Hello all, had a few questions about quests in classic and how they are different from retail.
I’ve heard there’s no map markings or directional arrow to show you where to go. Does this include the ‘!’ on the map that showed you where the quest givers are?
How good are the directions given to you? Do you always get directions in every quest or only for standard quests?
Yes.
Good enough that we completed all the quests previously.
Don’t worry everyone will use an addon that has waypoints, marked mobs, directions and map highlights.
There are addons that will do this for you, also give you the most optimal path for leveling.
It will be glorious. There is no mystery when it comes to Vanilla.
Speak for yourself.
There is another major difference that I see nearly no-one talking about, and that is that the quest text in Vanilla was considerably better written than they are today, likely because they were written for an environment that didn’t provide all the other clues and assistance that is provided now.
So, when a quest told you something like “Down to the south you will find”, it will actually be south of the questgiver, not west.
Before anyone chides me on that, I ran across such a quest (though may have recalled the incorrect compass directions) just the other day in BfA, and it’s just one stand out example of what I consider to be poorly worded quest text in the current game.
It really almost isn’t possible to turn off these quest helpers in the current client - the quest text in many cases isn’t enough to complete the quest.
Here’s something I’ve noticed about how my brain works when I play this game:
If I read the quest (actually read it), probably 4 times out of 5 I can complete the quest with no problem. The other 20% of the time I might look the quest up to see if it’s just a rare item drop or if I’m doing something wrong/in the wrong place.
If I don’t read the text and just follow markers/built-in quest helpers I’ll get the quest done but I’ll have no idea what quests I was completing in which area and which mobs/items were specific to each quest.
In the first scenario, I’m able to remember every quest and complete them again and again on each alt with no confusion and no additional assistance/reference needed. In the second scenario, I learn nothing at all and have no idea how to do the quests the next time because I honestly didn’t need to understand any of it to get it done the first time.
As an added bonus, when I play as mentioned in the first case, I’m also able to mentally catalogue all the quests I’ll need ahead of time and knock them all out in an efficient sequence that requires little-to-no backtracking or inefficiency (this is less of a concern in modern WoW because the game batches all these quests for you now in each ‘hub’ but in vanilla that was much less so).
Thanks guys, looks like it’ll be learning experience but thats part of the reason I want to try this game as it was back when I wasn’t able to play.
Most of the quests would say things like, “to the northeast” or “south of this landmark”. You had to make sure to read the text to ensure you were killing the appropriate mobs because many had similar names.
Personally, I never used quest addons, if they even existed in Vanilla. But I did check various websites if I just could not find what I was looking for.
At least on other things that shall remain nameless, you’ll see a little dot (like the mining node icon) when you get close to the areas where the quest givers are when you’re turning them in, but not to show they have quests.
One of the best parts about the quest text from back then is you had to actually read it. It might say something like “You recall being told that the cave was to the Northeast, over the bridge” and then it’s on you to find that area. It actually made you want to explore and try to figure out where you were going rather than just follow an arrow to the blue shaded area on your map.
Although I’m betting as soon as addons are available people are going to use them that show all the available quests in an area, and where to go.