World of Warcraft Diary #1
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 806
Of course, lots of quests means nothing if they're boring. I think this has been my biggest problem with instanced quests in games like Anarchy Online, Galaxies, and even to a slightly lesser degree City of Heroes. Let's take Galaxies as an example, though. My Rodian Tailor, in his spare time outside of making Wookie Pants, spent his vast spare time in the vacant expanse of a variety of worlds seeking fortune and resources. Instanced missions were a nice means to this end, but there was something wholly unsatisfying about being asked to kill your third consecutive random animal nest of the day. It was busy work, barely as challenging and interesting as drying the dishes. The mission generator might as well have said, (Do random action 175 for [difficulty plus player level multiplied by constant] credits.) Inspiring stuff, no?
Look, not every World of Warcraft quest has been an epic adventure of itself, but at least they've all taken the time to put the quests into a larger context and even into something of a twisting narrative. Your actions lead to additional quests that when put together begin to tell a story. I'd have been much more satisfied killing rats in Everquest if I'd had some extended narrative context to put the endeavor into, it's called suspension of disbelief and it's far too rarely paid any attention. So far World of Warcraft has given me that.
