[MUD-Dev] DESIGN: WoW quests and content

[Mike Rozak]

In player-rant sites, WoW players often claim that its quests and
content are much better than other MMORPGs, especially in comparsion
with EQ2. (I havent tried EQ2 yet.) I don't understand why WoW
players think its quests/content are so superior. (See below). Does
anyone have any opinions about why players think WoW's quests are
better than other MMORPGs?

Here's my synopsis of WoW's quests:

  - WoW's quests are fundamentally the same as any other MMORPG I've
  tried.

  - Except that there are more of them and they seem to flow into
  one another better.

  - The quest manager UI seems better than other MMORPGs.

My observations about content, in this case exampled by an instanced
dungeon I just went through:

  - Nice use verticality in the tunnels, as opposed to many flat levels.

  - The lighting/mood was uninspiring. In my opinion, dungeons
  should be dark and scary. This was light and chearful.

  - The dungeon had a few special monsters/NPCs to kill. The rest
  were selected from a palette of 4-5 basic "types", such as
  raptors, slimes, pythons, and druids. Each type had several
  varieties (small raptors, invisible raptors, big raptors, red
  raptors with blue spots, etc.). (As an aside, whomever decided to
  call the snakes "pythons" has obviously never dealt with
  pythons. Pythons are constricters that like climbing trees. Snakes
  that rear up and bite (like cobras) come from a different family.)

  - A nicely done sub-quest to protect a friendly NPC as he stupidly
  walks through the dungeon to a pre-programmed destination.

  - As far as I can tell, the only place that the instancing really
  made a difference was the follow-the-NPC part.

What am I missing? (Perhaps I'm missing some quest/content-design
subtlety.)

Mike Rozak
http://www.mxac.com.au
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