Drysc weighs in on questing
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Feb 8th 2008 at 9:00AM
Player Tychlona of Kul Tiras made a fair point in a forum post when she noted that it sometimes gets a little annoying doing "collection" quests where it seems to take hours to collect what you need, Be it Gray Bear Tongues or Helboar Meat. I'd say that most of us can likely feel her pain on that measure. Drysc answered her later in the thread with some of his own insight into the process of questing and dealing with various types of quests. His point that sometimes seeing that "5/30 Windroc" notice in your quest log can make a quest feel like a bit of grind is very understandable, but I have to counter that seeing that "8/10 Monstrous Crawler Leg" in your quest log and knowing you've already killed 30 mobs without those last 2 legs appearing can feel just as grinding. He says a few more interesting things that may shine some light on Blizzard's questing philosophy, which I'll discuss after the jump.
For example, He also points out that variety in quest types is needed to keep things from getting too boring, and it's a fair point too. Most of us, after finishing up Nesingwary's quests in Stranglethorn or Nagrand, probably feel like we never want to see a quest to kill massive amounts of wildlife again, so we'd likely get to feeling a bit drained if every single quest involved killing massive amounts of the same thing over and over again. He also mentions that if they did remove random drop style quests, they'd probably have to start bumping up the required number of kills for "Kill X amount of mobs" quests, which might suggest various internal metrics at Blizzard that must decide how much a person should have to quest or kill to jump up a level, or how long a quest hub should keep a person in an area.
He ends by stating that he believes the WoW team is getting better at implementing new quests and making new mechanics to build off of for future quests. The game really does seem to hold him out on this, as we've had plenty of new and exciting things do in Outland, from stealing the souls of gronn and going on bombing runs, to jump-starting the hearts of Fel Reavers. If nothing else, the philosophy Drysc expounds bodes well for players as we head into 2.4 and the expansion, since if Blizzard continues to build quests off those ideals, it means we should get some good, quality game play out of them.
Of course, we'll probably still have to kill 30 Shovel Tusks for good old Hemet.
So what's your take? Is variety the spice of life? Or would you rather not waste time waiting for one last Forest Troll Tusk to drop?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Quests, Leveling, Forums
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Woecip Feb 8th 2008 9:15AM
"which I'll discuss after the jump."
I dont know who started this phrase but its REALLY annoying. More annoying is seeing it here.
bob Feb 8th 2008 9:59AM
If you didn't have to 'jump' to read the article you could read the whole thing in your feed reader and you wouldn't see any of the ads.
Mark Crump Feb 8th 2008 1:19PM
After the jump is a holdover from newsprint. If you have a story that's on two pages, the "continued on page 5" is the "the jump."
Eleazar Feb 8th 2008 1:17PM
Ridding the world of the phrase "after the jump" is a worthy cause.
I totally understand why blogs cut off the feeds for increased page views, but A LOT of folks are tired of reading that same annoying phrase about 100 times a day. Just come up with something else to say.
Arabelli Feb 8th 2008 1:48PM
Man. People will complain about anything, I swear.
Zegim Feb 8th 2008 2:02PM
So true, people complain about anything.
Reading that phrase takes less than a second, even more if your brain is already wired to identify and skip it.
Kraki Feb 8th 2008 3:21PM
they may have a good reason, but its still annoying as hell. makes my morning feed reading take a whole hell of a lot longer when half of the blogs do this.
jbodar Feb 8th 2008 10:37PM
@Kraki
The point of feeds is to give you a taste of the content so that if you aren't interested in anything, you don't have to go to the site to find that out. You can pick and choose where you go and what you read all of, based on that preview. It is not so that you can read the whole site without actually visiting it. How exactly does clicking links make your read "a whole hell of a lot longer? Are you on dialup?
Fel Feb 9th 2008 8:13PM
You are seriously a bunch of babies.
After the jump. It's three words. Cry more. You're worse than the QQs the article refers to.
And on that note: I really don't mind grinding for a quest. If you've played Everquest, you know that collection quests are just part of the game, and if you're unlucky enough to kill 200 of something before your quest is over, so be it.
If every quest was "Hey, go kill a boss" or "Hey, go talk to this guy", the month/two month quick run to level 70 would be turned into a week/two week run.
Is it not boring enough being level 70 and doing the same things over and over? Would you rather grind for quests and levels than just grind for gear?
I don't see the logic.
Zhalseran Feb 8th 2008 9:16AM
I think that they are absolutely right, quest variety is incredibly important. Quests like the bombing runs everyone loves are great, but the outlands saw a lot of new types of quests like body burnings, ring of blood, the prayer bead quest in hellfire and many more, which is a nice break from the original 2 quest types they could do, the kill x or collect x.
Personally I've always preferred the kill x quests over the collect x quests, because those are a predetermined length and you can actually reliably track your progress. Of course its always annoying when you need to kill 50 of x and 5 of y, and the spawn point has 50 of y and 5 of x, but I digress. I'm always up for new and innovative quests though, and making questing feel like a new experience instead of the same quests in a new environment is something that is going to be integral to WotlK I think.
But yea, I full expect to be slaughtering the wildlife for Nesingwary once again.
p-diddy Feb 8th 2008 9:19AM
I was thinking about this last night as a friend and I did the Ungoro grind together. Quests that say "Kill X whatevers" are substantially easier as a group since you both get credit for it while "Collect X whatevers" are substantially harder because now two or more people are competing for the drop, if it comes at all.
I gotta say, the worst moment in my admittedly short WoW experience was seeing "Collect 60 ____ tusks" in the Barrens. I stopped for a second, withdrew from the game, and said "60?! Really?!" Not an ideal reaction you want your audience to have. Even though the tusks can drop two at a time, I didn't know that when I accepted the quest.
Among my friends, "collecting muskrat pelts" is a running joke/euphemism for exactly why one of my friends won't play WoW. There are definitely times I see why.
-p-
Rambull Feb 8th 2008 11:32AM
Ah, but quilboars for that quest drop multiple tusks at a time. Also, there are some other quests to kill the quilboar that you can do simultaneously. That's some good XP.
math Feb 8th 2008 9:23AM
Personally I like the "Kill X amount of this crap" type quests. It makes leveling soo much faster especially when you turn it in. I say more of that and less of "Bloodhoof SlowFoot wants you to travel on foot using only walking speed from WinterSpring to Bootybay to drop off 2 pieces of lint and a ball of wax to his Brother and you will get 11xp and piece of meat for your trouble"...
Oldbear Feb 8th 2008 2:02PM
ROFLMAO - Sounds like a great video story line (is Oxbow reading?)
Frostwolf Feb 8th 2008 9:37AM
The grab 60 tusks for Mankirk is nothing, they drop two at a time, and theres even a quest given by the caged quillboar to kill 12 of such and such quillboars 12 more of such and 6 of such the tusks usually drop before finishing the kill quest. But yes i agree some of those drop rates are ridiculous i personally hate thrall for sending me to get a burning blade insignia that has the stupidest drop rate in the world and can only be looted by one party member at a time!
p-diddy Feb 8th 2008 9:57AM
Yes, grouping the quests together means you can clear two quests at once and the tusks did drop relatively quickly once I started. My point about the tusk quest was that it was my initial reaction to the quest, before I killed anything, that I withdrew and said "60?!" - that INITIAL reaction is not what you want your audience to have.
Ametrine Feb 8th 2008 10:00AM
Really? Every time I've done that quest, it's always dropped within the first 3-5 mobs.
p-diddy Feb 8th 2008 10:50AM
So 60 tusks / 5 mobs means the boars are dropping 10+ tusks each. Really? Sorry, not buying it. I was getting drops of usually 2 per boar, occasionally 1.
p-diddy Feb 8th 2008 10:54AM
Please ignore my post above - you were referring to the burning insignia.
I'll be over here in the corner.
-p-
Zali Feb 8th 2008 9:39AM
I don't mind the "Kill 30 of whatever" quests. That is a fixed quantity and doesn't feel like much of a grind to me. The quests that I just dread are the "fetch me 10 whatchamacall it hearts" quests, but only if the drop rate bites. I don't mind fetching ten of anything if they drop every two or three MOBS, but if I have to kill ten to get one drop, I want to beat my brains in with my mouse. You just can't put a timeframe on it.
I tend to separate my in game time into different catagories. There is "Playing," and "Working." I can live with killing six or ten mobs to get two Mote of Life drops, I expect "farming" to be "work." Questing though is "playing," and playing should be fun. Game developers should pay attention to where people use the word "grind." The word Grind brings to mind "hamburger" which a player really doesn't want to be turned into. In game play, it summons thoughts of long boring repetative dullard play that you have to slog through so you can get to the fun stuff... like doing the chores so you can go out and play. Nobody talks about Raiding as if it were a grind. Raiding is playing. People talk about farming an item for their crafting trade as if it is a grind, because farming IS work. Thats OK. It's supposed to be difficult to level up your trade skill. It is supposed to take you a long time to pull mats together. Questing should not be work. Questing should be fun. If you make drop rates so low that it turns into a grind, and half way through you are to the point that you never want to kill another *insert your least favorite MOB here* again... well then it has stopped being fun.
I don't want to change the Blizz philosophy on game play, or tell them to get rid of the random drop quests. Just kick up the percentage rate to 25% or 33% on those quest items. Don't make it a grind. Grinding is work, it isn't play.