Was Archeology a success or a failure?

[Devilyaki]

Horrible, was not fun at all, failure.

[Oerba Yun Fang]

For those that took it up for the free epics, it has utterly failed. For those that took it for the lore, which is the primary reason for the profession, it has been a success...

I would hardly call them free epics considering the amount of time you have to sink into the profession to get them, unless you're extremely lucky.

[Deleted]

I personally liked Archaeology. It was a bit grindy but hey, you want some rare pets/mounts/titles then imo you should have to grind for them. Why does everyone want everything served on a silver platter?

I do think that they could have made a weekly archaeology contest, something similar to the Kalu'ak fishing weekly, where there is a digsite somewhere that holds an item that you can hand in for a special prize. The special prize could have been a BoA novelty item, or gear that is relevant to the current item level, maybe even an archaeology flying mount!

[Darkdruidelf]

For those that took it up for the free epics, it has utterly failed. For those that took it for the lore, which is the primary reason for the profession, it has been a success...

Or for the lore you could just read on the internet, without the absurd boredom.

---------- Post added 2012-01-15 at 12:28 PM ----------

I personally liked Archaeology. It was a bit grindy but hey, you want some rare pets/mounts/titles then imo you should have to grind for them. Why does everyone want everything served on a silver platter?

I do think that they could have made a weekly archaeology contest, something similar to the Kalu'ak fishing weekly, where there is a digsite somewhere that holds an item that you can hand in for a special prize. The special prize could have been a BoA novelty item, or gear that is relevant to the current item level, maybe even an archaeology flying mount!

Its not that it was grindy, it was that it's a boring as shit grind.

Its not so bad when you have to, say, grind firelands each week to get the staff. Its fun, you kill stuff, with people, it's all good. But archaeology, urg, no thanks.

[shimerra]

For those that took it up for the free epics, it has utterly failed. For those that took it for the lore, which is the primary reason for the profession, it has been a success...

What lore, any worthwhile archaeology lore(again, what lore lol) based experience can be read online without having to fly around for hours across continents. I don't know about you but having to fly around for an hour before I can read the next page of the book wasn't all that exciting just something to keep you busy while you hunted for the item you wanted. I love reading up on the lore for every game and I can say with absolute certainty Archaeology was an abject failure in that regard as well.

[Deleted]

If they'd added new items each patch that were worth farming for, then it would have been a lot better.

I don't like how RNG based it is either and there should have definately been more Tol'vir. Not a failure per se, but not quite a success either in my eyes. Maybe they should have used it to bring some Raid buff or something, similar to Fishing and Cooking.

[kel]

it was good, for a secondary profession

[Deleted]

I'd say a bit of both. The concept was great but it was all to RNG dependant. The ability to focus on a single "tribe", which Blizz talked about some time ago, would be a fantastic improvement.

[Deleted]

Anyone find out what the last icon was for yet?

[Deleted]

Fishing, cooking and first aid are useful all the time, archeology isn't. Too much traveling, terrible RNG so I vote failure.

[Ubukung]

I hate grind

[Beace]

I'd say a bit of both. The concept was great but it was all to RNG dependant. The ability to focus on a single "tribe", which Blizz talked about some time ago, would be a fantastic improvement.

Agreed. I'm not ready to call it either a success or failure, it has good and bad parts. The major issue is the RNG (which is still a lot better today than it was at first implementation).

[Deleted]

I would hardly call them free epics considering the amount of time you have to sink into the profession to get them, unless you're extremely lucky.

The promise for most people was that they could dig a little here and there and then get some awesome sword, staff, ring, whatever. The amount of time and luck needed to get them couldn't possibly be THAT much, could it? Well, it was and still is. So most were expecting free epics and I assume a lot of the people voting Failure were out to get epics and nothing else.

What lore, any worthwhile archaeology lore(again, what lore lol) based experience can be read online without having to fly around for hours across continents. I don't know about you but having to fly around for an hour before I can read the next page of the book wasn't all that exciting just something to keep you busy while you hunted for the item you wanted.

Thank you for proving my point. You wanted the epics, not the lore. You took the profession for the items, not the purpose it was created for. The lore was the main reason. To make it appeal to more people, they put in the epics. You are not the lore-lover you claim to be, and if you were, you wouldn't have looked for it on teh intarwebz. You would stick to what you found and read it then.

[Deleted]

Big fail. A lot of grind, like fishing, only you had to stop grinding after 4.2 came out, because there was no need to grind anymore, items weren't that good.

While you have fishing, cooking, which you use throughout the entire expansion, this is a profession you use untill the first patch and then you abandon because there is no use of it. Doesn't feel really succesufull to me.

Still it was fun while it lasted, let's see what they got for MoP

[Oerba Yun Fang]

The promise for most people was that they could dig a little here and there and then get some awesome sword, staff, ring, whatever. The amount of time and luck needed to get them couldn't possibly be THAT much, could it? Well, it was and still is. So most were expecting free epics and I assume a lot of the people voting Failure were out to get epics and nothing else.

Perhaps, but speaking as someone who was interested in both the items and the lore, Blizzard really dropped the ball with Archaeology. It had the potential to be a great addition to the game, but they just neglected it far too much. More items (and therefore, lore - stop pretending like the two are mutually exclusive) added more frequently would've kept up more interest in the profession. When you let things stagnate for nearly a year, people are going to lose interest. So, in that respect, I would definitely call it a failure.

[Deleted]

Saying failure just because it's been forgotten about. It was supposed to be easy to add content to every patch but all the cool pets/mounts go to either the tcg or pet store.

[Deleted]

I think it was a success whilst the 359 epics were still good - now they are useless, even for alts considering how easy you can get other gear to replace them. Some aspects were too grindy and being forced to do pointless stuff (like digging a million nelf digs when you've got everything already just for a chance at a tol'vir site), took away some of the fun.

But then - it's a secondary prof, compare it to first aid and it's a billion times more successful imo, but definitely not perfect... needs to be updated more.

[Eliot123]

Total failure imo. One of those ideas that look awesome and then they get implemented and they turned out to be this huge, terribad abominations that crash and burn screaming... Coming from someone who has arch 525 on 3 chars, one Tyrande's Fav Doll, 2 Tol'Vir mounts and a couple of other epics/bunch of blues from arch.

[Deleted]

More items (and therefore, lore - stop pretending like the two are mutually exclusive) added more frequently would've kept up more interest in the profession.

I'm not at all pretending like they don't co-exist. I'm just seperating the actual lore items from the 359 epics that most people are interested in. I agree that more regular Archaeology items would be awesome. But since it's a Secondary profession and the other 3 haven't had any real improvements since Cata launched, I really don't think of this as a failure. I think First Aid have stagnated even more, to be honest.

[barthic]

I think it was more or less a success - it's something that you can do casually whenever you have a few minutes, and the rewards that you get are interesting enough without being so good that you feel like you NEED to do it IMO.