Killing the King: A step-by-step guide to taking out WoW. [Questing Edition]

[looopy]

So my last thread got infracted at http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...4#post14358874 I just wanted to say that I'm not trying to troll/start a flame war. I truly do want to just point out some things that I think make WoW great and could very well make SWTOR/GW2 great!

WoW has ~10 million subscribers, 7 years under its belt, a community that will persevere with blizz no matter how bad it gets, an appealing lore, and so many other things that keep people continuously hooked in. Perhaps one of the most successful franchises of all time, but when does it end? Inevitably it will be bested, but who? Many have tried, but they continuously just dont get it quite right. So what does it take?

Many forums address what MMOs must do to be original and new, but I want to look at what it is Blizzard has done right that simply cannot be overlooked when shaping a new MMO
Things about SWTOR will be underlined

Questing
I'm going to address the questing in Cataclysm, I'm going to avoid talking about the other expansions and especially the old 1-60 experience. In my opinion the questing system in cataclysm works because of one thing.

--Relevancy--
What I mean by relevancy is, Do the quests feel like your actually making a difference to the story? participating in important events? Does it feel like the jobs you are doing are important jobs that must be done for the good of the faction or are you merely grinding through kill quests. Now World of Warcraft has a leg up in this category off the bat because a lot of players care about the lore enough to find all quests relevant to lore/story. But IMO blizzard didn't have it quite right until Cataclysm questing.

Having Raid bosses make frequent appearances throughout the quest chains really adds depth and meaning to my actions. Additionally it can help tell the story of the raids before you even enter the raid so that when you do eventually enter the raid you not only understand whats going on but you get a sense of attachment to the raids. I suppose they did this in wrath of lich king questing as well but even then it didnt feel quite as special because it was like well heres the lich king!! now go kill 10 Spiders! Blizzard truly nailed it with cataclysm having frequent appearances of not only death wing but also extremely important characters on our side (Especially Hyjal and then again with thrall). One thing it seems to me that blizzard trys to do (and i love this) is they seem to have 4/5 of the zones be extremely lore heavy to the expansion and then have a 5th that is off topic but interesting within its own story (Sholazar/Vashir). My worry about MoP is that all of the questing zones may feel like vacation zones from the main story because there is no end boss/central lore that people care aton about.

So how is bioware going to address this? Well I haven't gotten a chance to play the beta quite yet but it seems to me that with the mass effect style voice acting every quest no matter how small feels like you are developing your characters story as well as connecting with your quest givers in a different way than any MMO ever. I have only really watched 1-10 beta footage (trying to avoid Spoilers) but I would assume as the player begins to truly develop their story their will be quest givers that in a way become close companions to the player or harsh enemies. As for the grindiness in SWTOR I dont know the degree but i would assume that the talking sequences can make even 10/10 kill quests interesting and relevant.

DISCLAIMER: I am fully aware that darth vader is not in the same star wars time period as SWTOR, but he makes for a good example. Seeing raid bosses like Darth Vader throughout quests would be simply epic. One main difference between the warcaft universe and the star wars universe is that in the sw universe the majority of the conflict occurs between the two factions but on the contrary the Alliance and the Horde often team up or both fight against third party threats. This gives SWTOR a huge opening to include opposing faction leaders in quests/cutscenes. Seeing people like darth vader/general grevious/ the emperor while questing as a republic commando would be the absolute best thing they could do for relevancy and immersion.(once again I know the game won't be featuring these characters) Side Note: Correct me if I'm wrong but the game is 1000 years before the movies, isn't yoda like 1 k years old? maybe we will run into em as a kid in expansions later on. I digress. WoW truly nailed questing in cataclysm, for example when I was flying into the twilight highlands and deathwing chomped on the blimp in front of me it actually gave me the sense that what i was doing mattered. I was not only helping the leaders of the horde fend off the destroyer of worlds, but also effectively questing without ever even having to kill 10/10 boars!

Obviously there are other things that make WoW questing good (there are a lot of negatives to WoW questing as a whole don't get me wrong) but relevancy is crucial to a successful mmo. Tell me what you guys think!

[RenegadeXan]

isn't ti like 10k year? Anyway i would have loved to see yoda race in swtor.

[Damire]

a fucking wall of text lease use some enters

[looopy]

a fucking wall of text lease use some enters

sorry about that, wasnt thinking

[Sargerus]

a flame war will start...

[Trollsbane]

While you may not want to start a flame war, others will. That's why we don't allow game vs game threads.
Closing like 3clise did with the last one.