EQ 2 have some solid quest lines. It does however have many patethic quests too (go and kill 100 animals that have eaten a book to put the book together again).

Guildwars have some good ones also.

My favorit one is however the quest in AoC when you have to figure out who of 3 guys are a jewel thief, either using logic or threats.

Honestly, I can't think of any MMO* quests that stand out.

I don't think designers put much effort into quests because the majority of the players run quests for xp and items. Have you ever used a cheat site to find out what the end result of a quest is? Perhaps even gone so far as to scan level-appropriate quests and chose the one with the best reward? Of course you have. Now did you ever try to search for "the best storyline quest" or "the most exciting quest"? Nope, that never occurred to you.

First thing that comes to mind is Vanguard. Too bad I didn't play that game for very well (well maybe not too bad...) but I loved making alts just to run their series of quests. My favorites were the Orc and the... asian humans (can't remember their race). The asians start off on a beach in the middle of leveling a city. A general on a dragon-mount thing gives you quests to burn down and plunder from houses. Finally when you go into the last building the "leader" kind of gives you this good vs. evil beach and then you wake up on another island, a refuge camp. Slowly you begin to denounce the evil Empire you served and train a Lao'jin Knight, to fight for good. There were a lot of very cool tests during this process, such as a jump of faith off a hiiiigh cliff. The storyline even if a bit cliched was just executed perfectly and was a damn exciting way to begin an MMO.

As an orc, you start off breaking out of a slave ship. The quest chain is really solid until you get to this one mountain. Inside begins a huuuge quest chain, which explains step by step the story of a great orc who climbed the mountain and performed various tasks to get to the top and light a torch, signaling to his tribe that they were under attack. The whole storyline was so epic and it was so cool to retrace the steps of such a prominent figure in Orc lore that I actually get shivers as I remember running it.

To be honest, no game I've ever played besides Vanguard felt anything other than a quest grind. It feels like the quests in Vanguard were placed there for some amazing story telling and to make the world feel alive, while quests in Warhammer and WoW were placed there solely so you could get experience.

That said, I really enjoyed running my Shaman epic quest in EQ and the "main" subclass quests in DAOC, however no game is nearly as consistent in the quest department as Vanguard.

I think the class specific Paladin Quests in WoW are my favorite series of quests EVER.

1.  The item is uber that you get.  And I was the only class that could wield it.

2. I did 20 levels this way and all I was doing was one quest.

3.  The feeling that I was fuffiling my role as a paladin in the game world by completeing.  

Heritage Quests in EQ2

Gear was based off of legendary items in EQ (that I never got)

2.  Required a dedicated team of participants

3. UBER UBER Item as reward.  Even if your class couldn't use it you could still frame it as a trohpy in your house.

4. Quests were never boring (except camping a named)-- I remember sneaking into Freeport through the sewers so I could complete the Stein Of Moggock quest.

Any task Force in City Of Heroes.

I must say that wow would be the best.  MxO had some great ones as well, and the content they through in every once in a while was usually quite exciting  (havnet played MxO in a few years now).

as for WoW though, the quests have grown by leaps and bownds in the Wrath expansion.  here are some examples of the quests i have done that i found entertaining.

1.) Stealing horses in grizzly hills

2.) Tranquilizing an npc with a blow dart and kidnaping her and her horse

3.) rescuing a soldier from a cage, riding backwards on the back of the horse shotting crap as we rode to safty ...

..... lots of horse quests i am notcing ... lol

4. )  (alliance side) end of questline in dragon blight, you actually storm undercity through the sewers with a mass of  alliance npc's.  the trailor achievemnt for that was outstanding.

5.) the new pvp dailys in Grizzly hills where you steal some fule and strap a rocket between your legs like Wilie-Coyote (sp?) and race off to blow up a horde supply ship..

the list goes on an on.    

old school WoW and even Burning crusade (for the most part) was just a bunch of "go kill X of these and come see me" ... "k now i need 10 livers from these, come find me when you done" . etc etc.

Dont get me wrong, those still exist in the Wrath expansion, but they have definiatly pulled out the creative stick on this one.

fwiw.

V.

The only problem is you have to finish the burning crusade to level up high enough to play Wrath of the Lich King.  It would be nice if they added some new areas that were for other level ranges then just 70+ IMO.  A lot of the combat system and class abilities have been revampmed in WOTLK.  I started playing around with a Paladin at level when and they changed a lot of things.  One major change for everyone is that casting time pushback is only effect by the first two hits and then it doesn't effect it anymore.  It's like you have 100% chance not to lose casting time.

Originally posted by gnomexxx

Originally posted by DeserttFoxx

WoW..

 

The game followed hte fules, the quests corresponded with your natural grind, there was no reason too quest but there was no reason not to quest, they gave great xp, and usually helped you find your way, after all if you got a quest in another zone it usually meant you should be grinding in that zone, also, the quests lasted all the way to max level and even for hours after you hit max level.

 

There game had a ridiculous amount of quests, so much so it was practically impossible to actually hit max level and finish all the quests.

Funny, that was the game that I was actually thinking of when I referred to the quest system I hated the most. 

There were some quests in WoW that I liked, but they were so few that I actually remember most of them still.  Like the one in Blade's Edge Mountain where you had to take on the vision quest to find the item that troll antiquity collector was looking for.  Those kinds of quests stick in my head because they showed some thought.  I think they filled most of the game up with those "go kill me x of these and y of these then come back" ones so much and that was the high amount of quests.  I would be willing to bet that 90% or more of the quests in that game are those types of quests.

Aye, WoW has a lot of generic quests, but out of all other MMORPGs that I've tried, WoW has the best questing system (and the most number of unique quests).

If I could include non MMORPGs, then id say Fallout3 is the best, followed by Mass Effect as best quest/story driven games.