[MUD-Dev2] The Future of Quests

[cruise]

It's too quiet round here, so:

The number and quality of quests in large scale POW projects has been 
sreadily increasing as each new product attempts to improve over its 
predecessor. It's fair to say this is one of the major time sinks for 
such projects. Additionally, players are becoming jaded with the static 
quest system and an unchanging world.

It is obvious this cannot keep on going - the manpower required would be 
ridiculous. Something must change...but what? Here are some possibilities:

a) Nothing - Quest writing stagnates, and current popularity of POWs 
collapses.
b) Sandboxes - EVE, and to an extent Warhammer's PvP let player's 
generate their own quests out of the world they're given.
c) Procedural - An automatic generation of quests. This is what I'm 
working on currently.
d) Community - CoH is taking the first towards this, by opening up what 
are effectively the developers mission creation tools to the players.

Please discuss, comment and criticise, in which ever order you prefer :P