Cataclysm Post Mortem -- Quest Design with Dave "Fargo" Kosak

[Deleted]

He must have an awesome job. Making your money by designing the same 'pick 10 flowers' and 'kill 10 flower monsters' 90% of the time. Levelling will just never be fun for me when they are halfassing like they do. I understand you simply need some filler quests, but ONE cool quest every zone is just them not caring. In Hyjal we got the jousting thing, in uldum it was the 'kill 1000 gnomes with a giant fireball' in Zuldrak it was that giant giant that you could ride. But those are the only quests that stand out, the rest is all of the same crap.

Then i read about how he thought Firelands dailies were awesome. I hate them. Putting easy quests in 1 place, then telling people 'YOU CANT DO ANYMORE TODAY, GO JOIN A QUEUE' when they're 'done'. Sad. It's like they arent even trying to hide the fact that instead of making up good stuff, they'd rather put a limit on how much crap you can do per day.

Then as i came to the Legendaries part, and how totally awesome he thinks legendaries are, i just shook my head and closed the page. Thanks for giving the same class 4 different legendaries man. Great design where 99% of the people are collecting 10 bear asses all throughout the game, and 1% of the people that also happen to be Rogues have this many specific class quest lines. Put all your work on an item that ruins the fun of the people on the opposite side of pvp, while keeping quest PvE boring and bland. Great design choice right there.

[MasterHamster]

The game continues getting overall better and better. Whiners just can't tell

[Alixie]

That flapflapflap jousting quest in Hyjal was the most fun I had in Cata by far. No troll. I liked having to steer, aim, and control my height. Better than the "Collect 10 bunnies and kill 10 Fire elementals" quests. Took me til now to realize I friggen hate auto attack combat.

[popzx]

for the first time in 8 years I don't feel I'd be going back to WoW. They moving in completly wrong direction, the game is so easy and flat you don't wanna even touch it. It's not nearly the same experience it was in the years back. And no, I'm not going older, having a ton of fun with LoL atm with former WoW friends and I think it's a matter of game design failure in wow. PvE is too easy and boring as fuck, pvp is 100% broken in terms of balance and design with new skills kicking in every expansion.. Why thety just can't make you chose let's say 9 skills when you que for arena or BG and make them pure PvP and balance them around? They fail to adopt other games cons as they did in the past. I think all people responsible for blizz games success is moved to the new MMO and thats it. I never thoguht I can quit wow, srsly ;D And now I'm free that you Kasak! No hope is left for fixing WoW.

[Cirque]

The jousting quest wasn't all that bad, really.. Anyway I always hated goblins passionately. But when I finally did roll a goblin, it was the most fun I ever had. How can the goblin starting area be the one thing they criticize? I loved it. It was great. I hate siege-based combat but the goblins did it just right. It was awesome, original, and extremely funny.

[Elethiem]

A lot of these "lessons" should have been known in advance. The effort required, the shortcomings etc etc. It sounds like a very messily run development process that was rushed.

[Cirque]

Fuck the Worgen and Goblin starting zones.

Fuck no longer being able to level with a friend like I have in every single xpac.

Fuck not being able to turn off XP or transmog or access any other Stormwind-only service due to phasing.

Fuck phasing entirely.

Fuck one-path-only quest chains.

Fuck having to run to a third-party website every time I accidentally miss an exclaimation mark god knows where in Deepholm.

Fuck Therazane chain on every single raiding toon.

Yeah, I've done the "new" questing. It's crap. Most of the jokes aren't funny (some I admit are). Most of the chains are not "epic" unless you want to spend your whole life in a zone WELL past the level you should be in here. I did the Redridge chain once at by the time I got to the end in full heirlooms, the quests were fucking grey. That's brilliant.

What I want is to get off the boat in Darkshore and have fifteen question marks, including some red ones, waiting for me. I leveled countless night elves through that zone...and Draenai and humans and really every race too...without getting sick of it. That was epic feeling.

New Azeroth is crap and Dave "Fargo" Kosak is my new most-hated developer. Every time I run into a mob that evades because it spawned inside a rock, or get stuck in a new place or see a really crappy looking terrain transition I realized that they could have done a few things well but instead they opted to do a whole lot of things badly.That's a failure on all sides.

Though I cannot agree with the tone in your post, I do agree with its content really. This pretty much summed up what I feel about Cata, aside from the phasing, with which I have no problems. But yeah, Darkshore and Ashenvale, I leveled countless, countless toons there never getting tired of it, it was great, and the new Cataclysm leveling really in my opinion ruined everything. I was a big altoholic.. Before cata. Now I barely even saw through the new Azeroth content once. I try and try but just can't get through it, it's easier than ever, knowing every quest will be as faceroll as the last, and even without heirlooms you outlevel a zone very fast even without doing dungeons.

Therazane was the biggest joke they could ever come up with. I thought it couldn't get worse after Hodir... But clearly they outdid themselves. Cataclysm is very linear and that's another cockblock for me when it comes to leveling an alt, there's no relief, before I only dreaded Northrend but knew I would be quickly done and I loved Azeroth and also Outlands. Now I don't like Azeroth and Outlands is the same old, same old after 12 alts or so, and Northrend the same disaster it always was to me on alts, and after that I can only expect to see the same old annoying Cata content and fucking Therazane......

But yeah, a lot of criticism there. That's really it, you know, when there was lack of shit to do on a main I'd pop on an alt and it was NP. But now not even that is interesting to me anymore.

Plus the fact my main server is full and I still can't transfer heirlooms to other servers to make the suffering a bit less. =-=

[Malackai]

Patch 4.2 also had the Aggra and Thrall questline, "Elemental Bonds." Did that meet your expectations? How do you feel about Thrall's character development? But we had to do a lot of things to make it work in the game. We needed to make a quest that 500 people could do simultaneously without getting in each other's way. We wanted a quest that players could do solo, no matter what their skill level. We didn’t know if the player was decked out in raid gear or level 85 greens, so we had to keep it simple. We somehow made all of it work under those restrictions, and we filled the screen with some killer imagery (I love the vision of Thrall immersed in the Abyssal Maw). But ultimately the quests themselves ended up not being as compelling from a gameplay perspective as we would have liked. Many players blew through them once and never looked back.

Yea no shit they went though it only once. I had to do it solo a couple of weeks ago on a fresh character and god that quest now is so goddamn annoying. not to mention if you end up dead you can start the whole vision your on over again.
So yea I can understand if people skip it after the first time it was fun to do when there were multiple people around. It was painfully obvious that the quest was build around a event with other people around.

And the legendary q chain makes me head desk too. It was one major repetitive collect quest. the staff had some interesting parts.
But most of it was collect x amount of item turn it in then go back to the same spot and collect another amount of x item.

The rogue one was even worse. Collect the shards that come from cluster container that drop from bosses (random amount on top of that) and turn them in. Now go back and go collect the same cluster containers without opening them and turn them in >_>.

The daily hubs are starting to piss me off btw. The tournament ones from Wotlk its just gating in a horrible way. Especially now its outdated content they should have either added a repeatable quest you can do unlimited times to accumulate seals or removed the daily status from the quests. Hell even adding seal drops to ICC zone mobs or bosses would have been preferable. But to be forced to go back everyday to so a limited set of quest just to get the remaining stuff is more tedious then grinding away for a weekend to get your seals.
This is also one of the main reasons I haven been bothered to do them.

and now with the fire-land dailies they do the same :S

I want chains back like nether wing one sure they had dailies too and they gave you the most rep but besides that you could still farm the lose eggs for extra rep. so you could still finish it easier without being limited to daily progress.

But yea we will see what MoP brings.

[Shadowsaint]

Fangs of the Father is a garbage quest line. I was absolutely horrified that they even phased the final turn in so the guild that accompanies the Rogue for months can't see a single thing. Great, we get it, you went and killed some dragons off in the downtime when you weren't killing raid dragons, but you didn't do it yourself.

Totally pissed in the face of every non-Rogue in a guild, and I just know Fangs will go down in WoW history as the most forced and worst legendary there is. Even Rogues I knew pre-patch who have theirs and those who are just now in the midst of their own set aren't excited about them beyond anything but an ilvl boost that will make them feel like they're doing higher content than they are.

Agreed, even look at Heroic Blade of the Unmaker, same Ilvl, same dps and its an (epic dagger) of the same teir. These legendary daggers do not feel or perform like legendaries. More like just an heroic epic. Blizz dropped the ball on these. No guild perk for everyone who helped, No chest with goodies in it, and no mount. Just wings that give a slow fall to a class who already has slow fall dmg reduction. Huge let down. Even heard yesturday on the forums that the proc is broken. Not much love for these wpns. I don't think blizzard even follows the rogue forums based on the blue post thinking "everyone is happy with these wpns" lol what a joke. I'm closing in on obtaining these and to be honest, I'm not that excited due to the lack of "legendary'ness"

[Santoryu]

Nothing even remotely resembling the Molten Front daily hub should EVER be added to the game again.

[Korru]

The rouge legendary should be like that, not something broken that everyone must have to do competitive dps unlike THAT STAFF.

[theturn]

"We love class-specific content, but quest lines like those are very resource-intensive. Each sequence involves weeks of development focus that takes content away from dungeons, dailies, or outdoor zones."I always love when blizz rolls out the "too intensive" excuse, and yes its an excuse. Can someone explain to me why a questline would interrupt dungeon design? They should be two completely different departments. Of the three they mentioned dailies are the only thing that should be impacted but a special questline, and we all love dailies right??? I get angry everytime I hear this excuse, you're a multi billion dollar company, if its resource intessive get more resources.

[good diu bro]

I dont really see the problem of quest being linear, unless someone really enjoys kill-x or collect-x quests for a random NPC in a remote location.
Besides quests are not really tuned for heirlooms users and you always level faster before you complete all quests in the zone.
The situation was worse "in the old days", because of RNG quest objectives and elite zones.

[Kressilac]

Loved the jousting quest. I'm almost 40 years old so I'm sure the nostalgia effect had an impact. (For all you young whipper-snappers standing on my grass, that means I played the game the quest was inspired from.) Immediately wondered why the jousting quest wasn't a daily and why there were not more of them. Give me a Mt Hyjal inspired Donkey Kong and I'd be all over it. Gotta rescue Aggra or something like that from a pitfiend and all the pitfiend can do is roll barrels down Mt Hyjal at you. Awesome.Give me a maze with stuff to pickup in it. Throw in fruit and wandering baddies that try to kill me. Really, the quest lines inspired from old arcade games could be very entertaining. Where's "Tank" as a PvP duel mode? Anyway, I must have had too much fun with arcade games to understand why such classic gameplay makes for piss poor content in an MMO. The jousting questline was loads of fun in my opinion.

[Keristrasza]

i personally hated the goblin and worgen starting zones. not letting me leave til level 15? wtf...? means i cant keep profs up to date as i level, means i cant level how i want to level etc. ive leveled 12 toons through the human quests. and theyre my favorite. and thats why i do them. and 1 orc, 1 tauren, 3 undead, 1 belf, 1 nelf, 1 dwarf. but when i just make a toon i like to do it how i want to do it. i dont want to be forced into another set of linear bullshit quests. i dont like linear quests. i like being able to immerse myself in the world and do what i want to do when i want to do it.

I can some what agree with you, while I don't hate the worgen zone (I do like it) it is too linear. I have tons of alliance and horde alts, and all my alts follow the same quest pattern. Alliance go to the NE starter zone, horde go to the Tauren, and it bothers me that I can't take my worgen there too. I don't mind doing new starter zones from time to time, but I do like having the option to up and leave when I want and not when I'm told I can.

[blackwater]

Wow took gaint step backwards with cataclysm, instead of innovation they applied band-aids.

This is what has me worried for pandaville, the lack of real story in exchange for a meta game. I came back into cataclysm very late, after a 2 year break.

I though the zones sucked compared to wrath, there was a complete lack of momentum, appeal and sense to them.
Though some quests were undoubtedly cool the lack of synergy and cohesion killed the overall storyline.
The raiding experienced was total shit, boring + boring = boring. Everything was way to easy, I hate a game without a challenge.
The PvP is absolutely dismal.
Gearing up was extremely fast and then I simply had nothing to log in to do as the pve was a bore fest and the pvp is, well a joke.

I don't think this will improve with a meta game of pet pokemon pvp.


They need to focus on the simple things. A fantastic storyline + really challenging and comprehensive pve + some decent pvp (for once).

[TabooUK]

Q: Looking forward to it. Thanks for your time!
Not a problem!

Thats not a question

[Prag]

Really sad to hear about 600 people hitting the unemployment offices, but I guess that's what happens after such a large game loses a lot of subscribers. My thoughts go out to them and theirs, I hope they find employment soon.

[Yriel]

Not to me, he isn't. The only reason he's portrayed as such is that Chris Metzen has a fetish. He even walked out on the Blizzcon stage carrying Thrall's freakin hammer, and voices the character. They tried to juice him up with as much Mary Sue power as possible (he somehow takes over Deathwing's power as the Aspect of Earth in the Dragon Soul, despite the fact that Deathwing is STILL ALIVE), but he'll always be just another orc to me.

It´s amazing how one-sided people always are when it comes to the Horde-Alliance-Blizzard topic. Yes Metzen was carrying Thralls hammer while wearing an alliance shirt. It´s the same with the Thrall quest where people always go "He said he´s gonna kill Varian so he´s a warmonger" while in the water sequence he´s shaking hands with Varian and it is said that peace with the alliance is his biggest wish in life (aside from having kids).
You may not like the Horde or Thrall or whatever but Blizzard really tries to stay neutral on this whole topic.

[Deleted]

I actually thought the answers were mostly good and I thought the previous Q&As were semi-bad.