Kids in a Candy Store: An Interview on Casual Gamers and Tier .5

Kids in a Candy Store: An Interview on Casual Gamers and Tier .5 Armour

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I want easily attainable epic items, and I want bicycle, and I want some strawberry ice cream, and I want…



Sound familiar? The fight between Raiders and Casual gamers within the World of Warcraft has been the biggest source of animosity within their first MMORPG attempt. It has taken a while for the two groups to really separate and voice their opinions and views, but now, well over a year after the release of the game, Blizzard has taken a very large step in trying to close the gap. The release of the new tier .5 armor quests gives the chance for any player, both Raider or Casual, to upgrade their tier 0 armor sets, into a whole new set, comprised of 4 new rare items, and 4 new epic items. This interview will help explain not only the steps involved to complete these new quests, but views from the gamer’s themselves as to whether or not these new upgrades and quests are worthwhile at all, and whether they are the answer to the Casual’s cries before the release of the expansion.



Whats Involved?



Horde: The First step is to head over to the quest giver found in Thrall's Chamber. He gives you the quest An Earnest Proposition and tells you to collect 15 Venom Samples from Spiders/Scorpions in Silithus, and bring these and 20g to him. He's one of the guys across the room from Thrall, very easy to spot and the drop rate isn't bad, it only takes about a half hour. Make sure you save the Ironweb Spider Silk found off of the spiders, for you will need it to create a Delicate Arcanite Converter for step 2



Alliance: Your start will lay with the human NPC named Deliana just inside the Ironforge throne room. She gives you the quest An Earnest Proposition (Alliance) and requires 15 Blood Samples from the bears and/or wintersabers in Winterspring, as well as 20g. The drop rate seemed to be alright here, about 3 or so in 10. The drop rate off the wintersabers in the Northwest corner of winterspring is considerably higher than the drop rate off the bears.



Both: After giving you your shiny new bracers, they send you on a quest to Gadgetzan to talk to a friend of theirs, and thus you embark on the long and winding road to completeing your total .5 quest.

For those of you wondering what exactly is involved, be it money, materials, number of quests, or estimated time, here you go, broken down in its simplest form:

Bracers :

• 20g

• 15 Winterspring Blood Sample

Belt & Gloves :

• 1 Delicate Arcanite Converter (Made by Engineers)

• 4 Greater Eternal Essence (Collected by Enchanters)

• 10 Stonescale Oil (Collected by Alchemists)

• 90g

o 40g to Mux Manascrambler

o 40g to buy a Quest Item: Fel Elemental Rod (or 50g. Price is dependant on whether the quest to buy it is in your quest log.)

• Extra Goblin Rocket Fuel as needed (buy on AH or from a Engineer)

Shoulders, Boots, & Pants :

• 3 Dark Iron Bars (Smelted by Miners)

• 3 Mooncloth (Made by Tailors)

• 20 Enchanted Leather (Collected by Leatherworkers and Altered by a Enchanter)

• 4 Cured Rugged Hide (Collected by Leatherworkers)

• 8 Large Brilliant Shard (Collected by Enchanters)

• 4 Dark Runes (Found in Scholomance)

Helm & Chest :

• 120g to buy a Quest Item: Hallowed Brazier (Requires Argent Dawn - Honored)

• 1 Twilight Cultist Robe (+ 3 others to get the 3 Abyssal Crest needed to get the Twilight Cultist Medallion of Station)

• 1 Twilight Cultist Mantle (+ 3 others to get the 3 Abyssal Crest needed to get the Twilight Cultist Medallion of Station)

• 1 Twilight Cultist Cowl (+ 3 others to get the 3 Abyssal Crest needed to get the Twilight Cultist Medallion of Station)

• 1 Twilight Cultist Medallion of Station (i.e. 1 Large Brilliant Shard and the 3 sets of Twilight Cultist listed above)

• 1 Signet of Beckoning: Fire (or luck)

• 1 Flask of Supreme Power



You must be Friendly with Cenarion Hold to summon Cynders --Total gold:230g (Costs for buying materials excluded) Note: If you do the quests at lvl 60, a lot of the gold you spend will be returned as quest rewards instead of XP.



Now, these mats are collected and gained through a very long and time consuming quest series, from solo collection quests, a Stratholme Baron run in 45 min, fights in BRD and UBRS, and quite a bit of luck, patience, and… GOLD! In the end, as hard and very difficult to obtain as it may be, results 4 very good rares and 4 epics. It really is a trade off from the tier 1 gear from Molten Core, hours and months spent raiding and collecting DKP, compared to many hours of almost independent farming, for gear that is on par, a little lower in some cases, but still very good.



The Thoughts of the Gamers



I managed to get a hold of some gamers, 2 Casuals and 2 Raiders from Thunderhorn, to sit down and talk to me about their thoughts on the topic, whether or not the .5 quests are exactly what WOW needed, or whether it is just a complete waste of time. I hope this provides you with a bit from both sides of the conflict, and to help you create your own decision about the quests!



Casuals



Darsi Wenham (60 Troll Rogue): The real problem with casuals in the end-game is a matter of Time/Reward relative to that of level 1-59. I consider myself casual; I have been playing since release and to this date, only have this one level 60. The reason? During different periods of time, I don’t have many hours to dedicate to this game, so it took well over a year to get a level 60. I really have no problem with that at all. The reason I didn’t give up is because though it took so long, through level 1-59 I felt I was making a decent amount of character progression for the amount of time input, keeping the incentive up and the game fun (but this also has cause people with more time to be able to blow through the game, calling it easy).



Now when 60, the game suddenly makes a massive shift. Sure there are things that everyone, casuals and hardcore players alike can do, but the focus is more on finding bigger and better things for those who have more time to do. The hardcore people working on their nth character who blow through some of the raid dungeons, getting their tier gear. This keeps the reward/time factor up for those people.



What does that leave the casual players who are starting to reach 60? Few option, basically none of which are rewarding or an incentive enough to make me want to play the few hours I can here and there.



Ok, you have faction quests. But many of these are long grinds that provide gear oriented for the next raid dungeon. While these don’t require certain amounts of time to do, the time input to them is little to no incentive for the grind for the casual.



Ok, you can go for your 0.5 gear. But the quest chains for this are ridiculous, simply put. They are long, and arduous. While they do give epics, are they really worth the time to first not only get your dungeon set, but to then upgrade them to 0.5 ? I would much rather join a casual raiding guild, and chance a epic or 2 every month off of a roll than have to sit down and put the effort in collecting for some of these quests. Sure, don’t get me wrong, the rewards are great… just not worth the hassle and the time. I have seen some people go into a run of MC and collect 6 pieces of gear in a single night, one night to be outfitted better than if I completed all of these .5 quests, no thank you!



Ok, reroll, you will find the same level of progression and enjoyment again! Um, After taking so long to get to 60, I want to do something with is. To create another character knowing the time it took to get to 60 because the lack of time to dedicate is daunting.



And PvP is not even a choice, because we all know to get anywhere respectable, you need endless amounts of time to dedicate.



I understand the need to keep the interest up for those with endless amount of time to blow through the game and raid everything, but with little incentive to do some of the non-hardcore things in the end-game, this game has become utterly boring because there isn’t any other casual method to character progression than gear, which will always be sub par to those who can raid consistently.



Charelotte Bingley (60 Undead Priestess): The sad fact is that I DONT want to raid. I CANT raid, even if I DID want to anyways. I despise raiding guilds (having firsthand experience with the drama, the facelessness, and rudeness that inherently comes from one), I despise the time constraints, and my life doesn’t allow for scheduled gaming.



This game was NEVER about that until you reached 60. It offered game play that appealed to everyone, that was fun for everyone, that provided enough challenge for the majority of players, instead of providing a challenge for a minority while making it impossible for everyone else.



This all being said these "fixes" were meant to be the solution to this lack of new content for casuals. It was also supposed to close the gap (even a sliver) between the itemization offered to raiders versus players who cannot. Tier .5 was supposed to be our answer, and in a small way it was. It provided me with a lot of fun, farming and getting my items, beating a 45 Minute Baron and feeling every accomplished knowing that I can take everything at my own pace, and have a chance at keeping up with the people decked out in MC gear, be it in a group, or in Battlegrounds.



Due to Blizzard's recent ineptitude for solving these issues, they not only did NOT help the growing gap (Nax is soon to arrive, blowing away what they did with the .5 gear, by upping the bar greatly) but also ruined the only "casual" content for end-gamers to do at all.



And those "casual" instances? Due to the lowered cap a normal group can take around the same amount of time to complete a single run that it takes a raid group to take MC. With by far inferior rewards. The reason I WASN'T doing MC in the first place was the time constraints (and to just as large extent the boredom). So they pretty much just made these instances which were at one time fun and doable within an hour and a half (or two hours tops), instances that fail to even get COMPLETED in three hours, and for many, the rewards will soon be worthless.



Raiders



Catherine De Berg (60 Troll Mage): Casuals, even after getting their Tier .5 quests, accuse anyone who raids of getting EZ Epics, as if MC is the be-all, end-all of raiding. Because, you know, MC is ridiculously simple (once you learn it, that's largely true... not so much for BWL or AQ). So, if MC is so simple, then it surely has to be boring for us raiders. Which it is... The trash and decor aren't even interesting, unlike BWL, which is structured and feels like a lair... or AQ40, which is just cool.



So, if I grant that MC is easy and boring, I still understand that MC is still tougher than 5-mans. The only way an MC raider or better will wipe in a 5-man is if someone else in the party doesn't do their job. The hardest thing I have to do is aoe… gee, that's tough.



The translation of this... 5-mans are even more boring. As for Strat/Scholo/BRS, I consider having to go there a punishment of sorts. One, because I know in a PuG that there is always one person who can’t play WOW with a grain of comprehension. Two, because it's boring. The only fun I may have is after the patch to get the undead gear of ass-kicking, throw on an undead killing oil, my rune of the dawn, pop the ZHC and see if I can burn a boss down solo. I think I can get Timmy. Maybe Meliki.



So, why would any of us players with decent gear and decently developed skills from raids want to come to the most simplistic of instances, especially to help you Casuals with getting half a set of epics that you barely earned yourself? And can you blame good players for wanting to move on from those runs to raiding, provided they have the time? So why are people surprised when the quality of groups goes down? I put in a lot of my time and effort to achieve my gear, and you seem to still complain (Casuals) about the small amount of running around you have to do to finish your quests and still you ask and wine to Blizzard for more.



Cornelius Talmage (60 Undead Mage): The only way to create a challenge in that environment (The tier .5 quests and casual instances) is to introduce some external variable, like the 45 minute Baron run. As for the game mechanics, you can't do much with actual encounters without either requiring a certain group composition or pigeon-holing people into doing one thing (because of global spell cool downs and limited mana/health).



If you have 5 people who know what they're doing, Strat/Scholo will never be a "challenge." It's like a game of tennis as a skilled player against an average one. Avoid unforced errors and you win. Period. As for wanting to go to them, get loot, and chit-chat. No, I don't. I'd prefer not to altogether. But enchants require righteous orbs and large brilliant shards and the like. They have to come from somewhere.



I'm not even suggesting making these instances easier. I think that they're tuned more or less appropriately. It's just that once you get to a certain level of gear, they become trivial. I've met one PuG tank that could hold aggro from my fireballs, but it doesn't matter that I pull because I can burn a mob down in the time that it takes it to reach me from the tank. I'm used to doing 35%-45% of a group's damage when I do go.



I think that the Vallathak fight is the place to START. I think that 5-man content should be what Deadmines and SM and Ulda were... fun places to level up. They have a chance to be that in the expansion. You just can't do enough with them to justify making them "end-game" or itemizing them with enchanting/crafting mats like righteous orbs, at least not without putting in artifical challenges/constraints, like a timer.



You can make some "small-group" e.g. 10-15 man content that is tough. Vallathak proves that. I hope that is the direction Blizzard goes--providing more challenges to more people and rewarding them better for it.



I think that the Tier .5 questline culminates with killing him is good, it’s a great set up for Casual gamers (and even for the people in the middle) - it's a good stepping stone to either 20-man content (I think 2 groups of 10 that killed him could figure out how to kill Jin'Do... I really do) or 40 man content. It's also a good indication of what is to come... or at least I hope that it is. I really like what Blizzard has done in this department, especially knowing that you can take your time doing the quests, farm the gold, farm the mats, and work towards something real and attainable, as opposed to just dreaming of Phat Lewts from Nef. If Vallathak becomes the norm for smaller "end-game" content, then I think the game will find the right balance between challenge and reward and fun.



That’s a Wrap



Now that’s what I call food for thought! A lot of good ideas, some for the new sets, some against, some liking what Blizzard has created, some down right hating it, but that is what we like to see and hear, different opinions and thoughts! A big thanks to the time put in by our 4 gamers interviewed, Darsi, Catherine, Cornelius, and Charelotte!





Have comments or suggestions? Thought of something that has been missed? Found an error? We would love to hear from you! Please email me at memnok@tentonhammer.com