Where Did Quest Heavy Advancement Go Right?
Sorry to give away the ending, but this part of the article is far shorter than the parts that talk about where quest heavy gaming went wrong. Many quests in games like WoW are actually very good. They have interesting story lines. They have characters you care about. You can find yourself moving forward to advance the story or to help out an NPC you feel an affinity towards. Those are all good things. WoW-style quest design keeps players moving from zone to zone and avoids the “where do I go next?” problem. As you finish all the quests in a hub, the quest givers start asking you to visit NPCs in the next zone over. This pushes you along at approximately the right level to move along. This is a helpful and effective way to keep players progressing through a world’s content. Finally, quest heavy advancement does effectively create the illusion that you are not simply grinding mobs – for a time, at least. Eventually, it becomes obvious you are still grinding, you just do a lot of running
