So i have played to many MMOs to list right now, currently I am in Aion mode. In all my years of MMOing I have watched the concept of Questing evolve into something not really all that great at least in my personal opinion.

I started off my MMOing hobby way back during EQ1 beta. I played EQ from beta all the way up to I think Lost Dungeons of Norrath, at which point I started moving to new things. I did play a bit of DAoC during my EQ days as well. Back in those early days of gaming I remember logging online to find my friends doing whatever it was they wanted to do. I would ask hey lets get to gether and group and we would. If a person was working on a quest it was ususally very involved took a bit of time and many times help from friends to finish. Also the final reward in most those quests were substantial. Granted some were just wastes of time.

As I moved into newer more modern MMOs, new very well thought out quests started appearing. At first this seemed like a great evolution to the gaming industry. Developers and Gamers termed quests as "content" and adding more content seemed like the way to go, you add more content for players to do and you gave background for the world along the way. It also became easier to find the quest givers with Giant glowing neon markers scarring the land to give even the casual gamer a chance to embrace the well written and elaborate content to help shape the world. Along with that each and every quest now gave xp, items or money. Allowing players to feel rewarded for partaking in all the quests. Heck I must have 30 to 40 quests on my character in Aion right now. There in lies one of the problems.

I seem to be at a point in my gaming hobby life where I feel quested out. Sure I love  takinng part in a great story, and learning about the world lore of the game I am playing. But in all honesty the games these days just seemed to be full of pointless quests. Not only that another trend I have noticed over the last few games I have played more and more is that the days of logging online to just hang out with friends are not the same. Everyone seems so worried about what quest they are on..

Example The last few weeks I havent been on all the much due to alot going on in my professional life. I logged in a few nights ago. One of my friends had moved into a new area, he had jumped 3 levels since the last time I had played. I asked him if he wanted to come join me. His response "Man I finished that area and all the qeust there 2 nights ago really dont care to go back why dont you just catch up some then we can group, besides I am working on other quests right now that Im wanting to finish"

Now dont get me wrong I am ok with that. But it is something i have noticed in the more modern days of gaming. Back during EQ we got together to hang out and just have fun. Now its like You log in to grind quests. I honestly feel like in some ways the "content" is taking the social aspect out of the game somewhat as everyone seems obsessed with just grinding their quests to get their next reward.

Some games have done a great job with questing. Guild Wars for example. YOu didnt log in and have 50 quests there you felt you had to complete to move on in the game. Yes there were those 2 or 3 major questlines you were working on that told an epic story and you would occasionally pick up a side quest. However they had implemented some great ways of getting rid of the grind quest such as the Sunspear Scouts. Instead of getting countless go out and kill this many of this type of mob quest. You just got rewarded for any you killed along the way.

Vanguard with its open world design mixed with a good amount of quests. You could go anywhere, and find abundent quests. But you didnt feel like you were leaving you friends behind. I cant count the amount of times in Vanguard where i just deleted the quests i had to go group with friends in a different area. If they had diffferent quests than me.

I loved the way Age of Conan had the single player quest lines and the story line quests in that game  were amazing.

But  with all the content game developers seem to say they add today why is it no game seems to hold me like EQ1 did, a game with hardly no questing. And when you actually did a quest you actually felt like you accomplished something.

I guess in all I think the the evolution of games maybe should take a step back somewhat.. Devolution instead of evolution or more games need to add tools much like GW to get the grind out of the campaign. 

Sorry this post is so long. Its just been on my mind alot.

On a side note. I Enjoy Aion alot... was hoping to be here a long time.. Not sure anymore maybe I am just burnt out on MMOs currently.

You've described pretty well how I feel, OP.  Quests used to be something on the side that you could do if you felt like spicing things up.  They were usually pretty involved compared to today (although there were still plenty "collect 4 bone chips and come back" quests in EQ1).  The main difference is that they've gone from an optional activity to do while leveling, and have now become the main source of progression. 

For many people, solo questlines disguise the grind of past games, but for my money, they are far more monotonous and boring than a regular dungeon crawl to grind mobs.  You run here, run there, kill this, gather that, give it back to the npc and do it over again.  Mindless, repetetive garbage in my opinion. 

Why can't we have a smaller number of "real" quests (similar to the heritage quests in EQ2) that provide substantial rewards, but may take a few levels to complete.  They shouldn't be the focus of gameplay, but should be one optional aspect of advancement.  And for the love of all that is holy - Do not give me a mini-map marker telling me exactly where to go when I'm figuring out a quest!! - That is the single more inane quest mechanic I've ever seen.  It removes any semblance of requiring brain power to finish a quest and destroys any sort of feeling of accomplishment. 

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There you go... my typical questing system rant.  That's gotta be like the fifth in as many weeks.  You people just get me riled up I guess :)

 Agreed nearly completely. You put into words a lot of the intangible negatives of the quest system, particularly one of my biggest gripes which is one person being done with an area and not helping out other friends with it. The same is applied for wow dungeons, only in the form of loot (once you get your set, you ain't going back to scholomance), which further enhanced the failure (in my mind) of the tiered loot system. Some may argue that comes down to greed and selfishness, and to some extent they are correct. However, quest and tiered loot dungeon systems as they are encourage such behavior and the simple fact is that the vast majority of us *are* selfish. There will always be exceptions to that rule, but your average gamer always wants to be progressing their character, not going back to help someone else when there's nothing in it for them.

I didn't play EQ, or DAOC. My mmo other than wow was SWG. I liked SWG's system, which was based on "mission terminals". You'd get "quick meaningless quests" to do, particularly kill quests, and you could always group with someone else around your "level" (or in swg skill-level) with a much wider range then wow and the modern mmo. However, SWG did not utilize much in the way of story-driven "epic" quests. That was one of its failures to me. If a mmo dev can create the correct balance between the two systems, I think you would have a great structure to enhance the game through quests without destroying the social aspect at the same time.