As somebody who has spent an hour looking for a book coloured the same as the floor one I support this change. But I know what you mean.

Same. It definitely seems to walk the line a little.

Either way, I hope they at least get some nicer looking icons if this makes it live. :P

Except delivery and middleman quests are zero skill anyway, they're just irritating time-wasters. Something I've always hated about some quest descriptions is, "SOA N'DSO is east of town, go find him." East. East tells me jack. I'll go 'east' and there's nothing. Soa is actually SSE, a gnome standing in a cornfield that has no roads leading to it. -_-

"Except delivery and middleman quests are zero skill anyway, they're just irritating time-wasters"

See, and I like most of those quests. Especially if they have a bit of meaningful lore involved. Even if they don't I don't mind the diversion. I don't mind playing delivery dude for a nice chunk of XP and maybe a few coins. It's a nice switch up from collecting bear butts and murloc parts.

This is what I was thinking. The rummaging around for stuff was part of the fun! (kinda).

...Is there a way to toggle them on/off? That way only if you really need it you can flip it on and go 'Oh! There it is.'

People tend to confuse ease of use with difficulty. It's easy for a game designer to just say "it's hard because they'll have a hard time figuring out the controls" or "they'll have a hard time finding this one ring in the room", but honestly, that's just bad game design. If the objectives were in real life, then sure, hide and seek questing is a good idea. But when your interactivity with the world is limited to a mouse and keyboard, you can't force the player to make actions that challenge his familiarity with the system.

It's best to make the actual game elements more difficult, so let's say, harder packs of mobs, or specific items that need to be used at correct times, since they build on what the player can do in the world and how he interacts with it already.

I've seen a lot of games where people would say "This game is hard and a challenge" when in reality the controls are just bad and unresponsive. Making quests more accessible and easy to go through helps you focus more on your actual combat skills and class mechanics rather than spending 10 minutes hovering over the area with your mouse looking for something.

I think we can all establish that WoW is just going to keep getting easier and easier. But even so, difficulty does not equal fun. Easy doesn't mean bad, it just means...well, easy.

It's a good thing, trust me. Especially when you have to talk to someone in a completely different area.

These markers have been a big help in RIFT, which has a lot of similar "Go talk to X, Y and Z" quests. It doesn't make things "easy," it just helps when you're looking all over for one particular person or object and can't find them. I've had a few situations where I ended up talking to everyone except the person I needed to.

I don't see why anyone would think it's a good thing for the game to be remarkably frustrating. That's not a matter of skill; there's no skill involved in chatting quests. I guess some people need to talk down the rest of the players and any improvement in the game to make themselves feel "elite" when they're anything but, but I'm sure the vast majority of us enjoy being able to actually complete quests rather than spend long amounts of time looking for the "right" person.

It's nice, but I hope there's a way to turn it off, same as wth quest sparklies. I like to play through the quests at least once without waypoints, WoWhead or hints (if I can, that is).

Imo if you need huge icons above characters' heads to show a player who to talk to, you didn't make the quest clear enough.

@Snuzzle re: "Imo if you need huge icons above characters' heads to show a player who to talk to, you didn't make the quest clear enough."

I agree with this. I don't understand why game NPCs go out of their way to be uselessly vague. When you give directions you should be descriptive.

"Go to Orgrimmar and speak to one of the guards. Ask where the Alchemy trainer is located. When you find the trainer, there'll be a panda snorting opium nearby. He's the one who'll sell you meth."