Friday, July 1, 2011

Review of Firelands Dailies, Plus some Inspiration

 The Review

When you get your 20 Mark of the World Tree and start into the Molten Front of Firelands dailies, you'll notice a fairly stark dichotomy in design.  The daily quests you'll be running in Mount Hyjal will be sorta cute (punting turtles and chucking bear cubs come to mind) and will be reasonably spread out in a calm, flowing sort of manner.  Conversely, doing the daily quests at the beginning of the Molten Front will make your eyes blur and your innards clench.

For some reason, the game designers implemented the "pigs at the trough" strategy for daily quests here, probably hoping to appease those who want to get them done as quickly as possible while at the same time alienating those who think that "dailies" are a poor excuse for letting time pass without delivering enough content.  Why do these zones need to feel like a Manhattan apartment? It may be great for some people to be able to shower and cook breakfast at the same time, but in a game with relatively infinite space, it just seems lazy.  There is no epic feel to running around in a tiny box of an area trying to complete four quests, constantly having to zig and zag to tag mobs or quest objectives that a hundred other players are fighting for.  Hopefully this is just the "Front" of the Molten Front and things will smooth out when more quests are opened, but it seems as though Blizzard wants us to accumulate Marks of the World Tree at a relatively slow pace.



The Inspiration

Suck it up and plod on.  Think of all the people in this world who do not get an opportunity to play World of Warcraft.  Think of all the people in this world who have never even seen a computer.  The next time you find yourself lamenting over another bleary eyed quest, imagine that you could have been born as a slug or a gnat or a birch tree and would not even have the capacity to conceptualize what a computer is.  Or, the next time your soul is wailing to the sound of endless daily questing, just think that you could have been born in a galaxy far, far away to a family of creatures that resemble muskrats, enslaved by the ignoble prairie dog peoples of your planet to toil endlessly in the sulfur mines.  And then, finally, when things seem bleakest of all, when the torment of one more god-forsaken blue exclamation point is more than your mortal being can bear, imagine that you were the metamorphic rock next to the sulfur in those sulfur mines -- unwanted, chiseled and broken to reach the better stuff, and all without consciousness, soul, opinion, or any hope of transformation into something greater.  That you will be mineralized over eons of neglect, only to undoubtedly be reformed into the insentient form that you probably have always been. NO NO NO!  You must embrace your blessed state and vanquish the evil-doers, slay the fire-dwellers, and pour ice over the blasted Firelands of the present.  Much like a traveler extinguishing an engine fire with a super-size Mcdonald's sweet tea, you must bring your own icy chill to the Firelands.  There is no despair in a living ember and there is no fern that grows unseen.

How to get to Firelands Entrance
Firelands Dailies Guide
Review of Firelands Dailies Plus Some Inspiration
Shadow Wardens vs. Druids of the Talon - Which one Do I Choose?
Calling the Ancients, Filling the Moonwell, or Additional Armaments: Which to choose?

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