No Time for Dailies

Hello dear reader,

I had intended to write this post the day Mogu'shan Vaults was released, however I did not have much time. Ever since the first raid was released, we were sitting at "end-game" whether we liked it or not, despite being VERY ambitious this was the plan and we weren't going to deviate from it.

Let me give you a recount (get it, recount?) of my druid's Pandaria experience thus far:

1. Level to 90 as fast as possible while gearing up along the way. I did not read any quests, nor was I actually present for probably 30% of my leveling experience (questing with an efficient buddy with a ridable mount helps).

2. Hit 90, and run Sha of Anger IMMEDIATELY upon receiving a luck token, and grind heroics until they are sick of me and vice versa.

3. This part gets messy: grind dailies because ohgodwhy.jpg

Dailies. This aint fresh news to nobody, but... I'm not quite sure where I stand on the topic of dailies.

First off, I felt compelled to do EVERY SINGLE faction's dailies, everyday. My motivations might be different than most. See, how I see doing dailies and getting rep, gear, and mounts are tinted by how I perceive society as a whole from an American standpoint. Wait what? It's sort of a Keeping Up With the Joneses notion where if you aren't in a certain "stage" of the game, then you are behind and "bad". It's not exactly how I see view society, but how I think society wants me to think about itself. Y'know?

I knew for sure that I wasn't going to be server first 90 anything. I had actually put off levelling for several days to check out pet battles. Thus, right off the get-go I wasn't going to be the "best" druid. Someone else had hit 90 before me therefore I am irrelevant. See what I am trying to get at? Other than playing the game, which from what I see is actually pet battles, and materials collection, I was made myself do the "other" thing...dailies.

The moment where the answer to my question of "do we get tabards?" was a resounding "no", I decided that I disliked the entire reputation system only on the basis of "needing" to gear up and have all the mounts right now.

My major qualm are the Golden Lotus dailies. There are a LOT of dailies divided into multiple hubs, which provides one "reward" at the end which may or may not contain something useful/useless. My ranting on the Treasures of the Vale thus ends here because I did find a Sky Shard in one of my bags so now I know they DO work. (However, someone had already found 10 shards and caught Alani, so that mount is no longer special)

These dailies involve a lot of killing, then some clicking, then more killling and clicking and ends with a "big boss" type quest, then sends you away to do more killing or clicking. This would be fine if I had TIME. By the time I get off work to bed-time I have about 4 hours of playtime. Yesterday was a non-raid day so I did these dailies with glee. However on raid nights, there's no TIME since I "have" to do them on multiple characters with various professions. And you know what the sad thing is? Truny hit honored, which means she has to do all THREE hubs of dailies! BAH. Luckily a destruction warlock is about three times more efficient than my poor boomkin.

I wouldn't mind if the Golden Lotus dailies were just THREE dailies that reward 550 rep each. For example the dailies could be:

1. Kill this dangerous monster.
2. Traverse this dungeon and kill another monster
3. /wave at Alani

Instead of committing genocide on everything in the vale amirite?

This, my friend, is just one faction. At revered, I opened up Shado-Pan (SP) and the August Celestials (AC). SP requires you to go all the way to Townlong Steppes to kill yet another hundred or so mobs. Fuck that I don't even have time to fly to their hub let alone do their lame quests. AC has a hub in Krasarang Wilds? What am I a time traveller you might as well send me back down to Tanaris to do a quest.

I have rationalized these two factions, and considering that my VP acaquisition rate is so slow, there won't even be a feasible method for me to have every faction unlocked to buy everything they have to offer anyways. My plan is to have Truny work on Shado-Pan, she is the most efficient killer, and the mobs from those quests are rather annoying to kill; and to have Turby work on AC once he is 90 and once he hits revered with GL in his own sweet ass slow time.

After hitting revered with the Tillers and Klaxxi I sighed a breath of relief that I would never have to interact with them ever again on my druid. The sad thing is that my VP acquisition rate slowed completely down and I'll be damned if I can ever manage to cap my VP in any given week.

So now we go back to the age old question of "what can we do at end game?"

If you think about it, dailies are a HUGE part of end game, they unlock the gear, and also provide the currency as a means to obtaining said gear, they unlock recipes and also the mounts. ALL the mounts (except the Yaks).

If you take out dailies, what have you got left? Dungeons? Meh already outdated. Scenarios? Interesting but the rewards have been insignificant since day 5 unless you somehow managed to level up through gathering. It would be nice if they FULLY COPIED LOTRO and gave scenarios/dungeons their own set of currency rather than a pittance of VP and crappy blues.

We have challenge modes, those look interesting. Beautiful transmog gear and ugly phoenixes. I guess we can spam challenge modes non stop for months on end?

LFR? Does this even count? People are crazy in LFR despite long-winded explanations on every single mechanic, which may or may not be relevant.

Farms? Farms are getting annoying. It's nice to have your own plot of land, away from all the crazy people but really it takes so damn long to plant all my crops, why can't they just be planted and stay happy? Does everything I plant have to be infested/weeded/attract angry birds? There isn't much interaction with the farms other than the Annoying Random Event. You plant your stuff, then leave.

We have one thing left, and that one thing is by default the defining "game thing" of WoW: Pet Battles. But who has time for that with all these dailies in the way?

So, what is the point of all this? To gear up? To appreciate the art of the new mounts? To have fun with friends? I think the one single line that the Panda from the Pandaria Cinematic resounds quite well with the game, "what is worth fighting for?"

Nothing. You've heard this line before "slow down!"

Turny the Needs to Slow Down