Blizzard have made some great world events and some really bad ones. So I thought I would detail what (based on my opinions as well as those in other blogs and guild discussion) are the good and the bad points of these events.
Good
Achievements/rewards
The introduction of achievements made world events a great deal more satisfying. However this makes obvious the world events that do not have achievements and leaves them slightly hollow. Having some sort of reward to work towards is also good, I am a big fan of the mounts, titles and other fun items that are slowly filling up my bank space.
Special bosses
I love special world event bosses, this was a great introduction and I hope more are added and updated for each year. Something that would be really interesting would be the addition special bosses, similar to Prince Tenris Mirkblood in Karazhan for the introduction of Wrath, every now and again. I’m sure there are a few instances in Northrend that could house an extra boss when required.
Fun daily quests
Daily quests sit hand in glove with a token based reward system. Despite a couple of small bugs I really enjoyed the Brewfest quests, groups of us would complete them together each evening before heading off to Black Rock Depth to lay some Smack Down on the Dark Irons.
Token based rewards
As mentioned below having rewards based on a Random Number Generator(RNG) is not fun! So the introduction of rewards that are purchased with tokens acquired during the event is a great way to go.
Available to all levels
Okay so every part of a world event doesn’t need to be available to all levels but it is good when newer players can still participate. Winterveil is a good example of this, lower characters can still get some of the presents and complete many of the quests.
Bad
Random Number Generator
Tasks or rewards that involve random drops are no fun at all. This is especially the case for short events where your opportunities to acquire said item are limited. A great example is the recent “Love is in the Air” festival. Instead of having each item be randomly included in a gift of adoration why not have different type of NPCs give you different things as a gift. So for example male guards give you Love Rockets and female guards Love Fools, male food vendors give you a Bag of Candies and female give you a Box of Chocolates. As mentioned above, for rewards, a token based system when you receive token for completing tasks is a much better. I’m all for having power items have low drop rates but when there is a limited time frame it just gets frustrating.
Long travel for short task
There is nothing worse than having to travel to a far off zone to complete a task that takes all of 5 seconds. So although I enjoyed traveling around the world for the “Honor your Elders” achievements having to go all the way to the end of Maraudon for one of the elders as very annoying.
Imposed participation
People shouldn’t have to participate in world events, I believe this was the mistake of the Zombie Invasion (well one of them). There should always be an opt out, especially in major cities where most people just want to do their auctions in peace. If for story purposes a city needs to be involved then limiting the event to only one city for each faction would mean people can escape to other locations if they needs to.
Opportunities for griefing
I play on a PvP server but there is a difference between PvP and griefing. If a world event allows a level 80 to kill a level 10 over and over then that level 10 player is going to be a bit upset.
Overall I think that World Events are slowly improving. It is nice to have a purpose in world events, a reason to complete quests that is storyline or reward based. Hopefully some of the annoying RNG tasks will be removed as events are revisited. It would also be good to see some of the rare items have their drop rates improved or be acquired with tokens. Probably the most important thing will be to have events with special instanced bosses updated to the new level cap of 80.
Images thanks to Wowhead and World of Warcraft Blogger.
Monday, February 16, 2009
World Events - The Good and the Bad
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Midsummer Thankyou
A very short post to say thank you to everyone who helped out Alassiel and Me during the Midsummer Fire Festival. My thank you will take the forum of a haiku
Heroes join to fight
The Frost Lord is defeated
Still no mini pet
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
One Perfect Day
Sometimes everything clicks in wow and you get all the things you want in one shot. In this case two excellent events made me a very happy player last night. Firstly I got home to find my latest ebay purchase in my mail box making Ironarm the proud owner of A Paper Airplane Kit. I then jumped into Slave pens to have another few goes of Ahune and behold, the Scythe dropped on the fifth attempt. On top of that we then progressed to steam roll him in Heroic mode.
Once you sort everything out the Ahune encounter really isn’t that hard. You defiantly need some good area of effect classes to handle the mini elementals (warlocks are excellent); you need to keep away from the big elemental as he has a damaging aura and watch out for the frost spikes which come out of the ground. We didn’t have really high DPS but we did have an awesome healer and tank. Some players are of the opinion that a paladin tank is your best option but we found that a Druid tank worked really well. He could tank the large elemental in his damage gear then when it was dead could clean up elementals and help on the frozen core.
The Frost Sycthe isn’t the most amazing weapon stat wise but it looks awesome, and has a use effect which makes it snow over your character. I read a blog entry
Friday, June 20, 2008
Midsummer Fire Festival
Blizzard have updated the info page for the festival so you can view more information about the quests there or you can check out the wow wiki page.
One particular item the Frost Lord drops, Frostscythe of Lord Ahune, is on Squiggle's must have list. Sure it’s not the greatest shadow priest weapon but it looks awesome. I shouldn't forget he also drops a non combat pet. The festival will run for about two weeks so we can expect a lot of people “LFG Heroic Slave Pens”. Also keep your eyes out for the Brazier of Dancing Flames, at a pricey 350 blossoms there wont be a lot of this unique and fun item.
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