I may just be living with my head in the sand, but I am seeing a whole lot of win coming from Blizzard lately. They redesigned the whole world!

Class quests? Oh, hell yes that would rock. I have one of every class except priest, and I’d be tempted to reroll several of them just to see the quests and go thru the spiffy new content. I would love that. I was all happy when I did my paladin epic mount quest. Happy when I helped a friend do their warlock epic mount quest. That stuff is fun. Players now are just lazy. They want everything handed to them without having to work for it.

I don’t see Cataclysm as “incomplete”. How can I as it ISN’T OUT YET AND IS STILL BEING WORKED ON!!!!!!! How can you bitch about something sucking and not being complete when it’s still months from release and evolving constantly?

Pazi got it right. Players being “lazy, shortsighted, selfish and greedy” hits the nail on the head. I long for the old days when you had to work for the good stuff, and strut around in the gear because so few people had it.

-Sarabian a.k.a. “Grumpy Old Bastard”

For me the class-spesific quests etched out the class and character in a unique way. Partly -because- of these quests some classes felt more interesting, unique and fun-to-play-with. Classes with very few or very generic, uninteresting class quests were much less interesting lore-wise…and for this or other reasons I actually ended up playing them much less.

I don’t think it’s all about the costs.

Back in the days players were actually trying to play the game, enduring all the obstacles.
I did the paladin-charger-quest on my first paladin (alliance), at level 60, with friends that gained nothing from it but helping a friend (I didn’t do it with my other two paladins (horde) because I got the charger for far less gold and I already did the quest once). I did the druid-swift-flightform-quest (twice, on alliance and horde, at level 70, one back then and one a few weeks ago, because I didn’t want to wait until lvl75) as well as all the other druid-quests. Right now I level my last open class, a warlock, and he will do his pony-on-fire-quest at level 60 because I never did it before, although he runs around with it for 18 levels now. To be honest, I hated the shamans totem-quests at early levels, but I sticked to it the third time I tried to level one. I think I did all the class-quest with the exception of the priest-lvl60-quest (stratholm if I remember right) and those that would be started in MC (I did the hunter-bow-quest). I have a Lore-Master (Hunter) on alliance-side, I stopped playing all of my alliance-toons because I’m experiencing the horde-side now, which isn’t so much different after level ~35, unfortunately.
With other words, I don’t consider raiding to be the only goal in this game (I have a KingsSlayer (Tank), and another CloseButNotThisTimeKingsSlayer (Healer)).

Were was I? Ah, endurance. You know how many fresh lvl80-paladins don’t have the spell “Redemption” (for those that don’t know, it’s used to revive other players)? It’s a quest you get in the starting-zone (lvl12ish), from the paladin-teacher. YOU CAN’T MISS IT. And yet in the last month I met 3 paladins that said they don’t have that spell, and worse, they didn’t have a clue from where to get it. They knew that other paladins can revive and still they didn’t bother to find out how to get that spell (for over 60 levels) – I had to explain it to them and I bet two of them still didn’t bother to do the quest because why the heck would they want to spend time on something that doesn’t help THEM.

Blizzard doesn’t bother with class-quests, because players today are lazy, shortsighted, selfish and greedy (that roll need on any item because they “need” the gold).
Those players …
would rather quit the game
then use their brain.
All Blizzard wants is their money, as long as possible. They will water down any difficulty to Farmville-level.

After spending a year progressing through the raids in WotLK, and then taking a break, I’ve been spending most of my time in-game as “me-time” with my druid. I’ve done a lot of PvP, which brings me closer to my class. I’ve changed my soloing/questing/farming playstyle. I’ve finally completed “Vanquish the Raven God” and the druid questline. I’m working on fun and different achievements. I’m soloing old content. I’m more in love with my feral druid than ever.

As I completed “Vanquish the Raven God” and got my Swift Flight Form feat of strength (LOL!), further class quests in Cataclysm were high in my mind. The druid questline made me feel special, and I like that.

This won’t be a “rail against Blizz” comment; because others have said it better in previous comments, and like I said, this was a very good article. It’s just to express that I really enjoyed the druid questline, and I wish that there were more to come.

That being said, class-specific quests add to both the epic and personal/individual feel of the game. As you stated, they also add to the uniqueness of the experience when playing multiple characters. If Blizzard wants to retain subscribers during the lean months, it seems to me that developing class-specific questlines makes good business sense after all (no math involved, just common sense as I see it).

Thanks again for the article, BBB!

yep that’s the point of ALL of this crap from our paid developer company lately – Blizzard/Actievil realizes that Wow is probably in it’s last death rattle.
Yeah sure they still make a ton of money… but not like they did in the past.

So translation of corp-speak to english – “too expensive” means “Gee we can’t invest even miniscule resources to a legacy aging game that may not last much longer”

Here is the thing that chaps my leggins. How much developer time is Blizz spending on “social networking” integration? Oh yeah that’s a GOOD QUESTION!
You see I am paying for a service. I give Blizzard money and they entertain me. I REALLY REALLY DONT LIKE BLIZZ SPENDING DEVELOPER MONEY THAT I GAVE THEM TO MAKE AN ENTERTAINING GAME… AND USE IT TO MARKET TO ME.

IT’S LIKE PAYING FOR CABLE AND HAVING THE CABLE CO SENDING ME A SURVEY EVERY WEEK!!! I just can’t stand this. FACEBOOK is FREE they can do whatever they like cause no one is paying them. Blizz is a different story. They ARE being paid and they want to play it both ways. They want the subscriber revenue stream AND the marketing database to sell data out of. Gee guys I don’t think so… I pay you to give me content… you don’t do content… I DONT PAY!

Net Net of this is.. Blizzard is admiting to the entire player base that Star Wars: The Old Republic WILL KICK THEIR ASSETS when it ships in 2011…

THIS is why Blizz is shipping an incomplete Cataclysm
THIS is why Blizz is shipping the expansion in 2010 come Twisting Nether or Highwater
THIS is why Blizz is doing the stupid “facecraft” II in space
THIS is why Blizz is saying “too expensive” and we put B Team Mr Ghostcrawler on point to produce Wow expansions
THIS is why we were “forced” to switch to Battle.net ids
THIS is why we get these stupid Real ID debacles

We just have to get our heads wrapped around the fact that… it’s 2005 again and we are playing Everquest II hoping that this Wow thing takes off… because ughh EQ2 just jumped the shark BIG TIME with this /pizza thing and I can’t stand a company messin with my killing dragons time.

Isn’t that the great thing about free markets??? WE WILL HAVE CHOICES FOR OUR ENTERTAINMENT DOLLAR… In fact it’s the looming Wow-killer that has Actievil all in a tizzy about “expediting revenue capture”.

Shintar… you said what i wanted to say, with far more eloquence. Well done, and welcome to my feedreader. :)

Kit, you’ve got a very good point. I don’t think it’s cynical, after all… I thought about that rocketmount too.

Athenrein, yay for Anzu!!!!!

Graimerin, I know JUST what you mean, that warrior quest agasint the whirlwind, and the warrior quest for learning Berserker were both, without heirlooms the first time I did them, lasting memories. And the Druid quests to learn Bear form! I still think that was awesome when done right at level. And the long quest to learn swim form! Those memories last, for me, lots longer than doing Westfall again.

Oops, I gotta go, but I also wanted to add, Lara… you’re right. A server transfer is a good option, IF you’re willing to split time between two servers and have the money, or just want to know that character is parked somewhere if you want them back someday. Good point!

I think at this point I’ve played all the races starter zones. I played the vast majority of the classes and got their unique quests. Would more unique quests make me want to level more? Absolutely. I would love to have a class quest every 10 levels with a nice blue, just to keep up, because (and this will change), while leveling it is damn hard to get decent gear by questing alone.

I’d really love it if we could get an extra slot or two, even if it meant you had to choose one particular server to get the extra slot(s), and maybe even if it cost a bit of real cash. (Though, of course, I’d rather not have to pay extra for it!) Still, I’m more than a little bit skeptical that Blizzard would ever do this for us. :(