I’m sure you’ve all noticed it; you get to Tanaris, to the entrance of Caverns of Time and as soon as you do you get this in chat, repeatedly:
“How often can we kill Doomwalker for drops?”
“What does Doomwalker drop?”
“Where is the vendor for the pet?”
“What pet?”
“What mount?”
And so forth and so on. Yes, I know, people can go to Wowhead but why is it that none of this information is every made available via playing the game?
More examples - where are you told ingame that if you have a lower level character, if its a ‘certain level’ (which you dont know) you can go to Tanaris, but if it is levelling up in chromie time, that you need to return to Chromie and turn it off so you can see everyone else fight Doomwalker? Answer : nowhere. Go figure it out.
Where ingame can you find out what other bosses/rares are available on that day to fight? Answer: nowhere. Also go figure it out.
It shouldnt be necessary to rely entirely on an outside reference source to tell you how to play the game, especially for current content. Surely it would be possible, when your character logs on and you get the event gift box, to have a letter that gives you some basic information. I just get a bit frustrated at being kept in the dark and fed…well, nothing really.
I went to wowhead to look up the loot table. The mount isn’t listed on it. Where were players supposed to get this information you want them to “share”?
Regardless of all the various Blizz powers who have come and gone through the years, one core design principle has always remained the same – ‘never let the player have any clear understanding of wth is happening or why.’
I wanted to see what was listed as the loot table on Doomwalker. I see you decided to pull the “lie by omission”, because the loot table for Doomwalker doesn’t have the mount listed on it.
The fact is that they deliberately leave out information to give people like you the opportunity to try to make yourself look clever and edgy by lying to contradict a fact.
It has all the info you need, but who wants to read?
You’ll also be able to do a little Timewalking to take on the Doomwalker with the weekly quest, “Doomwalkin’ Has Come Knockin” for Timewarped Badges and a chance at additional rewards including the Doomwalker Trophy Stand toy or Illidari Doomhawk mount.
and make the game’s file size bigger? the game is already 120GB, and it’s not rocket science, quest says go here, new quest says kill this, very simple
because there would be too much information for them actually to put in the game and it would take too long to create a system to provide the information, plus how would the poor wowhead people survive without the free business for them.
You know… I think that goes for most of the game. There are lots of things that could facilitate learning how to play, especially for new players. (Or just make the game more interesting.)
I think the new starting area is a good beginning for learning your class, but it still doesn’t teach people utility stuff, rotation, etc. which imo is kind of important given people expect you to know your rotation and how to use e.g. Interrupts and immunities in instances.
The new quest markers really help with that but when you’re new you still probably have a hard time finding lots of things - particularly from older expansions.
Transmog is fun, right? Yet the game doesn’t really point you towards how it works or where to do it at any point while playing.
Why do I still need add ons or wowhead for my stat priority when clearly the data must be in the game somewhere? Same goes for dbm, gtfo and damage meters… Why aren’t they things that are IN the game you can toggle on and off?
Why aren’t the bags automatically easy to organize without add-ons?
Each individual one of these things isn’t really a big thing on its own, but if you put them and some others I didn’t mention together, they influence playing a lot.
I think for me the biggest thing is that the game doesn’t teach you how to play your spec well at all.
When you play through Exiles Reach on a, mage, you essentially learn how to use Frostbolt and Fireblast. Using the damage abilities on a damage dealer is the most intuitive part. No new player doesn’t know to use them.
The things that matter later on are rotation and utility abilities and the game doesn’t tell new players how to use them properly.
This wouldn’t be a huge issue if you weren’t sort of expected to know your rotation, your interrupts, your dispels, etc. or as a healer how to manage your mana well as soon as you get to endgame but you are. And unfortunately (or fortunately?) you can easily level to 60 without ever using e. g. an interrupt.
The quest marker thing has gotten way better and isn’t really the biggest problem anymore imo.
