[MUD-Dev] DESIGN: WoW quests and content

[Greg Titus]

On Jan 25, 2005, at 2:40 PM, Mike Rozak wrote:

> 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.

[...]

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

First, I haven't tried EQ2 yet either, so I can't compare.

However, I have played WoW quite a bit, and I think that the real
difference in WoW's quests is simply that there are so many of
them. The quantitative difference leads to a qualitative
difference. There are enough quests that there is never any need to
simply grind or farm mobs - there is always a worthwhile purpose (up
to 20 worthwhile purposes) to accomplish. I haven't yet run into a
situation where I have to tell myself "guess I'll go out and kill
random things to level up and get strong enough to do the next
quest", because there are always plenty of quests appropriate to my
current level. I think this is not only the first MMORPG I've played
where that is true, it is the first RPG period where that is true.

Even though the quests aren't any deeper than in other games, the
simple fact that you can spend 100% of your playtime trying to
accomplish appropriate difficulty quests rather than needing to
level-for-level's-sake makes the game feel very different.

	- Greg
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