Dailies are probably one of the more benign devices, if only because they were created for the reasons submitted here. However, I mentioned the following point to another commenter on my blog: there’s a world of difference between having a compelling experience and being compelled to have an experience. One of those maintains player choice the other takes it away, makes it compulsory in some way for whatever reasons.

I don’t have a current MMO of choice, but I’m a gamer just like everyone else here. I existed in an MMO world for years and look forward to the next one that catches my attention. But just because I enjoy them doesn’t mean there aren’t some questionable things going on, especially in F2P. I also don’t believe that just because they are questionable then there’s something wrong with me for enjoying them. That’s a conclusion I never drew. I do think that this question of ethics has far more relevance to service based games like MMOs and phone/Facebook games.

Thanks for this thoughtful response. It’s nice to see conversation flourish.

I don’t mind grinding in order to do something cool and unique. In late Cata I was really, really into mount collecting, so spent months engaged in some of most epic grinds the game had to offer to get them. I always found this kind of gameplay interesting and satisfying, if not “fun” the whole way.

So I’m okay with grinding if it’s something I’m choosing to pursue. When it’s mandatory, I fucking can’t stand it.

I remember doing Molten Front dailies to get gear upgrades which were required for raiding at the time, and I hated it. When I went back there a year or so later chasing pets and achievements I enjoyed casually slashing my way through there.

I totally reject the current batch of dailies which are mandatory to both earning and spending Valor points. They are not special or interesting or epic, they are just required. That is not the game I want to play.

[iirc the Netherwing and Skettis/Ogri'la daily quests came well before the Quel'Danas ones]

Players will repeat game activities either because they enjoy the activity itself, because it’s the key to earning a reward that they enjoy receiving, or because they feel they must because it gates some game content they WILL enjoy. There’s nothing wrong with either of the first two, in my opinion. The third is crappy game design but not something I would deem unethical per se, that’s a label I reserve for actively duplicitous and manipulative techniques such as those used by Zynga to suck people in and then tell them to either cough up cash or help them farm marketing data in order to continue playing at all in any meaningful way.

Think of it this way: if you level an alt toon from scratch to L90 and then start running dailies so that you can raid with your friends, it could conceivably take months just to catch up to them once 5.2 or 5.3 drops. So, if you decide that Death Knight just isn’t doing it for you and you decide to start over with a Warrior, you can’t just grind out some heroics and run some initial level raids just to catch up; you have to do the longer grind, one way or another.

And they WERE well received. I remember, me & my guildies had been talking before the patch. Blizzard had promised the Netherwing faction would be extended and we would be able to earn the rep to get a netherdrake. We knew how popular that would be, and couldn’t imagine how this could be made to work. Visions of having to kill 4,200 Dragonmaw orcs which were camped to hell danced in our heads.

So when the patch landed, I remember all of us thought that daily quests were an elegant and well-designed system. Some of us ripped into it and did all our dailies every day, and got a netherdrake in a couple of weeks. Others took it slower.

Ultimately though – it’s a game. If you aren’t enjoying it why are you playing?

I mainly agree with you though, that it’s a tough case to claim what amounts to voluntary manipulation.