The thing that first drew me into World of Warcraft where previous MUDs and MMOs had failed was the well thought-out quest system. When you land in the game the first thing you see is a yellow exclamation mark hanging over the head of the nearest NPC. That leads you to more yellow exclamation marks and before you know it it's 3 o'clock in the morning and you've hit level ten.
Background
In an MMO like World of Warcraft, your interaction with the game universe is limited by the game mechanics, so all quests must therefore be drawn from this quite small palette:
- Moving
- Interacting with NPCs or other players
- Killing things
- Looting things
- Trading with vendors or other players
- Gathering resources from the game world (fishing, mining etc.)
- Manufacturing new in-game objects (enchanting, tailoring etc.)
- Performing class-specific skills (casting spells, picking pockets, unlocking chests)
As far as questing goes we can shorten this list. Interacting with an NPC is only clicking on them, so that's just a trivial component of moving to where that NPC is located. Looting, resource-gathering, lock-picking, spell-casting and the like are just clicking on something after you've moved to it and killed it (or everything in aggro range of it).
As a result, questing in World of Warcraft consists almost entirely of 'Go to location A and kill things. Go to location B to receive your reward' with a few random decorations. Fetch quests? Travel around this area, kill anything that attacks you. Escort quests? Go very slowly along this pre-defined path. Kill the mobs we spawn in your path. Class-specific quests? Go here. There might be mobs to kill on the way. Click on your skill. And so on.
Patterns
- [CQPR - A Grind By Any Other Name]
- CQPR - Questing for Dopamine
- [CQPR - The Princess Is In Another Castle]
Antipatterns
- [CQPR - One-Legged Spider]
- [CQPR - Lazy NPC]
- [CQPR - Escort Quest]
- [CQPR - The Respawn Queue]
- [CQPR - Runaround]
- [CQPR - The Vehicle Level]
- [CQPR - Green Hills of Stranglethorn]
- [CQPR - Mankirk's Wife]
Comments (2)
May 18, 2009
Andrew Lui (lolzcat) says:
I must admit that the quest system was also one of the things that first drew me...I must admit that the quest system was also one of the things that first drew me into WoW. That, and the sheer size of the game world. I remember asking my mates how to get to Westfall from Goldshire and they said 'Run west' (obviously). Every few minutes on that long journey, I would say, 'I've been running west for quite a while, have I passed it?' or 'I've been running for ages, I must have passed it now.'
Such a pretty game world too, despite the low-tech graphics.
The other big drawcard to me was the interaction with other players, especially in dungeons. It's not hugely complicated, but the teamwork required is challenging and fun. I started playing with a few mates, which was awesome. I remember some epic late-night dungeon runs through Deadmines, Wailing Caverns and Shadowfang Keep. This is still the most appealing part of the game to me today (I'm really enjoying our work WoW group).
May 27, 2009
Charles “Carlfish” Miller says:
Interview with former WoW director Jeffrey Kaplan: http://www.shacknews.com/feat...Interview with former WoW director Jeffrey Kaplan: http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=1096