Gnomebliteration as a daily? Not so fast.

Suffice it to say that Gnomebliteration has become one of the most popular one-time quests in Cataclysm's content, and due to other fun quests being made dailies or repeatable quests, many have asked that Gnomebliteration receive the same treatment and be made either a daily quest or a repeatable quest. I myself also had a lot of fun with this quest, (though I had even more fun with the game that probably inspired it, which I highly recommend you check out if you haven't done so) and would love to jump on the "Gnomebliteration for daily!" bandwagon, but I could never let myself do that without really looking at the issue first and deciding whether becoming a daily quest really is the best fate for Gnomebliteration.

Let's get the obvious concern out of the way immediately. Gnomebliteration is a fun quest because there are often large crowds of gnomes or mechanoids to pick up or obliterate. If you had to go around looking for enemies to obliterate, it would not be nearly as fun of a quest. And if the quest were a daily or repeatable quest, you can bet that many people would be doing it at the same time. With a lot of people doing this quest, the number of gnomes and mechanoids to pick up or obliterate would go down significantly, and there goes the fun you might have had otherwise. Now, there are two ways to remedy this issue. One is to make the respawn rate on the gnomes and mechanoids dynamic, making it go up as more people are doing the daily. Considering how many people would probably do this daily at any one time, that would likely result in groups of gnomes spawning ludicrously frequently, with you obliterating some groups more by accident than intentionally when they happened to spawn right in front of you. That would ruin some of the fun of the quest, since the intentional rolling destruction of numerous gnomes is what makes this quest so fun.

The only other option is to give players their own phased environment through which to roll their fusion core. That way, we wouldn't have to compete with anyone else for gnomes to obliterate. Of course, this option is not without its own issues. Part of the fun of Gnomebliteration is seeing other people rolling their fusion cores around and sharing that sense of, "Isn't this so fun?" as you roll past them. And considering how popular this daily would be, I could see it putting a real strain on the servers to maintain that many "instanced" versions of the zone. Perhaps a limit would need to be put on how many people can do the quest as once.

But the biggest risk to making Gnomebliteration a daily is that it would risk losing its appeal. I don't think I need to expend too many words to convince you that, if you do something over and over again, it begins to lose its appeal. The fact that we expect Blizzard to make new content for us, rather than being satisfied with what we had at launch, is proof enough of that fact. And though this quest is without a doubt a cut above the rest, it, too, will begin to lose its appeal if we play it enough times. That is the fate of anything we play too much, not matter how much it may be a cut above the rest of what we play; "Embedded" by Job for a Cowboy is, in my opinion, Rock Band's funnest songs on guitar, and yet I don't play it as often as I used to because, like everything else, familiarity makes it lose its appeal. And if this quest is made into a daily or a repeatable quest, it, too, will lose its appeal.

Of course, you might say, this is all well and good; if players want to replay a quest until they are sick of it, that should be their right. I am inclined to agree, but I don't think Blizzard is, and I can see why. As it stands, if we want to level a new character, we have to go through all of the quests we have already played on our previous character without much deviation. The path we take on our first character won't be much different from the path we take on our second character, and these fun quests provide the high points that make the leveling worth it. If we were able to play them repeatedly, the leveling process would lose those high points that make it bearable for those who don't enjoy leveling new characters all that much, and that would make leveling a new character that much less fun.

So in the end, I say make Gnomebliteration a repeatable quest a la Return to the Abyssal Shelf: one that can be repeated several times a day, but provides no reward of any kind. This way, players can get to replay what is clearly one of the quests they enjoy the most in the whole game, but they'll have no incentive to keep playing it once it stops being completely enjoyable, which means they'll still enjoy when they come to it on a new character. Will Blizzard do it? Probably not, but hope is a free resource.

Speak up, Ramkahen!

It seems Uldum has become the new acceptable target for the blogosphere. From my own post on the motivation dissonance of the place to Spinksville's post on the zone to Murloc Parliament's post about keeping Nazi's out of WoW, there are plenty of negative opinions going on about poor ol' Uldum. Now, I for one found the zone to be pretty enjoyable (though it did have two bad cases of "incomplete storyline" syndrome due to questlines continuing into dungeons); though some people would prefer that WoW take itself more seriously and not reference pop culture as much as it does, I, for one, enjoyed the Harrison Jones quest line. But as for the Ramkahen questline, I found myself decidedly unopinionated. There was nothing wrong with the quests themselves, as far as I'm concerned, but they all felt a little bit empty. And upon reflection, I think they felt empty because I really didn't care all that much about the Ramkahen themselves.

From the beginning of Uldum, the Ramkahen aren't really given much of an introduction. Here is this new race of beings that we have never encountered before, entrenched in a war we have no context for, and upon helping one of them escape the same prison we find ourselves in (one I was able to fly in and out of with no difficulty), we immediately side with them and help them fight their conflict. Yet several questions are left unanswered before we start helping them. Who are these cat people? Where did they come from? Why are they fighting who they are fighting? The exposition on the Ramkahen is decidedly sparse, and though we get some idea of who they are as we fight for them, they never really struck me as sentient beings. Oh sure, they give us quests, buy and sell things to us, and even speak in cutscenes, but something about the Ramkahen prevented me from conceptualizing them as people (by the loosest definition of the term; in fact, let's just go with "humanoids". Something that had made me able to empathize with Sporeggar, with the Sons of Hodir, and with other clearly non-human factions was missing in the case of the Ramkahen.

Maybe it was their models; the Ramkahen's bodies just don't look at all natural to me. I find them to be too top heavy; whenever I look at one, he looks like there should be no way for him to support himself, especially with all their support centered behind their torso due to their centaur-like structure. Their animations don't seem all that natural, either; when they move, a whole lot of their body stays still, and they seem to glide rather than walk or run. But even greater than these issues I have with the models is how difficult it is to see their faces. The face is where we look when we are trying to connect with another human, and something about the Ramkahen's models make finding that face and connecting with it difficult. Maybe it's the absence of any perceivable neck, or even a distinct head. Whatever it is, whenever I looked at the Ramkahen with my camera zoomed out to a normal distance, I just saw a body, with no real face or head to speak of. Sure, they're creations of the titans who probably fell victim to the curse of the flesh, and if they were created by the titans rather than natural selection, it might be permissible for them to have body structure that isn't exactly natural. But Dwarves and Gnomes are in the same boat in terms of being titan creations that fell victim to the curse of the flesh, and they look natural enough.

But even worse than their models, even worse than the fact that they come right out of nowhere and we are expected to accept them and ally with them, is the fact that they are completely silent. I don't mean that they never communicate with us; they certainly do, with their quests and all. What I mean is that they never make any audible sounds. I just have no idea what a member of the Ramkahen sounds like. Even in battle, they make no sounds other than the clang of their weapons. No grunts, no utterations of any kind, just their silent existence. Most other friendly NPCs make some sort of noise when you click on them, but the Ramkahen do not, and I never realized how important those simple sounds were until I clicked on the members of Ramkahen and got nothing. When the game featured that cutscene of the three advisers talking to the king, I had no idea what kind of voice to put to those words because I had no idea what the Ramkahen sounded like. And with no voice to put to their words, they seemed much less human...oid to me. If anything, they seem more like Beasts, and I just can't conceptualize a faction of beasts.

Don't you know there's a Shattering on? Redux

The last time I asked the question, "Don't you know there's a Shattering on?", it was because I was struck by the nonchalance the citizens of Stormwind seemed to have taken towards the recent destruction of their world, and I was able to formulate a reason as to why they were so calm after a gigantic dragon had just ravaged their city. Now I am forced to ask this question again, this time by the Hero's Call board. Allow me to copy a line from the Hero's Call quest for each Cataclysm zone (the Alliance versions of those quests, that is) that succinctly sums up your purpose going into each zone:

Vashj'ir: "Recent attacks by the Horde on our trade ships must be met with swift and just force!"

Mount Hyjal: "Our brothers in the Cenarion Circle report that Deathwing's minions have launched a destructive offensive against the world tree and threaten to burn it to the ground!"

Deepholm: "The Earthen Ring requires our aid! They report that the elemental plane of Deepholm threatens to overtake our world and destroy all life on Azeroth!"

Twilight Highlands: "King Wrynn requires a trustworthy and proven hero for a mission of the utmost importance."

Uldum: "Be one of the first to enter glorious Uldum and claim its treasures in honor of the Alliance!"

One of these things is not like the other... I mean, what's up with Uldum? The way that your motivation for going into Uldum stands out from your motivation for going into all of the other zones becomes even more clear as you accept the introductory quests for each zone:

Vashj'ir: "As you may have heard, the Horde's attacking just offshore. The fighting's been fierce and relentless. We need every able body out there repelling the enemy!"

Mount Hyjal: "It is good that you've come here just as Azeroth finds itself in a time of great need. Deathwing's minions are attacking Hyjal and seek to bring the destructive Ragnaros back into our world."

Deepholm: "Deathwing's return to our world left a rift open between Azeroth and Deepholm. If we don't mend the breach, this land will be torn asunder."

Twilight Highlands: "Great burdens have been placed on my son's shoulders in his short lifetime, and I fear his responsibilities are only going to grow. He will never learn leadership confined to the keep, but I am loathe to send him forth without escort. [Name], your deeds in the wake of this cataclysm are already legendary. You would be an excellent mentor for young Prince Anduin."

Uldum: "The ancient region of Uldum has been exposed! Treasures beyond your wildest dreams, free for the taking! We just need a bit of an escort, what with the bandits and all..."

Let's look at each zone individually. In Vashj'ir, the Horde has attacked Alliance ships out near an island that has recently surfaced, and we need to go out and defend ourselves, lest we loose even more lives to the conflict. On Mount Hyjal, the mountain threatens to burn if we don't do something about it, and Ragnaros might be brought back, which would be an even greater threat upon the world. In Deepholm, the world threatens to tear apart if the world pillar cannot be reconstructed. For the Twilight Haghlands, though Varian doesn't exactly make it clear what is wrong in that zone, the tone of the quests give the impression that it is important and consequential. In Uldum, there are treasures to be found! Yes, one of these things really isn't like the other.

In other words, it seems as if our actions in every zone in Cataclysm minus Uldum are motivated by the basic need to save the world or ourselves, or at the very least, some grander purpose. We are out there to do things for other people, as is our character's motivation for much of the game. But when we get around to going to Uldum, we suddenly find ourselves motivated purely by the treasures we can find. Sure, the quests may try to gloss over that by saying that we are looking for these treasures "for the glory of the Alliance" or that we are really helping this caravan get into Uldum, but at the end of the day, rather than being there to help, we are there for fame and glory. In every other zone, we are there to make a difference, to help the innocent, to save the world, but in Uldum, we are there for easy treasures... what.

This dichotomy was especially apparent to me because I only quested through Hyjal and Deepholm before starting Uldum, and in both of those zones, we narrowly avert widespread destruction though swift and timely action. In Hyjal, we narrowly avert the destruction of the mountain by fighting back those responsible; in Deepholm, we narrowly avert the destruction of the whole world by resembling the world pillar. Between these two zones, the mood of the expansion is set as one where the world is constantly teetering on the brink of destruction, and only by acting quickly can we save it. That's why it's pretty jarring to spend two zones saving a world that is very close to destruction, then to be lead to a zone where our only reason for being there is to see what treasures we can find. As the people in that caravan asked me to escort them into the desert, I couldn't help but ask myself, don't you know that there's a world out there that could be lost if we don't go help? Don't you know there's a Shattering on?

The one possible reason I could think of for Blizzard to put in a zone with such a different mood is that they wanted to show that our characters are not the spotless paragons of good they might otherwise seem to be. They may be heroes, but perhaps Blizzard wanted to show that they are by no means perfect, and they can get excited about personal gain just like anyone. I can understand why they would want to do this. After all, they are trying to tell a story, and we are simply playing the part of the protagonist of that story. If the protagonist of a story is too perfect, he becomes a Mary Sue, and the story becomes unbelievable. But our characters do have flaws, the most prominent of which might be their gullibility. The way we help Tyrus Blackhorn, Drakaru, Teron Gorefiend regain their power in Mount Hyjal, Grizzly Hills, and Shadowmoon Valley, respectively, show just how easily our characters trust others, a trust which is often taken advantage of. But being that that is the only flaw that comes to mind (for me, at least), perhaps they are a bit too close to being Mary Sues, which is why Blizzard wants to add self-centered greed to the list of their flaws by sending them to Uldum to look for treasure.

Does it work? I suppose this is a matter of opinion, but I'm of the opinion that it doesn't. Our characters spend so long being near-perfect heroes (with gullibility as their only flaws) that for them to show this interest in more selfish motivators so suddenly feels more like character derailment than character development, even if there isn't much character to derail in the first place. Now, maybe I need to level an alt through the old content so I can see that our characters really can be pretty self centered, because the truth is that I haven't leveled a character past level 14 since the start of the expansion. Hell, it probably isn't out of character at all for goblins. But I can say that two large zones' worth of setting our character up as a grand world-saving hero is enough to establish our characters suddenly taking on the role of a treasure hunter as decidedly out of character.

And even if this concept did work, it would completely ignore the fact that the world is teetering on the brink of destruction, as was made clear to us in Hyjal and Deepholm. No amount of character development or any other such justification can mask the fact that Hyjal and Deepholm probably aren't the only areas in need of being saved by our characters, and to be forced to go treasure hunting when the world is teetering on the brink of destruction forces our characters to show an uncomfortable amount of disregard for the world at large.