Does Patch 5.2 signal the beginning of the end of dailies in World of Warcraft?  That is the question that comes to mind when looking at the patch notes for 5.2.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect that daily quests will ever completely disappear from the World of Warcraft, but this patch has several changes that make me think that Blizzard might be re-considering their push on daily quests.

Before looking at the changes coming, it is important to understand the basics of daily quests in Mists of Pandaria up to and including patch 5.1.  Once that is covered I will look at the changes that made me wonder about the fate of daily quests, and then give an opinion on the changes.

So Many Dailies

When Mists of Pandaria was launched Blizzard removed the old cap on daily quests, which had been 25 per day.  When this was first announced, and then when it happened, most people didn’t truly understand what was taking place.  

Now after several months of Mists of Pandaria, we have all come to realize what it means.  Tons of daily quests to do, each and every day. 

Why We Do Dailies

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style="border: 0px solid ; width: 300px;">
Mounts like this amber scorpion keep players coming back for more dailies.

When you first turn level 90, you are forced to complete daily quests to earn reputation with the various factions in Pandaria.  You do this so that you gain access to the various rewards that they will sell to you once you have reached the required reputation level with them.

Even once you have been level 90 for a while, you really need to do enough dailies each week to earn 90 lesser charms of good fortune.  These are then turned in for 3 elder charms of good fortune, which allow you to roll an extra time in LFR raids for loot.

To a lesser degree you also need to do dailies to earn valor points.  While each daily is only worth 5 points, it does add up.  For players that are tired of running heroics for valor points, this is one of your only other methods.  It does take a whole lot of daily quests completed to add up to a decent amount of valor.

What Patch 5.2 is Changing About Reputation

There are two big changes coming with patch 5.2 in regards to reputation.  The first change has to do with the coming changes to Sunsong Ranch in the new patch.

When and if you chose to purchase Sunsong Ranch from farmer Yoon, you will gain access to Sunsong Ranch work orders.  These work orders will have you grow 8 plots worth of an item to fulfil and order for one of the factions in the game.  When you supply the required items you will be granted 300 reputation with that faction. 

The second change to reputation is an addition reward being added to the first heroic or scenario that you do each day.  When you complete either a heroic or scenario you will be given a choice of what faction you would like to gain the bonus reputation with.  You will then be granted 750 reputation if you completed a heroic, or 325 reputation if you completed a scenario.

How Do These Changes Affect Rep Grinds

As mentioned right from the start, the primary reason that players have to do dailies is to earn reputation with the various factions.  This then allows them access to gear, which in turn allows them into heroics and then raids.

Normally you are limited to earning 150 – 250 per daily quest for the appropriate faction.  Since most factions have 5-7 daily quests, this meant roughly 1000 - 1500 rep per day per faction. This was also the only way that you could earn reputation with the various factions.  Players have been complaining about this since early on, especially those with multiple characters which have to do multiple sets of dailies. 

Blizzard thankfully listed to those complaints and put in place a system where you could get double the reputation on characters of the same faction on the same server once you got one character to revered.

These incoming changes will mean that you can earn up to another 1675 rep for a single faction per day to speed up your reputation grind.  Or, if you are really sick of daily quests, you can earn just as much rep towards a faction through these alternate methods as you could by doing the dailies.

If these bonus reputations trigger the bonus rep for players have gotten to the point that they receive double rep for subsequent characters, then this could boost rep grinding even more.  That 1675 with the bonus become 3350 rep, which is huge.


The Golden Pagoda, a place many of us are sick of visiting for daily quests.

Why These Reputation Changes Make Me Thing the End is Nigh

These changes signal to me that Blizzard is listening. What I believe (and this is just opinion, not fact) is that they are listening to players complaints about the number of dailies that they need to do, especially for players with more than one character.   They are doing something about the complaints by providing a way to get through the rep grinds quicker, after all the main purpose of the daily quests was for rep grinds.  Sure they serve secondary purposes like charms and valor, but those are secondary.

The second thing that I believe is that Blizzard is realizing that dailies might just not be the be all end all solution that they had hoped for end game content.  While daily quests do provide a lot of decent quality content, and help keep players in the game playing, they also have a down side.  Over time the quests get old (for some players this happens very quickly), and if there is no alternative method to accomplish the same objective (here it is rep, valor, and charms) and players don’t like the one provided method to earn them, then players end up leaving the game.

By providing these two changes, after one already significant change (the double rep bonus) to reputation, Blizzard is in my opinion admitting that the daily only method for reputation gains doesn’t work.


With so many different reps to grind, only being able to earn
them through daily quests just HAD to be changed.

Messiah’s Last Word

While I like dailies, enough is enough….  Having had to make my way through them on several characters, I have done more than I ever wanted to do.  Yet, I need to keep doing them to earn charms to help gear up more quickly….. catch 22, don’t want to but have too

I applaud the fact that Blizzard is listening to players and doing something to rectify the situation.  While I am unsure about the number of players actually complaining about reps through dailies only, I know all of my friends are sick of it, so can only imaging that many other players feel the same way.
By listening and implementing changes, Blizzard is showing that they care about the players and are willing to adjust what they thought was the best solution, to something that players may like more.

Overall I am very happy with these upcoming changes.  The only thing that I would like to suggest in addition is the addition of some lesser good luck charms to the reward as well.  If 10 lesser charms were added to the heroic reward and 5 to the scenario reward, it would allow players to earn enough lesser charms each week through PVE content.  This would allow players that really do not want to do dailies, could do so and still earn enough charms to get a set of rerolls each week.  Since you can only turn in 1 set of lesser charms to elder charms per week, this shouldn’t create issues by people having access to more lesser charms.

The Messiah has had his say, how about you have yours.  Make sure you let us know in the comment section below.

 


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Byron has been playing and writing about World of Warcraft for the past ten years. He also plays pretty much ever other Blizzard game, currently focusing on Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, while still finding time to jump into Diablo III with his son.

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