Rest states

[BSTRhino]

I just read that thing about rest states that was linked from WarCraft.org. I'm not exactly sure what it means. Could someone explain what benefits are provided by resting?

Also, by tiers, did they mean, every two or so hours of 'sleep' you reach a new tier and a new level of benefit from rests?


At first I didn't think this was such a good idea, but now that I look at it, it's a great idea. It means that casual players won't miss out on so much because they will be slightly stronger.


One last thing to the people who actually play the game. Does the world really seem that big? Like, you could spend weeks travelling through it and still not have seen the whole thing?

[Graeme]

The idea behind the rest state is that it will hopefully eliminate gaming binges, allow people to play several characters and master them all, allow casual gamers to play WoW with more bonuses so they don't lag behind the general population, and lastly, it acts as a timesink.

I'll give a brief explanation on how it works first:
As you play WoW and gain experience, you slowly become fatigued. A character may start at Well-Rested at the start of the day, be just rested by noon, and so on. The five tiers are as follows: well rested, rested, normal, fatigued and exhausted. In well-rested, you receive a large exp bonus, rested a smaller exp bonus, normal no bonus, fatigued less experience, and exhausted least experience. The experience augmentation and subtraction are NOT taken into account with quest experience. So even though you may be exhausted, you'll still be able to receive a hefty amount of quest experience by doing those 'collect x number of items' quests instead of the 'slay x number of monsters' quests.

When you log off from your account, you begin to rest to the normal level. You can also begin to rest when you enter an inn, and you'll hit well-rested. From that time, you have 8 hours to wait until you're back to well-rested. As it currently stands, there are NO in-between rest-state-changes. If you leave the inn, or log back into WoW during this timeframe, the timer on your rest resets completely. This however is very apt to change.

In order to make it easier to rest, Blizz also added Hearthstones, which automatically teleport you to an Inn.

One major problem many people have with the rest state, is that they feel Blizzard is trying to slow the rate at which they play the game. They see the rest state ONLY as a timesink - a way to allow the game to go on for longer, and to stop people from achieving higher levels too quickly. They don't like having to pay to play a game that they are restricted in.

It is important to note that Blizz has stated they will attempt to fix basically all of the qualms people have with the rest state here:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-general&T=31929&P=1&ReplyCount=69#post31929

So although it may sound like a pretty horible idea right now, it's going to get much better as we go along ^_^.

[SpiderEternal]

Well, having played the game yesterday for 8 hours, I feel I can comment on this. I started playing at around 4pm, and I ended around midnight. Somewhere around 10pm I hit rested level. The time it takes to fall from well rested is quite a bit. The bonuses are as follows, to the best of my knowledge, Well rested: 200% of experience, Rested: 150%, Normal: 100%, Fatigued: 50%, Exhausted: 25%

It pays to be well rested. The thing that most people forget is that the more you do quests, the more your rested meter goes up. And...last I knew, unless you rest at an inn, your rest state does not go up at all. I remember I logged out sitting on some plains, and 8 hours later I was still in the same rest state.

It's mostly the power-players that consider this a hinderance...but I honestly don't see the big deal...it makes sense. Your character does need rest...^_^ That, and Blizzard said players are free to use another character, so if they really want to level grind for 16+ hours, then can do so between a few characters. Even with rest state, people rush levels. A friend of mine was level 16 by the first day; he just never stopped playing.

There has been talk on the Beta boards of expanding Inns to accomidate lots of players. (Chairs, tables, bars, etc) Seeing as rest state goes up just by being in an inn, people want to play mini-games and things of that sort. They want music and drinks in inns; they want to dance and get virtually drunk. I don't see how this is a bad thing, it would certainly add a nice side flavor to the game; not to mention it makes sense to implement. MUDs and D&D have done it for years, why not WoW? ^_^

It would also keep players from dueling within inns while waiting for their rest state to go up. It's very annoying as it lags anyone in the Inn to about .5 FPS, unless you're using a dream machine of a computer.

The heartstones are a nice addition, they can make travel a bit easier, not to mention logging out. The stone takes an hour to recharge however, so you can't just use it as a teleporting device. I know the shaman gets a spell at level 30 that allows him to warp back to his home location, but I don't know the cooldown on the spell, it might also be one hour.

As for the size of the world...it's pretty damn big. Sometimes corpse runs can take anywhere from 5 minutes, to 15 in some cases. Travel, is truly travel in WoW. I'm sure that if you wanted to run around and explore the whole world it would take you at least a few weeks. (Assuming you're walking everywhere to explore all the sights of the world)

[Graeme]

Well, having played the game yesterday for 8 hours, I feel I can comment on this. I started playing at around 4pm, and I ended around midnight. Somewhere around 10pm I hit rested level. The time it takes to fall from well rested is quite a bit. The bonuses are as follows, to the best of my knowledge, Well rested: 200% of experience, Rested: 150%, Normal: 100%, Fatigued: 50%, Exhausted: 25%

Of course, you have to remember that your state depreciation is based wholly on how much experience you attain, not the amount of time you spend in-game. So, as it stands, a higher-level person would find their states changing much more rapidly than a person that is of a low level. Of course, Blizz stated they'll likely be changing this is the next patch, so no real worries there.

Another group of people, other than the binge-gamers and WoW-addicts, that would find the rest state annoying, would be those who play WoW in hour gaps. ie. Someone that plays WoW for one hour, takes a 1 hour rest, goes back for another 2 hours, etc.
These people would find themselves having to take much longer breaks in between their playing than need-be (8 hours to be exact). You couldn't exactly rest at the inn for the 1 hour in between, because it would do nothing for you.

Or a person that wakes up in the middle of the night, can't get to sleep and wants to play WoW, but just recently played to the exhausted state, and is 6 hours into their rest at the inn. They'll have to wait a solid 2 hours before they can get back into the game X_x.

Once again though, Blizz is revising and revamping the WoW Rest system. We'll likely see some great changes by the time retail rolls around. And hey, I really love the idea of the Inns having a bunch of mini-games. I'd end up spending all my time in there, even if I was rested ^_^.