When did questing become so LINEAR?

[huth]

but WoD and after that Legion really pushed the "leveling on track". You start in Zone A hub A at 100 and end in Zone Z hub Z at 110. No shortcut, no avoidable hub, no avoidable quests.

You do know you can opt to start at hub Z instead, right? Or even just do Invasions and skip the zones entirely.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Really? There's main story quest chains, then there's everything else that's really just up to you to find or pick up.

Is it a BAD thing that they use all the space because questing has become more involving? Huh? What?

Exactly.

But, people gon' remember the past in a rose-shimmering light all the same.

[spleen1015]

You do know you can opt to start at hub Z instead, right? Or even just do Invasions and skip the zones entirely.

Aren't the invasions spread out such that there's a lot of dead time between them?

[Teri]

I wonder how many people have done 1-60 without heirlooms. I never have. The experience has to be much different when you finish all of the quests, etc. I think the rework of the zones was great.

I don't feel the point doing that at all as I've known the game since 2004, but I still finish zones, at least it seems stuff still gives xp 8-10 levels over your level. (did 24-34 in just northern strangthethorn on a monk with 50% enlightment on top of 55% heirlooms).

Only thing that sucks if you hit an expansion level cap, all xp regardless is cut by 75%, it's still easily possible to skip MoP completly by doing cata etc.

However if 8.0 brings a revamp of sorts, or at the minimum zone scaling I might level new character without heirlooms since quest rewards aren't that awful these days, and 7.3 added dual stats to pretty much all leather/plate/mail armors so spec swapping is a lot easier.

[Pawstruck]

It's a QUEST, not one of your buddies patting you on the back saying "Go have fun, you rascal you!" It's inherently linear.

Ya dingus.

[tankbug]

Back when people enjoyed the game without a lot of consistent content, riding on the lore and the excitement about the world from Warcraft 3, you didn't need a narrative. Now Blizzard need to make quests that builds up to the achieving the greater objective, something that ties your character to the events in the main story. In that sense you need followup quests and phasing.

[talha123]

Nice post.

[Queen of Hamsters]

TBC started this "finish the zone before entering next one" -kind of gameplay, which was the first step in the wrong direction. In WotLK they added more zones but it kept going on the same path as TBC.

Vanilla WoW was the only iteration of this game that really was *world* of warcraft.

What a load of bullshit.

Legion is the most WORLD of Warcraft this game has ever been. It's over a year since the game released, and the Broken Isles leveling zones are still utilized. Also, scaling tech.

If they bring the Legion systems to the 1-60 content, then that content can be made a part of the WORLD relevant to max level players for the first time since 5.3, when the northern Barrens were used for max level content...

[kary]

The class quests you got around level 50? I loved those!

No, there were several other quests that did that shit.
Jintha'alor storyline was the one i was drawing reference to. Theres a bunch more.

[Aeula]

While I like the Legion questlines, it would have been cool to have a longer questline that was story driven that spanned all of the zones. Maybe that's what we get with the order hall questline.

Legions order hall quest lines were filled to the brim with gating. Completely ruined the flow when you went from killing a Legion commander to turning in 100 wool bandages or playing with the order hall table.

[Nurvus]

Questing will only become more linear as Blizzard becomes "better" at in-game "storytelling".
It's inevitable that focus on story takes away from variety, choice and feeling of world.

[rda]

In Cataclysm. They went overboard with it, like with many other things.

[caervek]

When did questing become so LINEAR?

In Warlords of Draenor, the design of the game changed drastically and instead of being part of a world with many objectives/quests/etc to participate in as part of our story we became a minor part of one big storyline.

I.E In WoD we were basically minor players in Yrel's story (or the horde equivalent of her).

[kary]

WoW is technically a 'good game'. However, its been changed so much its almost literally in another genre. Ive seen a lot of good, high quality, games come down the pipes over the years. They're fun to play for a while until their 'goodness' wears off, and they become boring. That's the difference between now and then, the game now is really good, technically. I dont think that anyone can deny that's its a solid, well developed game, technically; but not epic in the sense that it inspires a desire to play it on a constant basis like the old game did. Its a very different design mentality.

It's in the same genre it always was, dunno how yall constantly make this shit argument

[caervek]

TBC started this "finish the zone before entering next one" -kind of gameplay

That's not true at all, if you did that then you would still have two full zones left by the time you reached max level. Most players skipped to the next zone before finishing all of one then went back later, and there were two endgame L70 zones (SMV and Netherstorm) to explore/conquer.

- - - Updated - - -

Because it's better for story telling.

Disagree totally. The Vanilla/TBC/Wotlk/etc method was much better than the new linear WoD/Legion method. It feels more like playing through a generic single player game now than an MMORPG.

[Dilbon]

TBC is the correct answer.

[Deleted]

WoW isn't and never was a sandbox MMORPG

[deniter]

What a load of bullshit.

Legion is the most WORLD of Warcraft this game has ever been. It's over a year since the game released, and the Broken Isles leveling zones are still utilized. Also, scaling tech.

If they bring the Legion systems to the 1-60 content, then that content can be made a part of the WORLD relevant to max level players for the first time since 5.3, when the northern Barrens were used for max level content...

I'll judge it again when the game stops being a collection of smaller stand-alone games with different themes and features, and you can play the latest one only. One possible solution could be the scaling tech, but 1-60 won't be enough - you should know all the time you're playing the same game you started regardless of a level.

Right now my grandma's patchwork quilt looks more uniform than the game of World of Warcraft.

[Deleted]

I came back to WoW for the first time since wrath. Now don't get me wrong, the quality of the quests are probably the best they've ever been...BUT I have never felt so guarded from veering off into my own path and exploring the world.

The zones feel a lot more condensed and there seems to be virtually no open space that doesn't involve a scripted quest.





Just an observation

Clear answer, Cataclysm.

[barackohmama]

I'm not a fan of being some kind of "hero" lore wise. I prefer the early days when you were insignificant and the stories were separate but interconnected in a subtle way. Current system is designed for linear, movie like scripts and tbh it's quite a bad movie.