An Analysis of MoP Frustration

[jav27msb07]

WARNING: This is not a MoP QQ thread!
DISCLOSURE: I am a MoP fanboy!
OPINION: This is not a factual post, it is my personal opinion. *gasp!*
MOAR CAPS AND BOLD FONT: If you are still reading this, you have a longer attention span than the vast majority of the WoW community – congratulations.

The below is my analysis of why I think some people are frustrated with the MoP experience so far. Despite MoP being visually stunning, choc-full-o-content, and -- in my opinion – a huge success so far, I can understand why some people are frustrated. I, too, was frustrated at first, but after I did some thinking I changed my tune. Hopefully, this post will help some others with their frustration. Ssshhhhhh, little one, it will be OK.

In general, I think there are six main issues with why people have been frustrated to date:

1. The daily questing blues: Content gating via reputation grinds and feeling forced to do “filler” content
2. Structure of the MoP tabard system
3. Disconnect between content progression and rewards
4. Structure of the MoP JP/VP system
5. Content overload
6. Keeping up with the Joneses

I will now go into some more detail on each of the above six points:

The daily questing blues: Content gating via reputation grinds and feeling forced to do “filler” content
By “blues” I don’t mean the ilvl 458 gear you get from rep vendors after reaching Honored. No, by “blues” I mean, “I got the blues.” Let’s take a poll: Who LOVES daily questing? *quick scan* Oh, wow! So I guess no one loves daily questing – shocker! Personally, I am not a daily questing fan, and I know a lot of others are in the same boat. I know there are a lot of other folks out there that don’t mind the daily questing grind – but I think it’s safe to say no one LOVES it. People don’t buy WoW and say, “Gee golly! I can’t wait to start them swell daily quests!” Doesn’t happen. Daily quests are no more than content filler – things you do when you are in a que or you are that guy who just loves to do everything in the game possible. However, in MoP, you can’t do a lot of that other content unless you do LOTS of daily quests – for LOTS of days in a row – using LOTS of your playtime grinding out dailies. Blizz has gated much of the more fun and exciting MoP content via rep grinds – which you can only progress via daily quests. While the rep grinds are “technically” skippable, and not “technically” mandatory, they certainly remove a lot of RNG and make it quicker than alternative ways of achieving the same goal. So, while you are not “forced” to do them, it is the most efficient choice. This sucks. No one wants to grind out so many dailies for so long. Especially the god awful Golden Lotus grind starting at 0/3,000 Neutral – which you do NEED to grind to unlock August Celestials. People are upset because they are feeling “forced” to spend a lot of their playtime doing filler content. I get it, I am not a huge fan of it – but it will eventually pass. Hang in there! Once you unlock them shiny ilvl 489 phats it will be worth it – trust me! But, I think Blizz could have found a more interesting and fun way to gate content.

Structure of the MoP tabard system
Haters: “SO WHAT! WE’VE BEEN DOING DAILY QUESTS FOR LIKE SIX YEARS NOW! WHY IS THIS ANY DIFFERENT?!!??!?!?!?!” *calms himself down by counting his number of Exalted reps aloud*
Me: “But what about the tabards!”

Yes, kind Sirs and Madams, we are no strangers to rep grinds OR daily quests. They have been a big part of the game for like, I dunno, a billion years or something. But now in MoP, when the rep grinds are so critical to accessing the cool content, we do not get the benefit of gaining said rep via wearing that faction’s tabard whilst slaying bad guys in dungeons. Gone are the days when we could simply equip the tabard, join the LFD que, and watch that purdy green bar fill up as you yelled at the tank for sucking – Ahhhhh… the good ol’ days! Because of this, the content-filler daily quests are the only route to achieving the requisite reputation with all of the MoP factions. Again, reinforcing the feeling of being “forced”. That ain’t cool, Blizz. All daily quests and no fun makes me a dull boy.

Disconnect between content progression and rewards
“Yes!!!! OMG!!!! I MADE IT! I got Honored with [insert MoP faction here]!!!!” *quickly runs to rep vendor and right clicks* “What can I get… what can I…” *ilvl 458 blue gear* “Wtf.”

So you worked hard to get to Honored with that faction. Now it’s time to go get the reward! What’s that?! You don’t need that ilvl 458 blue item because your ilvl 463 item from a heroic dungeon is better? That sucks. You put all that time and work in, and you get a crappy thing you can’t use. Its demoralizing when that happens. Being rewarded for slugging through content is at the heart of why WoW and any other RPG exist! When the reward sucks, it makes the progression suck. When Blizz suggest strongly (i.e. forces) you to do dailies, and you don’t get any valuable reward for hitting a big milestone, that sucks. I can understand why people get frustrated.

Structure of the MoP JP/VP system
This happened to me the other day… I hit lvl 90 while doing some of the Klaxxi quests in Dread Wastes. Soon after, I realized I was like 2,000 rep from Honored. So, I start doing my Klaxxis dailies. As soon as I go over to the rep vendor for my very first MoP epic (which happens to be ilvl 489 and will go a long way to helping me meet the ilvl requirement for LFR – score!), I realize I have a laughable 350 VP. My necklace costs 1,250 VP, or something meaningfully far, far away from where I am. Ok, so I say to myself, “Well, looks like it’s time to hit-up some heroics!” *”I” > que for random MoP heroic > look at Valor reward for completing instance > freak out* Wtf! I only get 30 Valor for doing AN ENTIRE INSTANCE!!! I used to get 150 Valor! So then I look at how much Valor I get for a Scenario: 30 Valor. Hrm. I get that Heroics are SUPPOSTED to be easy, but they are technically more challenging than a Scenario, and therefore should reward more.

No problem, I’ll just do daily quests to meet my Valor requirement. What’s that!? I get FIVE FREAKING VALOR PER QUEST!? I am not a rocket surgeon, but I am pretty sure that means I have to do daily quests for the rest of my adult life to meet my Valor cap for the week!!!

Well, at least there’s LFR! *go to que up for LFR* “You suck and do not meet the ilvl requirement for LFR… loser.” Ok, it doesn’t actually say that, but that’s what it feels like.

So, I only have 3 options to gain Valor: heroics, scenarios, and dailies. The most Valor I can gain at a time is 30. FML. It will take me WEEKS just to get my first ilvl 489 necklace from a rep that I was able to hit Honored with just a few hours after hitting 90. That system sucks, and the JP system is even more messed up – so I won’t go into detail. This is a huge barrier for a lot of people that play, and might be the most frustrating out of everything.

Content overload
This next one kind of relates to the above. I am prevented from moving forward to LFR and potentially other raiding because my gear sucks, but now I have to do A MILLION THINGS to advance. For people with ADD, this is a problem. You have several choices to gain Valor, ty Blizz!, but they are all equally inefficient – no thx Blizz!. I don’t know if I should be running heroics, just doing dailies, or mindlessly running scenarios! I have not done the math (again, because I am not a rocket surgeon), but my guess is that running scenarios until you are blue in the face in the most efficient way to gain Valor sub ilvl 460. While I am a fan of scenarios, I don’t want to exclusively do them because I also want to be making progress on my rep grinds. But, I also need to gear-up with ilvl 463 blues in the meantime, so I also have to do heroics! GAH! WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO!

I get that can feel frustrating. Don’t you?

Keeping up with the Joneses
Lastly, it is frustrating when you have to deal with all of the above and then you see a guy passing over your head while you are doing dailies on his shiny, new cloud serpent mount. “WTF! HOW DID HE GET THAT SO FAST?!?!?!” One of the great things about playing an MMO like WoW is the competitive aspect. You want to be good, even better than the guy sitting next to you AFK at the bank. This wouldn’t be a problem if you were playing a single player MMO, but in WoW, it fuels your inner competitive fire. It sucks when you feel like you are being forced into a frustrating situation (see all of the above) and on top of that someone else has already unlocked 99% of the content because he/she doesn’t work and has played near non-stop since MoP launch. That sucks, and it is frustrating.


MORAL OF THE STORY: Enjoy the content, you certainly did not have it in Cata. It will all be worth it when you get past the first few critical daily grinds, my friends!

[Eurhetemec]

The forced Daily Questing is the biggest complaint that I hear about. It's really putting the players I know off, even the fairly grind-friendly ones. I know one player who has already given up on MoP because he just isn't interesting grinding Dailies for all his rep, ever - in Cataclysm he largely ignored Dailies and did dungeons, not because they were awesome or whatever, but because he plays WoW for group stuff, not solo grinds. So it seems like a fairly serious oversight on Blizzard's part, to me.

[Spotnick]

It's one month of game play to reach exalted on every faction.. was the same with Molten Front, and same for Tol Barad, and same for Isle of Quel'Danas and Argent Tournament.

What was different was tabards in some factions in last 2 expansions, but otherwise, the daily quest grind has always been part of every content patch, and it always lasted one month.

My only issue with this is when you play more than one character, you just don't want to do that on more than one. And the other issue is the 463 blue weapons from Klaxxi at exalted.. that one is something I really don't get.. they will be useless once people get exalted.

[Flaks]

While I don't necessarily agree with the last part (the point of an RPG is that people with more time have more), I agree with everything else. It's definitely very unrewarding to grind out those dailies. Luckily I find the Klaxxi lore to be amazazing so I'm sticking to them (they also happen to be the only faction actually relevant to the past 8 years of Warcraft lore).

[Lefrog]

The forced Daily Questing is the biggest complaint that I hear about. It's really putting the players I know off, even the fairly grind-friendly ones. I know one player who has already given up on MoP because he just isn't interesting grinding Dailies for all his rep, ever - in Cataclysm he largely ignored Dailies and did dungeons, not because they were awesome or whatever, but because he plays WoW for group stuff, not solo grinds. So it seems like a fairly serious oversight on Blizzard's part, to me.

The problem has been forced rep grind period, and that has always been a part of the game even back in vanilla and TBC that people loved so much (TBC was killer grinding regular dungeons for enough rep for the damn key for heroic). They have simply shifted it from forced dungeons to forced dailies. AT least this time around, you don't actually need any reps beyond the first month of raiding as stated by OP, as opposed to having to have helm and shoulder rep maxed on every raiding toon.

[Synstir]

Agree; it is not only a long way but it gets boring very fast also.

[DeadmanWalking]

Your post is content overload.

If you do 15 dailies a day while cueing up for your first dungeon you get 135 valor a day. Thats a little over an hour a day for 15 dailies and a random dungeon. Dungeons also have less trash in them so you spend less time in the dungeons. If you don't want to do dailies then just grind dungeons. It may not be as efficient but if doing dailies is so repulsive that you don't want to take advantage of their benefits then don't do them. You get rep for beating dungeons too.

Keeping up with the jonses -> Stop worrying about what other people have. You sound like the guy who buys a white ford truck and then complains that he saw 30 white ford trucks on the road this month just like his. You can't possibly think that you are going to be the only person who has stuff to show off on an entire server worth of people. Everybody is special which means nobody is special. Oh Boo Hoo someone earned a dragon mount before me and now my dragon mount doesn't mean anything anymore, boo hoo!

[Zoneseek]

The problem has been forced rep grind period, and that has always been a part of the game even back in vanilla and TBC that people loved so much (TBC was killer grinding regular dungeons for enough rep for the damn key for heroic). They have simply shifted it from forced dungeons to forced dailies. AT least this time around, you don't actually need any reps beyond the first month of raiding as stated by OP, as opposed to having to have helm and shoulder rep maxed on every raiding toon.

I don't really understand why they did this. In my opinion, they should have left the tabard change in and adjusted the rep gains from tabards to be in line with the rep gains from dailies to be on par in terms of total time /played to hit exalted. If you want to spend that time on dailies, you can. If you want to spend that time in dungeons, you can. If you want to do both, you can. Its a win win win for everyone, pro-daily people will see their daily zones less zerged/camped, pro-dungeon people don't have to do any dailies if they dont want to, and people like me can do both depending on how they feel on any given day.

[Dvaldin]

People I know have complained about the dailies also and that it was beginning to feel like a job.

I don't personally have a problem with the philosophy. In fact, I kinda enjoy it. But I think there's enough people who don't that it warrants tweaking the dailies philosophy as it stands regarding reputation.

[Oogly]

An insightful read on the problems with the game atm and also gives us insight in to Blizzards objective to string out the current content for as long as possible to try and hold on to those subs for the next qtr. I miss all my old friends in WoW and though i keep in touch with the ones who are still playing the game via other means I am personally glad that I no longer play the game if your post implies what I would have to look forward to.

[Benno]

I think the complaint about the Klaxxi neck costing 1250 VP and taking weeks to get is rather silly. VP ain't that hard even if you don't bust your butt dailying everyday.

[Deleted]

I still fail to see where the guy who forces you to daily grind at gunpoint comes in.

The only thing I'd have to agree with is that the JP/VP vendors shouldn't require reputation, the rest is fine as it is.
You don't want dailys? Don't do them.
The only stuff you get at exaltes is mounts, tabards and maybe other cosmetic stuff anyways. "but I want" isn't the same as "being forced to".
Will lacking a cloud serpent matter when it comes to raid invites? Will that shado-pan hat replica increase your DPS? Will wearing that tilelrs tabard suddenly shower you with epics and legendarys?

Also, I don't like being forced to wear tabards. I still wonder how many stacks of arcane dust those dalaran mages had snuffed before that monstrosity of a tabard was born into this world...

[Agramonia]

The thing is, you don't have to do all the dailies every single day, the other limiting factor is valor. You have plenty of time to get the valor and get the rep by then.

[DeadmanWalking]

I've been 90 for 1 week, I am a casual. I am 2 days worth of dailys away from REVERED with Klaxxi, I am Revered with Cloud Seekers and I only found 2 bonus eggs, I am revered with Tillers. I maxed out my Valor for the week. I bought 1 piece of Justice gear that cost 2,200 points to get rid of my lowest ilevel green. I pulled down 5 heroic gear items. All this on 1 hour on every day of the week except for friday where I get 6 hours and monday where I got 2 hours. I pulled down 3 tokens to reroll gear rolls in raids +87 more lesser tokens as of last night.

So tell me again how this is too much work you or how Oogly says this is a scheme to string out current content. If this is a recipie to force me to play longer then its a shitty recipie. I spent longer in Cata getting gear than this expansion.

[MasterHamster]

The tabard-dungeon system made us spoiled.
Glad it's gone.

There's so much to each faction, voice acting, interesting quests (no really. try reading.), lore. No wonder Blizzard wants us to experience it, not hit 90, put on a tabard and start farming.

I am however a bit annoyed by the low rate of Valor. I've been quite busy, but managed to play a fairly respectable (hrm...) amount of hours on my 90 last reset, and I only managed to get 700 valor. Three days of dailies (GL, Klaxxi, Tillers), and quite a few heroics/scenarios on top.

I don't feel like I'm being forced to do anything, but the times of doing 7 dungeons one day to cap sure is lingering over me. Don't get me wrong, that sucked majorly from a design PoV, but atleast it was a tiny tiny bit satisfying to know you've gotten the valor you could.

[vbnm247]

I like dailies and grinding rep, but I have never had 4 or 5 reps to grind at the same time to improve my progression while at the same time trying to fish, farm, run dungeons and grind mats for proffs. Oh yeah and never mind alts, I haven't been able to fit them in yet heh

I don't really understand why they did this. In my opinion, they should have left the tabard change in and adjusted the rep gains from tabards to be in line with the rep gains from dailies to be on par in terms of total time /played to hit exalted. If you want to spend that time on dailies, you can. If you want to spend that time in dungeons, you can. If you want to do both, you can. Its a win win win for everyone, pro-daily people will see their daily zones less zerged/camped, pro-dungeon people don't have to do any dailies if they dont want to, and people like me can do both depending on how they feel on any given day.

I agree, maybe having a tabard as an option would have been the way to go, maybe with a rep cap similar to what the quests would give. No harm in having more options as long as both offer similar rewards.

But I guess too much to do is better than too little.

[fizzbob]

the rep via tabard was too easy. it was something for nothing. shit needs to be a bitch to earn or it's not worth earning. there is no point in doing something that everyone can do, we call that "farmville"

a lot of people won't put in time and effort so things that require time and effort are slightly more exclusive.

[ragingsoul]

The problem has been forced rep grind period, and that has always been a part of the game even back in vanilla and TBC that people loved so much (TBC was killer grinding regular dungeons for enough rep for the damn key for heroic). They have simply shifted it from forced dungeons to forced dailies. AT least this time around, you don't actually need any reps beyond the first month of raiding as stated by OP, as opposed to having to have helm and shoulder rep maxed on every raiding toon.

I'll say it again.
TBC grind has nothing to do with the game now, since it was a necessary step for your character's progression, and could not be bypassed by simply waiting for a new patch.
There is the shift from dungeons to dailies, BUT there is mostly the gated system, which will probably get all your Rep rewards useless with LFR.
That doesn't even include the downgrade of points for free gear every patch.

[WorldofWorkcraft]

The idea of reputation grinding conflicts with their philosophies in another aspect, namely Talents. Why would you introduce a new talent system that gives "more choice" (I use "" as people can argue you have less talents to spent, but it can be seen as there is more than one optimal base build) and then take away elsewhere? If there's one thing people like, it's having some freedoms; not too many, mind you, because then they get lost, but freedoms enough so they don't feel pressured. Dailies never sat well with me, but that's half because the questing system became stale, save some funny/fun quests (still within the stale system, though).

[Tinsoul]

It's not necessary to grind any reps. It's one pathway.

I've levelled 2 to 90. First one needed 1 piece of gear to queue for heroics. I was surprised that the second didn't need any and could queue immediately.

All classes can get ilvl 476 chest and hands crafted. You get ilvl 476 boots off of Sha. 470 trinket off Direbrew. Those along with some heroic drops will easily meet the LFR bar.

If you do choose to get valor gear, then don't overload yourself in the process. Choose 1 faction and work on them. If you are ploughing all them at once not only are you over-capping valor but you are going to reach the rep requirement before you actually have the valor to spend. Look at your loot tables, decide the valor pieces you want, and make a plan.

It's easy to get overloaded. Don't do everything at once.