Attunements - a look to the past

[Totle]

I will preface this with asking you to take a look at this page: http://www.wowpedia.org/The_Great_Ma...de_quest_chain

You don't need to read everything, just take a glance.

This was a story that started way back at level 15 when you first went to Lakeshire and continued well on until you were at endgame of Vanilla. All it required was a couple trips into BRD and a trip in UBRS. Doing this granted attunement to Onyxia's Lair.

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Where has this epic lore gone? Why were quest chains such as these removed and are no longer created?

Before, people complained that it took forever to get groups together to do these, but that's no longer a problem. With LFD and LFR, you'd be able to complete these quite easily.

Moreover, they would incorporate dungeons into endgame. This combined with new scenarios could really make attunements into something fantastic again.

They tried doing something like this with Wrathion, but that quickly got frustrating and repetitive. They tried something like it with the Thunder Isle and the solo scenarios, but let's be honest: a daily grind is not that interesting.

Examples:
There was no inclusion of the rest of Pandaria. Why not make something where we have to go into Mogu'shan Palace to recover an artifact? Perhaps we can imbue it with the power of the Celestials - by doing the Arena of Annihilation scenario, by doing Temple of the Jade Serpent, by doing the scenario at the Temple of the Crane, by doing the Siege of Nizuhao Temple, we can beef up this artifact to allow us to break through whatever magical barrier is shrouding the Isle of Thunder.

What about in the future? Perhaps in order to defeat this Seventh Sha, we need to get some weapon from the ancient times. Upon [EDIT] unlocking [EDIT] August Celestials, we get a quest to recover a weapon from Taran Zhu in Shado-Pan Monastery dungeon and then we have to defeat avatars of the other 6 Sha that wander around Pandaria like the Warbringers. Each one we destroy charges the artifact until it becomes the ultimate Sha-vanquishing weapon.


TL;DR - the main idea is that people complained due to time commitment and finding players. These arguments or worries are no longer valid with the implementation of LFD and LFR.

For those concerned about alts, you still need to gear up your toon to get into LFR. That effort is no more than what would be required of attunement quest chains.

Would you want to see quest chains like this in the future?

[anaxie]

They were removed because it hard enough to find top end raiders no need to roadblock alts and shit when needed with pointless quest chains.

Legendary is an attunement anyhow. If you aren't on the current step of the chain you are dragging the raid down.


Also you said Isle is boring and your idea of attunement is exalted with the celestials and running 5 mans that we already have grinded the shit out of? Are you really suggesting something this moronic?

[K i s u]

I personally would love to see some account or even faction-wide attunement quests return. I miss doing them and found it enjoyable back in the day but as others will say it was awful when it came to alts.

[Deleted]

Since players started to zoom out camera into max range the game isn't the same anymore. Look how top tier raiders' UI looks and you will realize the game has changed in terms how we play it. Back then mechanics weren't even needed to provide awesome experience but that's all gone. Quests are not rare anymore since gind is completely out of question. Quests are not long anymore because it's not efficient. Difficulty does no longer mean "oh I did an elite quest'" but beating hard mechanics on bosses or brawler stuff. Gear isn't for the looks anymore but for numbers.

[SherbertLand]

I think with the tools they have at their disposal, attunements could succeed. The only thing people really disliked about Wrathion's business is that it was long and is intended to span the entire expansion.

[Deleted]

@anaxie: Ehm. Monara.

OT: Attunements were alot of fun to due, even though it took ages. It did however make rerolling a char a great hassle, since the server i played on, made it hard to get through certain parts, since getting a group for it were near impossible. If they were to make it again, they should prob make it account-wide, just to avoid making it a bad chore when lvling more characters.

[SherbertLand]

@anaxie: Ehm. Monara.

OT: Attunements were alot of fun to due, even though it took ages. It did however make rerolling a char a great hassle, since the server i played on, made it hard to get through certain parts, since getting a group for it were near impossible. If they were to make it again, they should prob make it account-wide, just to avoid making it a bad chore when lvling more characters.

Attunement quest reward could be a token similar to the account wide rep tokens, use it and boom, your account is attuned.

[Totle]

The only thing that really made it hard was being able to grind out dungeons or raids. The difficulty came in finding people and then getting through the content.

LFR and LFD fix this issue immediately.

@anaxie: The "attunement" to Isle of Thunder was sitting around doing daily quests. AC rep won't need GL anymore, and with championing, commendations, and Zandalri, it's easy to get. That point aside, dungeons are boring and aren't even done anymore. This would give us a reason to go back to them, to include them in current lore, rather than to avoid them except for the VP.

The phasing they did for LFR ToT was due to the idea that "LFR would reach Lei Shen before regular raiders".

Part of the reason for this was lack of attunement. If they include an attunement aspect, then "RAIDING" is once again a step above regular dungeons. The way it is now, LFR is just a longer 5 man with more people. Actually putting in some effort, adding a lore event, will create a boundary to separate the "epicness" of raiding with that of regular dungeons.

[ent0mbed]

Blizzard put in attunements... people complained. Blizzard removed attunements... people complained. If Blizzard puts attunements back... people will complain.

Personally I don't care either way. I don't mind a challenge, however I do think that they could have solved most if not all of the issues by making attunements apply to an entire account rather than one toon. Maybe the game isn't currently designed in a way that allows for that, but I think it would be in Blizzard's best interest to implement it. So many of the issues they've tried to avoid over the years were the result of people not wanting to do the "grindy" stuff on toon after toon after toon. Doing the "grind" once was something most people could tolerate without too many issues, but the 3rd, 4th and 5th times... different story altogether.

[Deleted]

We kinda had a attument in MoP. You couldn't enter Terace if you didn't do Heart of Fear.

[ItachiZaku]

Attunement quest reward could be a token similar to the account wide rep tokens, use it and boom, your account is attuned.

I agree to this.

[Clockwork Pinkie]

I don't see how that is epic lore but, chain quest like that would be nice to see, every 5-10 or so levels you get another part of it. Cause hell if evil need vanquishing, the citizens of Azeroth ain't got time to wait. /rp

[Merite]

The UBRS one was "annoying" as LBRS was more difficult than UBRS when you had to do the quest and it took a lot of hours and convincing of people to even do.. It was slightly annoying to have to pay someone 25g to unlock it for your raid though. However, I think it definitely was better than hitting 60 and immediately being able to raid UBRS with 40 people, it by far did its job.

As far as MC, very good attunement, same with BWL. Then moving onto Kara, very good attunement in my opinion (I had no alts). SSC attunement was wonderful as well, I had zero issues with it, very much liked that it was there, gave me a sense of completion accomplishing things along the way.

I think if you just step into something and the difficulty lies in beating your head against a boss until it dies, it is far more boring than having to complete a quest in order to even try to beat your head against the boss.


Then again, I never really had alts when I PvE'd, and I no longer PvE because it is entirely boring (possibly because they took out the sense of completion that attunements brought, or PvE has just sucked since BT, not sure).

[Faroth]

Another alternative I could see being interesting would be if attunement quests were brought back and essentially were an option that led to a special title, tabard, or cosmetic armor set for transmog (or a combination of the above). Transmog pieces at various steps of the attunement quest, title for completing it. Title and gear removed at end of expansion.

I am, unlike many, a believer that not every single miniscule aspect of the game must absolutely be offered to players 10 years down the road. Letting things come and go adds some sense of history to the game for me.

[Kazgrel]

Attunements worked great years ago, when most players didn't have a plethora of alts at their disposal. Now they would just cripple guilds at this point, who may still be scraping and clawing for any and all decent raiders they can find.

The whole "AC rep to exalted" idea and whatnot presented by the OP...yeah, no. Unless you want to encourage massive amounts of Warbringer/Warscout farming. I remember how fun (painful) it was trying to scrounge up the ring of ascension to unlock UBRS. Also the Ony attunement chain...and Kara, and SSC/TK. Did all that stuff. It isn't bad if you have one toon, or maybe a main and 1 alt.

[Nobleshield]

I dislike the idea of attunements in general but I wouldn't mind if they brought back some kid of epic overarching questline. I really enjoyed how Rift handled that (although I never finished it) since it kept giving you rewards as you advanced. If they tweaked that model a bit (take out the forced group quests as after a while people will be past it, maybe implement them as Scenarios?) it would be pretty neat. They could also tie in all the dungeons that are introduced with reasons to go there, and at the end it would breadcrumb you to the raids with a nice reward (weapon perhaps, since those are hard to come by) for finishing the raid.

[MOEEEE]

I miss them... I'd really love to see a return. That would be pretty awesome! =)

[Faroth]

Attunements worked great years ago, when most players didn't have a plethora of alts at their disposal. Now they would just cripple guilds at this point, who may still be scraping and clawing for any and all decent raiders they can find.

The whole "AC rep to exalted" idea and whatnot presented by the OP...yeah, no. Unless you want to encourage massive amounts of Warbringer/Warscout farming. I remember how fun (painful) it was trying to scrounge up the ring of ascension to unlock UBRS. Also the Ony attunement chain...and Kara, and SSC/TK. Did all that stuff. It isn't bad if you have one toon, or maybe a main and 1 alt.

I think most who liked the attunements approve of the account-wide link to them, but it would still be a bit of a pain for catching up late comers. Still, there are indeed ways to bring back attunements while still addressing these issues.

[Darmalus]

Attunement quests and such are being moved into solo scenario chains. This is a better solution, IMO, since it means that dead servers and becoming outdated content no longer block you from completing them. Many highly scripted events have long delays (5-10 minutes) to allow all NPCs to reset. A minor inconvenience, but one that goes away in solo scenarios.

[Tziva]

Hiss! Hiss! Using the Onyxia's Lair attunment just makes me even more combative because that was definitely the most painful one of I've done. (note: I am never vendoring that damn neck. It cost me too much)

My official opinion is that I love epic quest lines like that, and while I have fond memories of completing certain attunements, I would never never support their return as a mandatory key to a raid instance in that kind of form. They are very frustrating from a raid leader perspective (finding subs/new members), they are irritating from a raid member perspective (having to go back and run obsolete content for new players), and they are harmful from a guild perspective (too many guilds in BC became feeder guilds, endlessly running toons through old attunments at the cost of progression while better guilds simply recruited from those guilds, putting them in an endless cycle of trying to finish their roster). It would be less painful if it was something that could be done in LFR or solo scenarios, but even that I don't think is necessary.

I "get" the appeal of attunements, I really do. But I think they are a bad idea. I would love if those kinds of quest chains return, but instead rewarded titles (like Hand of A'dal) or epic rewards (like the Battered Hilt chain) or stuff like mounts, tabards, etc. I think Mist's legendary chain is reminiscent of this kind of thing. But as far as the whole "do a bunch of shit in last tier's raid to get in the door to this tier's" I am firmly and positively against them.