Feb 27, 2009

60 Minute Hearth Too Long? Play a Mage. Or qq.

So, since the start of the game, everyone has been provided a hearthstone. It will quickly take you back to the last inn you set it at. It has always provided a way to return to your home location every 60 minutes. Of course, certain classes have ways around this. Mages have portals, shamans have ancestral recall, engineers have their own special trinkets. There's even rings now that take you back to Dalaran, and from Dalaran, there's free portals to almost anywhere you want to go.

Yet, even with all these modes of transportation, people felt like they could game the system using the "ghetto hearth." It consisted of joining a group, entering a dungeon, and then leaving the group. Since you're not in a a group, it would kick you out of the dungeon back to wherever your hearthstone is set, even if your hearthstone is still on cooldown.

In patch 3.1, they announced that they'd be doing away with ghetto hearthing, instead sending the player to the nearest graveyard to the dungeon they're attempting to ghetto hearth out of. Seemed like a good idea to me. Because in all reality, ghetto hearthing was abusing the game mechanics. This way, you'll be booted out of the dungeon like you're supposed to be and if you want to get home, use your hearthstone.

But, what happens? People cry about it. They bitch and moan and raise hell on the forums. And then what happens next? The developers cave in. They say, fine, we'll lower your hearthstones to every 30 minutes. WHAT? You're eliminating an abuse of the game mechanic, yet you're going to reward all of those people that abused the game mechanic and complained about it with a 30 minute hearthstone? Come on guys, grow a pair. Stand firm in your decision. Don't keep giving in to these people that qq and complain every chance they get.

Seriously, there's something wrong with the game right now. Maybe I should qq about it. Because it seems like every time someone qq's about something in the game, the devs give in (see: Love is in the Air, Children's Week, etc., etc.). Just cry enough on the forums and the devs will listen. I'm fairly certain they'll remove the 12 month requirement for the Brewmaster title, instead replacing it with an achievement to just buy the brew of the month membership rather than sampling all 12 brews. God knows people have qq'ed enough about it.

2 comments:

Vetarra said...

While I'm typically agree with keeping hard achievements and encounters hard, and I like the idea of removing rewards and such before they become too easy to attain, I actually like the hearthstone change. When they originally set the timer to 1 hour, Azeroth was a lot smaller then it is now and the hearth was a luxury item that you didn't necessarily need. If you aren't a mage, or don't have a mage in tow, if you're in some remote area of the world with your hearth down, it absolutely sucks to have to spend 20 minutes flying back to a portal. Sure, QQ, but the time I waste sitting on a return trip from nowhere is time I could have spent actually doing something else enjoyable. I hated sitting on my cooldown being penalized because I like exploring the remote nooks and crannies of the world.

As this isn't really depriving anyone of any of their effort or achievements, and since there's already classes with ways around the time limitation, I don't really see any problem with the lower cooldown.

The problem with Blizzard is that this was allowed to be an open practice for far too long. The fact that they did nothing to stop it for so long, despite it being common practice, gave people a taste of having that sort of mobility that they didn't really have before. Why didn't they stop it? Well, either they didn't know how, had higher priorities, or simply didn't consider it a gameplay breaking bug, but the fact that the CM that relayed the request returned fairly quickly with the notice of the cooldown change could quite likely mean the developers were already considering it due to the world's expansion. So who knows if it was QQ, or simply something the developers felt was needed. I tend to think that the forums aren't a huge influence on their decision making, as it's a small portion of the player base, and who goes on the forums unless they're going to complain?

Anonymous said...

They are going to give out T7.5 gear now if you:
Say QQ 7 times in /trade, while spinning, at a major faction mailbox.

But I'm still not satisfied...