FFXI and Lotro.  FFXI because every single quest had a reward you will either use or sell for a ton of gil and you really had to explore and find them and basically "unlock" quests the more you do them for each city.  Yeah, the quest log could have been better, but for overall immersion, they were the best.

Lotro, while it has it's run of the mill go kill x boar quests, the Book quests and a few side quests are just awesome and very well written.

I liked the story lines in SWTOR. If the game wasn't a buggy nightmare at end game I'd probably of kept playing.

As for actual quest system I've never really seen a game that "breaks the mold " GW2 has a different take on quests with it's hearts but it's still just a go do pointless things that don't matter for xp.

Guild Wars 2 for the execution and presentation.

The Secret World for the lore, diversity and ambiance.

As i truly love stories, atmosphere and riddles, there is nothing that comes near The Secret World quests.

Runner Ups would be some of the newer WOW Quests. They really got some nice ideas, but unfortunately Blizzard copies their own quests now for the last 5 years. /yawn

and SWTOR had a great agent storyline. But nevertheless the usual "Kill 50 droids" quests were not very innovative.

my favorite quest system is GW2's dynamic events

best quests are imho investigation quests in TSW

but i have to say i would be quite happy with sandbox game without any (visible) quests :)

TSW: The style and atmosphere, also the investigation missions can be fun. *

DDO: Every quest is unique, with its own challenges (and traps!)

SWTOR: Choices and dialogues! *

CoH: The vast amounts of missions and the fun storylines! (and to a lesser extent WoW as well for the many, many quests!)

* Not to mention the voice acting and cutscenes!

Best questing system I've ever played is in GW2 right now with the DEs replacing all standard static quests.

I've never played TSW so can't speak on the quality of their questing but I see it getting lots of positive mention. Does it use the static method just better written?

Back in the day, probably WoW's quests. I went EQ->SWG->WoW so was really immersed in all the little quests that flavoured the zone and had never seen anything like that before. Elwynn forest and the bandits and kobolds, Redridge Mountains and the creepy stuff in Darkshire. Some of the max level stuff was also epic like Molten Core attunement, or getting the ring to open the door to Upper Blackrock Spire.

Sadly these days I loathe questing. I don't know if it's burnout or if more modern MMOs just suck at making it engaging.

Originally posted by keenber
old Everquest quests were trully epic

Yep my favorite quests in a game :)

EQ.

It had Epic Quests that were chain quests that could span the entire EQ world and take days/weeks...even months to complete to receive you're classes Epic Weapons. THOSE were true quests.

Sure, EQ still had those "Kill 10 rate and bring me their pelts" types of quests....but at least even those only gave you vague directions as to where the rats were (In most cases) and made you explore to find them. They weren't on map GPS and only 10 feet away from the quest giver like almost all of the current selectionof MMORPG's.

Not to mention almost every quest reward would be useful to you, and for more than a few hours. Nothing chaps my ass more in newer MMORPG's than playing a class and having entire quest lines give rewards with useless stats to that class.

Originally posted by Volkon

Best questing system I've ever played is in GW2 right now with the DEs replacing all standard static quests.

 

I've never played TSW so can't speak on the quality of their questing but I see it getting lots of positive mention. Does it use the static method just better written?

 TSW has 3 types of quest. Conventional, Investigation and Sabotage.

Investigation usually has you using the in game browser to look up stuff to figure out puzzles (often quite complex). Sabotage will see you sneaking around rather than rushing through killing everything in sight.

But yes, the main reason it gets so much praise is due to the high quality of not only the quest dialogue, but also the calibre of quests themselves.    

Originally posted by evilastro

Originally posted by Volkon

Best questing system I've ever played is in GW2 right now with the DEs replacing all standard static quests.

 

I've never played TSW so can't speak on the quality of their questing but I see it getting lots of positive mention. Does it use the static method just better written?

 TSW has 3 types of quest. Conventional, Investigation and Sabotage.

Investigation usually has you using the in game browser to look up stuff to figure out puzzles (often quite complex). Sabotage will see you sneaking around rather than rushing through killing everything in sight.

But yes, the main reason it gets so much praise is due to the high quality of not only the quest dialogue, but also the calibre of quests themselves.    

investigation quests examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrO_zXURnS0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDnNtWlnJv0

I will have to say eq2.  There are different types of quest.   You have quest arc's,  you have heritage quests that tell stories, you have sigiture quest that tell better stories and tie in the lore of the game.  You have crafting quest.  You have single quests.   Some quest have great names like one npc was named Mic Roe he offered a quest called a dirty job.  You had one npc that was a kerra (cat) that offered can has cheeseburger. A crafting quest that had 2 npc that were named after the myty busters and the quest that was offered was blowing up dummies.  

Eq2 has a rich quest serries and good writing.  Most of all we dont have a lot of cut screen crud. 

I preferred EverQuest's quests over anything else today. They were totally optional and most of them actually felt like a big quest instead of day to day chores that needed to be done. It was nice because you could be off adenturing, find a drop off of a mob that you were farming and ask around and find out more about the quest.

Even what now is the "Kill 10 x" quests weren't bad, thinking the Crushbone belt and bandit sash type quests. You could go off and farm and turn in when you were finished, only time going to the quest NPC is when you need to turn in your quest pieces. You never had to go pick it up, the mobs dropped the quest pieces all the time instead of just when you pick the quest up...then dropping it off the next 10 mobs you kill, never to drop again (that never made sense to me.)

I even enjoyed the key and flagging quests for new zones. The reward for doing those was great. Usually got you into a group of more dedicated players who knew what they were doing, faster exp and better drops. People cry now about content gating...well it served a purpose.

Then...the epic quests. 

Basically I liked when quests were real quests, not just tedious tasks you get sent off to do. I'm an aspiring adventurer, supposed to be powerfull, why do I need to carry your bags of groceries back to your house to progress again?