Daily Delights

My feelings towards Dailies are well documented. I hated them from the minute they were introduced in the Burning Crusade, seeing it as nothing more than a cynical attempt from Blizzard to force the player base to log in each and every day. Nothing in the subsequent five years has done anything to alter that view point, in fact I’d argue the opposite. Which brings us to MoP, the expansion of the Daily. Now don’t get me wrong, I understand Blizzard’s desire to gate reputation. They don’t want a repeat of previous expansions where a good chunk of people did nothing but run dungeons over and over til their eyes bleed, reached exalted with everything and then preceded to whine about having nothing to do. However I don’t believe the current system was the way to handle it.

What would have been wrong with having a reputation cap per faction per week just like the conquest, valor, justice and honour points. It could easily have been the total amount of rep per day times seven, perhaps increasing as you climbed the reputation levels. That would remove the frustration felt when for whatever reason you can’t log in on a specific day and yet you need that rep like yesterday. A further simple twist would have been to make it just like conquest in that you can earn X amount from one area (arenas), Y amount from another (battlegrounds) and Z from a third (rated battlegrounds). That way people could do a heroic wearing a tabard for a bit, do a few dailies and perhaps use their professions for a bit more. Variety is the way to stop people getting bored, not shoehorning them into doing a set number of quests every day.

So now we’ve established beyond all reasonable doubt that I loathe dailies, despise them and would quite happily leap up and down on top of them yelling unpolite comments about their nearest and dearest, I want to talk about the dailies I find bearable. Perhaps my all together favourite is this beauty. I love speeding down the wall, eyes half shut as the landscape goes flying past, frantically trying to steer past spilled oil and barricades. In fact whenever I’m passing by, I pop up there and repeat the course and to me, that’s what dailies should be, quests you actually go out of your way to do because they’re frantic and fun.

Another favourite which also favours speed is this one from the Temple of the White Tiger. Now the first time I did this, I hesitated and failed time after time, getting more and more frustrated. Then driven on by Mr Harpy’s offer to do it for me (naturally he being a rogue did it perfectly the first time), I took a deep breath and ran for my little life. Indeed when it comes to this quest, the phrase “he [or she] who hesitates is lost” couldn’t be more accurate.

There are few others I enjoy, wrestling a shark with my bare hands springs to mind as does battling with my “nemesis” at the Temple of the Red Crane but the vast majority are just a mindless time sink in which I grab as many mobs as possible before aoeing them down and profiting. It’s just like having to do the dishes over and over again intermingled with throwing out the rubbish and picking up the leaves from the garden. I log intending to do all sorts of things, pvp, chat with people in my friends list, tame pets but by the time I’ve tackled my dailies, I’m so sick of the game I tend to log off, looking for other things to do.

The issue is exacerbated by the really random nature of the dailies, getting the same set three days in a row is just painful, especially when you happen to hate those particular quests. If dailies are going to be Blizzard’s answer to providing new content then those dailies have to be fun, they have to be varied (and that includes using the model used to great effect in Money Matters) and above all, they should be just one other aspect of the game. Something that people can choose to do, not a path we’re forced down regardless of how much playtime we have.

As a side note, returning to Money Matters, wouldn’t it be awesome if there were multiple different ways to approach the bulk of the dailies. You could take an intellectual route, perhaps tricking your way to your objective or maybe by simply being nice. The next time around you could take a more agility driven path, focusing on speed or sneakiness. Another day, if time was an issue you could steamroll your way through using brute force and strength. The final path would of course involve stamina and being in it for the long haul.

If Haribo made Dragons..

They’d look like this:

So I’ve finally got around to finishing up my Netherwing reputation, it’s only taken me the better part of three expansions but I got there in the end. Pre-account wide mounts I wasn’t particularly interested in the jelly dragons because I didn’t see any of my characters ever using them. The idea of everything being shared changed my mind slightly because I can see my little Gnomish warrior flying about on one.

Despite doing it very slowly, I think the Netherwing grind is the perfect example of how non dungeon related reputation should work.

You start with a quest chain which introduces you to the faction and sets the scene. We learn about these poor mistreated dragons who are falling from the sky exhausted and progress from there. The chain then cumulates in what was a fairly tough group encounter, the demise of  Zuluhed the Whacked. I seem to remember helping an awful lot of people kill him in one of those little rooms off his courtyard.

Once you hit neutral, you have dailies to contend with but with each new level of reputation reached, you get more dailies to complete. There is also a good mix of quests from the Booterang which always makes me smile to the Deadliest Trap ever laid as well as one off quests mixed in. For example you have to make your own booterang before you can start throwing it at lazy peons which is a wonderful touch. Most importantly though I love the fact that you can supplement your daily rep gain by farming eggs as well as doing dailies. I wish all reputations followed the same pattern, offering you a choice of dailies or the ability to farm a specific item or a combination of both.

You also get disguises, okay it only works in a couple of specific zones in Shadowmoon Valley but disguises are always good. Then there are the trinkets which summon a whelping to fight with you, despite their bag space consumption, things like this are always useful to have.

Finally, hitting exalted isn’t the end. You get to have a meeting with the big bad guy, in this particular case Illidan who of course sees straight through our Orc disguise and is less than impressed. (Fascinating how when these bad guys project themselves places, they are always bigger than when you meet them face to face).

Although he does a great line in name calling,

This might become my go to response next time someone tries to explain away the fact that they ignored the healer/flag or anything else of crucial importance in PvP.

You get rescued by a Dragon pretending to be  Goblin which wraps up his “interest” in any Netherwing eggs you happen to find lying around nicely and flown off to bond with a sweetie coloured drake. The fact that you can then buy the other five drakes you didn’t pick is just icing on the lollipop.

It might be a reputation grind but it’s well paced enough to distract you with it’s various quests, items and rewards.

BETA: The Tillers

This is part idle speculation and part extrapolation from the datamined information from WoWhead.

What we do know is that as you build reputation with the Tillers, helping Farmer Yoon repair his old family farm, you will eventually take it over. First however, we have to help Farmer Yoon get the farm back on it’s feet and then gain the respect of the Tiller’s Union by doing favours for various people as well as some manual labour and of course a spot of Virmen slaying.

Quest Chains

Our first faltering footsteps into the farming world.

The Family Farm – This is the quest which first introduces you to Farmer Yoon.

A helping Hand – Given the unyielding rocks in the screenshot below, it would make sense that this is one of the first quests Farmer Yoon offers you. After all, you can’t plant crops in a field full of stones.

Learn and Grow 1: Seeds – Once the fields are empty of stones, then you need to buy or otherwise acquire seeds. This quest sends you in search of Merchant Greenfield at the nearby market to purchase cabbage seeds.

Learn and Grow 2: Tilling and Planting.

Learn and Grow 3: Tending Crops

Learn and Grow 4: Harvesting

Halfhill Market

———-

Becoming respected members of the community.

Getting Votes from the Tiller’s Union. These all follow a similar pattern, you go and see the Farmers, they say something dismissive about you and Farmer Yoon whilst revealing that they currently have some sort of problem they’re struggling to fix.

Vote 1 Mung Mung which leads to Rotten to the Core (“rescuing” half eaten carrots).

Vote 2 Farmer Fung which leads to On the Loose (catch runaway horses).

Vote 3 Gina Mudclaw which leads to Tummy Trouble

Vote 4 Haohan Mudclaw which leads onto The Real Culprits which in turn I think leads to The Melon Felon. Next is Pure Poison and then finally Chief Yip Yip

———-

Improving and building up the farm

Growing the Farm 1 – weed removal (leads to A Little Problem).

Growing the Farm 2 – the removal of the the broken up wagon which leads to Knock on Wood (pick up wood from the bottom of this lake).

Growing the Farm 3 – getting rid a large rock somewhere on the farm. There are a couple of possible candidates.

Dailies

Whilst playing around on the Beta taking screenshots for this post, I noticed that you could earn reputation with individual members of the Tiller’s faction. A quick flick around on WoWhead confirmed this as intended. Given that it’s highly unlikely Blizzard are taking a leaf out of Bioware’s book and letting you become friends with these farmers, I wonder if this is how we earn the seeds and animals for our farm.

Each of the people we can do dailies for could potentially offer a different item for our farms. Here are a couple of examples:

• Fish keeps pigs down by the lake and could on reaching a certain reputation offer us a couple of piglets.
• Old Hillpaw has prizewinning chickens.
• Chee Chee is surrounded by sheep.
• Farmer Fung: From the quest “Farmer Fung’s Vote”, we know this gentleman has the biggest vegetables in the Valley.

It looks as if there are three types of dailies. One set which are always picked up from the same person and offer just Tillers rep and then another set in which you gain rep with the individual Tillers. I’ll go into the last set later on.

Tiller Rep:

I’m going to gamble slightly here and say the general Tiller dailies are offered by our new friend Farmer Yoon.

• Simian Sabotage  – blowing up stolen goods.
• Stalling the Ravage – killing Hozen.
• Stealing is bad.. Re-stealing is ok – reclaiming stolen vegetables.
• The Lesser of Two Evils – killing the Virmen Denmother.
• The Kunzen Hunter-Chief – killing you guessed it, the Hunter Chief.

Rep with Individuals:

• A Gift for Haohan – getting the tooth of an enormous grouper for Haohan
• Pest Problems – jumping on Marmots for Haohan
• Not in Chee-Chee’s Backyard – killing Hozen for Chee Chee
• Money Matters – debt collecting for Gina Mudclaw
• They don’t even wear them –  rescuing jewellery for Tina Mudclaw
• The Kunzen Legend-Chief – stealing a book of Kunzen legends for Fish Felreed
• Weed War II – flattening weeds for Jogu the Drunk
• Where it Counts – disrupt a ritual for Sho
• You Have to Burn the Ropes – burn some ropes for Ella
• Water, Water Everywhere – water the dusty ground for Farmer Fung
• Chasing the Chickens – catch Old Hillpaw’s prize winning chicken

Given that there are two quests for Haohan Mudclaw, I imagine this list will get longer as we get closer to live.

Besides this list, there is also another list of quests for each of the Tillers, like this one for Old Hillpaw. What I love the most about this is that each of the Tillers has a favourite dish. We need to bring Braised Wolf to Old Hillpaw and Shrimp Dumplings to Ella. Given that all the dishes required for “A Dish for …..” seem to be cooking recipes, it’s possible that we’ll see more use for our professions in helping us farm rep this expansion.

This set of dailies seems a bit of a departure from the daily questing norm, as it appears that you collect or make an item and then can choose which person to give it to. In another twist, it seems that each Tiller likes certain things, for example you could give the Jade Cat to either Chee Chee netting you 540 rep or to Ella which would reward you with 900.

The cursor marks the spot (in this case not buried treasure but our future farm).

Rewards

This farm.

The view from the front steps. There is Farmer Yoon working away at the large rocks which litter the property. You can also see the broken up wagon which will be removed in one of the quests.

More rocks plus a small pen for keeping animals.

There is a pond for growing waterlilies or lotuses. The house is a little one storey affair but since location is all, we’ll be well placed right next to the Halfhill market (which you can see in the above screenshot).  Bear in mind though, that given the amount of tidying up we’re going to be doing through the quest chains, the removal of all the rocks, plus the weeding and the getting rid of the rubbish, it’s going to look completely different as a fully functional farm.

I also found myself wondering if we get a farm dog. This might be more wishful thinking on my part but this quest definitely suggest the presence of a dog somewhere.

Despite the fact that I didn’t particularly enjoy questing through the Valley of the Four Winds, this is one set of dailies I am looking forward to doing. That is unless they decide to add tilting at windmills or jousting with carrots sometime between now and live.

I’m also curious as to just how much of my speculation is correct so roll on the next Beta patch please.