I started out writing this post as an observation on how players were interacting after 2.4, how the level of co-operation was going up a little and, hopefully, would continue to do so. Whilst I was thinking on it, though, I realised it had more than just the effects I had originally fixated on - thus I have decided to document at least a few of the changes I think 2.4 has had whether they are possibly fleeting or long lasting.

Cooperation

This may seem a bit of a stretch but I’m wondering how much of an impact 2.4 has had on cooperation between players. Now I’m sure at least a few of you, whilst doing your new dailies in Hellfire or Nagrand, maybe even Blade’s Edge Mountain or Netherstorm, have seen the following:

[1.General] - LF help with Quest Which Requires 2/3 Players.

Now I’m betting a lot of people ignore those calls for help - I sometimes do myself if I’ve got limited time but I’ve found that, in the last few days, I’ve been saying saying “Sure, inv.” Now, it usually only takes 5-10 minutes for me to help them do their quest and then I can be on my way to finish off whatever I was doing. It’s totally not selfless on my part, I feel, as it gives me the warm and fuzzies inside. Not everyone can be bothered, though and not everyone likes grouping with random strangers who might be complete idiots who sap your time and will to engage in conversation with those outside your guild.

Quite often, though, they turn out to be people who maybe don’t have huge guilds or anyone on to help them and the sparcity of people at their level nowadays doesn’t help matters. I’ve brought two alts through Hellfire in the past few months and getting a group for any of the group quests was not easy. I don’t like to bug people too much in guild and I am often on when there’s hardly anyone about, too. A few times when I asked randomly in LFG higher levels responded who happened to be hanging around doing gathering or just leaving an instance - the dailies have really upped the number of ‘random’ high levels in many of the areas which require a large number of groups for quests (except Shadowmoon).

Whether by design (doubtful) or happenstance it would be nice if these new dailies, at least for some time to come, brought people back into the areas they’ve not been since hitting 70. People have a tendency to dismiss those below max level as nublets of one form or another, even if subconsciously, and assume they’re not worth your time. Just remember that as well as making yourself feel warm and fuzzy you’d probably be helping make their day a brighter one, too.

World Event Interaction

Running alongside this small-scale personal interaction is the larger scale stuff. “What % is armory (or portal) ?” is now more common than “What’s daily heroic?” on my server. People are interested in whats going on, people are encouraging others to do quests in order to open up the new stages. Now, I’ not naieve enough to think this is all ‘for fun’, I know that a lot of people just want to open the badge vendor and that things will likely quieten down again soon after she’s avaiable, but even if that is the end result it seems nice to me that people are co-operating in a way which brings about mutual benefit.

Badges

Everyone wants them and it shows. A number of people may have been sitting about on a large pile of badges but most have enough for one or maybe two items. Some, though, have even fewer still and this has caused an amazing surge in the number of heroics people are doing. Magister’s Terrace has been my favourite haunt but, as when 2.3 introduced daily heroics, this patch has caused a flurry of interest in getting into any and all heroics again. Nice, especially, if you’re looking for gear and haven’t been able to muster up a whole group from your somewhat jaded guildies.

Again we’re seeing an increase in interaction and exploration of content.

Prices

This is a bit o an up-and-down thing.

Down:

Primal Mana, Leather, Gems, some Herbs and Marks of Sargeras / Sunfury Signet rings.

Up:

Cut gems, other Herbs, all other primals, meta gems

The gathering professions have taken a bit of a hit here as the daily means more people are out skinning /

herbing / mining. The market is a bit skewed at the moment but I think the gathering quest is the first people will stop doing at Exalted as it’s a bit of a pain. Of course I cold be wrong as there’s no point to not grabbing it and keeping it if you normally do that grinding anyway.

Primal mana, of course, has fallen in price dramatically. I’d guess the fact that the mobs used for the dailies drop it quite frequently has a lot to do with this - annoyingly it’s the one primal I already had a surplus of. The other primals boost in price I can only attribute to a mix of people not grinding them so often when they do their dailies and the other big economical issue from the patch - people have way more gold.

The influx of gold may be interesting - will people buy more, will they spend more? I’m not sure as I know a lot of the people in my guild who’ve not gotten an epic flyer are getting it on the proceeds of these dailies. There’s also the big money sink incoming from Blizz - buy a title for 1k gold. Nice idea to drop a load of money out of the economy after introducing so much of it but how many people will buy into it? (I’m a sucker and probably will as I have no other title except the old, lowest pvp rank).

Numbers aren’t my strong point and I’ve probably missed a lot here but the new patch is, for sure, affecting the auction house and general economic goings on of the server.

Behavior

There has, sadly, also been the usual increase in random increase in gittishness which comes when new content contains something which has limited resources. I won’t go on about getting mobs and items ’stolen’ from me as most of you will have experienced the same yourselves. This comes as a stark contrast to the helpfullness mentioned above and I’m sure it will decrease as people get exalted / the armory opens and people stop doing the dailies.

General chat on Quel’danas is a bit of a mixed bag, at the moment. You get “Lol n00b 2p” alongside detailed explanations if you ask for help. It’s nice to see those who’ve figured it out helping others but sometimes the level of misinformation is astounding. One little up-note here is the fact that there is at least some small sense of community - “W00t! got them all first go!” when the daily bombing was a bit harder was more often responded to with a /cheer or alike than anything sarky. Going on later / earlier also helps reduce the number of idiots hanging around in general.

Moar LPS?

As a random last aside… has anyone noticed that they’ve been disenchanting more Large Prismatic Shards from greens? I fairly regularly sharded things before the patch and it was a very rare thing indeed to get a shard from a greenie, even a high level one but they’ve been dropping like candy for me since 2.4. Bug, intended or just a nice luck streak for me?

Overall

I’m loving what patch 2.4 has done - besides all of the economic and gear side of things people are actually getting out and doing stuff. They’re pushing back into old content whilst rampaging through the new stuff and WoW, at the moment, feels kind of alive again.

Apologies for another wall of text, the next few entries should be a lot lighter in nature.