It’s no secret many MMOs lock desirable things behind content, it’s a normal practice and not inherently a bad thing. However, after the recent 6.2 patch for World of Warcraft the carrot which is being dangled for me is looking less and less worth the effort. The whole concept of forcing players to do different types of content just to be able to be fully prepared for the content they want to do is a bit ridiculous.

First let me give some brief personal history so you can understand where I am coming from on this issue. I started playing wow back February of 2005, at first I was just focused on PvP but I switched to raiding after attaining the Commander rank. I kept actively raiding through every expansion except MoP. I was never in a World First guild or anything crazy like that, but I do enjoy raiding and theroycrafting a lot.

Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry were both raids I enjoyed a bunch, though I like Highmaul a bit more but that might be due to just getting back into raiding again. I didn’t mind doing garrison missions as they seemed to have mostly taken the place of doing dailies, which is something I appreciated. In general I don’t usually like doing dailies very much as there are normally other things I’d rather spend my time on, so being able to send followers out to do those things instead was awesome. Plus finding followers through questlines and dungeons was also a ton of fun. Gave each of them a backstory I could relate to and I felt a bit of attachment to them.

Given all of that you might be thinking I love the shipyard… well you’d be wrong about that. Shipyards have so many issues for me it’s hard to know where to start. I’m not a fan of how completely separated shipyards are from the rest of the garrison. It makes me feel like all my hardwork with my followers was completely pointless. Sure I still send them out for oil. gold, and garrison resources but that’s about it, most of my followers now stand around idle with not much to do. I don’t even feel like there was much point to getting them to 675 ilvl at this point.

Failed a 93% chance mission and lost a ship -_-

The really sad thing is most of my ships also sit around idle with nothing to do. The problem is if a mission is failed there is a chance to lose a ship. The goal of this risk was probably to make succeeding feel much better and to add a bit of excitement. Unfortunately what it does is add a ton more stress and frustration. Losing any ships feels bad but losing an epic ship or a ship with a buff you don’t have on other ships is especially painful. Also losing ships on missions with a 90%+ chance to succeed feels exceedingly punitive.

To mitigate this I have started sending out my ships on missions only if the percent chance is at least 70%, though I know others who don’t send ships out on missions with less than 90% chance to succeed. The upshot is we are severely slowed in progressing through the Legendary Ring quest, which is the only reason I am doing any of the shipyard stuff in the first place. Sure I could be more cavalier about it and just send my ships out on all the missions… but holy crap that would be expensive in terms of resources and would mean having to do even more of the Taanan Dailies.

As I mentioned earlier I don’t generally like doing dailies very much. I’ve slogged through the rep grinds and dailies in all the expansions and at this point I can’t help but wonder why this is a thing. I’m not practicing skills useful for raiding by doing these dailies, I’m pretty much for the most part just out running around on my own which is completely different than raiding. I’m just doing random quests to get oil or rep for things I need for my shipyard just so I’ll have a chance of succeeding at the legendary ring quests.

It’s not like I haven’t enjoyed daily areas in the past. Molten Front dailies were interesting because the story involved with them was rather interesting. I was more personally invested in it and the payoff with the storyline was well worth it. The Argent Crusade was a ton of fun because it was completely different than anything in other parts of the game. I’ve reached the point in WoD where I just don’t care about the story anymore and the quests are just more of the same. Which is sad considering heading in I was really into it and the payoff in Nagrand was awesome. Sort of funny though Gul’dan is now a problem… Like it wasn’t obvious letting him go in the beginning was a bad idea.

I don’t mind having rewards being gated behind doing things, after all that’s the basis for most games. What I do mind is having a reward which is only useful in one sort of content gated behind doing completely different unrelated content. It’s almost like requiring PvE people to take part in PvP just so they can remain competitive (or vise versa). The Legendary Ring is only really useful for raiding, sure it can be used outside of raids but its effects are minimal in those settings. Of course I could get into a whole thing about how legendaries are being done now… but that’s a whole different post.

The only argument I’ve heard for having the legendary ring quest be tied to the shipyard and doing things in Taanan Jungle is if they weren’t tied together no one would do them. Well that’s the point isn’t it? If the only way certain content will be done is to tie highly desired things behind doing it, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate the content. I mean yes, locking raiding gear behind non-raiding PvE stuff is one way to get all of your raiders participating in the content… it is the easiest answer. But come on Blizzard, you can do better than that.

Going back to the subject of Taanan Jungle for a minute, mob tapping and racing for resources is so ten years ago. There have been improvements, sharing rares and some of the harder mobs is a thing and it’s great. I know I can start attacking one of the gronn in the Iron Front and multiple people will automatically help. That’s great, why are we still fighting over the other things? It’s much nicer to see other people out in the world and want to help them as opposed to having to worry about people being jerks and taking an objective from you while you are killing a mob. Honestly this would be a huge QoL improvement which would personally make me much less annoyed about trying to get stuff done out in the world.

Anywho, that’s where I am on things with WoW right now. raiding things should deal with raiding things, out in the world things should be out in the world and don’t try to strong arm people into doing content they aren’t interested in.