One of the big messages we got in the announcement of Warlords of Draenor was that they don't plan on having any daily quests whatsoever. (EDIT: Apparently that was exaggeration. There will be some dailies, just nothing on the level of Mists.) Instead, they intend for max-level outdoor content to be more of the Timeless Isle style, with lots of rare mobs and the occasional event that you can take part in.
While I certainly think the front end of Mists was loaded up with way, way too many dailies, I do wonder how they're going to avoid the pitfalls of the Timeless Isle's style of outdoor content.
So before I go into what I'm hoping for in the future, I'm going to talk about the advantages and disadvantages we've seen with the Timeless Isle.
PRO: Do as much or as little as you feel like.
While the Timeless Isle is not entirely perfect in this regard (you need your 50 Epoch Stones and your 50 Lesser Charms every week,) for the most part, the zone feels very freeing. You can kill animals around the Celestial Court if you want an easier time, or, as you get better geared or simply more confident, you can move eastward to the Tigers and the Frogs, and then eventually move on to the Yaungol up on the big bluffs that surround the island (I don't know if many people solo the stuff in the Ordon Sancutary - it's doable, but probably designed more for groups.)
One of the biggest problems with daily quests is that there's a very clear set amount of work to do. Once you've completed the quests for the day, doing any more would simply be a waste. Oddly, this also makes it feel as if you can't just stop in and have a shorter session, because if you don't complete every daily quest, the day is effectively wasted - you can't just catch up later on.
While Shaohao's 20 elites daily quest sort of undermines this benefit to the Timeless Isle style, for the most part, it's a zone that lets you set the pace for yourself.
PRO: Different areas for different strengths.
While Timeless Isle doesn't really have much of a daily structure to it, there's a clear distinction between the different parts of the zone that people of different skills or gear progression should be attempting. For example, my 543 iLevel Death Knight can pretty confidently slash his way through big groups of Yaungol basically anywhere except in the Ordon Sanctuary. Meanwhile, my 495 Monk is probably going to stick to just the ground-level stuff, and possibly just that first Yaungol area.
PRO: Rares and Hidden Secrets provide fun variety.
While a lot can be said about the various rare mobs that pop up, the thing I find much more interesting in the Timeless Isle are the various events. For example, there's a sunken ship not too far from the Gulp Frogs and the pirate ship with a living crew. Occasionally, the ghostly crew of this sunken ship will come under attacks, and you can help fend off the evil ghosts (getting "cursed" with the ability to breathe under water) until their captain shows up.
CON: Lack of clear reward structure.
Unfortunately, everything about your time on the Timeless Isle is subject to RNG. Whether you get your Lesser Charms, or your Epoch Stones, or which buffs you get from the shrines (Chi-Ji's is by far the most fun.) But that also extends to your gear. Getting your Timeless Plate Helm, burning a Burden of Eternity to make it a 535 piece, and then getting dodge and parry when what you wanted were haste and mastery can be a serious let-down, especially when you consider either the immense effort to farm up 50,000 Timeless Coins or the incredible luck to actually see a Burden drop.
Personally, I'd like them to eliminate all forms of randomized-stat gear, but given the way that both Battlefield Barrens and Timeless Isle have worked, I fear that that's the route they want to use going forward. I like being able to work toward a clear goal, and not just have to cross my fingers and hope that I'll get an array of stats that is halfway decent for me.
CON: The return of the true grind.
We talk about daily quest reputation grinds, but in truth, they're not grinds, exactly. Shaohao rep, though, is nothing if not a grind. You just have to kill Yaungol after Yaungol after Yaungol to get it. There is no real sense of milestones being reached or any interesting stops along the way (ok, to be fair, he has you summon the Archerius of Flame at Honored.) The grind is also far, far slower than what we've come to expect with our reputations throughout Mists, mainly because it consists solely of killing the same mobs over and over hundreds, if not thousands of times.
I recognize that they wanted this to take longer than, say, Kirin Tor Offensive, but if that's the case, they have even more of a responsibility to make in interesting along the way.
CON: More of a gold sink than a source.
This is probably intentional, actually. Without twenty daily quests to turn in every day, we aren't getting nearly as much gold as we were in the early part of Mists. But then, this might be the best way to deal with gold inflation, so oh well.
IN CONCLUSION:
The Timeless Isle was far more interesting than Battlefield: Barrens, and that gives me a lot of hope. The Timeless Isle was the first time they really built an entire zone around this free-form adventuring, and as such, it can be expected to have a few kinks to work out.
So I have a few hopes for the future: Let's have more fun events, with greater complexity. If we're not going to have quests that involve doing specific, interesting things, then let's have events that stand in for that. Let's have more of a story to the place and more visual variety. Let's also have clearer rewards for our efforts. You can have gear to discover out in the world, but let's also have some vendors that can sell you pieces that you know will be good for you. Especially with reforging going away, it's important that we don't get rewarded for our long efforts with gear that winds up being terrible for us.
And finally:
If this doesn't work out as well as you want it to, don't just throw the whole thing out. Daily quests can work out well. I think we saw that with the Shieldwall/Dominance quests, and also with the Isle of Thunder quests. There is stuff to be salvaged here, and I don't know if eliminating the entire idea of a daily quest was quite called for.
I will be very excited to see how this idea evolves, though.
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