As MoP draws to a close, I find myself trying to fill out a roster of alts in order to have options when WoD hits. The thread about medals being required for WoD Heroics jogged my elderly musings in the direction of scenarios. Rather than clutter that thread, here's another. Pop your CDs, don't let the Wall O'Text crit. The AQI is still rated at Hazardous so I'm going to prop myself up with coffee and dream. It's probably bad that I'm happy it has dropped all the way down to 320 from 433. Yes, dropping roughly 25% still leaves us in Hazardous. In the time it took me to type this, it has gone up 10 points
Scenarios, how do they fit with your game play? Personally, I like them, but I also find them a bit awkward. I like them because I like something that doesn't follow the usual trinity model. Sure, sometimes you zone in, see two other shadow priests and at least one leaves group. Sometimes though, you'll see people change specs or try to find ways to make an odd group work, and I like that. What I find awkward is that they fill a fairly narrow niche. They've become another flavor of daily, and because they are focused on particular points of a story, I feel like they haven't held up particularly well to that.
That brings us to WoD, what would you like to see from scenarios next expansion? I'd like to see a handful of scenarios that don't represent a major plot point, something with a bit more depth than a daily quest (go kill X Hozen) but less pretentious than a 5 man (X was only a set back). Currently, the Arena of Annihilation works well enough for me in that respect. I don't know, maybe do something based off of the various rares, tweaked a bit to be three manned? For example, queue for the random scenario -- let's call it "Making Your Mark". Your group zones in an instanced version of a rare spawn site -- for this example, let's use Skritch. Clear your way through the village, fight buffed up versions of some of the mobs, then face a buffed version of Skritch for your random goodies and a shot at a Hozen Peace Pipe. This isn't incredibly different from the way rares on Timeless work (at least on our servers), a rare pops up, people see the skull appear, everyone rushes to tag it. The difference is that it would be instanced as a scenario, you get a random shot at a rare and three of you have to take down a tweaked version instead of 40 people trying to zerg a rare for the tag.
OK, it would probably be too much work to implement, but I'd like to see random scenarios related to the Garrisons. I'd like to be able to actually queue one of my minions and some AI support to do something related to the garrison. I gather that we will be able to send our troops out for things that happen largely out of sight, but hey ... I like pet battles. I'd like to have the option to take over the garrison blacksmith, go out with a couple of soldiers and rescue a wagon load of supplies. You know, the things that used to be our speed 40 levels ago. That isn't really a major case of nostalgia, I just feel like it is a more entertaining option to another round of stealing vegetables from a bunch of monkeys or worse yet jousting.
If you made it this far, thanks. Let's hear your ideas!