WoW quest design does not respect your time

Community General Discussion
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WoW in quest design philosophy is just bad

Yes there is a lot of content but 80% of it is just outdated and poorly written.

I like reading quest text in games when it actually engages my mind and makes me think, but in Wow; The “get 5 rat tails” meme is no joke, there are lots and lots of stupid & unimaginative quests that will make your brain bleed even in recent content.

WoW has the some of the worst quests I have ever seen in AAA computer gaming. This is very important for a game that is supposed to be an MMO RPG. The Stories the player experiences along their journey is very important and if you can’t regularly create a somewhat engaging story design then people are going to hate questing in your game.

Questing loses its novelty really fast in WoW, you’re just clicking to get to the next one to level as quickly as possible.

I would equate Blizzard with a Bad Dungeon Master. Their philosophy seems to be;

-have Great set pieces for the beginning so then players have good first impressions

-have Great set pieces for the end for a great & epic pay-off

BUT don’t put any effort into the journey itself and fill it with meaningless tasks that are designed to extend played time instead of - consistently making engaging content and a fun experience.

It’s no wonder Blizzard offers a level boost to new players because even they know that leveling is awful. Blizzard focuses on the end instead of the journey and it shows because, overall, questing feels like a Chore instead of a Fun experience.

Leveling is a brain-dead ride while you have Netflix or a podcast on in the background and the fun doesn’t start until endgame.

Maybe if the Developers focused on quality quest design instead of time consuming tasks they could actually have quests that are voice acted.

This four part video series makes it easy to understand why WoW questing is bad and what makes a quest “engaging”.

another tid bit as an after thought on how Blizz artificially extends player time which makes the experience less enjoyable


The video points out how there is too much filler grind time sink to make player stick around rather than focusing on making engaging content.
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The issue with respecting a players time is that it’s diametrically opposed to /time played metrics. So even though quality content may mean less content, it is not within their best interests to provide such content. A good example of this is PvP vendors (or lack thereof) or the massive amounts of rng layers that keep getting added to the game.

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MMOs aren’t for you.

btw thanks for providing examples of ‘engaging content’.

If there’s one thing WoW has it’s 15 years worth of content piled into a single game. There’s plenty of content you just have no interest in doing any of it.

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I’m playing it - I just am directly against filler content when it comes to the leveling experience. It is a huge turn off
Create good stories for the zones and don’t fill them with quests that are mostly “Do this X number of times”
This is important when WoW relies on stories to make up for combat that isn’t very engaging
ESO avoided this issue of filler

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I play many a d&d and watch many a d&d. I’m even planning my own campaign. While I do see how a connection can be made between an rpg game and a d&d game, I feel like it is way too much to expect that level of content for as long as we play this game.

I no life this game, won’t lie. At launch I spent the entire month, 8-10 hours after work at this game. I got pretty much all reps and 340 epics in 30 days… at 100 or more hours played. That was only on alliance! Horde quests would take just as long. An average d&d game is 4 hours… once a week.

I wanted to no life this game but I do not expect the remaining x months until the newest content to be just as solid as that first 100 hours. That is too much for a person or team of people to create so I had to find my own reasons after so long, mainly focusing on transmog. I understand that lock outs and x attempts a day or week suck and feel like they “timegate” things but I can’t think of any other way to give a person something to do if they wanted to log in. I want to play stupid hours a day, a month but expecting there to be stupid amounts of content does nothing for the people creating who have to live their own lives and enjoy their own creation.

Ask Matt Mercer or any other DM how much of their lives they put towards their creation. How about writers of books. You get a 300ish page book once a year maybe. It takes time and just because I want to no life this game, doesn’t mean I expect the creators to no life it too.

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I mean…this is MMOs in general.

There are only so many ways you can implement quests.

Trying to get a player play longer is the cornerstone of every MMO. Its not a new WoW concept. Its evident in Classic WoW.

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Do you expect any of us to watch this shameless plug of a video?

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I watched the first 2 minutes of it and I am struggling to figure out what it even has to do with the OP’s statement. So I stopped it because its been completely irrelevant so far. Considering its a 6 minute video, if 1/3rd of it has nothing to do with anything…:man_shrugging:

I mean. I get it. Blizzard is trying to create content that gets you to play longer. Thats MMO 101. That isn’t a new concept. Its been around since Classic.

Cause really…what do you think the REAL reason you were on foot for your first 40 levels, and getting the gold for that first mount was so tough?

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Probably just googled something and posted the first thing that came up. I would not be surprised.

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Yeah the difference is you relish in the moment you get a mount

Currently it’s just annoying to not have one

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Sure. its annoying. And yeah, you relish finally getting one. But having to do everything on foot clearly slows you down, and makes it where you have to play the game for a longer period of time.

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there is a difference between tough and rewarding experience and just plain boring.
Can’t be too hard on blizzard seeing as how WoW is a 15 year old game so can’t expect the combat to hold up after all that time.
However, the combat mechanics and quests are both boring for most of the world- sad to say.
Worgen intro starting zone was a good start and the Darkshore forest storyline was engaging to some extent but it came apparent when almost every quest is “do this thing X number of times” it gets old real fast.
Games like Destiny and Warframe can get away with it because the combat is engaging and fun.

WoW heavily relies on story for engagement but at the same time they rely on filler for player time but it becomes detrimental to the experience

The video points out how there is too much filler grind rather than focusing on making engaging content

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Anyone knows that if you want your time to be respected, single player games are the best.

Anything that has multiplayer progression will be layered with things to waste your time.

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I think a major issue is…what is engaging content?

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Uhh… no part of MMO’s suggests doing RNG M+ grinds that never end while in between the time gated rep walls to do something as simple as fly in zones you’ve well exhausted all the content on.

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Well we can rule out a turtle made it to the water

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engaging content to one is filler content to another.

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WoW has always had “filler content”, all the way back to spending most of the week farming herbs for pots, trying to get resist gear, and making food.

Maybe it’s the fact that the filler content mechanics are just too transparent at this point that you may as well put a “play for 5 more hours and you are allowed to do this content” on the bottom of the screen.

When before there was a veneer of organic achievement to things. There were personal and guild gearing and stockpiling milestones you had to go through to get to a progression point.

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You know what else they don’t respect? My authoritah.

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Maybe actually read the quest log, there’s some good lore

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