Project Lore

QuestHelper/Carbonite & Extended QuestLog/DoubleWide Features Incoming I've never been one to play on the PTR.  Like many other players I don't want to spoil the upcoming content or experience "unfinished" gameplay.  And yet I spend hours a week just staying current with the latest news and revelations, from the Live realms and the PTR.  I guess that would make me a bit of a hypocrite - I won't spoil by playing, but get spoiled by reading occasionally - but that is the price I pay for knowledge.  So when my buddy noticed that the patch notes had changed again, he knew I would be interested. Blizzard began implementing QuestHelper functionality as part of the Secrets of Ulduar patch, and I was okay with it.  They have been trying to make leveling easier for some time now, and that change was the next logical step.  The devs seemed to have found a happy middle ground between the hardcore and the casual players thanks to additions to the tooltips.  In essence you still had to read the quest text to find out where mob X or item Y was located.  Only when you were in the general location - being able to mouseover an objective - would you be tipped off.  No biggie.  Enter Call of the Crusade, which is taking it a step further.

• A skull graphic will be placed on the map in the general area where players can find creatures they must kill for a quest.
• A skull graphic with red eyes will be placed on the map in the general area where creatures can be found that must be killed in order to collect quest objects.
• A gear/cogwheel graphic will be placed on the map in the general area where players must loot quest objects found in the world.
• A chat bubble graphic will be placed on the map in the general area where players must interact with a specific NPC for a quest.
• A yellow question mark graphic will show on the map to provide the location of a NPC whose quest the player has completed.

Aside from these obvious benefits, former downloaders of quest helping mods should see an increase in available system resources and (slightly) more secure accounts. Okay, this is way further then I expected Blizzard to go.  Before the hardcore base goes all "reading comprehension" on us let's take a step back.  Remove yourself from the discussion and just look at WoW as a product.  Blizzard, the creator of said product, is looking at QuestHelper, and mods like it, and realizes that it is one of the most downloaded add-ons for World of Warcraft.  What would you expect them to do?  Would you want them to simply ignore the actions of millions of players?  No, of course not. Here's the rub, many other UI changes are getting the option to be toggled on or off, but Zarhym's updates make no mention of that for the topic at hand.  If you want to play WoW the hardcore old school way it doesn't seem to be an option.  The freedom of choice is what the hardcore should be complaining about, not the dumbing down of a part of WoW that you are no longer a part of. Under what circumstances would you accept the added features to the world map?  Would it have been acceptable to you if it was implemented back in 2004?  Should the option be defaulted off?  Are you going to abandon your helpful questing mod if the feature goes live?  With the amount of subscribers reaching a plateau, does it even matter at this stage in the game? Let the QQ begin. <popcorn>

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