Was Archeology a success or a failure?

[Deleted]

I like it, gets you out in the World more than what you would normally, and you can actually get some cool items from it

[Fullgore]

Every patch they should have added atleast one or two cool pieces of gear.... 359 doesn't mean much at the end of teh xpac....

[DeulonUS]

I honestly forgot Archaeology was even in the game until I saw this post.

[ambigiouslynamed]

My biggest issue is the travel time. If they had made a way to teleport from digsite to digsite I would be fine. Right now I'm trying to get Zin'rokh: I have every rare in Northrend, except that. I still get 80% non-troll and spend 90% of my time flying from borean tundra to zul'drak and back again. I watch movies/series during archy farming just to stay sane.

eastern kingdoms dude

[Spikier]

Part of me wants to say succes, and part wants to say failure.

First thing I did when I hit 85 after Cata was released was leveling Arch. And it was such a grind fest, especially when the fragments amount was so low, you hardly got keystones etc. All I cared about was the Tol'vir scarab mount. And I got it after 151 completions. And it felt so epic. But now I hardly play that char anymore and I'd wish that mount was BOA tbh. The other sad part is that the other rares you get from Archeology are hardly worth it for me. There are some funny things you can get, but nothing I'm willing to grind Arch another time for on a different character.. The concept was amazing, but I wish Blizzard would've added more items, not only the outdated gear is useless now, but also more fun stuff, pets, mounts etc.

Ah well. Maybe they'll do more once MOP hits, maybe not. We'll have to wait and see.

[ambigiouslynamed]

Horrible, was not fun at all, failure.

i consider it a failure since blizz forgot about it and so can anyone else once they get what they want out of it but on the other hand there are some nice things that are Arch only like the bug mount (unless you did the gate thing but hardly anyone did) and the fossil raptor

---------- Post added 2012-02-21 at 09:56 PM ----------

Part of me wants to say succes, and part wants to say failure.

First thing I did when I hit 85 after Cata was released was leveling Arch. And it was such a grind fest, especially when the fragments amount was so low, you hardly got keystones etc. All I cared about was the Tol'vir scarab mount. And I got it after 151 completions. And it felt so epic. But now I hardly play that char anymore and I'd wish that mount was BOA tbh. The other sad part is that the other rares you get from Archeology are hardly worth it for me. There are some funny things you can get, but nothing I'm willing to grind Arch another time for on a different character.. The concept was amazing, but I wish Blizzard would've added more items, not only the outdated gear is useless now, but also more fun stuff, pets, mounts etc.

Ah well. Maybe they'll do more once MOP hits, maybe not. We'll have to wait and see.

sadly i doubt they will add much in MOP besides Arch stuff for the new area(s). If the mount you got from Arch was BOA you would still have to learn it and bind it to that one toon unless you mean BOA like the onxyian whelp which would be awesome

[Spikier]

sadly i doubt they will add much in MOP besides Arch stuff for the new area(s). If the mount you got from Arch was BOA you would still have to learn it and bind it to that one toon unless you mean BOA like the onxyian whelp which would be awesome

Exactly how I meant it. If someone got the scarab, get it in your bags, and then the ability to transfer it to your alts. Make it so that not every alt can have, like your level 20 running around in BG's. Maybe a restriction like 525 Arch, or an x amount of fragments completed.

[yetgdhfgh]

I must say it has been a boring failure

Its too time consuming
Its too heavily based on RNG
And lastly the rewards dont seem to justify the time and luck you need to spend on it

[ambigiouslynamed]

Exactly how I meant it. If someone got the scarab, get it in your bags, and then the ability to transfer it to your alts. Make it so that not every alt can have, like your level 20 running around in BG's. Maybe a restriction like 525 Arch, or an x amount of fragments completed.

then the point of making them BOA would be the rng factor...

[Cataclysmic Skyris]

definitly a failure. they promised "oh this isnt finished this is only about half the content! we promise to get the other half in content patches!" hmmm i dont see the other half? and dont count the few troll stuff from 4.2 :P

[Ligier]

But to me the profession looks rushed and incomplete.

Yeah, but they ask you to go out and dig up the rest of the pieces to complete it


Another QQ post about something completely harmless in the game. People answering "its too time consuming". Really, I mean, what else are you going to be doing while you're waiting for your 20 minute dungeon queue to pop up? Is waiting for your dungeon not also time consuming?

[Atrea]

Think about what archaeology was supposed to be.

A secondary profession - meaning, entirely optional - that could be done as a time-killer.
So what if it wasn't an exciting and magical tour through Azeroth's history; neither is First Aid or Cooking. And while Cooking provides the most tangible benefit of the three, really, only one person in a raid needs to have it for everyone to benefit.

Archaeology isn't bad. It could have been a lot more, but I think we all set our expectations unfairly high.

[AdriWar]

I think it was a success...I know the grind was just BRUTAL but I felt very accomplished. I love vanity items and Archaeology gave me more than my fair share of vanity things. Also the Professor title is nice to sport around since it was a well worked for title and I can say that I actually grinded all those rare artifacts.

[Pet0r]

i think it was a succes cause i enjoyed some hours of farming but now it's not that good i would like to see some new items to gather and maybe some acvm

[Zoma]

It's better than First Aid, and about equal with Fishing.

I love the rares and epics, hate the RNG.

[Spikier]

then the point of making them BOA would be the rng factor...

What's wrong with the RNG? I mean, there is RNG in wow everywhere. What would you suggest, if you reached x amount of fragments, you get item Y, etc? So you would get the scarab at 50?

[Solitare-sp]

Fishing wasn't too bad if you did it as you lvled. Doing Arch from lvl 80 and going back to the start was the killer.

[Sansnom]

Do you think the implementation of this profession was a success or a failure?

Have not maxed out this one yet so my opinions is probably not fair. So far, I failed to see the purpose of this profession other than just throwing something new to the players to waste their time on.

The other three profession have uses, first aid for healing, cooking for raid buff, fishing for cooking for raid buff. Archeology, other than a "possibly" fun thing to do. At the moment, I just doing this while waiting for my queue to pop.

So, yea, I consider it a failure.

[ambigiouslynamed]

Yeah, but they ask you to go out and dig up the rest of the pieces to complete it


Another QQ post about something completely harmless in the game. People answering "its too time consuming". Really, I mean, what else are you going to be doing while you're waiting for your 20 minute dungeon queue to pop up? Is waiting for your dungeon not also time consuming?

except blizz admitted Arch was rushed since for example there was supposed to be an option to donate the artifacts to a museum but now? you're just a grave robber selling the junk you find to random merchants and blizz had to buff the money amount gained from selling to merchants so ppl wouldnt just delete the worthless common artifacts you made

[Deleted]

From a personal view, Archeology has been a big disappointment. For a couple of reasons.

For 1, its RNG. Yes, I understand it shouldnt be all very easy to get, but there are some major flaws in it. There are common solves, rare solves, and 0.00001% dropchance rare solves. All normal rare solves will drop very soon, but if you werent very lucky, you have these left:

Fossil - Extinct Turtle Shell
Tol'vir - Crawling Claw
Tol'vir - Scepter of Azj'Aqir
Tol'vir - Scimitar of the Sirocco
Tol'vir - Staff of Ammunae
Dwarven - Staff of Sorcerer-Thane Thaurissan
Night Elf - Tyrande's Favorite Doll
Troll - Zin'rokh, Destroyer of Worlds

These 8 solves seem to have an extremly poor droprate, which gets even lower if you have solved all common ones. Because when you have solved all commons, the ones you solved get trown back in to the drop pool, ending up often solving the item 3-4-5 times in a row. From a personal view. I've done over 1200 solves, but I havent seen any rare dropping after 20 Tol'vir Solves, and 50 of the other races. I have solved every other rare, from all races, but I think I think I'm 'dry' since 250ish solves. So, well, I just dont like the droprate getting lower if you put more time in it. Best way to solve this, is when a common item has dropped, it can only drop again after lets say 50% of the commons have dropped of that race. This way, the droprate stays the same as at the start.

Flaw 2: Well, this is minor, but they should have done something with the Archeology weapon drops, 359 ilvl means they are just vanity items now. You can hop in the 4.3 dungeons almost right after you leveled 85, which makes these weapons a bit to poor. I've seen a lot of idea's mentioned on forums, where the ilvls of the weapons grow with the tier, or they should have deployed new ilvl drops every tier. But then people mention that that would be stupid from the story/role playing perspective, but well, solving the same item 3-4-5 times in a row doesnt do good for story and role playing aswell.

Flaw 3: While fishing, cooking and first aid are extremly usefull for raiding and battlegrounds, archeology isnt. There is nothing not farm to buff your party. Only in Dungeons Archeology was used a bit. Not enough I think. Where other professions feel part of a MMO, archeology feels useless.