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| Again, they condensed the running back and forth into a bulletin board. The James Clark quest was new to me, so since I hadn't run into it before I decided to ignore it. |
A lot of the denizens of the Lumber Mill are still there, from the Supervisor:
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| And the lumberjacks. Can't forget them. |
To the Seamstress and her family:
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| Angelic glow not included. |
That brought up one of the weird things that I had to get used to in Retail WoW. If I thought the changes Blizzard made in Wrath Classic made it easier to quest out in the field, the current state of Retail made those old Wrath changes look draconian by nature. If I had to click on something it was patently obvious by either the glow surrounding the NPC (as seen above) or item (seen below):
Having seen all three versions --the Retail glow, the Wrath sparklies, and the "absolutely nothing" Vanilla Classic-- I kind of prefer the Vanilla Classic version. If you're not in any particular hurry, hunting around and finding it on your own presents a certain sense of achievement once you succeed in finding what you were hunting for. The kicker here is the qualifier "If you're not in any particular hurry", as it seems that questing is something to be gotten through rather than enjoyed for what it is.
Or that people want the quick dopamine hit to keep on rolling. Whichever.
Somewhere in the forest surrounding the Lumber Mill, I dinged L10 and two things happened. First, my toon became eligible for that leveling buff (which I honestly forgot about), and second...
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| "I'm sorry, who are you and why are you calling me a champion? And with those eyes, are you on drugs or something? |
I muted Wrathion's invitation, since my in-game character didn't know who the fuck he was, and even out of game I recalled him in Mists as a spoiled-rotten asshole. I have absolutely no desire to deal with him, and I'm not about to pretend 8-10 years' worth of in-game stuff went on just so I can be "current".
But now that I think about it, a third thing happened when I reached L10 that was more annoying than either of the two things listed above:
See that? You can't get click on it and get rid of it. Blizzard really really WANTS you to make a specialization choice, and I really didn't feel like doing that. I mean, if I'm going to examine only a few zones, why make a choice? There's no real reason for it, and judging by what I've been playing already I ought to be fine in generic fashion. At least in Classic WoW, you can ignore talent trees as much as you want, and I certainly do just that for 3-4 levels at a time.
The thing is, Blizzard makes you pissed off about it by letting it block your bags:
At that point my stubbornness really kicked in and I guess I should be glad my wife wasn't around because I used some pretty colorful language when I told Blizzard they could do with all of their pop-ups.*
While I was running through the Lumber Mill, I remembered that the Horse Breeder for Elwynn Forest was nearby, so I stopped and said hello. I was curious since I knew that it was always a big deal in Vanilla Classic to reach L40 and finally get your first mount (once you could afford it, of course). Additionally, I kept seeing a pop-up telling me some mount or so was added to my collection, so I wondered what that was up.
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| Those prices were off by a factor of 100 in Vanilla gold. |
What the hell? How is it possible that I already have that mount known and in my collection if I never played this toon until this previous weekend? And those prices were so low that I thought that surely the horse market had collapsed or something.
Well, in true Vanilla fashion I eschewed the mounts in favor of running around everywhere, which meant it was time to go visit Western Elwynn and say hello to Hogger.
In Vanilla Classic, Hogger is an elite that unless you're the right class and get high enough in levels you're not going to solo him. There's also the issue of Hogger wandering around the area he spawns in, which frequently means he either jumps on you when you're not expecting him or he pulls adds from the gnoll encampments whenever he attacks you. It's a meme in Vanilla Classic that there's the occasional "Hogger Raid" where you get 40 L1-L5 toons together to fight Hogger. I've never participated in a Hogger Raid, but I do appreciate those who put them together.**
Retail, however, has a different ending to the Hogger fight:
Yes, I let my opinion be known.
With Hogger dispatched, I headed out to Westfall, where I encountered what I knew and dreaded awaited me:
Again, I let my opinion be known. I'm almost 100% certain Blizzard did this to get us to care about what happened to the Furlbrows and their horse Old Blanchy, but all it did was make me mad enough to simply stop playing their game. The devs cared enough to give Old Blanchy a back story where you could find "Young Blanchy" outside the inn in the intro area for the Wrath Classic instance The Culling of Stratholme, and this is how it ended for the beloved old horse? And with dad jokes too?
This was obviously written with returning players in mind, since a new player will only see a murder mystery without any frame of reference. They won't know that the Furlbrow's deed, which is easily obtainable as a clickable item next to Hogger in Retail, is a drop in Classic that you might or might not get. About half of my Classic toons have the Furlbrow's deed quest completed, which is fine. I don't need it to enjoy Westfall and its storyline.
With that I went back to Stormwind and found a few more people in town than I did over the weekend. Not many, but a few. I did discover those Drac-whatevers that I thought were in-game toons were actually NPCs, so I kind of just shrugged and logged off.
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| I suppose I could have danced atop the fountain, but The Macarena isn't that appealing to me. |
And that's that, I suppose.
Is the game easier? Certainly.
Is the gameplay smoother? Absolutely.
Does the story work? Eh, maybe? If you're not invested in the story, yes. If you never saw what was there before, yes. If you never question as to why it effing took the Stormwind constabulary until the moment you defeated Hogger to show up when they could have captured him without any issues whatsoever before then, then sure it's fine. But if you are prone to questioning things and preferred the old NPCs the way things were, then yeah, it might not appeal to you.
And let's be honest: if you're being called a hero when you've obviously not done that much in Azeroth, I guess being called Champion once you reach a certain level isn't that surprising. What is surprising is that people aren't calling you a god or something.
*It involved Blizzard and that place where the sun doesn't shine.
**That thing about "making your own fun" in the game again.
EtA: Corrected grammar.
I think it's pretty much even. If I'm one mood I like as little hand-holding as possible, if I'm in another I'd be quite happy to have one button to pres and let the game autoquest for me. And, obviously, various points along that curve. I think the part that gets missed in most of these discussions is that these are all video games, not real life religions or philosophies that require strict adherence by their followers or believers. There are more than enough games (And in the case or MMORPGs these days, versions of the same game.) for no-one to have to play one that doesn't suit their tastes or moods so I do find it increasingly difficult to see what the fuss is about.
ReplyDeleteI'd have said something very different ten, let alone twenty years ago but whether that means I've succumbed to moral turpitude or become wiser in my old age I'll leave it to someone else to decide.
Until I played Vanilla Classic in 2019, I never knew how much hand-holding was done in MMOs and RPGs compared to the "before times". After having tried it, however, I prefer the lack of hand-holding because it makes be think and strategize. I certainly am guilty of tuning out when questing out in the field, but I find that I'm more present in a game when I have to engage more just to keep on going. Still, the hand-holding does have it's advantages, as people are using the Questie addon for a reason.
DeleteAt least there's multiple versions of WoW out there now, so I'd not be trapped in having to play one way if I wanted to explore the game. It wouldn't shock me if Blizzard wised up and figured out a way to put the original Vanilla version of Azeroth back in place in a "time-travelling" event some years from now; I'd be very curious how the current Retail graphics would work in a Vanilla Old World environment.
Seeing your absolute loathing for UI pop-ups is kind of funny after just reading Bhagpuss' post in which he could have done with more help in terms of figuring out how to use his mount. Just goes to show that there's no way for the devs to please everyone at all times with these things.
ReplyDeleteThat aside, it's interesting to me how many of your criticisms are not so much about retail in general but about the Cataclysm quests in specific, when Cata is close to turning 15 as well at this point and not necessarily representative of more modern questing. That said, yeah, I agree that Cata questing has not aged well at all. I didn't care that much about Old Blanchy, but they did the same thing with like... half the night elf NPCs in Darkshore and Ashenvale back them (kill them to shock older players, while all those deaths will have zero meaning to new players) and I didn't like it there either.
The problem isn't that the pop-ups exist, but that you're inundated with so many of them that it induces analysis-paralysis. And then there are those that simply won't go away until you actually do something with them, with no option to simply turn all of the helpful items off. If you just want to explore without all the assistance every time you login, that's not happening.
DeleteThe thing is, the Old World --and Org/Stormwind especially-- is what new players will see after they get out of Exile's Reach, before they get swooped off to the previous expac by someone whom they don't know a thing about. (Unless they want to spend a couple of hours reading Wowhead and the Blizzard website, I suppose.) The Old World is WoW's front door, and if it needs fixing, then somebody ought to fix it.
To be honest, most MMO questing from the past 10-15 years falls into a similar pattern: a main expansion storyline across all the zones, a main in-zone storyline, a main story within a hub, and some assorted side quests. Each hub's main story will have a 3 to 4 quest beat to it, which culminates in a mini-boss of some sort to fight, and then you're off to the next hub. With all of the built-in quest aids to MMOs these days, you don't really have to think about what you're doing, you just follow the yellow brick road and do what you're supposed to do. The irony is that NPC interactions that seem to naturally progress into a quest is something I'd like to see more of, but is chiefly found in the one game I know that I don't have the physical skills to play, Elden Ring. I still remember all that shade that Ubisoft and Sony devs threw at Elden Ring 3-4 years ago for their quest design, but I kept saying "THAT design is what I want, just not only in a game that I know I would suck at."
Then again, quest design isn't about the journey in MMOs these days, it's about getting you to the end as quickly as possible. You have to artificially slow yourself down or try something quirky and fun, such as your Pacifist Jedi leveling series.
The thing is, the Old World --and Org/Stormwind especially-- is what new players will see after they get out of Exile's Reach
DeleteOnly if they're like you and are hardcore about ignoring all pop-ups. Otherwise they'll end up straight in the Dragon Isles after arriving in Stormwind - there's a reason you hardly saw any other players in Elwynn, and it's not because nobody is playing WoW in general but because few people are playing that specific content.
It's not even that I disagree that the new player experience is kind of poor and that I didn't wish the world was more coherent, with fewer neglected parts - just that Cata seems like a kind of random slice of content to pin all that on.
Cata is what you see if you pass on going to the previous expac (I presume that it'll be TWW when the second of the trilogy drops) and instead turn around and walk out past the gates of Stormwind or Orgrimmar.
DeleteThat actually does bring up a wee bit of a problem: if it's the previous expac that is offered up to you when you reach L10, what will happen when the third of the trilogy drops? Does that mean you'll miss all of the context from the first of the trilogy and get shunted off straight to the middle one? Or if they decide to stick with the first of the trilogy, does that mean once they hit the previous max level they'll skip ahead straight to the new content without seeing the second entry in the series?
With Blizzard's design philosophy being to stick with current content as the only relevant thing, they've kind of painted themselves into a corner with this connected expansion concept.
Then again, Blizzard hasn't shown much appetite to actually fix in-game continuity, since getting new players isn't exactly a priority.