Bomb Them Again

So Patch 2.4 hit the live realms on Tuesday.  We were out of town most of the week, so I did not have a chance to experience the new content until the weekend.  My first impressions are generally favorable.  I have been doing the Shattered Sun dailies on both my warlock main and my newly-minted 70 hunter.  I have not ran the Magister’s Terrace five-man instance.

I am most impressed by the amount of gold I can earn in a day with these two characters.  I also like the green rewards (and potential for Badges of Justice) in the Shattered Sun “care packages” given as quest rewards.  My warlock is fairly swimming in Arcane Dust from the reward items I have disenchanted.

However, therein lies my ambivalence about the new daily quests.  I think they are called dailies because one can spend all day on them, on all one’s level 70 alts, and never experience anything else in the game.  Add in the potential “reward” of completing a phase, or opening a portal to Quel’Danas from Shattrath, and players can quickly come to feel like a hamster on a treadmill.

Today, there was some griping in the new zone General chat about being at only 15% of the second phase, and someone else expressed a worry that people were wearing out and giving up.  Indeed there is some potential for exhaustion of an otherwise great idea.  While flying the bombing run, I had the thought that the repeatable quest was so much like several other daily “bombing” quests Blizzard has introduced, that as fun and easy as they are, I could grow very tired very quickly.  Especially since this bombing quest has been made more difficult; usually one has to run the bombing gauntlet as many as five or ten times to kill the quota of mobs, due to their increased health.

Right now, I think what keeps these dailies enjoyable for me is that I do not have my epic flying mount, and my hunter still needs his normal flying mount…and my Shaman is level 54 and will soon be eligible to buy his epic land mount.  Furthermore, my warlock needs to max his enchanting profession.

In other words, I need gold, thus these quests have come along at just the right time, for me.  Between my bank, my hunter, and my warlock, I have over 1500 gold, a few hundred of it accumulated just in about two or three days of doing the dailies.

Other people may find the dailies merely tiresome.  I am afraid that as much as everyone appreciates the easy availability of gold through dailies, another bombing run won’t answer most people’s desire for new content and a richer game experience.