Today's quests are detrimental to fun, because it demotes thinking. Thinking is the basis for fun. The quests bring the players to every single important location. The players only need to play a few hours or so, before they, themselves, get that impression. As a result, the player doesn't think anymore (e.g. Why should I even bother wondering or checking that brilliant light coming from that cavern over there, when a quest is going to bring me there eventually anyways?). The thought process ends here, because why worry when the person is going to be led there anyways... There's no, "I wonder what that place is all about?" or "Is there some secret puzzle associated with that place?" or "I wonder what kind of scary monsters I will be meeting there?" or etc. This is exactly why I enjoyed World of Warcraft for 3 days, until it dawned on me that my explorations were pointless. Quests brought me absolutely everywhere. Every single point of interest… In fact, there was nothing to be found without actually having the quest for it. I explored for a few hours and it led me nowhere, except only further from where I should be. There's no need to think or talk to any particular npc to find information. All I need to do is click an NPC with an exclamation mark on its head and press "OK". Then the quest log will tell me absolutely everything I need to know in order to do the quest in bullets. No need to read the story...
User Comments
You would really have enjoyed Everquest. I'm sorry that you didn't get a chance to play that game during the first few years of its existence. It was the golden age of "thinking" gamers - those who don't like to be led around by their Rudolph red nose. Those who like to adventure and earn their keep. Those who know that community is integral to the enjoyment of a game.
The recent trend of games like WoW (and even Vanguard's overuse of quests) is really disheartening. It is all about appeasing those who don't want to think, and then those people wonder why they get bored. Even scarier is that some of them DON'T get bored by WoW's repetitive gameplay. What does that say about the majority of WoW's playerbase?
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