Yesterday, I made a post about Valor, Reputation, and Daily quests in Mists of Pandaria, and it really got me thinking... "How would I handle valor gear, solve the problem of players wanting more to do, while hopefully making the experience seem epic instead of grindy?" Surprisingly, it didn't take long to come up with something I personally think would be incredible. So here goes...
Here's my idea: First, I'd throw out the concept of valor all together. Second, I'd put in maybe 3 or 4 different repeatable quests-chains. I'm talking serious quest chains which would hit upon various types of game play, but I'll get to that later. To get at the rewards for these quest chains, I would divide the would-be Valor gear up based on it's cost, and therefore the expected time investment. I'd make a quest chain for the 1250 pt. items, say bracers, necks, rings; a chain for 1600 pt. items, say boots, gloves, trinkets; and a chain for 2200 pt. items like chest, legs, helm. Aside from the gear, I would offer a lump sum of gold, as one of the reward choices for each quest, thus giving players a reason to continue doing them after they've gotten all the gear.
These chains should play out like miniature legendary quest chains, except instead of taking months, they would take somewhere from 8-16 days. They would be mutually exclusive, so players can only work on one at a time, but there is no requirement to do any one before the others.
Anyway, the quests would be gated, obviously, so players can only make so much progress per day, and they would progress something like this: the first 3-4 days would involve completing some basic daily quests. After that, you might be tasked with completing special objectives in different scenarios for a few days, then maybe you need to collect drops from the end bosses of dungeons for several days. Maybe there's a day or so somewhere when you get to do multiple parts of the chain in one day - where you travel around to different zones hit some lore/story points, and finally at the climax of the quest chain, you're tasked with killing a specific raid boss, which can be completed on any difficulty from LFR to Heroic. Maybe at some point you get an item that works like a Mysterious Egg or Disgusting Jar, basically an item with a gestation period that will give you a few days break from working on the quest chain. The whole point of the chain should be variety, so I would even consider random inter-changable parts for all the quests chains, so you never really know what's next- aside from perhaps the last quests in each chain, the rewards, and the overall number of days required to complete them.
In the end, you'll have put in the effort. While you might have had to do a few daily quests or whatever it might be that you personally don't like to do, it was only for a few days and then you moved on to something else. You'll have experienced a variety of content, and you'll have a choice of rewards based on which quest you chose at the beginning, and hopefully that will also come with at least a minor feeling of having accomplished something. Then, you can pick one of the others quests, or do that one over again.
Each time there's a new content patch, I would add new quests that tie into the story hooks of each new content patch/raid tier. The old quests will still be there and can be done independently of the newer ones. I would probably even nerf the old quests so that they take less time to complete (and reward less gold) but I would plan for that and have a strategy for applying nerfs to the quest chains.
As for factions and rep grinds, I agree with Blizzard that tabards were a flawed system. However, I think faction-based daily quests could reward a consumable that would provide rep gain for a single dungeon clear. It would encourage players seeking maximum daily rep, to do dailies as well as dungeons. As for rep rewards, I think this a good place for a limited amount of gear, but should be primarily for cosmetic items, heirloom or otherwise account-wide items, and profession recipes or rare materials. Account-bound items, in particular, make the most sense for faction vendors for the simple fact that very few people want to do a rep grind on more than one character.
Hit that comment box below and tell me what you think, and how you might do it better.
