Board 8 > Win condition for World of Warcraft

(+) Yeah! (+)

As some of you may know, a couple of my friends and I have been working on (slowly) beating all 128 games from the 2015 GameFAQS contest. If you're curious, you can view our progress here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_SKvnMZTbqzkwbA1fEUfJ3ITIVLm3sZY_Gb62Tizamk

Soon we will be starting World of Warcraft. We were thinking we can just beat all these dungeons to beat the game: http://vanilla-wow.wikia.com/wiki/Instances_by_level

Can any wow experts chime in on this? Does this seem ok for a win condition for a game that you can't truly "beat"?
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non-expansion game does in fact end at 60. Some of those dungeons are no longer in the game..

No way, you have to buy Legion, reach 110, and then beat the latest raid on normal difficulty. That is the current 'win' condition for the game at a casual raiding level, which is fine.
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doing all the vanilla dungeons is nowhere near experiencing WoW - it's very easy to blitz through that stuff now.

my vote would be for this:
http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/The_Loremaster

but alternately, clearing all dungeons to 110 would be a good alternative.

so we cant do it just from buying wow from here? https://us.battle.net/shop/en/product/world-of-warcraft

i really don't want to make a $50 down payment for burning legion since i'm never gonna touch it again. and keep in mind that vanilla is what was included on the best game ever list so that's all we realy care about

if vanilla is what you really care about, time to go to the effort of finding a private server because that game doesn't exist on blizzard servers anymore

and if dropping $50 on a videogame you'll never touch again is a problem this seems like a poorly thought out endeavor

I don't think I'd ever suggest for anyone to play Vanilla WoW though. It really wasn't a good game. I'd say clear through the 60 content if you wish(They will be locked at 60, so they will still have to sucker some people into some of that raid content somehow, probably their toughest challenge is finding a sucker).
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that $20 gets you through level 100, so clearing all dungeons and quest areas to 100 seems like close enough to finishing the game

STElNER posted...

and if dropping $50 on a videogame you'll never touch again is a problem this seems like a poorly thought out endeavor

not really, i haven't had to spend $50 for any game so far, and i don't need to purchase a subscription to play any of the other games. it's just unfortunate that mmorpg's work a little bit differently but this situation doesn't make our journey poorly thought out, it just means that WoW doesn't fit in, which brings us here trying to find out how to "beat" a game that can't really be beaten :)

STElNER posted...

that $20 gets you through level 100, so clearing all dungeons and quest areas to 100 seems like close enough to finishing the game

thinking we might go for that following this spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V9ArvwQjwnTtM2-0nXF634i4pACoCQpSOT5Z3ksELTI/edit#gid=0

we might just go for the vanilla dungeons/raids

Just to be clear: The $20 base game just limits the amount of content you can do, right?

Does it come with a free month or do you have to pay a subscription fee from the get go?
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the game really isn't designed to where stopping at the end of vanilla makes sense now - you level past all that stuff so quickly now

LordOfDabu posted...

Just to be clear: The $20 base game just limits the amount of content you can do, right?

Does it come with a free month or do you have to pay a subscription fee from the get go?

$20 gets you all content available pre-Legion, and one free month of game time

STElNER posted...

the game really isn't designed to where stopping at the end of vanilla makes sense now - you level past all that stuff so quickly now

You still get thrown into BC upon reaching 60...which honestly feels more like vanilla WoW than anything else. Then the game returns to a more streamlined state near 70.
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Yeah, they sped up leveling for the early level content so much that it's impossible to do more than a small fraction of the content at the appropriate level. I would really just go for 110 and call that your win condition.
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i mean that's for sure one side of my argument - 70-90 or so content is peak WoW. but more importantly, playing to 60 in 2017 will not feel like finishing a video game.

thanks for the tips guys, we're having a pretty good discussion about this on discord. leaning towards playing everything on that spreadsheet up to legion (up to level 100 since we'll still be using the $20). if we like it enough, we'll spend the $50 to get legion and beat that too.

one more question: it looks like recruit-a-friend makes it so that the recruiter levels up faster than the recruit. is this true?

How does the recruit a friend work for the base game? If one of us recruits others will that have any negative impact on gameplay?
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i'm sure there's something in place so that if you're playing together you all level at the same rate but i don't know the specifics

p.s. i really wouldn't bother with older raids, as playing them at this point is for novelty - it's very difficult to get a group to run them at appropriate level and storming through them overlevelled is no fun at all. maybe my suggestion of loremaster was excessive (it was), but i'd seriously suggest you clear the majority of quest zones especially post vanilla.

STElNER posted...

p.s. i really wouldn't bother with older raids, as playing them at this point is for novelty - it's very difficult to get a group to run them at appropriate level and storming through them overlevelled is no fun at all. maybe my suggestion of loremaster was excessive (it was), but i'd seriously suggest you clear the majority of quest zones especially post vanilla.

we might do it just for the novelty like you said. but yeah i think since it seems like you really blaze through things now with how fast you level, we're gonna try to clear everything through draenor. plus with recruit-a-friend, it seems that both the recruiter and recruit will get a huge exp bonus when they play with each other, which will help quite a bit

STElNER posted...

p.s. i really wouldn't bother with older raids, as playing them at this point is for novelty - it's very difficult to get a group to run them at appropriate level and storming through them overlevelled is no fun at all. maybe my suggestion of loremaster was excessive (it was), but i'd seriously suggest you clear the majority of quest zones especially post vanilla.

I think it's fun to do them once just to see them. They're super fast when you're overleveled.

I had a ton of fun doing loremaster, but that takes a lonnnnnng time.
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they're super fast until you get to annoying parts designed around a number of bodies that you're just not bringing with you. molten core solo is great fun until you get to those fuckin dog adds.

The core hounds will actually stay dead as long as you aoe!

They also have a few people, so I don't think there's anything to really trip them up through at least Cataclysm (I could solo all of those raids on my warlock at 110 besides the boss you need to heal in ICC; there may be a few bosses that other classes have issues soloing; can't remember for sure).
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i was a fury warrior i had to whirlwind at the exact right time it was a fuckin pain in the ass

again just wanna say much thanks for the info guys, we really appreciate it

we are going to buy the $20 wow bundle and do all of these dungeons/raids: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_SKvnMZTbqzkwbA1fEUfJ3ITIVLm3sZY_Gb62Tizamk/edit#gid=1670430022

keep in mind that burning legion had not been released yet when this contest took place. if we find that we are enjoying the game enough when we finish all of this stuff, then we will purchase and play burning legion as an extra basically.

note that we're gonna be playing alliance characters so we will miss out on the horde-only quests, but what can ya do

LordOfDabu posted...

As some of you may know, a couple of my friends and I have been working on (slowly) beating all 128 games from the 2015 GameFAQS contest. If you're curious, you can view our progress here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_SKvnMZTbqzkwbA1fEUfJ3ITIVLm3sZY_Gb62Tizamk

Soon we will be starting World of Warcraft. We were thinking we can just beat all these dungeons to beat the game: http://vanilla-wow.wikia.com/wiki/Instances_by_level

Can any wow experts chime in on this? Does this seem ok for a win condition for a game that you can't truly "beat"?

Kill Illidan.
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ok if i can't talk you into doing any other quest zones at least do this one

http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=35/might-of-dragonblight

The only winning move is not to play

don't play it

Paratroopa1 posted...

The only winning move is not to play

don't play it

as someone currently with no option but to not play world of warcraft i don't feel very much like i've won :(

How many hours of gameplay would you all estimate our gameplay objective is?
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i've no idea. a bunch.

Paratroopa1 posted...

The only winning move is not to play

don't play it

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We have to play it to finish all 128 games.

That doesn't mean we have to 100% it, mind you. Hopefully we can do all we need within the free 30 days.
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I'd say there's around 3 ways to 'conclude' your WoW experience:

Stick to Vanilla, defeat the final raid boss of vanilla -- C'thun. The original final boss of vanilla was moved to level 80 content, so that wouldn't be possible with this framework. C'thun would have to do. Although I did notice you guys did TFT for WC3 -- does WoW in this case only represent vanilla? I mean technically Legion didn't exist in 2015 so would you have to do it?

Reach level 100. This kinda feels like the weirdest given it's not the end of the game -- but if you're set on not spending the cash for Legion, getting to 100 would be the cut-off. I guess you could join a group and kill the final raid boss (Archimonde) for level 100 content. I think this was the final boss of WoW at the time of the tournament.

Reach 110, defeat the current final raid boss: Kil'jaeden. With the raid finder tool opening up each week, this shouldn't be tough to do. It's designed for newbies.

From a realistic standpoint, that's where I'd cut it off. Doing Loremaster would be crazy, I don't recommend it.

RAF gives both players massive EXP boosts if you play together. It's very easy to breeze through content from 1-100.
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Beating the current end game raid (currently Tomb of Sargeras, but 7.3 could possibly come out before you get to max level and are ready for raiding) on normal difficulty would be about right.
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Wedge Antilles posted...

Beating the current end game raid (currently Tomb of Sargeras, but 7.3 could possibly come out before you get to max level and are ready for raiding) on normal difficulty would be about right.

There is no way in hell it should take that long to get to max level.

Leafeon13N posted...

Wedge Antilles posted...

Beating the current end game raid (currently Tomb of Sargeras, but 7.3 could possibly come out before you get to max level and are ready for raiding) on normal difficulty would be about right.

There is no way in hell it should take that long to get to max level.

You're saying that as an experienced player. New players with no idea where to go or any heirloom gear might take longer. Heck, they may decide to take their time and explore the world. You can easily get lost as a new player on what to do. Now if they have someone with a lot of experience who can guide them all the way through, maybe it won't be so bad.
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This is a blind playthrough, so we don't know anything about the game and we are not allowed to use guides.
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Ehhh the game is so streamlined as far as leveling now you cant really get lost.

To clarify some win objectives for other games:

We are playing games in one of three ways.

A "blind" playthrough means the person (or people) playing has never played the game before and is playing without any help from guides or advice from other players. Usually we attach a minimum win condition to this.

A "semi blind" playthrough means the person knows a little about the game, either from having played some (but not all) of the game or watched someone else play parts of the game. They can't look up any additional info while playing though. We adjust the win condition based on how much the player knows about the game.

A "not blind" playthrough means the person has played and beaten the game before. In this case we try to have the person do a harder objective (e.g. unlock all cheats in goldeneye) or 100% the game. Usually we try to shuffle who plays the games around to minimize these but for a lot of games all three of us have played them before, so it can't be helped.
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I literally just finished playing from 1-110 for the first time. It took around a month and a half, no heirlooms, no clue wtf I was doing.
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The problem with setting a raid as the win condition is

1) Raids require at least 10 people. So you'll either have to join a group that's looking for a few people or the easier way is to join a guild and get in on their raids. You can't accomplish this win condition with just your friends.

2) Once you hit max level, you pretty much have to use a guide to figure out your characters ability rotations, stat priorities, the best talents to choose, etc etc. Not doing this means you'll pull really sub-par DPS and groups will either not want you, or if you do join a group and can't hold your own, will see you getting kicked.
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Get to max level and do all the LFR content.
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We'll be streaming here:

https://www.twitch.tv/eyesonic

Starting now!
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What classes are you guys going with?
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Creeping on you!

Maybe watching someone play through an MMO will scratch that MMO itch I've been feeling lately.
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Which faction?
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Night elf
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