I just finished questing through Tirisfal Glades as an Undead Paladin (which made me hit level 15 which seems crazy) and have been noticing a trend with a majority of the newly added quests - there are no locations/directions given in the quest text from the questgiver. Typically a quest will tell you to find X creature “to the West of Y” or “North of Z”. So reading through quests in your log give no real instruction on where to go to complete them. While this may seem minor, it feels like a push toward players using the new [to Classic] quest tracking on the map instead of reading through and figuring out quests themselves. I really chafe against Questy/RestedXP style follow-the-dots gameplay, instead of engaging with the world, which these new quests kind of necessitate.
Would like to hear if others noticed this, or what your thoughts on it are, because it troubles me.
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Lots of people already use Questie anyway, this isn’t really that big a deal.
Sure but I would rather they not fall into that kind of mindset. The original quests texts point/hint you in a direction and so too should new quests. The “there an addon that does it so it’s fine” is how we got retail dungeons/raids as they are. They would balance fight mechanics assuming every player was running DBM so it became more and more required to raid.
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I also noticed this. I was reading quests on my paladin looking for directions on where to go in the text, in the summary… in the end it was just “go to the ? or objective circle on the map”.
I’m all for having the quest objectives on the map for people who just wanna go to the place and do the thing, but I’d also like to be able to read the journal to get an idea of where I’m going without just looking for the yellow paint.
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Huh. This genuinely surprises me. I had expected that the new quests would be written in a similar style to the original Vanilla quests, for the sake of cohesiveness to the game.
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I also appreciate when there are directions in the text. From a immersive point of view I want the quest giver to be 100% RP and talking to me like I just got into town even if I’m just chugging quests and not reading anything. When I do read it, I’d like it to give me more detail of who what when where and why.
From a practical point of view, There is often a lot of overlap and it’s not clear from the new quest overlay that I should be looking for something within a large area, or if there are a few specific places underneath one of the graphics, or even if it’s in a different zone.
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Ok so imagine playing during Vanilla, when quests were exactly like this BUT
Nothing on the map. No clue AT ALL where to go. We had to use Thottbot back then lol. I think I had it bookmarked, actually.
The map marker being there now and quests still being vague is ok. If someone’s new, they will ask and we old farts will help them (most of us anyway, some people are simply incapable of behaving politely or helpfully, but that’s what /ignore is for) and explain that they need to look at their map for the location.
Only a very few. A significant number absolutely did not. They were literally just, “Bring me back # body parts from these creatures” or “Go find that person and help them/talk to them/get something from them and bring it back”. and that was IT. That’s why we had Thottbot!
Don’t get me wrong, I’d much prefer to be given some details. But they’re creating in the Spirit of Classic, and being given quests with no details on how or where to complete them is absolutely the Classic I remember from 2005. However, at least NOW we have a map indicator. It was pretty awful when we didn’t AND we had not yet uncovered the majority of the map for the area we were in.
I seem to remember a lot more general quest guidance. Hm. Mandela effect maybe?
In any case, I would imagine as a person asking for a task to be done, it would behoove the person to tell you where to go, instead of just like “Ah, adventurer. I could use 12 ogre hands for… reasons…”
“Where are the ogres?”
“No clue! Good luck!”
Right? But that’s what they were back then. I think the intent was to ensure that we were exploring the zones, it’s actually rather amazing how many of them had “hidden” quests that you’d only find if you were poking into every nook and cranny.
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Yea, the old quests give a lot more guidance and the new ones are problematic. I just leveled a new character on Era without Questie and rarely had to check wowhead because the quests pretty much tell you where to go. It’s almost like half the new ones don’t even attempt to and when they do the directions are not nearly as detailed as original quest text.
P.S.
There are dozens of us who would rather not use Questie/Map Icons.
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Yeah absolutely. Would never use addons; used to the actual vanilla quests that did a good job with descriptions … except for Mankrik’s wife, oh and that treasure hunt one from Westfall.
Not only is it an issue of not being told where to find quest mobs, but also where to turn quests in … as can be seen by all of the people asking where to turn in quests for Ruins of Lordaeron. A surprisingly large number seem to have never even heard of The Sepulcher!