Questing Sucks: "On Rails," Lack of Goals, Underwhelming Threats, No Progression

[Ghazar]

Since I seem to have missed the mark with the OPs point, he's mostly referring to end game leveling zones in the future.
I feel like Pandaria was cool, because the threat was shared (sha) between the zones, and you had both alliance and horde stuff and the local stuff.

While in Legion each zone was pretty cool individually regarding the quests, in my opinion it was way to disconnected, which is the result of the ability to choose your leveling path. On the other hand WoD had a very nicely done story, and everything was connected into the garrison campaign against the orcs, but it was too streamlined for my taste. I always preferred the ability to choose, while still being connected to the main story (Northrend/Outland is a good example, although the quests themselves are not stellar).

So my hope is that they will make enough zones to be able to choose multiple paths (unlike Legion where you had to complete all zones, but you could choose the order).

P.S. a problem I had with legion questing is that, after the massive invasion at the Broken Shore, and all over Azeroth, we go close to the main invasion point, and find the zones almost intact(with the exception of Azsuna start), with demonic presence just barely beginning to show in very small amounts. While the stories were very well done, it didn't feel that urgent and dangerous, not enough for the biggest legion invasion yet. So I hope that they do the future zones more according to the main story they are trying to tell .

[Kokolums]

Questing in vanilla and bc was a lot better when it incorporated social elements. You had large zones like the barrens or ashenvale and youd have your set of normal quests and then alongside that were optional miniboss kills and group quests that required grouping. Youd have to actually TALK to people to fom groups for those. That made it more engaging.

The leveling system in wod and legion is horrendously bad. It is the worst system hands down since wow was released. You talk to no one, you usually see no one, if someone WAS there, hes probably gone in a moment because of sharding. They ruin the flow of questing with these awful scenarios and cutscenes (like when you first go thru the portal in wod at the start)

Its a mess. Theres pretty much nothing good to say about the levelling experience right now.

[StationaryHawk]

The same formula was tried in MoP and WoD, though, personally I didn't care for either. While Arthas being Arthas certainly gave the players some motivation, I'm convinced that just knowing the big bad, and fighting your way to their seat of power serves to motivate players, better frame expansions, offer a sense of progression in the questing experience, and give satisfaction upon the killing of said big bad.

Killing Garrosh felt "meh" to me, as did Deathwing. Archimonde, despite his reputation felt equally underwhelming when it finally happened, mainly because he came completely out of nowhere.

Building up to the big bad also makes the initial portion of the expansion feel underwhelming and non-threatening.

As Mists of Pandaria has been my favourite expansion from a story telling perspective, and Wrath of the Lich King is the only expansion to suit the mold you're setting forth, I'm reluctant to say that's the best way to handle an expansion's plot. That said, it's not hard to see that, when handled in a manner that sees consistent progression towards the end goal (WotLK) and not scattered across the globe with accomplishments having little to no significant impact (Cataclysm), having a definite big bad is a great way to focus the player's attention. I suppose my intent was to highlight that a satisfying narrative can be provided so long as that build up to the expansion's climax is evident, whether immediate or more gradual, but there's no question that providing a singular target to work towards makes for a satisfying conclusion.

With no substantial patches between its launch and conclusion, Warlords of Draenor lacked any sort of progression outside the initial questing experience and the plot suffered for it. Throwing Archimonde in felt like a cheap attempt at making Hellfire Citadel interesting.

[CaptainV]

Alot of good points from the OP.

My view is that blizzard is probably aware of at least some of these, namely:

Over-narrative themepark feel of current zones:

I suspect this one is becomming blatantly obvious to blizzard. However this sadly is unlikley to change as they've really been doing this ever since Cataclysm and have stuck with it since. Its sort of a thing they are too used to now. The real issue there is the introduction of obligatory in game cinematics which everyone expects to see at least one per zone after Wrathgate which created an expectation for them, its a shame, really.

A Clear Villian:

If the way the narrative is being told is leading us anywhere it is to just that. At this point, Sargeras is just a footpad for the real antagonist comming after him. Its likley after Legion we are finally getting Azshara and N'zoth, given how much effort has been put into hinting their presence in the future.

I also suspect that Azshara especially will be as memorable as Arthas was, I hope for the right reasons. But I fear that the demand for Azshara may create an over-expectation of her hype. However, given that Legions narrative HAS become significantly better than previous WoW games id say over-all the storytelling has become much more efficent.

I suspect Azshara will be the perfect villian to rekindle the conflict between the Alliance/Horde war because its her kind of tactics to make the two factions kill each other rather than outright fight them herself. I hope im right because it would make her a genuinley threatening antagonist more because of her manipulations which over the course of exploring the next expansion we will likley put together.

She must be regal, dominant, manipulative, cunning, extremely bitchy and utterly ruthless to her foes. However, I do suspect there will be more Alliance favored plots to come given how heavily the past 3 expansions before Legion centered mostly around Horde specific themes (Garrosh War in Cataclysm, Mists and the Iron Horde in Draenor).

I do think the Horde needs some love, given how little its had, but im not sure that it will be easy to balance the amount of equal content between the factions given the fact N'zoth and Azshara have always been more of an Alliance heavy problem than a Horde one. We have some refferences to the threat they have caused to the Horde but most of it has been with the Trolls, but it would be interesting to see the Old God prophecy by Il'gynath potentially explained with Sylvanas being sacrificed to Azshara for the power to bring the gods back.

Warchiefs in the Horde definatley have a problem of longevity these days, but honestly, I never saw Sylvanas as a good choice for permanent warchief, and honestly, with the direction the plot is going, unless they do something to reignite the conflict, theres really no point having a two faction story anymore.