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The Timeless Isle is a repetition of the same tasks everyday. The aim is to provide an explorers paradise were you can do your own thing, but the problem with it, is that some people like a little more structure in their lives.
I am utilising the mixture of dailies and weeklies to maximise my time on the Isle and to produce the biggest haul of Timeless Coins in the time allotted. Everyday I do the Dailies "Path of the Mistwalker" and a "A Timeless Question" after 4 or 5 days I will have completed the weekly quests "Strong Enough To Survive" and "Empowering the Hourglass", this I manage on three characters at least, Hunter, Shaman and Mage, and to this mix I sometimes throw in my second Hunter and Death Knight. My preferred prey is the Great Turtles which line the beach between the Horde and Alliance Flight Points.
I must confess I struggled at first with my Elemental Shaman, who dislikes having hard hitting mobs up close and personal. This problem I have learnt to overcome by judging the spin cycle or just plain outgunning the turtles. My Death Knight in her Blood spec was supposed to be able to tank most things, but was having real problems on the Isle.
When you change characters as often as I do you can forget the nuances of the class, and after a week I am now starting to really enjoy the experience. I have not received any additional gear in this time but I have a daily supply of buffs Dew of Eternal Morning, Book of Ages and Singing Crystal. These are monumentally powerful buffs, and you really notice the difference when you are not using them.
Now I am able to tank multiple Great Turtles and the assortment of Hatchlings, and no longer am I nearly dead after disturbing a Death Adder, in fact I am always at full health and ready and able for the next mob.
The reason for still doing the Timeless Isle is the Burden of Eternity for all characters, and the lack of Weapons available in this expansion. This was a point well made by Olivia Grace at WoW Insider:
"Let's not talk about the weapons and the shields, though. If I have one major criticism of the Timeless Isle, it's that for some reason, Blizzard's designers have a "thing" about weapons. The only ones you can get off the isle are ilvl 476, not 496 like everything else, and cost a whopping 10,000 timeless coins. They're not well itemized, they're not plentiful, so you have to go for "close enough" rather than "this is good for my character". Blizzard, what is up with that? Why can't these weapons at least be 496? Why do you guys feel that we have to earn decent weapons purely via luck from boss drops?"
Whilst I agree with Olivia entirely, it is not a whopping 10,000 timeless coins but a whopping 20,000 timeless coins for a weapon (i). In this respect the Melee classes and the Blacksmiths have been stung good and hard this expansion, with iLevel 463 Blue Weapons the best on offer. At least my spell casters get an epic stave as a standard.
After all the fuss about daily quests, it is odd that without the daily and weekly quests I would have already given up on the Timeless Isle, if Blizzard have any sense they will think about adding some new quests and activities to the Isle in the next few months. It is still highly unlikely we are going to see a new expansion for 9-12 months
(i) Edit as per R's comments 1 Handers are 10,000 and 2 Handers are 20,000
"it is odd that without the daily and weekly quests I would have already given up on the Timeless Isle"
ReplyDeleteSo, the daily and weekly quests that are there already are keeping you there? Isn't that pretty much what you're asking for here?
The way Blizzard normally does dailies (and if they add additional dailies, these will likely be the theme) is one of:
* Kill x number of e mob
* Kill x number of e or f or g mob
* Kill x of e, y of f and z of g mob
* Blow up x of some type of item that you only see on that day
* Plant x of something into patches of soil that you only see on that day
Basically, they'll be telling you, on that day, to focus on a limited number of mob types or a limited number of spawning quest interactives. So, your toons that can handle birds but not turtles may be forced to try to kill turtles... along with everyone else who's out there, all competing at the same time for the same mobs. Or it'll be a daily version of that ridiculous "trigger a shrine" quest that took up to 3hr for some of my toons on a busy servers that had 10 players camping each one... and that was a ONE-TIME quest, not a daily. That exact quest would be a NIGHTMARE as a daily.
I already can't find a frog to kill on my busy server... now imagine that as the daily.
You want any of that? I sure as hell don't. The current weekly and daily quests are perfect as-is, thanks, and work pretty much equally well regardless of whether your server is busy or dead, may just take a bit longer on one or the other.
To your list of things that I do pretty much daily (call them personal dailies) but aren't specifically directed in-game:
* Kill Ship/Evermaw/Huolon on main toons at least, others if convenient
* Grab any weekly chests I haven't grabbed yet on any toons that haven't grabbed them
The current format of the daily and weekly are GREAT... you can get them done by killing the mobs YOU PREFER, pretty much without exception. You just have to be out there killing stuff and you'll get them done.
What more direction do you want that wouldn't be a nightmare for me with mob or item contention? Have them add daily chests and add a quest to get the daily chests? Why would that be necessary? If there were daily chests I'd just get them, like I do with S/E/H.
Also, 1H weapons are 10K coins, 2H are 20K... for a rogue (her class of choice, I believe), she's paying 10K/ea for a weapon. That fancy new "class" filter that vendors have these days is great but does lead to this time of issue occasionally, one only sees part the world according to his toon of the moment. :)
Thank you for the update R. I must confess I have not taken my rogue anywhere dangerous on the Isle or to the vendor obviously.
DeleteIt is interesting to note that the Isle is very busy at peak times, and that Blizzard noticed a severe problem when 5.4 dropped and the Legendary cloak wearers in Europe, descended all at the same time.
With Europe having a much shorter Peak time with only 2 Hours between Greece and the UK, what would the Isle be like when we have consolidated Realms?
Turtles and Frogs are in short supply as it is, and if respawns are cranked up, then it is possible for a respawn on your head as you are still looting the last corpse.
It makes you wonder if connected Realms are suitable for all.
Oddly, I don't find turtles to be in particularly short supply but that's not generally a type that I prefer to kill, most of the toons that I spend time on out there are melee for some reason. Frogs, though, totally different story. There are usually 40 or so people hanging around waiting for spawns and, maybe, 3 spawn a minute. I can run end-to-end in that area 3 or 4 times without a spawn, sometimes. I'd be okay with them cranking up the respawn timer in that case. Frankly, when I'm doing the dailies on that server, I usually try to have someone pull me over to a slower server, the elites are a lot more common there. Can't get a world boss kill to save my life there, though, so there are definitely advantages to each kind of server, depending on what you're looking for at the time. Best plan is probably just to have enough Battletag relationships to help each other out as necessary. Pull everyone to busy servers for the first night or two for world bosses and to the slower servers for the rest of the week.
DeleteI think CR will be a positive for most people IF they get the ratios right. If my busy server had 1/3 to 1/2 of the active players on it, I think that would be a good number for a CR realm. Enough for stuff to happen but not enough to overwhelm the content. I wouldn't be able to get an Ordos kill more or less on demand earlier in the week, though, which I'd miss.