With patch 5.1, came lots of new content to keep World of Warcraft players busy, but I have to be honest...every time I read "new dailies" in the patch notes, I would cringe, knowing that I would again feel forced (not actually forced...but my competitive spirit basically means I am forced) to do more dailies. They sounded like a decent story for dailies, but I gotta be honest, I have yet to have a set of dailies I enjoyed doing. The closest was the firelands dailies, due to the good story, but even those got old real quick.
I feel like the shieldwall dailies are the best Blizzard has ever done, and for a very different reason then most would expect. It has nothing to do with the actual quests...THEY SUCK as much as the others. It instead has to do with an adjustment they made to the story telling process that has evolved from firelands dailies to golden lotus dailies, to now shieldwall dailies. So what is this change that make maddeningly repetitive quests actually fun...it is more frequent story tie-ins that are not told through the daily quests themselves.
If you are like me, when you do dailies, it is all about how to finish the objectives as quickly as possible. As a result, I never pay attention to the stories in the actual dailiy quests. In the golden lotus quests, the only story I got was the quest chain you did inbetween each level of rep. These were great quest chains, but seeing a new story every week or two, makes the story feel disconnected and confusing.
With the shield wall quests, they have these quest chains multiple times inbetween each level of rep. As a result, I have a fun quest chain every 2-3 days. These quest chains keep me coming back day by day because I want to see the next piece of the story. They occur frequently enough that I don't lose interest, and they let me interact with key players in the World of Warcraft world, so I feel like the true hero I should be.
Shieldwall is the first set of dailies I enjoyed doing on a daily basis, but it wasn't because the quests are fun, it is because the cool story quest I got two days ago, is fresh in my mind, and driving me to get to the next one. This is good story development and good daily development.
Don't get me wrong, I wish they would create quests that are more fun, and less punishing if there happens to be lots of people around you doing the same quests, but if they can continue the trend towards dailies that reward you with a new storyline quest every 2-3 days, then I will drastically change my opinion on dailies. If every rep I was grinding pre 5.1 had used this same model, I still would have hated having to do that many dailies, but I would have enjoyed doing them a lot more.
So here is to Blizzard learning from this model and continuing on with it. Maybe after a few more patches of these kind of dailies, I will look at the patch notes, see "new dailies" and give a silent cheer instead of a groan at what is to come.
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