Tag Archives: quests

Week of Fives: World of Warcraft Excellence

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This week is AFK Gamer’s annual look back at Ye Olde Year, 2006 –The Week of Fives.

Today, Five Things that World of Warcraft Does Really Well.

I spend most of the blog space discussing the stupid and absurd of World of Warcraft, both the game and the players. That’s not the entire story, of course. There’s alot about World of Warcraft, and its players, that’s wonderful. Here’s our top five — three from me, and two from Raster.

1. The music and the sounds. I mentioned a while ago that I haven’t played with music or sound in World of Warcraft since December 2004. Since I wrote that, I’ve made an effort to turn on the music and sounds when I’m solo’ing and not in the guild’s Ventrilo. I have to say, it’s as immersive and rich as I remembered. The swoosh of the stealthed rogues in the PVP battlegrounds, the “To Arms!” music when riding into Ironforge or Orgrimmar, the heightened suspense in Duskwood, the booming NPC taunts in Blackwing Lair … all superbly done. And until I was driven to madness by the mournful cello music of the Burning Crusade’s Blood Elf noob area, I thought it was beautiful. (Foton)

2. The noob levels. WoW does an excellent job introducing newer players to the game. Plentiful spawn areas full of beasts which are not aggro and extremely fast repop help get the initial levels down in no time. Mobs also drop starter gear for all classes and the quests in the area give you just enough money to buy all of your newly trained abilities as well as some slightly higher quality equipment. The quests are relatively easy and teach you the basics of your characters abilities, preparing you for the major area of the game. It’s not difficult to get to level 10 in an hour or two, removing some of the tedium especially if it’s not the first character you’re leveling. Alliance are also treated to their first “epic” dungeon, the Deadmines, around level 20, giving you a nice taste of things to come. (Raster)

3. The sly humor. This, more than any other aspect of WoW, proves that once upon a time, designers, writers, artists loved this game. Well, I’m sure they still do, but some day, the cash cow may become just a cow and there won’t be much time (or budget) to lovingly craft anything. Back to the now, I’ve always appreciated and enjoyed Warcraft’s sly humor … no one has ever done it better. The pop culture references, the play on words, Madonna on the loading screen (goddamit, I know that’s her!), even the corny, all of it so cleverly done — Warcraft is without peer on this. (Foton)

4. The quest system. Rather than follow in EverQuest’s footsteps, WoW made the quests in game an essential part of the game and leveling process. In EQ, quests were usually tedious and the only reward was some item you would receive. There was very little in the way of experience or money rewards, and most of the rewards made you want to throw a brick through your monitor. WoW made quests integral to leveling to 60 and to obtain decent gear along the way. Quests are plentiful and give large experience rewards upon completion, making it much quicker to get to 60 than previous games. Each zone is populated with any number of quests based upon the in-game lore, and after exhausting them, you were sent off to the next one. Most newer players appreciate the streamlined and relatively easy curve to 60 and I’m sure it’s a large part of WoW’s success. Well done Blizzard. (Raster)

5. The fluff. I haven’t written, directly, about Warcraft’s fluff in almost two years, but I’ve been enjoying it all along. (Fluff) There’s a lot of fluff and nonsense (the fun nonsense, not the nerf nonsense) in Warcraft and in many ways, we as players work harder for the fluff than the daily gaming basics — because we want to, not because we have to. We’re talking non-combat pets, enchant glows (the enchants could just add stats, but oh so much better that they have a glow), the additional game events, the quest rewards with an illusion effect, and hundreds of others. I don’t know if there’s one guy at Blizzard in charge of game fluff or an entire team. Either way, he/they have the best job in the whole organization. (Foton)

Wednesday, Five Things We Wish for Future Games.

See Also

2005’s Week of Fives: Day One, Day Two, Day Three, The Finale

Mr. Wiggles’ Wild Ride

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Mr. WigglesMr. Wiggles (seen here cowering inside a rock in Nefarian’s Lair), the noncombat pet pig reward from World of Warcraft’s recent Children’s Week event, has become my guild’s constant companion. All the cool kids have a pig.

Here’s a little secret you may not know about Mr. Wiggles: he can find grass to eat anywhere, even on a stone tile floor. One day, that’s going to be some Grade A finely-marbled organic pork.

If you have all the time in the world and want to collect the Warcraft non-combat pets (some of which are no longer available), there are several player-created guides available:

Warcraft Forums: Guide to Vanity Pets (Furl archive of thread)
Dianius’ Pets Guide, including screenshots (Furl archive)
TKA Something Zalla’s Collector’s Guide to Non-Com/Small Pets (Furl archive)

And lastly, Dark Legacy Comics’ Children’s Week and Pet Rewards comics

Think of the Children

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Stormwind OrphangeThe latest in World of Warcraft’s special events/holiday quests is available now: Children’s Week. We are to give back to the innocents, the children, although I don’t think they’ve ever given anything to me — not even a boot shine or a glass of beer, NOTHING.

There’s this guy in Ironforge, John Turner, who wanders around asking for donations to the orphans of war. Several times, I’ve tried to chat with him, give him a few gold for the cause. I don’t know what his deal is, but he won’t speak to me or take any gold. That’s why I think this is all a scam.

I play on a PVE server and as far as I’ve ever seen, the orcs and dragonkin stay in their instances and never venture out to ravage the cities. Sure, every once in a great while, a few horde will show up around Ironforge or Stormwind or Darkshire (wow, that’s brave) and pick on a few hapless players or NPCs. I do the math, that’s only a few orphans created each year, certainly well within Stormwind and Ironforge’s city budgets.

I’m not one to turn down free quest rewards and free reputation, so I griffed over to Stormwind last night and did the questline for Children’s week — even though, I disagree on principle. The evil orphanage matron handed over an orphan to me, rather eagerly, and it was my job to take him on a whirlwind tour of the sights around World of Warcraft.

My dullard wanted to see three initial sights, then he had two more requests (sigh) and finally, I returned him, rather eagerly, back into involuntary servitude at the orphange and got some tidy Alliance-wide reputation and a choice of four rewards: three non-combat pets or a bag of coins. There’s a few screenshots available in a Flickr photoset.

An organized upper-level guild could complete this questline for all of its online members in a few minutes with the wonders of mage portals and warlock summons. An improvement over other special events, there’s no items to collect that will take up valuable bag space.

My dullard got a little extra adventure. I dragged him through the savage countryside of Searing Gorge and into Blackrock Mountain — me on horseback, him racing along on the ground. I wanted him to experience the thrill of adventuring in the Warcraft world, as he claimed he wanted to do some day. Also, I wanted to return childless to the evil matron and request another, “Excuse me, madam. I seem to have misplaced my orphan, may I have another?”

That’s the real scam of the war orphans: little bastards have no aggro.