Archive for September, 2008
Proof!
Back in the episodes about the reputation experiment, I observed that there seemed to be fewer Horde quests than Alliance, at least for quests that gave reputation. I expressed my belief at the time that this didn’t apply just to reputation quests — overall, there were simply more things for the Alliance to do in the old world than there were quests for the Horde.
The new achievement system has given me the proof.
The achievement system, which will be introduced in a patch prior to the release of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, introduces achievements for completing quests in the classic (pre-expansion) World of Warcraft, in the Outlands, and in Northrend. The quest achievements for Outlands and Northrend simply state “complete X number of quests in [Zonename]“, with no differentiation between Horde and Alliance.
However, the classic quest achievements do make this differentiation, and it’s pretty interesting: Alliance are directed to complete 740 quests in East Kingdoms and 765 quests in Kalimdor, a total of 1,505 quests. However, the Horde are directed to complete a mere 580 quests in East Kingdoms and 715 quests in Kalimdor, for a total of 1,295 quests.
This is not a “gimme” for the Horde. Yes, the Alliance will have to complete more quests, but the Alliance have far more quest density. The reason the Horde don’t have to complete as many quests is simple: the Horde don’t have as many quests they can do.
Some Alliance may think this is unfair, but it’s truly an advantage for them. Greater numbers of quests mean more experience, more rewards, more reputation, and less work to find all of these things. Yes, they will have to complete more of them to get the achievement, but in some ways, this redresses the imbalance in the old world between the Horde’s relative dearth of quests. Alliance can get exalted with reputations up to ten levels earlier than the Horde can. They can actually level a bit faster due to the experience bonuses connected with quests. The fact that the Horde could, in theory, complete this achievement faster is small compensation, given that by the time you get up to this level, Horde are having to dig under rocks to find quests to complete.
To me, this is an interesting historical note on Blizzard’s early assumptions about the game. It’s clear that Blizzard did this not because they “hate the Horde” — they simply didn’t expect as many people would want to play Horde and thus didn’t put as much development into it. If the proportion of the achievement quests represents the differences in the actual numbers, there are 14% fewer Horde quests than Alliance quests.
It is true that overall, there are fewer players choosing Horde than Alliance, and if the census at Warcraftrealms is at all accurate, there are approximately 11% fewer players on the Horde side than on the Alliance side. But does this mean that they deserve a less rich experience? Obviously by the time The Burning Crusade came around, Blizzard agreed that the answer was no, because they put the sides on greater parity and gave them at least approximately the same number of things to do.
If nothing else, it’s an interesting look into the early psychology of the initial WoW development team — not to mention something of a vindication for me, since I got a fair number of emails from outraged Alliance players who told me I was nuts.
Episode 69: Pally roundtable and a new logo!
It took weeks, but we finally got episode 69 scheduled and edited. Whew! Thanks to all our Paladins that helped put the roundtable together.
We also have a new logo! Renata’s friend Damien Shamahan (Shamination on the boards) made a bitchin’ new logo for is. Thanks, Damien! We also have the new logo on items in the World Of Warcast Store.
Will burn peasants for food
It’s official now: there will be no more attunement necessary to get into Onyxia’s Lair. At first I thought “Yes! Easy gold at level 80″, but then something inexplicable happened: I felt sorry for the little whelp. It used to be that you had to work your ass off to get into Onyxia’s Lair. That goddamn quest line was a pain in the ass to do, mainly because it wasn’t always easy to get a group of 5 that wanted to wander around Blackrock escorting Marshal Windsor around like he owned the friggin’ place (could you pick up the pace? We have a dragon to kill). Not to mention the wipes, the respawns, getting it done on alts, killing miners in BRD that were happily mining until you set them ablaze looking in their pockets for a crumpled up piece of paper. I’m happy to not have to go through that again.
With the removal of the attunement, and the new level cap at 80, Onyxia and all the other old-world bosses are going to feel quite lonely. Sure, a few people looking to pad their Achievement List might still poke their nose in there and see if they can solo the old bird, but she’s pretty much going to be curled up in a ball with nobody to talk to. The same goes for the bosses in Molten Core and Blackrock Spire. All this work these bosses do to get to the top, spewing about how they’ll be running Azeroth, only to be toppled by a small group of level 80s that can kill them by pretty much spitting on them.
Maybe Blizzard should change the voiceovers on these bosses. Ragnaros can say “What? You’ve toppled Illidan? Well, go easy on me. Better yet, have these things and leave me be. I have this ring. One of you take it and go. Here’s some gold too”. Or Onyxia can just cower in a corner, showering players with gold and loot while waving her paw at the players to leave her alone.
I also though of another issue and that’s future expansions. How much is really left? Two I can think of off the top of my head are The Emerald Dream and The Maelstrom. Once those two are implemented (if ever), unless Blizzard thinks of something new, perhaps they should think about booting these bosses from their roosts and putting in new ones with new instances. One thing that annoys me about MMORPGs is how static the world is when you as a player are doing so much around it. There should be some world event where something happens to these old-world dungeons. I say nuke the site from orbit-it’s the only way to be sure.
