Hi all,
How would you feel if they added a variation of Reaper of Souls' Bounty-system to World of Warcraft?
In case you don't know, Bounties is a new way to play Diablo 3; the game presents you with tasks to do all around the world, such as killing a boss in a specific area, and once you've done that it'll reward you for it. You can do these Bounties over and over, and they are random, so you get to progress and find loot - but you don't get bored or grind the same place.
Here is how I imagine this for WoW:
ADVENTURES OVERVIEW
- Adventures would be a type of world quest that you complete for a reward.
- The rewards come in the form of a Bag of Spoils, which contains some currency (like Valor and Gold), as well as a potential bonus item. This item can be anything; useful gear, a mount, a pet, etc. The item you may get will also be based on the activity you did, so you get something your character could actually benefit from.
- The Adventures would send you on tasks around the entire world; not just the newest continent.
- Different types of Adventures ask you to do different things, but examples could include to kill a specific boss, reach a reputation with a faction, attack an enemy city in PvP, and so on.
HOW IT WORKS
- To begin an Adventure, you visit the Hero's Call Board in one of your faction's major cities.
- In the Hero's Call Board interface, you make a few choices in regards to what Adventures you want to display: PvE or PvP; group, raid or solo; which continents you want to Adventure on; and so on.
- Three Adventures are displayed based on your choices, randomly chosen from a pool of hundreds of Adventures - all designed by Blizzard.
- Once you choose one, the others fade out and you cannot select a new one until the current one is either finished or abandoned (abandoning an Adventure comes with a debuff preventing you to select a new one in a while, so you can't abuse the system until you get a particularly easy one).
- If you choose a group or raid Adventure (requires being in a group or raid to finish), you can share your Adventure with your comrades provided that they do not already have active Adventures of their own.
- Your chosen Adventure is displayed in your Quest Log, along with a descriptive test of what you need to do.
- Once an Adventure is finished, a reward screen pops up with your Bag of Spoils and potential experience points.
- You may then select a new Adventure at the Hero's Call Board. If you are in a group or raid, only one person has to visit the Hero's Call Board, and may then share the new Adventure with the rest via the Quest Log.
EXAMPLE ADVENTURES
- Defeat Lady Vashj before a timer expires.
- Help defend a team of Mountaineers in Dun Morogh against a trogg attack.
- Track down and kill a specific Rare mob.
- Kill one of each breed of trolls, found across the world.
- Kill an enemy faction leader.
- Pick every type of herb found on Kalimdor.
- Craft ten pieces of armour made from Thorium.
- /Hug Garrosh Hellscream on Heroic Difficulty before defeating him.
- Catch fifty Glacial Salmon out of Grizzly Hills rivers.
WHY IS THIS AWESOME?
- It gives you repeatable content, akin to daily quests - but it's a ton of more varied and fun.
- It gives you and your friends something to do in case you don't feel like raiding or running dungeons - perhaps like now, when the current tier has lasted a bit long, and SoO doesn't have the same appeal as it did before. Note, however, that based on your choices, Adventures could become your form of raiding. Instead of sticking with one raid, you and your friends could do a bunch of raid Adventures in different parts of the world on the same night.
- It gives each expansion a lasting purpose - Adventures never get out of date, their rewards are simply updated.
- Because more difficult (newer content) Adventures give higher rewards but take more time, it is up to you whether you want to run a ton of old content fast, or a little bit of new content more slowly. The rewards will be appropriate in the end.
- It puts people in the world, and makes us visit older continents. We'll revisit old raids, towns, zones, and questing hubs that we had perhaps forgotten and not seen in years.
- It makes us do a ton of different things in the game; everything from raids to PvP and crafting - but it lets us do it in a dynamic, varied, and fun way. Instead of grinding ourselves crazy doing the same thing over and over, we get a nice mix of things.
That's it for now - feel free to comment!