Pure masochism. Specially WoD🤢 Imagine having to do that without the power creep from later expansions. Remember starting those fucking Apexus dailies with leveling greens and realizing how slow filling up the bar was. I get an anxiety attack even thinking about it.🥺
Suramar was my favourite tbh. Progressing towards Nighthold was great and the area, city, the daily quests etc was so much fun. When ppl say Legion, I think about suramar. Edit: Also progressing your army in the army training quest was great too! That was the thing that inspired the Vision progress systems i guess
Suramar looks nice, it has nice lore, but I just hated that zone, as last zone needed for flying I just felt forced into doing it, and it took damn ages to do everything.
Preach, I just want to take a moment to thank you for everything you're doing. People with a voice in the community such as yourself are doing great work in vocalizing what many in the community are feeling, hopefully Blizzard are taking your feedback into consideration when developing Shadowlands.
"hopefully Blizzard are taking your feedback into consideration when developing Shadowlands" Well if BFA and the Azerite system is any sort of indicator of how Shadowlands will be in regards to taking in feedback and making decisions off it then we are screwed. Preach was warning of the issues with the Azerite system long before the release of BFA but it didn't seem to really change much. In fact, the issues stayed in the game for a long time AFTER the launch of BFA.
@@Tigerycat "its just alpha, betas not even out yet..." "its just beta, wait until the expansion launches..." "guys its only the last patch of the expansion, wait until the next one...". Like clockwork.
michaelscottpapercompany that doesn’t make any sense though.Just because it happened in BFA doesn’t mean it’s going to happen in Shadowlands. I understand the scepticism but honestly it’s not fair to judge a game that’s not even in alpha yet. We don’t even have solid proof that Shadowlands is going to have the same problems BFA has; we don’t have access to the classes or anything - if anything, the covenants look more like the artifact system in legion+class halls. What they have given us reassurance for is the return of PVP vendors and the “unpruning”, which again, I understand the scepticism but it’s not even testable right now.
The thing that's missing from this is Blizzards continuous over reaction and over correction for these things. People thought Argent Tournament was annoying to do, so they removed everything to do outside raids in Cata, so people complained there was nothing to do, so they added loads of stuff in MoP, so people complained there was too much to do etc, etc, etc
Yeah I gotta give blizzard some credit atleast. It's very very hard to satisfy people. Everyone complains continuously about things that there are or aren't
Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. It is painfully obvious that people at Blizzard do not play their own game. It's been over a decade and they still don't understand what people like in their game. They just pick some random complaint each patch and lurch blindly in one direction. Take invasions. At the end of WoD there were fucking demons falling out of the sky and smashing shit. That was epic as hell and a great way to level up your characters, and then we didn't get to enjoy invasions again for what, 2 years? Not until the end of Legion that is.
@@jacobwiren8142 They added legion invasions in 7.2, less than 6 months after legion launched. And we've had some iteration of them in almost every patch since. 7.3 has invasion portals in argus. 8.1 had faction incursions. 8.2 had minor invasion events in nazjatar. 8.3 was almost completely about n'zoth invasions of various kinds. 6 months to recognize how much the community loved a new type of event and integrate it into their game design going forward is pretty solid turnaround time.
There's a reason people dont reference 5.2 as prime content often. Its because we didnt play. The launch sucked so we left, even people who maintained their sub often were inactive and when we came back Timeless isle was such an incredible step up from the beginning of the expansion that we all lauded it heavily. 5.2 remains a hidden gem, in a way.
Boo Radley this 100% I was “lucky” (no idea if that is the correct word here but whatever) to have stuck around for 5.2 and what a marvel, all of my friends who quit though never mention it when bringing up mists though they always reference the timeless isle. 5.2 was on an entirely different plane of wow content that we hadn’t seen, nor have seen again for years.
@@Gravewhisper I hated the Hyldnir dailies so much haha, but I got super lucky and got the mount in my first cache and just only bothered at a very minor level after that :D
El Kehrer the only “daily” should be in the game is daily dungeon quest, like the mythic dungeon week quest. Tune it down to 0/1 mythic dungeon cleared every day, add fun instance quests that require collaboration.You get more interaction between players
THIS! I don't mind grinding reputation for mounts, pets, whatever... optional stuff that I decide I want to have, or for the sake of completion, but it should always be optional.
@@raphael2407 Agreed but you can't please everyone. Soon as they do that an army of casual LFRS will appear and whine that there aren't "Meaningful" rewards from the dailys. This is the real issue with Wow and blizzard. They try to cater to everyone at all times, and their game suffer for it. They are afraid to just take a stand like in the past and say "This is the way it is". I guess that's the difference between running a money farm and running an mmo.
Wasnt wod the first expansion where you got flying with pathfinder only after tanan jungle got released so those apexis crystals areas were worse until late in expansion
His longterm memory isn't the best when it comes to certain other things: Wrath already had several factions with tabards (because these didn't have dailies). Broken Shore was the same mess as Argus when it came to Nethershards. He forgot about those since the gear vendor got removed.
@@Loomx5 Never forget my beloved Suramar, I personally never classed it as a daily/wq hub in comparison to the ones mentioned. The actual hard part about this was the many areas have had a lot of their content changed or flat out removed over the years for various reasons. Many of the articles also update and change to be more current. RE the Broken Shore tho. It wasn't as good as the PTR but i still never actually minded it. Part of that may be I never used it as a gear catchup due to my other activities.
I enjoyed the nethershard grinds tbh. Mass murdering stuff with a chance to summon a mini boss on which you can go ham was cool. They also dropped nice mini flavor items that dropped a lot of materials if I'm not mistaken. There was also this goblin in the hidden cave with the random items that was a nice callback to the timeless isle one, but better.
Mists had a few too many, but the systems were the best. Halfhill and the Shado-pan should be a template for future content: Breaking up the dailies with actual story progression and boosts for alts. Always focussing on 1 area with multiple quests and progressing rep unlocks new areas so that you don't grow too weary of the old ones. The Bodyguard system in Naz has it's origins in the Shadopan system and how you gained rep with the individual bodyguards. Many people often talk about the Molten Front, but many of the MoP dailies feel like a more developed version of those.
There was also the rep from krasarang (the faction one) and isle of thunder that unlocked through time which also unlocked the main questline. It was a pretty good system imo, and the daily quests were on rotation so you didn't do the same everyday
TL;DR: My ultimate point is, though there was a lot, a lot of dailies in MoP, and there is a lot, a lot of dailies in BFA, the two expansions' systems that affect players' interactions with those dailies are very different. Before I say anything else, admittedly I am a MoP fanboy, though I started playing in late BC. I think an important thing of note here is, how many of those daily quests did you HAVE to do, even after you got exalted? Did you feel an obligation to do them beyond the mounts/pets, profession formulas, and-if memory serves- some pieces that could be bought with valor, which were locked behind rep? Was there a form of power progression available that gave you a slight increase in power the more time you put into? One with high diminishing returns? One which could be obtained through daily quests, so you felt you still had to do them, because of how easy they were? Once the rep was done, it was done. You could get your WEEKLY valor cap-more quickly and efficiently even- elsewhere, as opposed to the amount of valor you could acquire in a given day or week being determined by how much stuff you were willing to do. And then gold was the main reason for doing the daily quests. There was an end to the daily grind. It was possible to feel like you no longer needed to do them. And each week, there was an end to the things you felt obligated to do for valor. You could fill the bar up at your own pace. You could knock it all out in a day or two if you so desired, and also get a sizeable chunk from doing a challenge mode dungeon. Or you could spread it out over the week, with the first dungeon/scenario completion of the day rewarding extra valor to support that. And anywhere in between. Whatever suited your style of play, or fit best with your life's schedule/demands on any given week. It was flexible. And, to restate my previous point, there was an end to it each week. Oh, and I almost forgot. Getting valor cap on one toon also increased your valor gains on other toons for the rest of that week. And later on, repping up on alts, and revered-exhaled was made easier by items you could buy from vendors at revered that gave a permanent, account wide 100% rep bonus for that faction, plus a daily dungeon completion rep bonus for a chosen rep. And there was the farm work orders for extra rep, but who remember that?
Cataclysm and MoP haven't gotten nearly enough credit. But now, with this video and Bellular's recent class design vid, maybe people will finally realize that "lul pandas" was actually the golden age of the game.
@@Imprez888 Yeah, I loved how you actually had to try in Cata dungeons. MoP was easier, but keep in mind that they introduced Challenge Mode dungeons then.
@@Spyger9 MoP was crap until 5.3, First Tier of raids were garbage, dungeons for the first and last time were absolute garbage, the daily quests went overboard and were so annoying, the Isle of Thunder and Timeless Isle were so crappy and repetitive... And MoP was the first expansion where the game truly became a patch-based game, instead of an expansion based game. You had literally 0 reasons to any tier other than the current one. This is why in the future they added powerful trinkets that are hard to get so that people do the older Tiers, but that's a crappy solution. WotLK and Cata still had good reasons for you to do at the very least one raid Tier before the current raid Tier, in Cata all the Tiers were done actually, in WotLK, the worst raid of all time, Trial of the Crusader kinda removed any need to do Ulduar let alone Naxx. The class design in MoP flopped so hard after Tier 2(ToT), plus the CC hell in PVP, coming in from the excellence of Cata's class design, WoD brought it back up to Cata levels of good, but different. ToT and SoO were excellent, two of the best raids of all time, Monks are an amazing class and the Pandaren are awesome for finally making an appearance and being a shared/neutral race. The 85-90 leveling in Pandaria was the best leveling since TBC, WoD 90-100 eclipsed both of them.
My personal favorite is the Argent Tournament because I went there when it was being created at the end of Ulduar. Helping out that place and it turning into a fun place with good quests that weren't mandotory but optional. For mounts, pets, toys of which I still don't have all... Mostly because the area is stupid far away from Dalaran... It brought some nice story quests into the game that told us to go to old zones And then they even expanded on the quests with some more quests with the Northsea. But greatest of all: We built a dungeon and raid as prep for the Story Finale vs the Lich King. Amazing work overall and my #1.
Looking back Timeless isle was amazing because it was just a chill zone where you and your friends / guild mates could mess around. That's why I remember it so fondly, not because of the daily quest system.
I remember that mobs there did a lot more damage then any other place, you were always seeing people running around also people were always chatting or calling out rares.
Great content preach my dude, this is the stuff you do that I enjoy the most, even though I dont agree with you on everything (isle of thunder I do agree with, but I was one of those nerds that liked the timeless isle)
I never actually did the frog farm for coins on Timeless isle, but I still loved it. I remember joining a raid group and just circling around hunting for rares each day. Plus you could get all those crazy buffs from items and shrines that made world pvp interesting, and there was lots of world pvp going on. I remember when people realized you could ride the seagull to Huolong's bridge and then aggro him from up top so others couldn't attack him. That was also when they added that ordos sigil thing that you could use to become hostile to all players and there was a title for getting kills with it. I thought it was a cool prestige thing that only people with the legendary cape could jump the broken bridge to kill the stronger world boss. Then there was that dude that let you gamble your coins as well. I never cared for the Emperor rep grind, but I know many people did that for the mount as well. All that said, Isle of Thunder was also great.
The last time that I can remember actually enjoying Daily Quests was in MoP, and I guess that's because of a couple of reasons: there were decent enough items gated behind the associated factions (Water Strider, for example, but also Mounts, vanity items, and recipes for crafting professions); but also I felt some sense of daily or weekly progression (my farm expanded over time, I learned more about the Klaxxi and who they actually served, I got to 'Hang Around with the Shado-Pan' and use all of their unique abilities, etc). Nothing since then has ever felt as good to me, personally.
Timeless isle was more cozy, more quirky things like gambling with a monkey in a cave for more coins etc. Hitting a seagull to get grabbed and then you would have to kill the seagull to land ontop of a mountain and kill some random elemental. ALE ELEMENTALS. Underground caverns filled with secrets?!? J u m p i n g p u z z l e s. Random world bosses that allowed everyone to join in no matter what. Screaming in general "I GOT THE ITEM TO SPAWN THE BOSS" just to create a 20 man group to fuck up a pirate ship. And the world pvp was just UUUGH, yes. The bloody coin grind was SO, FUCKING, FUN. The Thundering isle was amazing, it held up great, amazing story, cool zone, great mechanics to catch up, nice rep, overall just a great place. But Timeless isle was like, an engame hub. Here you had completed the game, everything was kind of relaxing, here you can fish for a turtle, do world bosses, all the npcs throughout questing in MoP were there. World bosses spawned randomly, daily quests, hidden chests, gambling, SO MANY SECRETS, and just such a peaceful and nice little isle packed with so much to do. Thundering Isle was amazing, but Timeless Isle was an amazing place to be in, just cozy.
All and all, they are better together. That being said, timeless isle benefits much more from the AMAZING class design in mop when compared to the current shit show where none of the classes are actually fun to grind with on their own Thundering isle doesn't need classes to be fun to be amazing though. side note: fill the bar zones pre tanaan jungle was fun as hell. Fill the bar was meh but the actual stuff in those zones were amazing and i miss doing fill the bar there instead of the shitty fill the bars we have now.
I completely agree! It was cozy and wholesome which was just what we needed at the end of MoP for the month content drought before WoD. I wouldnt have been able to handle the dark and gloomy isle of thunder for 13 months
I think the core abilities in MoP were great. I didn’t like that as a Destro lock, I couldn’t cast shadowbolt anymore. I like the shadow/flame aesthetic. But the fact I had 3 dps cd’s 4 absorbs and 4 ways to heal was too much utility. Wrath was great for class design because you still needed the help from other classes to survive. Not in MoP. But I would take all of MoP designs over anything after it.
@@Metrognome110 i respectfully disagree. They added in the description of a destro warlock in MoP that *it is much closer to a fire mage than a warlock in the way it uses its fiery destructive magic* Which I loved. I also loved burning embers in MoP and how when we had 3+ embers our character was LITERALLY on fire. That was sooo fucking cool. And i loved all the utility. Imo MoP class was best. Pvp was a BLAST. Thanks to all the utility, every single spec had a massive skill cap. And i loved that almost every spec could counter any other spec in the game if played correctly. It made for some insane 1v1 matches and like I said it was a blast learning and seeing how much more powerful the specs got when played to their fullest potential. Ive mained a warlock since MoP. But at the end of MoP during the content drought I literally boosted a mage, shaman, and druid strictly to pvp on them because classes were so dam fun back then. Ive played since vanilla but Only played a warrior from vanilla-mid cataclysm so I dont know what locks or any other classes were like in the early days
Exactly. The appeal of the Timeless Isle was that I just enjoyed chilling there. Even if I wasn't actively progressing towards a goal, I spent more time just hanging around there than any daily zone before or since. And there was always SOMETHING going on if you wished to engage with it. Camping Huolon. Grinding some Shaohao rep. Farming some coins or alt gear. Using the Censer to become public enemy number one. Soloing the Celestials just for fun. Waiting for the pirate ship. Chasing around after rares thanks to that handy addon that announced them in chat. And all in an inviting atmosphere with beautiful scenery, rather than some gloomy, oppressive, dark little zone packed to the brim with mobs that's no fun to be in.
Sunreaver and Thundering Isle were my favorite. Their structure was just very intuitive and sold the narrative of the story well. I enjoyed Timeless Isle exclusively due to the difficulty of the Elite mobs there. It was less so about the rewards. During my downtime I'd farm the elites for various drops, extra gear tokens to disenchant, and to just practice. Killing High Priests of Ordos solo was pretty difficult depending on your class. MoP can be remembered as the only expansion with rare/elite world mobs who had threatening abilities. Even in 5.4 gear the Klaxxi rares bladestorm could kill you in a few seconds.
I'm maybe alone on this one, but cataclysm was my favourite expansion, because of one single feature ( two if you count the playable goblins ) , and it is the molten front daily zone. It was so good, it's a shame i didn't play MoP, because it seems like i missed on the evolution of the molten front, which was the thunder isle.
Timeless Isle was beloved by a lot of people because of the PVP buffs and basically you created your own content if you spent days out there. The shell you put on your head to not be attacked by the guards at closer distances, shrine buffs, random healing foods laying about. Great world PVP time. Especially with the Censure of Agony so you could sacrifice people of any faction to Ordos to get a currency for some fun rewards. The censure made a comeback in 8.3 actually which replaced the previous alliance slayer quest.
When it comes to MoP, I remember the Tillers rep being great for cooking. The best way to get mats for raid food was the farm you upgraded aswell as the tillers rep. I also remember getting the skill to ride cloud serpents was also a lot of fun as you get dailies tied to your own serpent which evolve as that serpent gets older. Holy crap I'm getting nostalgia kicks as I also remember the dailies tied to the krasarang landings from 5.1 where doing the dailies made you progress through a linear story with your faction leaders. The anglers rep wasn't really that fun to grind, but I do remember those being the key to get water striders to finally walk on water
I just find it really hard to hold out any kind of hope. The last half a decade has shown that the Dev team wants to micro-manage exactly how you interact with the game, and they are *relentless* in their obsessive need to make sure you do exactly what they want, exactly how they want you to do it, and exactly when they want it done. I don't see them moving back toward allowing players to simply have fun and enjoy the game at their own pace, in their own way.
Probably old devs moved on or got replaced and these youngsters have that participation trophy socialist mindset. At the end of the day we customers have a choice not to pay.
You don't understand dude. The PROFESSIONAL WoW players are all hard at work competing for world first, and they compose 0.01% of the paying customers. That means we have to balance EVERYTHING AROUND THEM because 0.01% is DEFINITELY THE MAJORITY OF PAYING CUSTOMERS.
@@jacobwiren8142 Not exactly sure where you're coming from, but balancing the game around endgame progression, for example by giving every access to every ability, but theming them cosmetically around the covenant that you are in, would allow *everyone* to make engage with the game and the system in whatever way they want. More content for everyone that just so happens to make endgame progression less of a hassle for those players who chose to engage in competitive play isn't a bad thing. I don't know whether you're serious or joking, but no one is suggesting that you should have anything *taken away* so that "elite players" can do their thing. On the contrary, what is being suggested is that every player at every level should be allowed to make choices that make sense to them, rather than have Blizzard put the game on autopilot.
@@Rakinjo2 I was being heavily sarcastic, and I was not referring to ability pruning. I was referring to the normalization of damage to make every dps spec "competitive".
I think Legion was the most fun I ever had in WoW, even though I main paladin, which did not have much going on past Crusade. And for years, I've hated MoP because of the incredible amount of dailies. I couldn't stand it at the time. But ever since WoD, I've said I wanted dailies back. I never wanted them gone. And the farm has always been one of my favourite pieces of content. I did not mind the garrison (I just didn't play instead of afk'ing at the garrison), but it wasn't the farm. The order halls were not the farm. The farm was the closest I ever felt to having my own little piece of Azeroth.
Ihope somebody will comment on this, even though its not related to this particulair subject. On the subject of keeping gear fun relevant: In my opinion gear should provide the following things to keep it fun: >Notable power increase in the current content//so clearing content over and over becomes easier over time. >Gives effect to skills and alters your play style//so it keeps the gameplay fresh >Looks cool//so you want it for the transmog >Some open world utility effect/cosmetic effect.//so you want to collect it even tho it might be a tad irrelevent How can Blizzard do this? well in my opinion the easiest way to do this is to not make gear irrelevent as soon as the next update hits. what if farming an older raid is easier with the gear from the newest raid yet the gear that drops still makes that particulair raid easier? >Make gear zone/raid specific. Give gear bonusses in particulair enviroments. what if in shadowlands a set drops for zone X that allows one player to open a bonus boss room when he has the fll set, a bonus boss that might drop a mount. What if in zone Y if three [players farmed this particulair item they can form a traingle to summon a valkry when they dealt X amount of dps/healing. yet in zone X this gear would just be a minor stat boost without the cool effect(like +10intellect) Or when you wear this set you farmed in zone A your moonfire places a rotating laser on the gound, ridiculiously OP yet when it can only happen in this zone with that zone specific set Blizzard can easily build the zone around the set buffs. What if crafting engineering gear sets allows you to craft a ironman suit, something disabled in dungeons but it allows flying without mounting in zone X and instant mining. Furthermore if they want to make gear more relevant make it interactive! look at a game like FTL where you can boost certain aspects of your ships ie guns/shield engine based on what you feel is needed. what if you can alter the boost your gear gives? it would make gear way more interactive and allows you to farm diffrent effects while preventing stacking. What if i farmed a set for zone X which would allow me to boost me defense to give me some effect that makes casting corruption applies a shock barier around me? or when i switch my points into mobility my charge becomes extra powerfull and allows me to ping pong between 3 targets? what if it allows me to teleport short distances in the open world when i put all my points into mobility? i guess the idea is pretty clear. im really wondering what people think of this idea since i feel like it would keep gear really fun and altho you cant transfer pve/pvp effects over from content to content it would give you something noticebal to farm which can make you particulairly strong in one area while not being tottally irrelevant due it still being a small stat boost aswell.
Engagement metrics > all! Just say "fun" is the primary concern in Q&As and interviews, but you need to make sure the engagement metrics are good for the content you designed, or else.
As someone who came in to MoP the last month before WoD launched, I really enjoyed Timeless Island. Was it grindy? Yes. Was it fun? Heck yes. The hunt for rares, treasure hunting, and mob grinding were enjoyable because of the way you had to plan your grinding routes and time that with the intense competition over spawn points. It also helped that the mobs were genuinely threatening with abilities that could kill you if you weren't careful. The content was great for social interaction and coordinating a group to farm Shaohao/frogs/etc. while dealing with Horde were really fun. Heck, even grinding Shaohao rep was fun, although in a more of a masochistic way. Because I came in so late I wanted to finish the rep grind for that awesome golden serpent dragon mount (still one of my favourites), I sat down and grinded for two weeks straight all the way to Exalted. It was a pain, but the fact that I was allowed to grind out my rep in my own time at my own pace and feel like I was done with it felt genuinely satisfying. Also, the reward structure was great. Even if I didn't get the chance to do a lot of progression in MoP, the progression system felt great with those Timeless Coins. If there is one thing that did frustrate me about the zone it was the drop rates of the Huolon mount. 1/100 chance of dropping with an hour long timer while having to deal with shard hopping and competing groups and the enemy faction were frustrating. It took me 60-70 tries before it finally dropped. Luckily I had other things to occupy myself with on the island to make the waiting far less frustrating, but it's certainly one of the low points of an otherwise great piece of content. I was so disappointed when WoD failed to live up to then fun outdoor content that Timeless Island provided.
My favourite daily zone was Quel’danas, which I stumbled upon accidentally after starting the game in WotLK. I just loved the look of the island, the look of the reward gear & tabard, and how everything was contained together in (mostly) the one isle save for the part where you teleport to Hellfire Peninsula. And having the dungeon and raid there on the isle, I’d give a shot at solo’ing them at 80 on my prot pally just because it looked cool and was right there
I love this kind of content. There's so much to talk about how Blizzard has handled various forms of content and so few content creators are willing to tackle the nuances. Keep up the great work!
Mike honestly you are the best content creator out there and after all these years following you i still cant get enough. Its your sense of humour your intellect your dedication but most of all you kept you being you never pretending. A Friend from Greece.
Best quests designs and things to do - MoP! Loved those farming quests, klaxxi, getting stuff from different factions, just like you said. And then that coin system about which I forgot was epic as well. Overall best WoW experience, even if done without most buddies which were with me in wotlk/cata. It says a lot - if you as a character can have fun on your own in the world and there is plenty for you to do - that's good design! Thanks Preach!
MoP with the current base systems would be perfection M+ in place of CM WQ emissaries over dailies Flex and mythic raiding from the beginning My opinion anyway
I'm all about variety and progression. Different scenery, different and sometimes quirky things to do, unlocking new quests and things as you go. MoP had that in spades, from the initial daily quests all the way to Timeless Isle, it was all different and fun in its own way. Farming, exploring, story, puzzles, training a dragon, collecting, hunting rares, and just doing goofy things like riding around on a seagull or turning into a saurok. It also helped that class design in MoP was excellent so I really didn't mind grinding mobs. Looking back on Timeless Isle (I definitely spent more time there than anywhere else), I can see how it'd be boring but I remember having fun. It was like a playground, lots of neat little things strewn around. Mostly mob grinding but I loved playing all the classes then and it was at the end of the expansion when everyone was most powerful which makes grinding more fun as well. It was cool how you worked your way up and around as you got stronger, and there were plenty of fixed one-time chests that gave new characters a nice boost. Isle of Thunder definitely had more... action? To me it felt cramped and like getting around was a bit of a chore. The vault scenario was fantastic. Idk, I liked them both and I liked the quest hubs even more for the variety if nothing else. When I first unlocked world quests, I was sent to do an exact copy of a quest I did while leveling. Kill a few things, click on a few objects, repeat ad infinitum. That was just the worst feeling, like getting to the end game meant nothing because it's only going to be the same quests forever. There were some unique ones thrown in but the majority of it was just copy/pasted quests spread willy nilly around the world with no feeling of impact, doing the same tasks over and over with different coats of paint. Reputation is all the same, each faction no longer has an identity other than the zone they happen to be in. I don't think I could really tell you what the BfA factions are about but I distinctly remember panda ninjas and crazy war-obsessed bug people and farmers and the tiger arena and so on. Good times. Since WoD I feel like Blizz has been thinking more about what's easier for them to make as opposed to more fun for the players, how can they get the most out of the same content and structures. Why put effort into making this faction unique when some people are going to skip it or hate feeling forced to do it so just make everything the same with only a little splash of something interesting here and there. Maybe I'm just too cynical now. That could be it.
Isle of Quel'Danas, followed by Broken Isles & Isle of Thunder. Before the video I would have said broken Isles first but this helped me consider what I would like to see moving foward.
Firelands were my favourite hands down. Like you said, the way the zone and everything in it progressed with you was just so satisfying, and made it feel like I was making a difference. Also it helps that it was a pretty cool zone (even if it was a bit much on the orangey side)
Thank you, Preach! I thought I was the only person in the world that thought the Timeless Isle was terrible. I hated that damn place. Blizzard keeps trying to remake the Timeless Isle and I just don't understand why.
my favourite WQ/daily zone was wintergrasp, I just enjoyed it the most, not specifically because of the dailies that were there, but the dailies were a part of everything that was going on there, but I can't give you a complete answer as to why, but I enjoyed that the most vs anything that has ever existed (if we're talking about WQs/Dailies)
Thing I loved about Thunder Isle was the Blacksmithing system with the upgradable weapons. Even if the axes weren't optimal for my class I still crafted them too because they looked cool. They were really long to make but I was happy progressing on them.
Daily quests are one thing Blizz has constantly improved over time. Questing in BFA is as fun as it’s ever been, with TBC being brutal, repetitive grinding. I got Revered with Mechagon and was still discovering new dailies to do and they were mostly creative and fun. Mechagon might be my favorite daily zone of all time. Edit: to be clear, not talking about the daily system. Just the quality of the daily quests themselves. Definitely more interesting and fun over time.
Thunder Isle was my favourite. Though, honestly I really, really liked Wrath's dailies for the most part too, though I think that's to do with Wrath's environments more than anything else, who knows. I kinda wish they'd have more confidence in their content and just make it "hey, look here's a cool mount you can work towards" rather than "do this set of dailies, or you'll be shit at end game". I kinda wish we' could go back to dailies being a genuine way of making decent, albeit not insane amounts of gold... And having more vanity items attached to them. People go mad for cool toys and mounts, so why not use that as the carrot to get people to engage with world content, rather than attaching almost every aspect of the game to player power in some way.
I'd probably say my favourite daily quest hub was The Molten Front. The Timeless Isle was really good for alts, I remember exploring the island for chests/rares with a friend for gear and we had a blast. The scary elites at the top was a danger zone. I feel like they need to make reputations less of a requirement, make some fun reputations with rewards that people can aim for that aren't power focused. I really enjoyed Order of the Cloud Serpent in MoP and The Anglers felt good to get the Water Strider.
Agreed tbh. I absolutely adored the firelands dailies and the thunder isle (going back to it at least as I missed it's release). Timeless isle was enjoyable, but only because I was returning to the game and there was loads of upgrades from TI. If I already outgeared it, I'm not sure how much fun I'd have.
I mainly only did them in TBC and Wrath so I would say I had a lot of fun grinding Sha'tari Skyguard rep for the Nether Ray (except the damn birds in Skettis). The Time-Lost Figurine is one of my favorite trinkets in game and it was worth going through the effort to do it. Plus I was a Paladin so I could go Protection and pull huge. The dailies in Wrath weren't that bad although I went sort of alt crazy at that time so doing it for multiple characters likely burned me out toward that sort of thing.
For me because I am basically a Wrath baby and love the idea of being a knight/ champion the ToC dailies, especially the jousting ones were my favorite zone specific daily hub. Now I think my favorite expansion for daily content was MoP with the Thunder Isle being my favorite part of the expansion.
I loved Timeless Isle for several reasons: 1) Rolo's Riddle. God I loved this thing. It was so short and unimportant and yet I had so much fun doing it. For me the most fun part of an open world game is... exploring the world. The envinronment is my gameplay. You need to figure out how to get from point A to point B and you are rewarded for it. I loved it. 2) Then there was Ordos. I loved the idea that people with the cloak had access to a special area. And I loved it even more that I, as a casual who did not have the cloak COULD "cheat" the game and get to that area WITHOUT the cloak. With a Glider. Of course, if you entered the sanctum itself, you would get ported out but you could still get over the bridge and enter a "secret area" so to say which offered cooler rewards (the NPCs there offered more currency drops and were more crowded together). 3) The platforming puzzles! The lore quiz! The shit load of interactable objects and shrines which made the world feel alive. They added immersion, they added rewards for curiosity and exploration. 4) The mobs. Each family of mobs had its own specific abilities which you could memorize. If you see a tiger you know it will jump and stun you so you utilize that knowledge and dodge it. If you fight a Yaungol guy with a burning 2H weapon you know they do that Fire Cone attack so you definitely move to the side to dodge it or you die. They really managed to engage you in the combat. You had to put some effort to survive the isle. It was not a mindless grind. 5) The rep grind - it allowed you to get it in multiple ways. You want to grind your ass out? Go ahead and grind your face through a pile of mobs. You want to take it slower? Sure, just do the weekly quest. Or you could do both. And the reward - holy shit that Heavenly Gold Serpent it looked epic. 6) The SoO trinkets and set pieces were really fun. I loved the trinket that reduced the cooldown of multiple of your abilities by 30-40%. That was lots of fun as a WW Monk and a Ret Paladin. The sets were cool too. They really made my spec feel more enjoyable. 7) I loved the theme and the aesthetics of the zone. The green forests and ridges, the lakes and waterfalls, the serpents, the MUSIC HOLY SHIT THE MUSIC, the voice of Shao-hao and the Celestials. The story of the Timewalkers and Kairoz giving us hints about future events. 8) I loved how quickly you can get into it on your alts, you just hop in and start doing content and you get tokens to gear up and you could upgrade them with a currency. 9) I loved how people were calling out rares and the entire isle would gather to kill Huolon. I loved the amount of WPvP that was going around, despite me being the victim most of the times. 10) I loved the Celestial Tournament. It was new kind of content for pet battles and it offered unique pet rewards (models and abilities) which looked super cool and were themed after known characters (the Celestials). I was the first person to post a guide how to beat it (PTR) on Wowhead and it was my first time getting so many fucking upvotes there :D I felt useful! It was my favourite patch in this game honestly. It inspired such genuine love towards the game in me. The only other area/patch/content that I have enjoyed this much is 7.0 and Suramar. Suramar was truly brilliant. I hope the Maw is indeed like it (they compared the two during BlizzCon). That's all I want honestly. More stuff like Suramar and Timeless Isle. BTW how exactly did you fly to the 6.0 elite areas for the Apexis dailies if you got flying in 6.2 xD ?
I didn't experience the Thunder Isles as modern content and since have gone back and really enjoyed it, but my favorite was Isle of Quel'Danas because I was there when it first opened and helped unlocked the new buildings. Content where you see progression in what you are doing is the best to me and I wish Blizz would bring things like that back.
Daily quests and world quests aside, one thing I’d really like to see is incentive to do heroic dungeons and such (or even LFR) as a daily/weekly thing to do, for some currency like valor or justice. I play WoW because I like group content, and I want to spend my time doing things with people rather than doing soulless quests alone.
As it is now, heroic dungeon LFD and LFR are effectively dead content. The rewards you get from them are way worse and less important than the stuff you get from doing nazjatar or 8.3 dailies, which is solo content. That seems like a weird thing for an MMO.
Netherwing dailies and the faction in MOP that let me get a cloud serpent. Both of them had stories that expanded as I went through the daily's and they gave us a personal connection to our mounts. I still use my netherwing drake all the time.
In terms of best daily hub, for me it's either Isle of Quel'danas (partly because of nostalgia but like mentioned in the video I did like that you grabbed all dailies and went your circle and did them) and Isle of Thunder which just had everything - big zone with different areas with different feel to them, a scenario, the way you unlocked more of the island in stages and so on. A daily hub like Timeless Isle is OK to me but I'm a bit surprised how many people love it, considering usually those same people flame other daily zones that have come out since that are essentially the same as Timeless Isle - only in a different skin.
I only ever did world quests in Burning Crusade, Wrath and BFA. The isle of quel'danas was the best experience. I loved the aesthetic, the progression and the dungeon (never did that raid). My friends and I loved the look so much we raced to see who could get that sweet looking tabard first. We had people online right at the daily reset to get the REP first. Its a shame I never did end game content for daily quests in the other expacs. I only played at the tail end of pandaria...so I didn't get into the daily quests. I just remember getting destroyed in timeless isle and never went back. So I can't really count that one
Once I got in to doing the Argent Tournament I was totally addicted to it and forgot that the reason I started it was to earn Rep, I was a bit sad when I finished it. Now it's a must do for me for any new character I make. Thunder Island was the bomb, I would enjoy an entire expansion based on that alone. I never much cared for Cata, but I did like the questing in WOD at first, later not so much. I am pretty much a questaholic, I have done nearly every quest in the game for both horde and alliance. Not big on dungeons and raiding, but I'll go back and do those too just to see if I can solo them at a level close to what you would do them normally.
BC daily content all the way. Skettis dailies and Netherwing for the drake and mount speed are positive areas / things that stuck in my mind. Agree the farm in Mists was good too!
Agreed with most of it. Thunder Island was amazing, and still is. U can still go there to farm or get stuff, they even re-used some scenarios from there in legion.
I remember back in Wrath where you had those daily quests you could do for the Tuskaar and I think it was revered before you could buy the Kalu'ak Fishing Pole. That was great because like you said it was optional. Yeah, the Isle of Thunder was great because of all the different quests you could do, but dont get me wrong, Timeless Isle was fun. For Instance, when you got on your water strider or your raft and had to chase down the shark to get your kill for the day or everybody trying to get to a rare kill on the map when someone called it out. Imo, that was alot of fun
I did dailies in TBC for the gold so I could buy my epic flying. I did them in Wrath for the mount/Shoulder enchants. I did them in Firelands because my friends did them and they were fun. I did them in ToT because of the coins, Timeless because of it being current content. I did them in WoD because of the quest table and the mythic rewards. I did them in Legion because of the artifact skins. I do them in BFA because of the rep/neck but I enjoy doing them for visions. I prefer a system that I do not have to do that is not gated and the rewards are not required to progress either in pve or pvp. I still enjoy going back and doing Legion dailies for skin rewards.
This was a fun bit of nostalgia! Isle of Quel'Danas was the one I remember the most fondly, mainly because I was bored of Outland's weird space theme and wanted to get back to Azeroth 😄
I’ve not done timeless isle since mop but i remember enjoying the random elite spawning, the looting random chests and the fact that basically anyone in the isle was able to participate fighting the world bosses, i also remember seeing the good players being able to cross the bridge and also being decent in the world pvp And farming those coins. I kind of enjoyed seeing other people doing things that were not related to what i was doing. Like farming those frogs
I always look to Isle of Quel'Danas and Timeless Isle when I think of good daily quest design. See, Quel'Danas just had quick, easy quests. I never got tired of them. I was doing only Quel'Danas dailies since I had finished the other grinds by this point in the expansion, so going to one zone to do a handful of dailies that took maybe 10-20 minutes at most yielded nice rewards for my effort. It helps that I absolutely love the blood elf aesthetic (architecture, environment, etc.), which made me just want to be on the island in general. Looking back, it's fairly rudimentary, but I would argue that helps it, not hinders it. Timeless Isle was one of those zones where you could go to kill a whole day if you wanted to, in my opinion. You had 5 different world bosses (of course only 1 Celestial and 1 Ordos kill gave you loot per week, but still had 5 bosses), a TON of rares, some of which gave mounts (HUOLON UP), toys, and even that 300% experience buff potion, and the layout of the zone was really good. I mean *really* good. It was always a mad dash to get to the newest rare spawn. The island really lent itself to world PvP, whose revival and immediate return to death I still lament. The level of tears being shed in general chat on a daily basis is the stuff of legends; I so miss coining and the coin farmers. I never saw so many people threaten to report others simply for PvP. Plus, flying solo made the island pretty challenging. To me, Timeless Isle always made every day feel like a lazy Sunday more than it made me feel it was a place I had to go everyday to grind out more reputation for something I don't care about. It was another daily place where I never got tired of doing the activities. I, unfortunately, was not around for Isle of Thunder. As a matter of fact, I quit the day the patch came out. I was so burnt on MoP content at the time that when I had to do this boring scenario to even unlock the Isle, I was immediately turned off. In retrospect, of course, there was nothing wrong with the scenario, and I did it about 12 times in MoP, since the Isle of Thunder was the best place to get some quick honor every day for undergeared 90s, but at the time, it was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. But again, I did the Isle quite a bit when I came back, which was still in MoP some time before SoO, and I do absolutely love it. Obviously I think the rewards were stellar, and I can't even remember what the dailies there looked like--which is good! As Preach went through each patch's content, I was able to basically remember my daily routine and the handful of quests that I did most often, but on the Isle of Thunder, I just remember being in a different place doing different things every day, and finishing the whole thing off with that gauntlet. It surprises me how many times they've done dailies right because lately, it just seems like they forgot that the people who play this game every day by choice still want to have fun, and dailies nowadays are anything but that.
One thing I think you missed was that on the broken shore you got to put some of those daily rewards towards unlocking the mage tower/ other buildings. which was another way of player based unlocking on a schedule.
Mike, the biggest thing for me with the Timeless Isle was the community. There was always something going on somewhere, and it was all a cooperative experience. In a way, it was very much a precursor to the Legion pre-launch invasions. You could chill with your friends, kill shit, and get guaranteed decent gear. Combine that with a chill atmosphere and music, and it was the perfect place to zone out, bs with friends for a couple of hours, then go back to the "real world" and do dungeons or whatever.
Phasing came in Wrath, but it was used in questing so that the area changed based on where you were in a quest chain so it felt like you had an impact on the world. Until you decided to help a friend on a quest you'd done and couldn't because you were in different phases.
The only daily zone/WQ thing i enjoyed daily ever was Isle of Quel'Danas. In every zone/system since i disliked the areas the quest took part in. Because of that, ever since then i've barely got into any daily quests or Worldquest systems. Half hill farm in Pandaria is like the closest i ever get to doing it daily and that's partly because i liked just sitting there and taking in the ambiance of the place.
Me personaly i do like world quests most of the time i do them as chill acticity. Most of the times i do drink my cofee or lisen to some podcasts or youtube videos while doing them. But what i would like to see is some kind of evolving events like in guild wars or more event like activities in world.
Some more great thoughts for the future of WoW. I truly hope people at Blizzard are viewing these, taking it in and passing it through the development line. Key notes were definitely the progression of daily zones and optional nature of that content. I can't believe it didn't hit until now that all those memorable enjoyable daily quest content all came from progressed zones that brought players together naturally. Quel'danas, Isle of Thunder, and Firelands truly were the most enjoyable daily quest zones we have ever experienced.
I enjoyed sunwell Isle, I still go back there from time to time, after that there was scholizar basin which was fun for the dailies, then from there Isle of Thunder was deeply enjoyable. I would rank my favorite daily zones as IoT, sunwell, then basin.
I liked Scholazar Basin in Wrath. I got hooked by seeing a green proto drake, and found out it was a rare drop from an egg that you bought at excalted from one of the Scholazar factions. It took a few weeks of daily quests (20 mins I think) and then I just bought these eggs every 5th day and got a few pets and stuff before striking gold and getting the proto drake - and it was cool! Many of them were cool and rare and testified that the player had done achievements in HC dungeons or Ulduar, or got lucky with a time-lost proto drake spawn, but very few people used the green one. Perhaps because the faction in Scholazar didn’t offer anything of importance, only funny/cool fluff.
Hm...thinking over what my favorite repeatable content was over the years, I have to say the Argent Tournament (for the RP feels, as I'm a paladin main), Firelands (a little frustrating, but the quests were fun and the choice of paths was refreshing), Halfhill and the cooking quests (I ADORE cooking systems in games), *some* of the Garrison random dailies (like the archaeology questlines, I thought those were really cool), and the concept of Emissaries in general. I tended to do a bunch of dailies anyway just to complete them all and I was never concerned about power gains, but when I think back to the content I wish I could do fresh again, those are what come to mind.
for me it was all about tbc. Netherwing and Quel'Danas just have the most special place in my heart, and I will still grind out magisters terrace for the shattered sun tabard and title and other rep rewards
I loved Isle of quell danas, I was working on my epic flying mount, killing some allies on the way and then hc mgt for my friends tanking trinket. The progression gating made several top guilds to move out of our server though... That actually ruined our realm. Enjoyed thunder Isle and farm aswell.
What made Timeless Isles fantabulous to me, was ‘group’ dailies. The area was so small and so many players were running around that different players would fall in together to finish a daily together, instead of fighting each other for the same mobs. It was simply fantastic, feel do I. Of course, the content itself was very simple but that was by design. If it had more and different content, less people would encounter each other. However, I still go to the Sunwell Iisle to do dailies every once in a while, it is still fun.. to bad it is impossible to solo the Sunwell.
Timeless isle was sort of fun to explore, once everything was known it became less fun. I really enjoyed the argent tournament though, I remember spending a fair amount of one summer getting all the factions completed and getting their rep maxed (this was the vanilla city rep too, back when previous expansion rep could still actually matter).
Oondasta came out at the same time as Isle of Thunder tho. The world boss(es) in 5.4 was the August Celestials and Ordos ( the big fire wannabe tauren who required you to have the legendary cloak in order to access )
Oh god he actualy did them all what a trooper
Quarantine hits us all differently
Did them all and doesnt even remember anything.
Absolute madlad
Pure masochism.
Specially WoD🤢 Imagine having to do that without the power creep from later expansions. Remember starting those fucking Apexus dailies with leveling greens and realizing how slow filling up the bar was. I get an anxiety attack even thinking about it.🥺
Suramar was my favourite tbh. Progressing towards Nighthold was great and the area, city, the daily quests etc was so much fun. When ppl say Legion, I think about suramar.
Edit: Also progressing your army in the army training quest was great too! That was the thing that inspired the Vision progress systems i guess
Tuf I hated Suramar, trying to finish that quest line and get flying was the most painful thing I ever did
Suramar progression was GREAT. Second best after WoD entry quest :)
@@szaka9395, WoD entry quest. Ok.
Suramar looks nice, it has nice lore, but I just hated that zone, as last zone needed for flying I just felt forced into doing it, and it took damn ages to do everything.
@@greatiusiterfector4519, definitely the best looking one. For me the questing felt bland, slow and somewhat obscure.
Preach, I just want to take a moment to thank you for everything you're doing. People with a voice in the community such as yourself are doing great work in vocalizing what many in the community are feeling, hopefully Blizzard are taking your feedback into consideration when developing Shadowlands.
9TailsPro they’re not.
Graves proof? Alpha’s not even out yet.
"hopefully Blizzard are taking your feedback into consideration when developing Shadowlands"
Well if BFA and the Azerite system is any sort of indicator of how Shadowlands will be in regards to taking in feedback and making decisions off it then we are screwed. Preach was warning of the issues with the Azerite system long before the release of BFA but it didn't seem to really change much. In fact, the issues stayed in the game for a long time AFTER the launch of BFA.
@@Tigerycat "its just alpha, betas not even out yet..." "its just beta, wait until the expansion launches..." "guys its only the last patch of the expansion, wait until the next one...". Like clockwork.
michaelscottpapercompany that doesn’t make any sense though.Just because it happened in BFA doesn’t mean it’s going to happen in Shadowlands. I understand the scepticism but honestly it’s not fair to judge a game that’s not even in alpha yet. We don’t even have solid proof that Shadowlands is going to have the same problems BFA has; we don’t have access to the classes or anything - if anything, the covenants look more like the artifact system in legion+class halls. What they have given us reassurance for is the return of PVP vendors and the “unpruning”, which again, I understand the scepticism but it’s not even testable right now.
The thing that's missing from this is Blizzards continuous over reaction and over correction for these things.
People thought Argent Tournament was annoying to do, so they removed everything to do outside raids in Cata, so people complained there was nothing to do, so they added loads of stuff in MoP, so people complained there was too much to do etc, etc, etc
Yeah I gotta give blizzard some credit atleast. It's very very hard to satisfy people. Everyone complains continuously about things that there are or aren't
Bipolar over-compensation has been the bane of Blizz's design for sooo long it is just sad.
Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. It is painfully obvious that people at Blizzard do not play their own game. It's been over a decade and they still don't understand what people like in their game. They just pick some random complaint each patch and lurch blindly in one direction.
Take invasions. At the end of WoD there were fucking demons falling out of the sky and smashing shit. That was epic as hell and a great way to level up your characters, and then we didn't get to enjoy invasions again for what, 2 years? Not until the end of Legion that is.
@@jacobwiren8142 They added legion invasions in 7.2, less than 6 months after legion launched. And we've had some iteration of them in almost every patch since. 7.3 has invasion portals in argus. 8.1 had faction incursions. 8.2 had minor invasion events in nazjatar. 8.3 was almost completely about n'zoth invasions of various kinds.
6 months to recognize how much the community loved a new type of event and integrate it into their game design going forward is pretty solid turnaround time.
Perfect comment.
Oondasta and the Isle of giants came with 5.2 tho, so that's just another point towards Isle of Thunder, not Timeless Isle.
Yeah its super bants that his complement for the Timeless Isle is another plus for 5.2
Fuck 5.2 was so good.
There's a reason people dont reference 5.2 as prime content often.
Its because we didnt play. The launch sucked so we left, even people who maintained their sub often were inactive and when we came back Timeless isle was such an incredible step up from the beginning of the expansion that we all lauded it heavily. 5.2 remains a hidden gem, in a way.
Boo Radley this 100% I was “lucky” (no idea if that is the correct word here but whatever) to have stuck around for 5.2 and what a marvel, all of my friends who quit though never mention it when bringing up mists though they always reference the timeless isle. 5.2 was on an entirely different plane of wow content that we hadn’t seen, nor have seen again for years.
I just had flashbacks of wiping over and over again on Oondasta because of people pulling and grouping up poorly.
@@booradley6832 That's how I am with 5.3(? 5.2.5?) , I have no idea about what happened with all the stuff in the Barrens.
Halfhill was my #1 daily content. I loved that place so much, sitting around there when it started raining...my shaman still has HS set there.
Can't upvote this comment enough! :3
Only thing I can remember that was more fun, was doing the dailies to farm the white polar bear mount back in Wotlk.
@@Gravewhisper I hated the Hyldnir dailies so much haha, but I got super lucky and got the mount in my first cache and just only bothered at a very minor level after that :D
The best dailies/wq are the ones that are optional for mounts/titles or even gold.
El Kehrer the only “daily” should be in the game is daily dungeon quest, like the mythic dungeon week quest.
Tune it down to 0/1 mythic dungeon cleared every day, add fun instance quests that require collaboration.You get more interaction between players
THIS! I don't mind grinding reputation for mounts, pets, whatever... optional stuff that I decide I want to have, or for the sake of completion, but it should always be optional.
@@raphael2407 Agreed but you can't please everyone. Soon as they do that an army of casual LFRS will appear and whine that there aren't "Meaningful" rewards from the dailys. This is the real issue with Wow and blizzard. They try to cater to everyone at all times, and their game suffer for it. They are afraid to just take a stand like in the past and say "This is the way it is".
I guess that's the difference between running a money farm and running an mmo.
Wasnt wod the first expansion where you got flying with pathfinder only after tanan jungle got released so those apexis crystals areas were worse until late in expansion
It was.
His longterm memory isn't the best when it comes to certain other things:
Wrath already had several factions with tabards (because these didn't have dailies).
Broken Shore was the same mess as Argus when it came to Nethershards. He forgot about those since the gear vendor got removed.
@@Nightstalker314 >brings up people don't remember a lot
>forgets a lot
>forgets *Suramar*!
Love you Mike
@@Loomx5 Never forget my beloved Suramar, I personally never classed it as a daily/wq hub in comparison to the ones mentioned. The actual hard part about this was the many areas have had a lot of their content changed or flat out removed over the years for various reasons. Many of the articles also update and change to be more current.
RE the Broken Shore tho. It wasn't as good as the PTR but i still never actually minded it. Part of that may be I never used it as a gear catchup due to my other activities.
I enjoyed the nethershard grinds tbh. Mass murdering stuff with a chance to summon a mini boss on which you can go ham was cool. They also dropped nice mini flavor items that dropped a lot of materials if I'm not mistaken. There was also this goblin in the hidden cave with the random items that was a nice callback to the timeless isle one, but better.
Mists had a few too many, but the systems were the best. Halfhill and the Shado-pan should be a template for future content: Breaking up the dailies with actual story progression and boosts for alts. Always focussing on 1 area with multiple quests and progressing rep unlocks new areas so that you don't grow too weary of the old ones. The Bodyguard system in Naz has it's origins in the Shadopan system and how you gained rep with the individual bodyguards. Many people often talk about the Molten Front, but many of the MoP dailies feel like a more developed version of those.
Also helps shado-pan gave my favorite ground mount that I still use whenever possible.
There is an argument to be made about how MoP dailies are eerily similar to the amount of world quests one may end up completing in a day.
There was also the rep from krasarang (the faction one) and isle of thunder that unlocked through time which also unlocked the main questline.
It was a pretty good system imo, and the daily quests were on rotation so you didn't do the same everyday
TL;DR: My ultimate point is, though there was a lot, a lot of dailies in MoP, and there is a lot, a lot of dailies in BFA, the two expansions' systems that affect players' interactions with those dailies are very different.
Before I say anything else, admittedly I am a MoP fanboy, though I started playing in late BC.
I think an important thing of note here is, how many of those daily quests did you HAVE to do, even after you got exalted? Did you feel an obligation to do them beyond the mounts/pets, profession formulas, and-if memory serves- some pieces that could be bought with valor, which were locked behind rep? Was there a form of power progression available that gave you a slight increase in power the more time you put into? One with high diminishing returns? One which could be obtained through daily quests, so you felt you still had to do them, because of how easy they were?
Once the rep was done, it was done. You could get your WEEKLY valor cap-more quickly and efficiently even- elsewhere, as opposed to the amount of valor you could acquire in a given day or week being determined by how much stuff you were willing to do. And then gold was the main reason for doing the daily quests.
There was an end to the daily grind. It was possible to feel like you no longer needed to do them. And each week, there was an end to the things you felt obligated to do for valor. You could fill the bar up at your own pace. You could knock it all out in a day or two if you so desired, and also get a sizeable chunk from doing a challenge mode dungeon. Or you could spread it out over the week, with the first dungeon/scenario completion of the day rewarding extra valor to support that. And anywhere in between. Whatever suited your style of play, or fit best with your life's schedule/demands on any given week. It was flexible. And, to restate my previous point, there was an end to it each week.
Oh, and I almost forgot. Getting valor cap on one toon also increased your valor gains on other toons for the rest of that week. And later on, repping up on alts, and revered-exhaled was made easier by items you could buy from vendors at revered that gave a permanent, account wide 100% rep bonus for that faction, plus a daily dungeon completion rep bonus for a chosen rep. And there was the farm work orders for extra rep, but who remember that?
MoP dailies were bad. Way to many of them and don't forget all the awful scenarios
"seduce a male bull to have sex with the female bull"
Preach, do you know what a bull is?
It's 2020 mate. A bull can be whatever gender it wants to be!
@@nicklasjensen9043 Try telling a bull that. He'll give you the horn.
You probably point out when people say ATM machine too don't you?
@@nicklasjensen9043 Run for your lives. Contrapoints fan base has invaded!
@@nicklasjensen9043 Transphobe joke getting upvoted. Stay classy WoW community.
MoP was the expansion when I enjoyed raiding the most, ToT was epic.
Cataclysm and MoP haven't gotten nearly enough credit. But now, with this video and Bellular's recent class design vid, maybe people will finally realize that "lul pandas" was actually the golden age of the game.
@@Imprez888 Yeah, I loved how you actually had to try in Cata dungeons. MoP was easier, but keep in mind that they introduced Challenge Mode dungeons then.
Yup! And challenge modes with just achieving gold was fun as hell, with competitiveness for time added later. Loved them!
@@Spyger9 firelands is one of the most epic raids in WoW. Nothing actually comes close to the epicness of heroic ragnaros.
@@Spyger9 MoP was crap until 5.3, First Tier of raids were garbage, dungeons for the first and last time were absolute garbage, the daily quests went overboard and were so annoying, the Isle of Thunder and Timeless Isle were so crappy and repetitive...
And MoP was the first expansion where the game truly became a patch-based game, instead of an expansion based game. You had literally 0 reasons to any tier other than the current one. This is why in the future they added powerful trinkets that are hard to get so that people do the older Tiers, but that's a crappy solution. WotLK and Cata still had good reasons for you to do at the very least one raid Tier before the current raid Tier, in Cata all the Tiers were done actually, in WotLK, the worst raid of all time, Trial of the Crusader kinda removed any need to do Ulduar let alone Naxx.
The class design in MoP flopped so hard after Tier 2(ToT), plus the CC hell in PVP, coming in from the excellence of Cata's class design, WoD brought it back up to Cata levels of good, but different.
ToT and SoO were excellent, two of the best raids of all time, Monks are an amazing class and the Pandaren are awesome for finally making an appearance and being a shared/neutral race. The 85-90 leveling in Pandaria was the best leveling since TBC, WoD 90-100 eclipsed both of them.
I’d forgotten just how much I loved MoP dailies. Thunder Isle was freaking awesome!
I did really like halfhill. I’m big into old kung fu movies so MoP in general for me was great. Plus avatar was broken af
My personal favorite is the Argent Tournament because I went there when it was being created at the end of Ulduar. Helping out that place and it turning into a fun place with good quests that weren't mandotory but optional. For mounts, pets, toys of which I still don't have all... Mostly because the area is stupid far away from Dalaran...
It brought some nice story quests into the game that told us to go to old zones And then they even expanded on the quests with some more quests with the Northsea.
But greatest of all: We built a dungeon and raid as prep for the Story Finale vs the Lich King. Amazing work overall and my #1.
Looking back Timeless isle was amazing because it was just a chill zone where you and your friends / guild mates could mess around. That's why I remember it so fondly, not because of the daily quest system.
I remember that mobs there did a lot more damage then any other place, you were always seeing people running around also people were always chatting or calling out rares.
No suramar mentioned sad times preach that was super fun tiered unlock
I had a lot of fun in Suramar, challenging, purposeful and gave a sense of accomplishment. :)
Suramar was quality content. That they were too dumb to replicate. Typical Blizzard.
He just said in a previous comment that he didn't mention it because he didn't think of it as daily content although he did like it.
That's what is called a quest chain.
Surumar was a story first and daily hub second.
Great content preach my dude, this is the stuff you do that I enjoy the most, even though I dont agree with you on everything (isle of thunder I do agree with, but I was one of those nerds that liked the timeless isle)
I never actually did the frog farm for coins on Timeless isle, but I still loved it. I remember joining a raid group and just circling around hunting for rares each day. Plus you could get all those crazy buffs from items and shrines that made world pvp interesting, and there was lots of world pvp going on. I remember when people realized you could ride the seagull to Huolong's bridge and then aggro him from up top so others couldn't attack him. That was also when they added that ordos sigil thing that you could use to become hostile to all players and there was a title for getting kills with it. I thought it was a cool prestige thing that only people with the legendary cape could jump the broken bridge to kill the stronger world boss. Then there was that dude that let you gamble your coins as well. I never cared for the Emperor rep grind, but I know many people did that for the mount as well.
All that said, Isle of Thunder was also great.
Id mostly zoned out during this patch, still played but didnt take anything seriously, but it felt.. fun? Run around and do goofy shit, it was so good
The last time that I can remember actually enjoying Daily Quests was in MoP, and I guess that's because of a couple of reasons: there were decent enough items gated behind the associated factions (Water Strider, for example, but also Mounts, vanity items, and recipes for crafting professions); but also I felt some sense of daily or weekly progression (my farm expanded over time, I learned more about the Klaxxi and who they actually served, I got to 'Hang Around with the Shado-Pan' and use all of their unique abilities, etc). Nothing since then has ever felt as good to me, personally.
Timeless isle was more cozy, more quirky things like gambling with a monkey in a cave for more coins etc. Hitting a seagull to get grabbed and then you would have to kill the seagull to land ontop of a mountain and kill some random elemental. ALE ELEMENTALS. Underground caverns filled with secrets?!? J u m p i n g p u z z l e s. Random world bosses that allowed everyone to join in no matter what. Screaming in general "I GOT THE ITEM TO SPAWN THE BOSS" just to create a 20 man group to fuck up a pirate ship. And the world pvp was just UUUGH, yes. The bloody coin grind was SO, FUCKING, FUN.
The Thundering isle was amazing, it held up great, amazing story, cool zone, great mechanics to catch up, nice rep, overall just a great place. But Timeless isle was like, an engame hub. Here you had completed the game, everything was kind of relaxing, here you can fish for a turtle, do world bosses, all the npcs throughout questing in MoP were there. World bosses spawned randomly, daily quests, hidden chests, gambling, SO MANY SECRETS, and just such a peaceful and nice little isle packed with so much to do. Thundering Isle was amazing, but Timeless Isle was an amazing place to be in, just cozy.
All and all, they are better together. That being said, timeless isle benefits much more from the AMAZING class design in mop when compared to the current shit show where none of the classes are actually fun to grind with on their own Thundering isle doesn't need classes to be fun to be amazing though.
side note: fill the bar zones pre tanaan jungle was fun as hell. Fill the bar was meh but the actual stuff in those zones were amazing and i miss doing fill the bar there instead of the shitty fill the bars we have now.
I completely agree! It was cozy and wholesome which was just what we needed at the end of MoP for the month content drought before WoD.
I wouldnt have been able to handle the dark and gloomy isle of thunder for 13 months
I think the core abilities in MoP were great. I didn’t like that as a Destro lock, I couldn’t cast shadowbolt anymore. I like the shadow/flame aesthetic. But the fact I had 3 dps cd’s 4 absorbs and 4 ways to heal was too much utility. Wrath was great for class design because you still needed the help from other classes to survive. Not in MoP. But I would take all of MoP designs over anything after it.
@@Metrognome110 i respectfully disagree. They added in the description of a destro warlock in MoP that *it is much closer to a fire mage than a warlock in the way it uses its fiery destructive magic*
Which I loved. I also loved burning embers in MoP and how when we had 3+ embers our character was LITERALLY on fire. That was sooo fucking cool.
And i loved all the utility. Imo MoP class was best. Pvp was a BLAST. Thanks to all the utility, every single spec had a massive skill cap. And i loved that almost every spec could counter any other spec in the game if played correctly. It made for some insane 1v1 matches and like I said it was a blast learning and seeing how much more powerful the specs got when played to their fullest potential.
Ive mained a warlock since MoP. But at the end of MoP during the content drought I literally boosted a mage, shaman, and druid strictly to pvp on them because classes were so dam fun back then.
Ive played since vanilla but Only played a warrior from vanilla-mid cataclysm so I dont know what locks or any other classes were like in the early days
Exactly. The appeal of the Timeless Isle was that I just enjoyed chilling there. Even if I wasn't actively progressing towards a goal, I spent more time just hanging around there than any daily zone before or since. And there was always SOMETHING going on if you wished to engage with it. Camping Huolon. Grinding some Shaohao rep. Farming some coins or alt gear. Using the Censer to become public enemy number one. Soloing the Celestials just for fun. Waiting for the pirate ship. Chasing around after rares thanks to that handy addon that announced them in chat. And all in an inviting atmosphere with beautiful scenery, rather than some gloomy, oppressive, dark little zone packed to the brim with mobs that's no fun to be in.
Mate. That background music made me wanna play Bastion again. Good video too!
Sunreaver and Thundering Isle were my favorite. Their structure was just very intuitive and sold the narrative of the story well.
I enjoyed Timeless Isle exclusively due to the difficulty of the Elite mobs there. It was less so about the rewards. During my downtime I'd farm the elites for various drops, extra gear tokens to disenchant, and to just practice. Killing High Priests of Ordos solo was pretty difficult depending on your class. MoP can be remembered as the only expansion with rare/elite world mobs who had threatening abilities. Even in 5.4 gear the Klaxxi rares bladestorm could kill you in a few seconds.
It's true, TI rares would murder you and even elite mobs were hard. These days everything tends to be tuned completely idiot-proof.
I'm maybe alone on this one, but cataclysm was my favourite expansion, because of one single feature ( two if you count the playable goblins ) , and it is the molten front daily zone. It was so good, it's a shame i didn't play MoP, because it seems like i missed on the evolution of the molten front, which was the thunder isle.
Molten front was really good
Timeless Isle was beloved by a lot of people because of the PVP buffs and basically you created your own content if you spent days out there. The shell you put on your head to not be attacked by the guards at closer distances, shrine buffs, random healing foods laying about. Great world PVP time. Especially with the Censure of Agony so you could sacrifice people of any faction to Ordos to get a currency for some fun rewards. The censure made a comeback in 8.3 actually which replaced the previous alliance slayer quest.
When it comes to MoP, I remember the Tillers rep being great for cooking. The best way to get mats for raid food was the farm you upgraded aswell as the tillers rep.
I also remember getting the skill to ride cloud serpents was also a lot of fun as you get dailies tied to your own serpent which evolve as that serpent gets older.
Holy crap I'm getting nostalgia kicks as I also remember the dailies tied to the krasarang landings from 5.1 where doing the dailies made you progress through a linear story with your faction leaders.
The anglers rep wasn't really that fun to grind, but I do remember those being the key to get water striders to finally walk on water
I just find it really hard to hold out any kind of hope. The last half a decade has shown that the Dev team wants to micro-manage exactly how you interact with the game, and they are *relentless* in their obsessive need to make sure you do exactly what they want, exactly how they want you to do it, and exactly when they want it done. I don't see them moving back toward allowing players to simply have fun and enjoy the game at their own pace, in their own way.
Wouldn't want you to have fun the wrong way, now would we?
Probably old devs moved on or got replaced and these youngsters have that participation trophy socialist mindset. At the end of the day we customers have a choice not to pay.
You don't understand dude. The PROFESSIONAL WoW players are all hard at work competing for world first, and they compose 0.01% of the paying customers. That means we have to balance EVERYTHING AROUND THEM because 0.01% is DEFINITELY THE MAJORITY OF PAYING CUSTOMERS.
@@jacobwiren8142 Not exactly sure where you're coming from, but balancing the game around endgame progression, for example by giving every access to every ability, but theming them cosmetically around the covenant that you are in, would allow *everyone* to make engage with the game and the system in whatever way they want. More content for everyone that just so happens to make endgame progression less of a hassle for those players who chose to engage in competitive play isn't a bad thing.
I don't know whether you're serious or joking, but no one is suggesting that you should have anything *taken away* so that "elite players" can do their thing. On the contrary, what is being suggested is that every player at every level should be allowed to make choices that make sense to them, rather than have Blizzard put the game on autopilot.
@@Rakinjo2 I was being heavily sarcastic, and I was not referring to ability pruning. I was referring to the normalization of damage to make every dps spec "competitive".
Isle of quel'danas had the best daily quests and progression.
It had the best world pvp experiences for me. I loved being on the opposite factions instant hit list.
I've been watniing to go back to MoP style content since the expansion ended. Such a good expansion in comparison to the more recent ones.
I think Legion was the most fun I ever had in WoW, even though I main paladin, which did not have much going on past Crusade. And for years, I've hated MoP because of the incredible amount of dailies. I couldn't stand it at the time. But ever since WoD, I've said I wanted dailies back. I never wanted them gone.
And the farm has always been one of my favourite pieces of content. I did not mind the garrison (I just didn't play instead of afk'ing at the garrison), but it wasn't the farm. The order halls were not the farm. The farm was the closest I ever felt to having my own little piece of Azeroth.
Ihope somebody will comment on this, even though its not related to this particulair subject.
On the subject of keeping gear fun relevant:
In my opinion gear should provide the following things to keep it fun:
>Notable power increase in the current content//so clearing content over and over becomes easier over time.
>Gives effect to skills and alters your play style//so it keeps the gameplay fresh
>Looks cool//so you want it for the transmog
>Some open world utility effect/cosmetic effect.//so you want to collect it even tho it might be a tad irrelevent
How can Blizzard do this? well in my opinion the easiest way to do this is to not make gear irrelevent as soon as the next update hits. what if farming an older raid is easier with the gear from the newest raid yet the gear that drops still makes that particulair raid easier?
>Make gear zone/raid specific.
Give gear bonusses in particulair enviroments. what if in shadowlands a set drops for zone X that allows one player to open a bonus boss room when he has the fll set, a bonus boss that might drop a mount.
What if in zone Y if three [players farmed this particulair item they can form a traingle to summon a valkry when they dealt X amount of dps/healing. yet in zone X this gear would just be a minor stat boost without the cool effect(like +10intellect)
Or when you wear this set you farmed in zone A your moonfire places a rotating laser on the gound, ridiculiously OP yet when it can only happen in this zone with that zone specific set Blizzard can easily build the zone around the set buffs.
What if crafting engineering gear sets allows you to craft a ironman suit, something disabled in dungeons but it allows flying without mounting in zone X and instant mining.
Furthermore if they want to make gear more relevant make it interactive! look at a game like FTL where you can boost certain aspects of your ships ie guns/shield engine based on what you feel is needed. what if you can alter the boost your gear gives? it would make gear way more interactive and allows you to farm diffrent effects while preventing stacking.
What if i farmed a set for zone X which would allow me to boost me defense to give me some effect that makes casting corruption applies a shock barier around me? or when i switch my points into mobility my charge becomes extra powerfull and allows me to ping pong between 3 targets? what if it allows me to teleport short distances in the open world when i put all my points into mobility?
i guess the idea is pretty clear. im really wondering what people think of this idea since i feel like it would keep gear really fun and altho you cant transfer pve/pvp effects over from content to content it would give you something noticebal to farm which can make you particulairly strong in one area while not being tottally irrelevant due it still being a small stat boost aswell.
Mop 5,4 was my fav to play
Thx, Preach, I've missed these type of videos. :)
Have a good one.
Engagement metrics > all! Just say "fun" is the primary concern in Q&As and interviews, but you need to make sure the engagement metrics are good for the content you designed, or else.
I thoroughly enjoy your music choice in the background
As someone who came in to MoP the last month before WoD launched, I really enjoyed Timeless Island. Was it grindy? Yes. Was it fun? Heck yes. The hunt for rares, treasure hunting, and mob grinding were enjoyable because of the way you had to plan your grinding routes and time that with the intense competition over spawn points. It also helped that the mobs were genuinely threatening with abilities that could kill you if you weren't careful. The content was great for social interaction and coordinating a group to farm Shaohao/frogs/etc. while dealing with Horde were really fun.
Heck, even grinding Shaohao rep was fun, although in a more of a masochistic way. Because I came in so late I wanted to finish the rep grind for that awesome golden serpent dragon mount (still one of my favourites), I sat down and grinded for two weeks straight all the way to Exalted. It was a pain, but the fact that I was allowed to grind out my rep in my own time at my own pace and feel like I was done with it felt genuinely satisfying.
Also, the reward structure was great. Even if I didn't get the chance to do a lot of progression in MoP, the progression system felt great with those Timeless Coins.
If there is one thing that did frustrate me about the zone it was the drop rates of the Huolon mount. 1/100 chance of dropping with an hour long timer while having to deal with shard hopping and competing groups and the enemy faction were frustrating. It took me 60-70 tries before it finally dropped. Luckily I had other things to occupy myself with on the island to make the waiting far less frustrating, but it's certainly one of the low points of an otherwise great piece of content. I was so disappointed when WoD failed to live up to then fun outdoor content that Timeless Island provided.
My favourite daily zone was Quel’danas, which I stumbled upon accidentally after starting the game in WotLK. I just loved the look of the island, the look of the reward gear & tabard, and how everything was contained together in (mostly) the one isle save for the part where you teleport to Hellfire Peninsula.
And having the dungeon and raid there on the isle, I’d give a shot at solo’ing them at 80 on my prot pally just because it looked cool and was right there
I love this kind of content. There's so much to talk about how Blizzard has handled various forms of content and so few content creators are willing to tackle the nuances. Keep up the great work!
Mike honestly you are the best content creator out there and after all these years following you i still cant get enough. Its your sense of humour your intellect your dedication but most of all you kept you being you never pretending. A Friend from Greece.
Best quests designs and things to do - MoP! Loved those farming quests, klaxxi, getting stuff from different factions, just like you said. And then that coin system about which I forgot was epic as well. Overall best WoW experience, even if done without most buddies which were with me in wotlk/cata. It says a lot - if you as a character can have fun on your own in the world and there is plenty for you to do - that's good design! Thanks Preach!
MoP with the current base systems would be perfection
M+ in place of CM
WQ emissaries over dailies
Flex and mythic raiding from the beginning
My opinion anyway
zantheus perfect.
I'm all about variety and progression. Different scenery, different and sometimes quirky things to do, unlocking new quests and things as you go. MoP had that in spades, from the initial daily quests all the way to Timeless Isle, it was all different and fun in its own way. Farming, exploring, story, puzzles, training a dragon, collecting, hunting rares, and just doing goofy things like riding around on a seagull or turning into a saurok. It also helped that class design in MoP was excellent so I really didn't mind grinding mobs.
Looking back on Timeless Isle (I definitely spent more time there than anywhere else), I can see how it'd be boring but I remember having fun. It was like a playground, lots of neat little things strewn around. Mostly mob grinding but I loved playing all the classes then and it was at the end of the expansion when everyone was most powerful which makes grinding more fun as well. It was cool how you worked your way up and around as you got stronger, and there were plenty of fixed one-time chests that gave new characters a nice boost. Isle of Thunder definitely had more... action? To me it felt cramped and like getting around was a bit of a chore. The vault scenario was fantastic. Idk, I liked them both and I liked the quest hubs even more for the variety if nothing else.
When I first unlocked world quests, I was sent to do an exact copy of a quest I did while leveling. Kill a few things, click on a few objects, repeat ad infinitum. That was just the worst feeling, like getting to the end game meant nothing because it's only going to be the same quests forever. There were some unique ones thrown in but the majority of it was just copy/pasted quests spread willy nilly around the world with no feeling of impact, doing the same tasks over and over with different coats of paint. Reputation is all the same, each faction no longer has an identity other than the zone they happen to be in. I don't think I could really tell you what the BfA factions are about but I distinctly remember panda ninjas and crazy war-obsessed bug people and farmers and the tiger arena and so on. Good times.
Since WoD I feel like Blizz has been thinking more about what's easier for them to make as opposed to more fun for the players, how can they get the most out of the same content and structures. Why put effort into making this faction unique when some people are going to skip it or hate feeling forced to do it so just make everything the same with only a little splash of something interesting here and there. Maybe I'm just too cynical now. That could be it.
PvP on the Timeless isle is prob one of my best memories from WOW, getting that 2000 kills on fellow alliance solo on rogue was beyond fun!
This is a fantastic and much needed video, Preach. Especially for Legion baby like me. Great content.
Love to hear that Bastion soundtrack in the background, "Build that Wall" is a great track!
love this content preach!
Isle of Quel'Danas, followed by Broken Isles & Isle of Thunder. Before the video I would have said broken Isles first but this helped me consider what I would like to see moving foward.
Firelands were my favourite hands down. Like you said, the way the zone and everything in it progressed with you was just so satisfying, and made it feel like I was making a difference. Also it helps that it was a pretty cool zone (even if it was a bit much on the orangey side)
Thank you, Preach! I thought I was the only person in the world that thought the Timeless Isle was terrible. I hated that damn place. Blizzard keeps trying to remake the Timeless Isle and I just don't understand why.
my favourite WQ/daily zone was wintergrasp, I just enjoyed it the most, not specifically because of the dailies that were there, but the dailies were a part of everything that was going on there, but I can't give you a complete answer as to why, but I enjoyed that the most vs anything that has ever existed (if we're talking about WQs/Dailies)
Yes, Firelands dailies were so good. I have that Flameward Hippogryph mount still today ;)
Thing I loved about Thunder Isle was the Blacksmithing system with the upgradable weapons. Even if the axes weren't optimal for my class I still crafted them too because they looked cool. They were really long to make but I was happy progressing on them.
Daily quests are one thing Blizz has constantly improved over time. Questing in BFA is as fun as it’s ever been, with TBC being brutal, repetitive grinding.
I got Revered with Mechagon and was still discovering new dailies to do and they were mostly creative and fun. Mechagon might be my favorite daily zone of all time.
Edit: to be clear, not talking about the daily system. Just the quality of the daily quests themselves. Definitely more interesting and fun over time.
Thunder Isle was my favourite. Though, honestly I really, really liked Wrath's dailies for the most part too, though I think that's to do with Wrath's environments more than anything else, who knows. I kinda wish they'd have more confidence in their content and just make it "hey, look here's a cool mount you can work towards" rather than "do this set of dailies, or you'll be shit at end game".
I kinda wish we' could go back to dailies being a genuine way of making decent, albeit not insane amounts of gold... And having more vanity items attached to them. People go mad for cool toys and mounts, so why not use that as the carrot to get people to engage with world content, rather than attaching almost every aspect of the game to player power in some way.
I'd probably say my favourite daily quest hub was The Molten Front. The Timeless Isle was really good for alts, I remember exploring the island for chests/rares with a friend for gear and we had a blast. The scary elites at the top was a danger zone.
I feel like they need to make reputations less of a requirement, make some fun reputations with rewards that people can aim for that aren't power focused. I really enjoyed Order of the Cloud Serpent in MoP and The Anglers felt good to get the Water Strider.
Agreed tbh. I absolutely adored the firelands dailies and the thunder isle (going back to it at least as I missed it's release). Timeless isle was enjoyable, but only because I was returning to the game and there was loads of upgrades from TI. If I already outgeared it, I'm not sure how much fun I'd have.
I mainly only did them in TBC and Wrath so I would say I had a lot of fun grinding Sha'tari Skyguard rep for the Nether Ray (except the damn birds in Skettis). The Time-Lost Figurine is one of my favorite trinkets in game and it was worth going through the effort to do it. Plus I was a Paladin so I could go Protection and pull huge. The dailies in Wrath weren't that bad although I went sort of alt crazy at that time so doing it for multiple characters likely burned me out toward that sort of thing.
For me because I am basically a Wrath baby and love the idea of being a knight/ champion the ToC dailies, especially the jousting ones were my favorite zone specific daily hub. Now I think my favorite expansion for daily content was MoP with the Thunder Isle being my favorite part of the expansion.
Quel Danas was one of the best expansion/daily zones ever made for the game. I had a blast doing world PvP there. Such fond memories of that place.
My fav Repeatable Questing was the ToC Tourney. It was all very different a cool. You could also battle your friends.
shoutout for the soundtrack on super quiet in th back group around the 13-14m mark. Transistor soundtrack. Great audio.
Isle of Quel'danas was my jam. Daily quests and world PVP. I spent all my free time there having fun while in the queue for battlegrounds and arenas.
I loved Timeless Isle for several reasons:
1) Rolo's Riddle. God I loved this thing. It was so short and unimportant and yet I had so much fun doing it. For me the most fun part of an open world game is... exploring the world. The envinronment is my gameplay. You need to figure out how to get from point A to point B and you are rewarded for it. I loved it.
2) Then there was Ordos. I loved the idea that people with the cloak had access to a special area. And I loved it even more that I, as a casual who did not have the cloak COULD "cheat" the game and get to that area WITHOUT the cloak. With a Glider. Of course, if you entered the sanctum itself, you would get ported out but you could still get over the bridge and enter a "secret area" so to say which offered cooler rewards (the NPCs there offered more currency drops and were more crowded together).
3) The platforming puzzles! The lore quiz! The shit load of interactable objects and shrines which made the world feel alive. They added immersion, they added rewards for curiosity and exploration.
4) The mobs. Each family of mobs had its own specific abilities which you could memorize. If you see a tiger you know it will jump and stun you so you utilize that knowledge and dodge it. If you fight a Yaungol guy with a burning 2H weapon you know they do that Fire Cone attack so you definitely move to the side to dodge it or you die. They really managed to engage you in the combat. You had to put some effort to survive the isle. It was not a mindless grind.
5) The rep grind - it allowed you to get it in multiple ways. You want to grind your ass out? Go ahead and grind your face through a pile of mobs. You want to take it slower? Sure, just do the weekly quest. Or you could do both. And the reward - holy shit that Heavenly Gold Serpent it looked epic.
6) The SoO trinkets and set pieces were really fun. I loved the trinket that reduced the cooldown of multiple of your abilities by 30-40%. That was lots of fun as a WW Monk and a Ret Paladin. The sets were cool too. They really made my spec feel more enjoyable.
7) I loved the theme and the aesthetics of the zone. The green forests and ridges, the lakes and waterfalls, the serpents, the MUSIC HOLY SHIT THE MUSIC, the voice of Shao-hao and the Celestials. The story of the Timewalkers and Kairoz giving us hints about future events.
8) I loved how quickly you can get into it on your alts, you just hop in and start doing content and you get tokens to gear up and you could upgrade them with a currency.
9) I loved how people were calling out rares and the entire isle would gather to kill Huolon. I loved the amount of WPvP that was going around, despite me being the victim most of the times.
10) I loved the Celestial Tournament. It was new kind of content for pet battles and it offered unique pet rewards (models and abilities) which looked super cool and were themed after known characters (the Celestials). I was the first person to post a guide how to beat it (PTR) on Wowhead and it was my first time getting so many fucking upvotes there :D I felt useful!
It was my favourite patch in this game honestly. It inspired such genuine love towards the game in me. The only other area/patch/content that I have enjoyed this much is 7.0 and Suramar. Suramar was truly brilliant. I hope the Maw is indeed like it (they compared the two during BlizzCon). That's all I want honestly. More stuff like Suramar and Timeless Isle.
BTW how exactly did you fly to the 6.0 elite areas for the Apexis dailies if you got flying in 6.2 xD ?
I didn't experience the Thunder Isles as modern content and since have gone back and really enjoyed it, but my favorite was Isle of Quel'Danas because I was there when it first opened and helped unlocked the new buildings. Content where you see progression in what you are doing is the best to me and I wish Blizz would bring things like that back.
Daily quests and world quests aside, one thing I’d really like to see is incentive to do heroic dungeons and such (or even LFR) as a daily/weekly thing to do, for some currency like valor or justice. I play WoW because I like group content, and I want to spend my time doing things with people rather than doing soulless quests alone.
As it is now, heroic dungeon LFD and LFR are effectively dead content. The rewards you get from them are way worse and less important than the stuff you get from doing nazjatar or 8.3 dailies, which is solo content. That seems like a weird thing for an MMO.
Netherwing dailies and the faction in MOP that let me get a cloud serpent. Both of them had stories that expanded as I went through the daily's and they gave us a personal connection to our mounts. I still use my netherwing drake all the time.
Isle of Thunder was great, but Quel'danas will ALWAYS be my fave
In terms of best daily hub, for me it's either Isle of Quel'danas (partly because of nostalgia but like mentioned in the video I did like that you grabbed all dailies and went your circle and did them) and Isle of Thunder which just had everything - big zone with different areas with different feel to them, a scenario, the way you unlocked more of the island in stages and so on. A daily hub like Timeless Isle is OK to me but I'm a bit surprised how many people love it, considering usually those same people flame other daily zones that have come out since that are essentially the same as Timeless Isle - only in a different skin.
And the thunder isle gave Warlocks the option to grind for the Green Fire questline :)
And what a fun questline!
love the bastion OST music in the background! and this video is on point. I hope blizzard sees this in preparation for shadowlands :) keep it up!
I only ever did world quests in Burning Crusade, Wrath and BFA. The isle of quel'danas was the best experience. I loved the aesthetic, the progression and the dungeon (never did that raid).
My friends and I loved the look so much we raced to see who could get that sweet looking tabard first. We had people online right at the daily reset to get the REP first.
Its a shame I never did end game content for daily quests in the other expacs. I only played at the tail end of pandaria...so I didn't get into the daily quests. I just remember getting destroyed in timeless isle and never went back. So I can't really count that one
Once I got in to doing the Argent Tournament I was totally addicted to it and forgot that the reason I started it was to earn Rep, I was a bit sad when I finished it. Now it's a must do for me for any new character I make. Thunder Island was the bomb, I would enjoy an entire expansion based on that alone. I never much cared for Cata, but I did like the questing in WOD at first, later not so much. I am pretty much a questaholic, I have done nearly every quest in the game for both horde and alliance. Not big on dungeons and raiding, but I'll go back and do those too just to see if I can solo them at a level close to what you would do them normally.
BC daily content all the way. Skettis dailies and Netherwing for the drake and mount speed are positive areas / things that stuck in my mind. Agree the farm in Mists was good too!
Agreed with most of it. Thunder Island was amazing, and still is. U can still go there to farm or get stuff, they even re-used some scenarios from there in legion.
I remember back in Wrath where you had those daily quests you could do for the Tuskaar and I think it was revered before you could buy the Kalu'ak Fishing Pole. That was great because like you said it was optional. Yeah, the Isle of Thunder was great because of all the different quests you could do, but dont get me wrong, Timeless Isle was fun. For Instance, when you got on your water strider or your raft and had to chase down the shark to get your kill for the day or everybody trying to get to a rare kill on the map when someone called it out. Imo, that was alot of fun
I love these types of videos.
Please do more preach!
I did dailies in TBC for the gold so I could buy my epic flying. I did them in Wrath for the mount/Shoulder enchants. I did them in Firelands because my friends did them and they were fun. I did them in ToT because of the coins, Timeless because of it being current content. I did them in WoD because of the quest table and the mythic rewards. I did them in Legion because of the artifact skins. I do them in BFA because of the rep/neck but I enjoy doing them for visions.
I prefer a system that I do not have to do that is not gated and the rewards are not required to progress either in pve or pvp.
I still enjoy going back and doing Legion dailies for skin rewards.
This was a fun bit of nostalgia! Isle of Quel'Danas was the one I remember the most fondly, mainly because I was bored of Outland's weird space theme and wanted to get back to Azeroth 😄
I’ve not done timeless isle since mop but i remember enjoying the random elite spawning, the looting random chests and the fact that basically anyone in the isle was able to participate fighting the world bosses, i also remember seeing the good players being able to cross the bridge and also being decent in the world pvp And farming those coins. I kind of enjoyed seeing other people doing things that were not related to what i was doing. Like farming those frogs
Sorry for my english
So true. I was livid about the back piece from MoP. I definitely quit raiding high end because of it.
I always look to Isle of Quel'Danas and Timeless Isle when I think of good daily quest design. See, Quel'Danas just had quick, easy quests. I never got tired of them. I was doing only Quel'Danas dailies since I had finished the other grinds by this point in the expansion, so going to one zone to do a handful of dailies that took maybe 10-20 minutes at most yielded nice rewards for my effort. It helps that I absolutely love the blood elf aesthetic (architecture, environment, etc.), which made me just want to be on the island in general. Looking back, it's fairly rudimentary, but I would argue that helps it, not hinders it.
Timeless Isle was one of those zones where you could go to kill a whole day if you wanted to, in my opinion. You had 5 different world bosses (of course only 1 Celestial and 1 Ordos kill gave you loot per week, but still had 5 bosses), a TON of rares, some of which gave mounts (HUOLON UP), toys, and even that 300% experience buff potion, and the layout of the zone was really good. I mean *really* good. It was always a mad dash to get to the newest rare spawn. The island really lent itself to world PvP, whose revival and immediate return to death I still lament. The level of tears being shed in general chat on a daily basis is the stuff of legends; I so miss coining and the coin farmers. I never saw so many people threaten to report others simply for PvP. Plus, flying solo made the island pretty challenging. To me, Timeless Isle always made every day feel like a lazy Sunday more than it made me feel it was a place I had to go everyday to grind out more reputation for something I don't care about. It was another daily place where I never got tired of doing the activities.
I, unfortunately, was not around for Isle of Thunder. As a matter of fact, I quit the day the patch came out. I was so burnt on MoP content at the time that when I had to do this boring scenario to even unlock the Isle, I was immediately turned off. In retrospect, of course, there was nothing wrong with the scenario, and I did it about 12 times in MoP, since the Isle of Thunder was the best place to get some quick honor every day for undergeared 90s, but at the time, it was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. But again, I did the Isle quite a bit when I came back, which was still in MoP some time before SoO, and I do absolutely love it. Obviously I think the rewards were stellar, and I can't even remember what the dailies there looked like--which is good! As Preach went through each patch's content, I was able to basically remember my daily routine and the handful of quests that I did most often, but on the Isle of Thunder, I just remember being in a different place doing different things every day, and finishing the whole thing off with that gauntlet. It surprises me how many times they've done dailies right because lately, it just seems like they forgot that the people who play this game every day by choice still want to have fun, and dailies nowadays are anything but that.
One thing I think you missed was that on the broken shore you got to put some of those daily rewards towards unlocking the mage tower/ other buildings. which was another way of player based unlocking on a schedule.
Mike, the biggest thing for me with the Timeless Isle was the community. There was always something going on somewhere, and it was all a cooperative experience. In a way, it was very much a precursor to the Legion pre-launch invasions. You could chill with your friends, kill shit, and get guaranteed decent gear. Combine that with a chill atmosphere and music, and it was the perfect place to zone out, bs with friends for a couple of hours, then go back to the "real world" and do dungeons or whatever.
Phasing came in Wrath, but it was used in questing so that the area changed based on where you were in a quest chain so it felt like you had an impact on the world. Until you decided to help a friend on a quest you'd done and couldn't because you were in different phases.
The only daily zone/WQ thing i enjoyed daily ever was Isle of Quel'Danas. In every zone/system since i disliked the areas the quest took part in. Because of that, ever since then i've barely got into any daily quests or Worldquest systems. Half hill farm in Pandaria is like the closest i ever get to doing it daily and that's partly because i liked just sitting there and taking in the ambiance of the place.
This was a really really interesting watch, thanks preach👏🏼
Me personaly i do like world quests most of the time i do them as chill acticity. Most of the times i do drink my cofee or lisen to some podcasts or youtube videos while doing them. But what i would like to see is some kind of evolving events like in guild wars or more event like activities in world.
Some more great thoughts for the future of WoW. I truly hope people at Blizzard are viewing these, taking it in and passing it through the development line.
Key notes were definitely the progression of daily zones and optional nature of that content.
I can't believe it didn't hit until now that all those memorable enjoyable daily quest content all came from progressed zones that brought players together naturally.
Quel'danas, Isle of Thunder, and Firelands truly were the most enjoyable daily quest zones we have ever experienced.
I enjoyed sunwell Isle, I still go back there from time to time, after that there was scholizar basin which was fun for the dailies, then from there Isle of Thunder was deeply enjoyable. I would rank my favorite daily zones as IoT, sunwell, then basin.
I liked Scholazar Basin in Wrath. I got hooked by seeing a green proto drake, and found out it was a rare drop from an egg that you bought at excalted from one of the Scholazar factions. It took a few weeks of daily quests (20 mins I think) and then I just bought these eggs every 5th day and got a few pets and stuff before striking gold and getting the proto drake - and it was cool! Many of them were cool and rare and testified that the player had done achievements in HC dungeons or Ulduar, or got lucky with a time-lost proto drake spawn, but very few people used the green one. Perhaps because the faction in Scholazar didn’t offer anything of importance, only funny/cool fluff.
My favorite daily zone was Sunreaver Isle followed by Argent Tournament and Island of the THunder King.
Hm...thinking over what my favorite repeatable content was over the years, I have to say the Argent Tournament (for the RP feels, as I'm a paladin main), Firelands (a little frustrating, but the quests were fun and the choice of paths was refreshing), Halfhill and the cooking quests (I ADORE cooking systems in games), *some* of the Garrison random dailies (like the archaeology questlines, I thought those were really cool), and the concept of Emissaries in general. I tended to do a bunch of dailies anyway just to complete them all and I was never concerned about power gains, but when I think back to the content I wish I could do fresh again, those are what come to mind.
for me it was all about tbc. Netherwing and Quel'Danas just have the most special place in my heart, and I will still grind out magisters terrace for the shattered sun tabard and title and other rep rewards
I loved Isle of quell danas, I was working on my epic flying mount, killing some allies on the way and then hc mgt for my friends tanking trinket. The progression gating made several top guilds to move out of our server though... That actually ruined our realm. Enjoyed thunder Isle and farm aswell.
*Does multiple expansions dailies* *Doesnt get rid of the cloak quest notice*
What made Timeless Isles fantabulous to me, was ‘group’ dailies. The area was so small and so many players were running around that different players would fall in together to finish a daily together, instead of fighting each other for the same mobs. It was simply fantastic, feel do I. Of course, the content itself was very simple but that was by design. If it had more and different content, less people would encounter each other. However, I still go to the Sunwell Iisle to do dailies every once in a while, it is still fun.. to bad it is impossible to solo the Sunwell.
Timeless isle was sort of fun to explore, once everything was known it became less fun.
I really enjoyed the argent tournament though, I remember spending a fair amount of one summer getting all the factions completed and getting their rep maxed (this was the vanilla city rep too, back when previous expansion rep could still actually matter).
The Argent Tournament was my favorite i farmed that like crazy.
Oondasta came out at the same time as Isle of Thunder tho.
The world boss(es) in 5.4 was the August Celestials and Ordos ( the big fire wannabe tauren who required you to have the legendary cloak in order to access )
The Firelands dailies were hands down my favorite by far. the progression sysatem in there just made it so much better
Ah the memories! Getting my netherwing mount. Sunken isles. Good times. Peak wow for me was TBC.