World of Warcraft Scenarios: An Ambivalent Relationship?

[Teryaki]

The new world event scenario "The Fall of Theramore" was released on live World of Warcraft servers on September 18th, 2012. Since then, there has been a lot of different views that have been floating around the World of Warcraft community forums about scenarios and the future of scenarios. What do you think of it now that is has been out for a few days? Was it more or less than what you were expecting? Really fun, or super boring? Here are some things that I came across when playing these scenarios.

Scenarios - The Basics
Scenarios are basically short little instances that you and two other people join in order to complete the tasks that are given to you. There are no time limits, so pace is really up to you and your team mates. There are no tank or healers that can be assigned to your group, so it doesn't matter if you are DPSing, tanking, or healing; it is doable regardless with or without one or more of these roles. With the release of Mists of Pandaria on the 25th of September, six new scenarios will be introduced. They will work in the same manner as The Fall of Theramore, only different loot and such will drop.

Theramore Loot and Vanity Items
When released, I noticed that queue times were almost instant, now when I run it again queue times skyrocket into the half and hour range. Now with the concept of scenarios, you will have a wait time of 30 minutes regardless if you are a tank, healer, or a DPS looking to join one of these scenarios. This is because scenarios do not require a specific role, only 3 people to a team. I sensed at that time people were starting to quickly get bored of the scenario. Loot itself is weird in it's own way as well. This is a list of loot that drops from the scenario's Spoils of Thermore. You only have a chance to get the epic Item Level 384 items, and always get ten gold and 140 Justice Points upon completion. During this World Event scenario, you get either [Theramore Tabard] as an Alliance, or [Mini Mana Bomb] as a Horde. Be sure you get these while this event is out for level 85s. Once Mists of Pandaria goes live, The Fall of Theramore becomes a level 90 scenario and you will not be able to obtain these vanity items! Will this be a viable way for farming lets say Justice Points or gear? As mentioned above, upon completion you get Justice Points and a container that might have an epic item in it. Whether or not this is how scenarios will work when Mists of Pandaria goes live on Tuesday, I would guess that scenarios will still be in the 15-30 minute queue time. Even though scenarios are short, it would still benefit more to queue up for a dungeon and do the dungeon, since you would get more Justice Points that way from the bosses and completing the dungeon.

Scenarios: What Content Were You Looking For?
Scenarios are great for Roleplaying within World of Warcraft. They offer lots of player interaction and also tell a story as you go along. For me, I found it to be lacking a lot of things. One thing I noticed was it was fairly boring. It felt as if I rushing to get to the end, and it was lacking a lot of content. Whether that is just the mindset that Blizzard has instilled in us over the years or not, I still felt as if it was lacking that "Wow!" factor that should come with a new expansion, something that we have never seen before. The World of Warcraft community seems to be stirred up as well. Just browsing the general forums you can see that people find it very original and boring. There is a lot of potential here though, The Fall of Theramore might just have been a bad example to release to players at this point in the game. I can only say this about the Fall of Theramore, since I have not done scenarios on the Beta.

While browsing scenarios on Wowwiki, I noticed that they had screenshots of what Blizzard had planned scenarios to be like, which was presented in this year's Blizzcon. Now this in my opinion would make leveling a lot more fun for players. The idea is there, so maybe we might be seeing some of the lower levels getting scenarios in future patches or expansions.

What Do You Think?
I would like to know what everyone else thinks on the matter of scenarios. Was the scenario fun and would you be likely to do it again? Was the loot great or was it lacking? Did you enjoy the content or did you feel that there was things to be improved? Were the vanity items awesome or were they just another item taking up space in your bags? Your feedback is welcome! I believe there is a lot of room for improvement with scenarios, and hopefully with the new scenarios that will be released with Mists of Pandaria will fill in that room. Also, don't forget to get your vanity items while they are still here, you only have five days left! Once they're gone, they're gone!

-Teryaki