I was just referred to this thread from the Community Council forums and, despite this being the EU forums, decided to throw in my answers to the questions asked. Be advised, this is based on personal preference. You may disagree and that’s fine.
If you’re the sort of WoW player who typically skips quest content altogether, especially at the beginning of a patch when that content is first released, why do you do that, and what do you imagine could be changed about the game that might result in you becoming more interested in / likely to play quest content?
A decent reward. I am not one that cares all too much about the storyline of a zone, how this unknown NPC or faction feels about this other unknown NPC or faction, what they’re up to etc. I barely read quest texts when I do them. They are a means to an end and it’s either because of items, XP or gold, very very rarely for FUN because the quests very very rarely are that. Fun. I still have a Worgen thingie in Oribos wanting me to go somewhere, but I just don’t see the point in it.
If you’re a player who feels that you must reach max level as quickly as possible at the start of an expansion, can you explain why that’s the case?
The game “starts” at max level. Anything before that is more or less irrelevant and usually a whole lot easier to do once character progression ends (max level) and gear progression slows down (higher ilevels reached). I do not care much for the challenge of killing this rare elite bugger for a super duper trinket that will last me all of 4 level-ups before being replaced by something else. But I’m sure as heck gonna kill it for a high ilevel version of that same trinket. Also, historically, all the endgame activities are only available at max level. The sooner I can get started on those, the sooner I can get through whatever roadblocks, hoops and ladders Blizzard throws our way, so I can start to enjoy the game with everything unlocked. I do want to PLAY the game, but I don’t want to have to go through a ton of not-very-fun things to get to the fun things.
We’ve also long tracked the debate among players about whether episodic or time-gated quest content is a good thing that helps address the issues above. If you have thoughts, please let us know where you come down on that subject.
I’m very much against it. Unfolding the storyline through the various contentpatches is pretty much the best way to tell a big story without revealing too much at a time, so keep doing that. But giving us only a tiny bit of progression each week? No thanks. Examples from Shadowlands. The Covenant campaigns were released bit by bit. By the time the next part came around, I had pretty much forgotten what I did a week earlier. I didn’t get the story because I didn’t play it as a story. It was more like reading a couple of lines from a book every few days. Another example is the Venthyr Ember Court. Why only one per week? If it’s supposed to be a fun activity and we are supposed to have a sense of progression, why not let us repeat it for as much as we feel like? As it is, it’s taken me almost 4 months to get to having my third guest, because I forget about the thing in between lockouts. But no no, we can only do the things we like once per week, because it is very important that we don’t have too much fun all at once.
Overall, timegating is crap. Plain and simple. You want me to have fun or you want me to work? I usually get paid to work and I pay to have fun. Might as well hold off on paying until the timegating is removed for whatever content I want to enjoy to the fullest. I’m sure DF will have some gated content and for once, I’m not buying into it. I’ll hold off on purchasing the expansion until something, anything, of interest is available to me without being locked by time. If I sit down for a 12 hour session, I expect to be able to progress for 12 hours (or however long it takes to unlock/finish things), not stop after 35 minutes because I’ve done all the available content and need to wait a month or two to finish it.
