Blizzard is destroying replayability

[Elorael-remulos]

In yet another misguided attempt to pander to the “Vanilla with Northrend” players, Brian Birmingham confirmed that In Game Quest Helper will not be implemented in Wrath.

In Game Quest Helper Removed in Wrath of the Lich King Classic

we’re not going to put that in because it was out in the very last patch of Wrath of the Lich King

The argument made is one that nonsense posters here have made, “It’s in the last patch so it’s not really part of the expansion”, and ignored the reality of that statement. The “Last Patch” lasted half the expansion, and is responsible for all the Wrath babies having a fulfilling experience.

For many of the new players who joined in Wrath more than 10 yeara ago, the game was specifically tailored to ensure that their experience was not hampered by the fact that the majority of players were at the endgame.

Random Dungeon Finder was implemented to help players find others of their approximate level, to do the “Multiplayer” part of MMO.

Quest Helper was implemented to smooth out the humps of levelling by providing concrete locations for players to go to for their quests.

These features also were key in allowing morw players to become altoholics for real, increasing replayability of the content. Having these players levelling new alts also meant new players would have more interactions and especially interactions with people who could help or guide them. It generated more avenues for play for people who’d become raidloggers on their main character, or even unsubscribed till the next content patch, which was a problem as far back as TBC original.

The whole point of Wrath was to make it accessible to a larger audience, increase replayability and expand non-raid content, and all of these changes are why TBC was the “Wrath Waiting Room”. We weren’t waiting for Vanilla in Northrend. We were waiting for Wrath and all the features it provides.

Now, I’m ok with them saying “We’ll add it when we add ICC”, but that’s not the logic they’ve gone with in the rest of the game. Their “Systems” are 3.3.5a. Death Knights are already “Fixed” into their DPS and Tanking roles. Snapshot refreshing is already implemented. Quest Helper is not content, it’s a system.

If we’re playing the 3.3.5a “polished version, how the devs intended”, then that includes Quest Helper. And RDF.

We want Wrath, not #VanillaInNorthrend

Update:

@Aggrend-1483

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to pop in and say that we do in fact intend to implement the quest tracking features that were added in patch 3.3 of original Wrath of the Lich King into the Quest Log and Map UI at some point. The interviews linked by the OP were a few months old and our thinking has changed quite a bit on this since then.

This feature isn’t present on the Wrath of the Lich King Classic beta at this time, but this along with several other UI features such as the Calendar and Equipment Manager are still in active development.

Thanks for all the feedback around this!

There’s hope.

[Kekkler-whitemane]

The #SomeChanges that were requested in Classic and TBC Classic were quality of life changes, but now Blizzard seems like they’re doing their best to remove quality of life features from Wrath Classic.

[Moonforest-bloodsail-buccaneers]

I don’t see why they couldn’t have just provided an option to turn it on and off in game. That would have made everyone happy. Instead they’ve chosen to make people unhappy.

I wonder if they’re being honest. I wonder if there’s some technical barrier or problem or something that makes it too expensive to include the quest helper component.

[Wargrieve-stormrage]

@Moonforest-bloodsail-buccaneers

I wonder if they’re being honest. I wonder if there’s some technical barrier or problem or something that makes it too expensive to include the quest helper component.

Even if this is this case, that’s really sad. “Too complicated to add a feature that has already existed for well over a decade into the re-release of the expansion that feature was originally included in.” I feel like it must take more work to extract it out of the 3.3.5 patch and not include it than to actually let it be included.

[Elorael-remulos]

@Moonforest-bloodsail-buccaneers

I don’t see why they couldn’t have just provided an option to turn it on and off in game. That would have made everyone happy.

Back in 2010, that existed. They removed it in Cataclysm.

@Moonforest-bloodsail-buccaneers

I wonder if they’re being honest. I wonder if there’s some technical barrier or problem or something that makes it too expensive to include the quest helper component.

I would believe specifically for Quest Helper, that they don’t want to put the time in to rebuild the data for EK/Kalimdor, but if that’s true, they’re actively lying to the community.

[Rendrael-benediction]

It is painfully obvious that Brian Birmingham is a liability to Wrath Classic and needs to be moved to another project or Sacked.

Our line in the sand should have been RDF. Give them and inch and they take a mile.

[Kekkler-whitemane]

They did not remove it in Cataclysm. The quest-tracking features first added in Patch 3.3.0 were the basis for the modern retail quest-tracking features that still exist in retail today. There’s an Engadget article from 2009 about it titled “Patch 3.3: Blizzard previews new quest tracking UI”.

[Elorael-remulos]

@Kekkler-whitemane

They did not remove it in Cataclysm. The quest-tracking features first added in Patch 3.3.0 were the basis for the modern retail quest-tracking features that still exist in retail today.

They removed the ability to disable the quest overlay.

[Kekkler-whitemane]

Oh, yeah. There’s an image of the overlay as it was on the Wrath PTR at the time showing a check mark option to disable the overlay on the map.

[Elorael-remulos]

Yeah, that was removed in Cataclysm, since no-one used it.