I’m pretty excited that I’m playing a game again so that I can actually have commentary about games again. 
Last night I played for a couple hours in my favorite zone in WoW, Feralas. In fact, Feralas might even be my favorite zone (speaking environment wise) in any MMO that I have ever played. My boyfriend looked at the screen and said “looks like it’s just green to me,” but for some reason – it’s more than just green to me. It’s probably the most lush forest zone that I can think of in any game. It’s immersive, varied elevation, has a continuity to it from area to area that flows well, and has a nice variety of creatures and monsters to defeat. There is something about it that I just really enjoy.
On to my point. Questing in WoW is hideous. It is uninspiring, repetitive, redundant, and feels like a timesink like none other. There is no feeling of triumph, there is no “man, I am such a skilled player! I can’t believe I just finished that on my own!”. There is a lack of decent tangible reward (in loot and coin, at least in the 1-60 leveling game) that makes the end result worth spending the time. The stories are most often devoid of lore references and consist of a personal struggle with one particular NPC and resolving that struggle for him without any relation to Azeroth at large. I feel like one tiny speckle of the gigantic universe that doesn’t matter and has no importance whatsoever. Basically, what I’m saying is the quests suck.
Here’s the deal though. They’re fucking fun.
Sure, I enjoy mindlessly grinding away at mobs with half my attention on the TV instead. I enjoy getting my ass handed to me in PvP by players who spend 80 hours a week playing and thus have gear that makes baby pandas cry. I enjoy playing the financial mini-game of buying and selling worthless crap on the auction house in exchange for worthless gold that I use in a worthless game. (Kidding, kidding.) But what I really enjoy is questing.
I love the little stories. Even if it’s something like “Our area has become rampant with two-headed ogres. Please go kill 13 ½ of them!” I still feel like I’m contributing something to the greater good. Even when there are 7 other Taurens that are helping the same cause, I still feel like I’m doing something beneficial and unique. Even when I go back to the NPC and I find out that he’s pleased I killed those mobs yet isn’t satisfied and wants me to kill 13 ½ of a different kind, before finally realizing that the real cause of the ogre overflow is the Headmaster Evil Honcho Ogre…I still feel like I did something worthwhile. (And even when that required me to make the same 900 meter run across the zone 6 times).
Something just pulls me back. Is it the experience points? Well, can’t argue that one. Nothing is more gratifying than watching my experience meter jump up by entire bubbles at a time. Is it the social experience of grouping? Nah, because I usually quest solo and I’m usually happier that way. I’m pretty certain it’s the methodical, “always having an objective” form of gamer that I am. Give me an easel and some crayons and you’ll be lucky if I even make a doodle. Give me Photoshop and tell me to make a band logo, and I’ll probably whip something up in 10 minutes. I’m a ‘follower’ type of gamer, meaning I like being told where to go and what to do – something Blizzard does extraordinarily.
When questing, I am gracefully moved from zone to zone while making my progression to 70. I naturally come across new places, new camps, new stories. The quests lead me throughout the game. The quests make the level 1-70 game in WoW. The quests serve purposes:
- Distractions from the fact that you’re actually killing 76 ¾ ogres.
- Temporary feelings of accomplishment that make you want more accomplishment.
- Clicking “accept” on a reward (even one you won’t use) makes you feel like you did something meaningful.
- The illusion of a story makes you think you’re participating in a broad story arc, and reading takes an extra 30 seconds (hey, multiply that 30 seconds by the 1 million players of the 10 million who subscribe who might actually read the quests. That’s 500,000 extra hours you’re getting for one quest.)
- Encouraging people to use zones that are hideous and they might not have used otherwise. (Ugh, c’mon…the Badlands are ugly and orange like 15 other Horde zones)
- Drive people to fansites for quest help. Fansites = build community = good. Not sure how I just argued that one.
- An easy way to keep people moving in the right direction (i.e. towards the end game). Put enough of them in there, and people won’t mind leveling up their 6th alt. Shit, when you’re on your 20th “kill X harpies” quest, you don’t mind switching to a “kill X insects” quest (even though you did 7 of those from level 20-30 and 5 of them from 31-40.) Hey, variety is good!
- You don’t really *have* to give out amazing gear. You can give out mediocre gear, because you can always argue that you also give out gold and you also give out a massive chunk of experience and you also provided the player with a 15 minute session of entertainment by means of an interactive microstory.
- You connect players together. Every once in a blue moon when the barometric pressure is exactly 29.32, you might have players in WoW who will group up with each other to achieve a common goal. Voila, instant community interaction!
I’m not being sarcastic here, I really do love questing in WoW. I have always hated the leveling process in the other MMOs I’ve played. Granted not so much in Everquest II, but surely in everything else I’ve played. In WoW, I want alts. I want a slew of alts. I want pvp alts. I want an alliance alt. I want a level 29 twink battleground alt. I want one druid of a feral spec and one in a resto spec. I want to two box. I want to run my own alts through instances. It’s rad to actually want to play the 1-70 game for once, and not just to rush to the end.
So anyway, the next time you’re grinding quests all night long and realize that you’ve been in Ungoro Crater for two straight levels of passionless quest completion – remember that you could be in Everquest trying to guess the keyword to progress the quest that you didn’t even know existed until you accidently mistelled while having the NPC targeted. You could be sitting in a camp for 18 hours waiting for Lord Bergurgle’s Crown, looking forward to your 20 hour camp of Lord Gimbox in Sol A. At least now we as players have choices because we as the game industry are being a bit more empathetic by giving people “quick fixes” of “casual addicting content”. Winnar!
Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life. She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com. She can be reached on Twitter or by email.
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how many quests do you think the average player completes going from 1-70? how do you create that many passionate quests?
if you can figure that out, you’re gonna pwn the mmo market.
m3mnoch.
Yah, totally. My point is mostly refuting the complaints that I often hear that state “MMO questing is so un-epic, so boring, & monotonous.” I was trying to argue that regardless of that, quests serve a much bigger purpose in WoW – which is streamlining the user experience into perfect paths that move them in the right direction and keep them feeling small successes. It’s all a piece of a giant puzzle that is amazingly well constructed.
Really well said, Cupster. That pretty much sums up my entire on and off affair with WoW, and is exactly why I expect to adore WotLK for at least a month or two this fall.
The types of quests I like are when lots of little quests are bundled into epic quest chains .. but I think the term “quest” has been devalued to the point where the most trivial errand is a “quest”. I’d seriously like to see a quest system which organises lots of little errands and tasks into a long vision quest, one which might take 40 levels to fully resolve.
It would extra sweet if the quests had an impact on the world, or at the least there was attached some
personal consequence as to which faction’s epic quest you chose.
Not all quests have to involve killing 10 rats. EQ2 has a (small) number of quests that are “skill based” – drop item near mob without getting aggro, climb walls following a particular route against the clock, scripted events featuring cool sfx that kind of thing. And then there are 3,000 versions of kill 10 rats. (I don’t know WoW but there must be similar stuff there, surely.)
Interesting quests take a huge amount of dev time, that’s why most quests don’t get that time and are so sucky.
“multiply that 30 seconds by the 1 million players of the 10 million who subscribe who might actually read the quests. That’s 500,000 extra hours you’re getting for one quest.”
That’s actually 500,000 extra minutes… not hours.
I never said I was good at math
Questing is the heart and soul of a particular community of WoW players, the soccer-mom-WoW-addict. There’s a WHOLE bunch of us out there, trust me. We love quests because we can go /afk at a moment’s notice to deal with spilled juice or even *gasp* potty training. Not so easy to do in a 5-man dungeon with other people counting on your fixed attention. That has to wait for night time, assuming you’ve still got some energy left. The quest on the other hand, allows completion at one’s own pace and timing. And unlike one’s kids, quest givers always remember to say “Thank you.”