Tone down Tol Barad dailies

The rewards and benefits for doing Tol Barad quests are quite nice. Players jumping straight into the zone when hitting 85 (either in quest greens or some dungeon blues) will certainly notice it's substantially more challenging than Twilight Highlands.

The balance of the zone partially relates to its sustainability as repeatable content for players at all levels of the end game. When I first started questing there I was in all questing gear and definitely noticed the challenge, but I liked it. As I started gearing up I saw how much better I was faring while taking high damage, managing unpredictable spawns, etc.

The basic point is that, because there are some great rewards there a lot of players are working toward, the questing needs to be more difficult than a place like Twilight Highlands so it doesn't feel incredibly trivial by the time you have a 329 average item level.

The rewards and benefits for doing Tol Barad quests are quite nice. Players jumping straight into the zone when hitting 85 (either in quest greens or some dungeon blues) will certainly notice it's substantially more challenging than Twilight Highlands.

The balance of the zone partially relates to its sustainability as repeatable content for players at all levels of the end game. When I first started questing there I was in all questing gear and definitely noticed the challenge, but I liked it. As I started gearing up I saw how much better I was faring while taking high damage, managing unpredictable spawns, etc.

The basic point is that, because there are some great rewards there a lot of players are working toward, the questing needs to be more difficult than a place like Twilight Highlands so it doesn't feel incredibly trivial by the time you have a 329 average item level.

So what you're saying is that, in order to establish continued viability, mobs this expansion have lots of health so that they aren't three-shottable at any point, ensuring that mobs in every zone will continue to be incredibly annoying no matter how well geared you are?

No, I didn't say any of that really. :)

03/03/2011 2:58 PMPosted by Motzie

The spawntimes do make me frown though. Killing something than having it instantly respawn on your face isnt a challenge, it's annoying. Although granted waiting for a mob to respawn while 7 other people need 12 of the same thing is also annoying. Catch 22.

It is sort of a catch 22 and a side effect of dynamic spawning. When there are a finite number of spawn points for certain creature types, and the rate of spawning is determined by the number of players in the area, this can lead to instant respawns at specific locations. We still feel that's preferable to set spawn times regardless of player population in the area.

I know I'd rather have a few creatures spawn on top of me and have to prepare for that potential outcome, than camp out and really fight with nearby players to get my quests done.

03/03/2011 3:21 PMPosted by Tsukasa

Are there any plans to add new areas like this? I'd love to see an IQD 2.0.

There are plans for a new daily quest hub in Mount Hyjal to be released in conjunction with the Firelands raid. We're planning to make it phase and unlock more content as players progress, very similar to Isle of Quel'Danas. One downside of the phasing and unlocking of new buildings/quests there though, was that you had to be participating during the world event to actually see the change take place. We'd like to make the Mount Hyjal hub phase per player so that your personal progress unlocks new content for you, rather than for your whole realm.

We'll have more details about that a little later though. ;)

03/03/2011 3:32 PMPosted by Pantagana

Nothing on the island is overtuned.

Except spawn rate. :)

And the reason for that is that it is less work to do smaller area with 'over-tuned' spawn rate then the bigger one with 'normal' spawn rate.

We didn't decide on the size of the two zones because it would have been more difficult to make the areas larger.

I totally get players' points about the area feeling cramped. I can understand how many players would feel that way, particularly on PvP realms. At the same time though, I think if we spaced everything out according to what players are asking for in this thread, we'd see at least an equivalent number of complaints about how the distance between all questing points of interest is too far -- that traveling around the zones to quest just takes forever on land mounts.

We tried to find a happy medium so that everything doesn't feel insanely far away, but doesn't feel insanely cramped either. As it stands, it doesn't take long to get around, but the size allows for a little interesting chaos. We're not trying to make things overly difficult or elitist, but we don't want everyone to be on full auto-pilot while doing dailies.

The rewards and benefits for doing Tol Barad quests are quite nice.

Not so nice it outweights the hate of having to go there 500 times.

The balance of the zone partially relates to its sustainability as repeatable content for players at all levels of the end game.

There is repeatable and content - rarely do they meet.

The basic point is that, because there are some great rewards there a lot of players are working toward

I think you vastly overestimate the value of what is there.

You've added virtually nothing to the discussion, but thanks for flexing.