time to build up a key collection like that. It took over a year and many max level characters to do that. It was many trips there, way away from the main strip were we are currently playing in and next expansion it will be even further from out current content.
So it was not like this was something that could be used to farm gold in a fast and efficient way. You can only get one key a week, so you will not exactly get rich doing this, even if you did it on 50 characters each week and if you did, you would be investing a huge amount of time and earning that gold, don't you think? And if it really were a way to farm gold and that is what they are worried about, why did they not adjust the gold before the next expansion, or adjust the gold three months ago, or adjust the gold six months ago, or adjust the gold nine months ago, or adjust the gold a year ago, or adjust the gold when it first came out?
There is absolutely no reason to remove the ability to get more keys, and effectively the ability to get the achievement, which is also being removed, because there are no longer any keys to be looted.
This is absolutely 100% blizzard removing content for the sake of removing content and I am getting sick of it. Why do they keep removing stuff? This, even if I was not using the keys, was the perfect type of useless meaningless content that I used to do when I was bored. Log in a character, head over there and get a key, maybe kill a few rares, and then switch to another and do exactly the same thing. it gave me something to do, it made me happy, it kept me logging in, so why are they removing content that people you know, actually do?
It is not like the thunder king is charging them rent for the place and it is no longer worth renting it out being we will not be there any longer. It is a room, already coded, already there, already working, that they could have left coded, left there and left working. It wouldn't cost them a thing to not remove it, but it does cost them man hours to remove it which makes you wonder, are they that obsessed with removing content that they are actively looking for things to remove and paying people to remove them? Our subscription fees paid for this to be removed. I do not pay a subscription to have content removed blizzard? Do you hear me. Stop removing content, even more so content that makes absolutely no sense to remove like this.
This is removing content for no reason what so ever. The change to talents really do not change how the solo scenario works much if at all in many cases. Even if they did, who the hell cares, it is old content. It is there for people to do if they want to do it when they want to do it. It is not required to be balanced. When it is new and you expect everyone to be doing it then yes balance really matters, making sure every class can do it matters, making sure every class can get the achievement matters, but when it is old content it enters the realm of who the hell cares. If the achievement would be harder for certain classes due to the talent changes then remove the achievement, not the content as a whole.
Warlords is lacking so much in the content department that they could not remove anything from it, so they decided to start removing things from mists. And each week we get another announcement that this is being removed, that is being removed, the other thing is being removed. How much longer do we have to put up with this bull before blizzard stops removing content for the sake of removing content?
An expansion is supposed to add to the game, but this coming expansion has so far removed more from the game that it has added. Even if we are having content added once you talk about all we are losing when warlords comes out so far the expansion looks like a net loss for the players in terms of content.
When something as simple and unimportant as the treasure room can see itself effectively removed from the game for no reason what so ever, who is the say that the next thing they remove because someone has an itch on their butt and their removal obsession kicks into overdrive again won't be something that matters to you? Really matters to you. Because removing something so inconsequential as this shows that anything, and I mean anything, can be on the chopping block.
We need to speak up, we need to tell blizzard to stop removing things, we need to let blizzard know that many of us like to go back and do old content and do old things and if I wanted to head to the isle of thunder every single week to get a key and run the treasure room I should be allowed to do so. There is no reason what so ever to remove it. I am just sick of blizzard removing stuff, even more so removing shit for no reason. You are supposed to be building the game, not tearing it apart.
Day Twenty-One - Nice
3 hours ago
They should have just nerfed the gold if that's the part they were worried about. That's what they did to old raids when they determined people were making too much gold by running them every week.
ReplyDeleteWe are all just speculating it was a gold thing, we really do not know. However, with that said I present the following to consider.
DeleteIt was always designed to be solo. So unlike raids that were designed to have their gold split between 25 people the gold from it was designed for one person and one person only. If it was not to much for mists, which apparently it was not because they never nerfed it, than it would surely not be too much for warlords with inflation and such.
Just something to consider. Like I said, we are all just guessing gold is the reason but it really does not make sense. The gold is fine. There must be another reason like, to beat a dead horse, their obsession with removing content for the sake of removing content.
I guess they would have had to deal with the squish in there too so they just removed it.
DeleteNot to sound like a jerk, but I know it will come out that way, but what squish there that they haven't already done for all the mobs outside of there and can just duplicate in there?
DeleteThere are very few mobs in there and only a couple of sources of damage otherwise. They could either squish it to the same pattern they did everything else or just over squish it because it is old content. I can't see squishing it taking any more time than removing it and changing the loot tables for all the mobs would.
That could very well be the reason however but I do not think laziness is a good reason to do anything and that is all this is.
Just realized something based on the twitter remark, the sceanrio is not being removed, only the ability to get new keys. So most definitely it does not have anything to do with scaling it back for the squish or they would have removed it as well with the keys.
DeleteI was pretty sure they responded to someone on twitter saying that when you can one shot every mob, you'd be able to get a much higher gold amount.
DeleteI can almost 1 shot every mob now, maybe 2 or 3 at worst if I do not crit. And as a hunter I can do it all while moving, so I waste no time. Can't really see how much of a difference it would make. Maybe an extra chest or two over the course of a run.
DeleteBut I get that is might be their reasoning, because than all classes would be as awesome as hunters in there, and we can't have that. ;)
I imagine Blizz will never tell us the real reason. I'm guessing it doesn't have anything to do with the gold you get from a typical run.
ReplyDeleteCouple possiblities:
- There's an exploit we don't know about and Blizz doesn't want to talk about.
- It's part of a larger clean-up project to remove non-critical content to reduce the overall support load for wow. As is, it's one more gated activity they need to keep track (since the key drop is limited to once a week). Especially if they see less subs and less revenue coming in, they may have a new interest in keeping the ongoing maintenance costs down.
Possibility one, that one sounds interesting. Perhaps with the squish or some other stat or skill changes there is something going on there that could be exploited and they do not want to take the time to fix it so they are removing it. Maybe it is just me, but if they told me that I would say, okay, sucks we are losing it, but okay. At least it is a good reasons. And a very interesting one at that.
DeletePossibility two. I might be able to agree with that one if there were problems with it often already. But it is in working condition now and unless they broke it it would work for the next 10 years just as it does now. Not sure this one would be a good reason. Heck, we pay a subscription for them to upkeep the gams, not to remove content because they can not be bothered with it, and if that were the case, they would just be getting paid to do what it is they are supposed to be doing, supporting the game.
I like your first idea better. Has a tin foil hat feel to it but it would really make logical sense why you would remove something like that. Very good one there.
Just realized something based on the twitter comment. They are not removing the scenario, just the ability to get new keys. So it most likely is not something that could be exploited or they would have removed it for sure and it might not be part of a clean up either for the same reason. They would have not left it there so people with keys can get to it possibly years later.
DeleteThere IS an exploit. If you know out to do it you can get 7-10 keys in less than 10 min once per week on ONE character.
DeleteI'll let you do the math taking into account that a run in which I earn less than 700 gold is what I consider a shit run in there ^^
Ah, so that is why they are removing the keys. If you know that for a fact, then it makes sense to remove the keys but not the scenario.
DeleteI do have to wonder how if there is a bug like that, that they let it go on so long without fixing it?
Now I will be the first to say blizzard is blind, but usually the "cool" stuff like that, like good farming spots, they nerf the hell out of in seconds but the people seeing dupes in trade chat, they let them sell their stuff for years on end.
I guess it's dur to the way the exploit work, you can only loot one key per weeks, the exploit consist in making more than one key drop before looting them and only after that you loot them. But yeah that thing allowed me to get like 6-7k gold per week from that scenario
DeleteAs I replied in another post here here, could have been from you, yes, it is based on them creating the loot list based on if you have looted it or not. If they just change the code to create the loot list on whether it was dropped or not, that would fix it instantly. So it only drops once a week, even if you never loot it.
DeleteWhen the island first opened there was another cool way to get extra keys.
After you looted a chest, which usually had a key, if you invited someone to a group that had not looted a chest, you could see chests again because they could, and you could get another, and another, and another, and another. Seriously, if you wanted to run around finding chests all day and had enough friends to keep inviting to a group, you could get thousands of keys.
They fixed that about the 3rd week it was out.
I don't get it either. I mean as you said it was a solo scenario so they set the amount of gold, so I can't think it would be that. I'm with James, I bet there was an issue with the squish and just deleting it was easier than fixing it.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I just really don't get it. Your statement about how you pay blizz to add content not remove it, is so to the point and about sums it up really but then I am of the opinion that nothing should ever be removed. It can be phased, it can be instanced, it can change location but it should always be there.
For me when I first started Warcraft. It was pretty much the first game I ever played. I never had a console, had never played other PC games really, just a couple of CSI clicky things. It was overwhelming, and I'm glad I had my friend who recruited me, to give me advice now and then until I found my feet. However, part of the appeal was that it was such a vast game. I wanted to see and do everything and there was so much there. There was always something to do, something to work on.
My only regrets when I first started playing was that I joined towards the end of Wrath so there was stuff I missed out on. I get some people like time limited content so they can have something that later people can't. I personally don't think like that and it doesn't bother me. So you can't make me and that kind of person both happy, as we want opposite things.
It's not just time limited stuff that is going either. So much content is gone. I know I sound like a broken record but I honestly did used to run dungeons a ton in Wrath and Cata, especially in Cata as I was still so new in Wrath. I had a lot of alts and they were easy to play. I know I should shut up about dungeons but they didn't just provide the half hour of content that was the dungeon. They provided hours of hours, days, weeks of content as I ran them on multiple characters, I collected points, I tanked, I healed, I did dps. All that 'content' has been removed. True with how points were gutted in Mists, and how irrelevant dungeons were, it has been removed for some time.
Blizz is making the game smaller and smaller and that just seems so counter productive especially for a subscription game. I know f2p games like to update frequently to keep people logging in, to attract new people etc. but shouldn't that also apply to a sub game? To keep people subbed?
I don't get it.
I agree, nothing should ever be removed. The old ZG and ZA should still be there, the raid ones, and it would actually give more content to the game because people would go back to farm mounts. Even old content can be good content if they just leave the stuff in the game.
DeleteI say do not shut up about dungeons. It is how you feel and how you feel should be heard. Not like anyone from blizzard will read here, but you get the idea. Not to mention you are dead on with dungeons. They are killing the fun that they gave you and millions of others like you over the years. They are not making many good moves lately. Not at all.
I would absolutely love to see the raid ZA/ZG appear in the caverns of time. Or hell, just put a humanoid bronze dragon off to the side that you speak to and he sends you into the old instance.
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw the announcement for this, I started a countdown in my head until The Grumpy Elf post would appear. :-) Testify!
Hey, I have to live up to the name don't I. At least they are not short of things for me to play grumpy over. ;)
DeleteI’m with you I’m sorry to see it go but if there is an exploit as the comment up above is saying I guess I can be okay with that. I’ll have to assume it’s not an easy fix and that it becoming common knowledge is not what they want. I’m hoping they add another one to replace it. I do like the idea of one always being in the game this is a popular feature I bet it doesn’t stay out to long.
ReplyDeleteSo I also wanted to follow up on past post and conversation here’s where I’m at with my garrison
Small building I’m going to do JC and Eng to get the additional items for crafting I plan on using my crafted items as one ring one neck and one hat. They also are my mages prof so I will get increased yields from them and increased ability to que up more tasks. (this goes towards my goal of 250 tasks completed to unlock all tier 3 buildings.) at level 67 I will drop the eng hut for the salvage yard. And then replace it back at level 100 until I craft my hat then I will put in enchanting hut (I’m a transmog fiend.)
Large buildings I’m going barracks I had toyed with the idea of the work shop but leveling I won’t need the increased blue purples. My plan is to finish leveling before I do all the nagrand quests then go into nagrand with my second large building as the workshop.
Medium this is where I’m going to be weird. I’m making an Inn I want access to the extra followers and I also want to have a chance to spawn millhouse manastorm so I can store the quest in my log and complete it ASAP. Also there is a quest to get a little item that gives you 200. My second building will either be the trading post.
I am going to say that person is just making it up. I read a fair deal of web sites, even the unscrupulous ones, and the only ways I ever read about getting extra keys have all been gone since the first few months after its release. Even then I only remember getting 3 per week, not 10. But I got 3 per week on all characters.
DeleteNot saying it is not possible however, there are many tight lipped people out there and if they are good with who they share info with it can stay hidden.
I have a farm spot that still to this day I have never seen anyone at, any place list, or anyone ever consider, where I make well over 1K every 20 minutes for basically doing nothing. I never use it however, don't need the gold, but I send guild mates there to help them out and show them what to do.
I'm with you on the large building. Might be good for an alt, but I will be level 100 on my main and well out gear anything it can get me so it is worthless. Unless they make it to work on upgrading baggie gear from things like LFR it is a useless building for anything other than alts.
Trading post seems like it will be really awesome early on. Medium seem to be the ones that will be hardest to choose for me.
Well since the scenario is removed in 2 weeks, I guess I can share it here (feel free do delete this post if you feel I shouldn't have say it).
DeleteBasically it's realistcly only doable on low pop realm, you go to IoT, check if the rares are up, kill one, open the body, don't loot the key, go to next rare, do the same, once last rare is dead, loot all the keys. you can even mix that with looting a chest before looting the keys to get a shot at an extra one.
That is actually a pretty sweet thing. I would have never thought that worked. That was sort of one of the ways we were doing it when the island first opened and they disabled that. I would have never guessed it would have still worked with rares. Guess they never fixed that.
DeleteAs far as coding goes there is an easy fix to that.
See, the way it seems to count it now is the system checks if it is has dropped for you this week yet and it does so by seeing if you looted it. If you have not looted it, it will let it drop. So if you keep killing things you can keep getting keys, as long as you do not actually loot one. Because it is checking if it dropped for you before it creates the loot list.
If they change it to only drop for you once, and whether you loot it or not, once it has dropped for you, it will not longer drop for you, it would be fixed. Not sure why it checks if it dropped for you AND if you looted it before creating the loot list. That is how that ends up working.
I think it is just an oversight or really bad coders. I only have limited coding experience and I was able to figure out the solution easily. Their coders should be able to as well.
I have though about the flagging on drop aswell, but then there is another problem.
DeleteIf for whatever reason it dropped and you didn't loot it (may it be no bag space, rushing or whatever) and you didn't notice it, then you loose your key for the week.
I don't really think it's a coding problem there, but a choice in how far to go to fix an exploit without actually harming other players in that case I'm pretty sure I would have deemed that the way the exploit work it was no easy enough to do to justify taking the risk to harm other players.
They could add it to the list of things that are sent to you like the items on the timeless island.
DeleteHave you ever killed guchi, the swarmbringer and already had 10 webs in your bag? If you do, you will not pick it up. But when you return to a mailbox later it is in your mailbox. It works that way with many of the items of that sort on the timeless island like the feather from the crane as well. They could add the key to the list of things that if not picked up when the mob despawns it is mailed to you. That would fix it.
I guess in the end, while we sit on the outside looking in, they just considered it not worth the effort, even if we think it would be easy. Heck, they might think it would be easy to fix, but it is old content so they do not care.
It comes down to, for me at least, I would rather not see things removed. It leaves a sinking feeling when everything people like, small and big, keeps getting removed, even the things that seem to not be of any major consequence like the key runs.
There is a similar thing with the chests that you loot once a week where it took time (about a minute or a little less) to update the server to stop them from showing up. If you scouted out multiple chests within close distance to one another you could loot as many as you can get to within that minute that it took to update. I'm guessing there is similar code to do the check of the "weekly" key that is just keyed off of having looted it.
DeleteYeah, on launch there were a lot of chest issues. That is how I was able to use the invite a friend thing. I think they fixed both at the same time. Heck, they might have even been connected somehow.
DeleteI could sure use 1000 gold every 20 minutes I'm only at 5k now going into warlords making money is my bane.
ReplyDeleteWell get those keys while you can.
DeleteI wish I could share it now, but been holding out this long I have to keep it tight lipped. I will give you a hint however. It is on the island of thunder and requires using the potion of luck thing and some instant respawn mobs. That basically gives it away but I will leave it at that.
I am one of those people that love patterns. I noticed something early on on the isle and tested it out. The mobs do not instantly respawn right away. But each time you kill them the respawn timer gets shorter. It actually gets to the point that they respawn as they die. Awesome huh?
mmmm I know where I'm going tonight.
DeleteLet me know if you have any luck finding it. If not I can throw you another clue which most likely will help you find it.
DeleteMY friend and I have been farming 6+ keys (depending how many bosses are up at the time) there every week for a long time. I would not call it an exploit particularly. My friend even raised a ticket with a GM about it as he was concerned that we might get banned or something, and he was told that what we were doing was fine. That's from a Blizz GM.
ReplyDeleteIf it had been an issue all this time then they could easily have hot-fixed it. I don't see it needed to wait for a new expansion to be fixed, so I doubt very much it is the reason.
What I'm more annoyed about is how many achievements are being relegated to legacies. As someone who is trying to get as many achievement points as possible, this really annoys me. They should either make them FoS/legacy from the start or leave them be.
As one person pointed out about, they could get 6-7K a week from it. So it does sound like a reason that might be enough for them. You know how blizzard loves to nerf any good farming spot. As of so far, that does seem like the best explanation I have heard so far, my opinion of course.
DeleteYou do make a very valid point however, one I believe I made in a reply earlier as well. The gold from it has not been a problem for well over a year, and they knew about it, so why would it be a problem later? A solid point.
I can see some achievements going leg/fos depending on changes. Like the valor collection one. If there is no more valor to collect, you can not get the achievement any longer. It is a complete change in the game so it makes sense. But I agree with something like this. It makes no sense to remove it. The run, the key and the achievement should not be removed. There is no real reason for it.