Do you think going by a quest giver’s instructions alone, you could complete a Wow quest or quest chain without resorting to internet help guides, 3rd party websites, you-tube videos, third party addons etc?
I know your immediate reaction will be “Of course!, What a silly question!”
But stop for a minute here. Think about it, before you answer. Then answer truthfully.
Isn’t there an in-game system that marks where quest objectives are now so no add-on needed.
Vanilla players got by just fine without addons by reading quest text. Sure, some of the descriptions were vague and you’d spend hours killing something in the wrong area, but eventually you’d find the way.
oh yeah.
I was cursing in strange tongues at a point somewhere in EK when I was playing classic and the quest was ‘go here, kill that’ or something and it wasnt exactly clear enough, lol.
I think that was one of the quests that drove me away from ever playing classic again lol
The system in game does it for you…
With just the written instructions it might be tricky at times, esp since they started using tracking and locations on the map themselves at some point. If you mean, with all the information thrown at you within the game itself, it’s easy most of the time.
The only quests that have done my head in at times is the expansion chains, with their sequence, and quests that open up elsewhere when you’ve done step 1 en 4 but only if you have also done quests F and Z. I need some wowhead there 
Given all the bugs?? No.
Often the objectives are unclear, the minimap/quest tracker is showing the wrong locations, there are bugs that break things, etc.
Having solo’d WoW for years, I only go to the web sites when stuck and have used them extensively through the years because of the above.
“by a quest giver’s instructions alone”; many times, no.
It has always been this way since vanilla. That’s why “Goblin Workshop” came into existence, later replaced by WoWhead. Later, they added the quest markers.
I was always under the impression that it was on purpose, at first.
My favorite was a quest picked up in Arathi Highlands or somewhere saying “Bring me the tusks from the trolls to the south.” They didn’t mean the local Witherbark tribe. No, they meant the Gurubashi on the other end of the continent in Stranglethorn. Found them after out leveling the zone entirely.
Point being, yes quests can be completed without any outside help, but that can be VERY inefficient.
Old school questing was…fun.
Go south east to the tree near the cave(no not THAT cave that you’ll spend 15 minutes in), then, turn around 3 times, walk back three paces and look up on a small hill, all while killing 23 cats that you’ll get a quest to come back for next to get claws, where each one will only give you 1-2 claws each so you’ll have to kill another 56 before the quest is complete.
I loved when they started marking exactly where quests were, personally, and I am a huge fan of questing and leveling, so I do it with a lot of alts.
I mostly only look up things on the net when I’m completely confused though, most of the directions or info in the quest or on the map are enough…usually.
90% of any quest I do I’m not looking up anything. I’m using what’s provided in the game which includes navigation points to the quest area … but rarely do I go to wowhead or YouTube unless I feel like I’m wasting too much time trying to figure something out. But again 90% of the time I don’t need to look anything up.
excuse me, I’ve been playing since before there were even mods telling me where to go. and I still can’t do it on my own now all these years later.
The only reason I go to youtube is to watch the funny cats videos.
Yes. Don’t even need to read the quest text or even open the quest journal, it pops up exactly what to do on the right side of the screen with a map pointer saying where to go to do it.
Quests in WoW have been ultra-simplified so that if someone doesn’t care why they are doing something, they don’t even need to know what they are doing to do it. There may be a few outliers like “Use this item from your bag to start doing a thing” but that button was added to the little objectives frame as well.
It isn’t like “Ye Olden Times” where you can get a quest saying, “Get raptor feathers!” And you go out and kill a bunch of raptors and get no feathers then wonder, “Why no feather?” Then find out it was a different named raptor somewhere else you had to kill and learn that way in which they were very specific on similar mobs with different names.
Sometimes, I can’t even get out of Ogrimmar without taking a moment to recalibrate and recall what I was doing.
Vanilla players were using Thottbot and Allakhazam.
I give myself some time to figure it out myself. Unless it’s from an older expansion and I just want to go for an achievement. But for something new (like the secrets) I will try on my own until maybe an hour has gone by and then maybe look for a hint. Like, “it is on this continent at least?!”
The majority of quests are easily completed without third-party help. Even with POI turned off on the maps.
For the most part, yes. However there’s just enough quests where it’s pretty obvious that they’re assuming we’re going to look it up so they don’t bother to explain it well to make it annoying.
It’s improved this expansion, but only slightly.
Just because I can doesn’t mean that I want to.
Trying to decipher what the author of a quest had in mind for objectives isn’t fun for me. They don’t feel like puzzles to overcome, just failures to communicate.