Are World Quests good for the game?

[mireigi]

To start off with, I will say that I have always disliked Daily Quests with a passion, due to their gating nature, forcing a set pace on you, the player, rather than allowing you to play the game at your own pace, be it fast or slow.

That being said, I do them anway, because there is no other choice, if I want to stay on top of the game.

In Legion, I am currently at iLvl 843, Revered with Nightfallen, Highmountain, and Stormheim, and have the 20th trait unlocked in my artifact. In other words, I've been busy.

On to the matter at hand, however...

World Quests seem to have replaced Daily Quests, and, even though they are more varied and refresh more frequently, they will impose the same limitations and drawbacks.

In earlier expansions, Daily Quests have been used primarily as a guaranteed means towards farming reputation with one or more factions. This hasn't changed in Legion with World Quests.

What makes World Quests different from Daily Quests, however, is that, in addition to providing reputation, they are also your primary source for artifact power, and crafting recipes and materials. Only the Daily Heroic Dungeon rewards more artifact power than the World Quests, and even then, most of the World Quests often provide more for less time spent.

So what does that mean for the game?
Well, to start off with, it means that if you miss a few days of doing World Quests, for whatever reason, you are not only missing out on reputation, but now also artifact power, and crafting recipes, with the latter being purely luck based when and if it will show up again, or randomly drop from monsters.

While there is a catch-up mechanic for the artifact power, there is currently none for reputation. And even the artifact power catch-up mechanic is only a band-aid. No matter how fast you can research the artifact knowledge due to catch-up mechanics, you will always be behind.

Thus content is suddenly gated behind your ability to do World Quests each and every day. Content is further gated if you were late to join the Legion expansion. While you struggle to catch up to your friends and guild mates, they will continue to improve as well, either keeping the gap between you and them, or even expanding it.


So how could it be improved?
Certainly not by removing World Quests. They are fun to do, and provide decent variety and rewards.

What then? For starters, allowing for the good old grind of Vanilla and, to some extent, TBC, thus removing the gating barrier of waiting for World Quests to respawn. With that barrier gone, no longer will the player who plays 1-2 hours per day, every day, be better off than someone who plays 7 - 14 hours only on the weekends.

Take a moment to think that over. Why should there be a difference in achievable goals and rewards between two players who spend an equal amount of time, but at different times and segments?

For those who need or want to see the comparison, consider that:
2 hours each day = 7 Emissary Quests (1 per day), ~80 World Quests (~11 per day)
7 hours only two days = 3 Emissary Quests (1 per day, plus 2 saved*), ~60 World Quests (~30 per day**)

*: Emissary Quests stay in the queue for 3 days, then gets pushed out as new ones become available.
**: Most World Quests stay on the map for about a day, allowing for some overlap when new ones refresh.

I ask: Is it fair that, despite devoting the same amount of time, two players receive different rewards, purely because of how that time is split during the week?


While I do think that World Quests are a nice addition to the game, I do not believe that they are good in the sense that they restrict the player from playing the game at their own pace, be it fast or slow, and it prevents late-to-the-party players from catching up despite having more time on their hands to play than others who are already a month or more into the game.

What do the rest of you think?
Do you enjoy the World Quests?
Do you want something more? Something else?

[Sierra85]

they're just a different type of daily quest system. personally i find them to be better than dailies, but thats just me.

[Valysar]

I fear this will become supra boring in the next few weeks.

[Aori]

I kinda like the current system, I don't feel as obligated to log in EVERY DAY. Now I can do stuff every couple days at my leisure.

[Alvito]

I kinda like the current system, I don't feel as obligated to log in EVERY DAY. Now I can do stuff every couple days at my leisure.

Not entirely true though. If you do more of them then you get more. So in zones like Suramar and The Nighfallen rep gating Arcway and Court of Stars, grinding out the world quests as quickly as you can so more are up that day is kinda important and slightly annoying. The pacing on quests has been changed to some degree though. The pvp ones for example went from 2 hours to 6 yesterday, slowing down the sources of AP, order resources and gear. Having a lot of content is great, but depending on the way we get that content or why we need it people end up not playing alts.

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I fear this will become supra boring in the next few weeks.

I think the burn out from world quests will echo the feeling many had at the start of MoP and all the gated dailies.

[smaktat]

The World Questing system was designed to be opportune to those with lots of time and those with little time. It's doing a pretty good job of solving a difficult problem.

[Orwell7]

Legion has refined a system that was present, the only difference is the amount of "required" things to do.
Instead of the daily valor heroic run, you get the daily heroic AP run and a few WQ's. It is not too much, 4-5 per day?
Also, if you miss one week of play, maybe you miss 1 trait right now. It will be even less the further we are in the expansion.
You miss a few weeks? No problem, with your artifact knowledge jumping 2 levels up, you will catch up very quickly - maybe someone got 2 traits, and you get 1 with 2 days worth of dailies, and get the second a few days later, no problem.

It is a fine system which promotes regular daily play, but does not punish much if you take a few days off. Cool.

[ryanmahaffe]

Anyone who burns themself out on Wquest has only themselves to blame dont do hundreds of them in a week unless you are into serious mythic progression

[justinhalfout]

They're good in terms of getting people out there doing slightly different stuff everyday and a welcome change from fixed daily quest hubs, the real problem is whether they can be kept relevant, most people will simply stop doing them once the dangling carrot is no longer tasty.

An example: I'm sat on 846, unlocked the Suramar mythics yesterday, done all my mythic dungeons and heroics with my guild and care little for the rep fluff and crafting patters, on top of that the artifact power gain is abysmal until research ramps up (lv18 atm).

I now find myself only doing my four emissary quests for a shot at a legendary then logging off until the next morning.

[Sencha]

Daily quests have always sucked. Doing the same quests every week is lazy design. World quests are the same with a different wrapping.

[Eurhetemec]

The World Questing system was designed to be opportune to those with lots of time and those with little time. It's doing a pretty good job of solving a difficult problem.

Exactly.

They're very well-designed for the long-term, I'd suggest, because they're potentially extremely easy to change or add to, very much unlike Dailies, where changing or removing one would cause a virtual riot.

They may not be perfect - but they're the best attempt yet, by a long shot.

[Deleted]

TLDR.

Was it really not possible to express yourself in fewer words?

Anyway yes worldquests are a massive improvement over anything related to endgame questing we have ever had

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Fully agree. Daily quests have always sucked. Doing the same quests every week is lazy design. World quests are the same with a different wrapping.

Your post is self contradicting

[Lyaelan]

You can get a huge amount of artifact power from dungeons and PVP, too. Mythic dungeons can rewards upwards of 1000 base artifact power, whereas the highest I've seen a world quest reward is around 600.

Per minute spent playing, world quests are definitely the most efficient way to collect artifact power, I agree.

[Hottage]

Things NEED to be gated.

This... if the world quests were not gated then some edge-cases would feel compelled to grind them as much as possible to stay ahead of the curve.

That's not the kind of behaviour Blizzard wants to promote.

[mireigi]

Things NEED to be gated.

I agree. Things need to be gated so someone can't blast through all the content in a few weeks, then have nothing to do for the next few months.

However, for someone who is late to join the expansion, or someone who only plays a few times a week, but for an equal length of time as someone who plays every day, the current system is flawed.

Ask yourself this:
If you and your co-worker both work 40 hours a week, would you be content to receive less pay than your coworker because you worked 10 hours per day for 4 days, where he worked 8 hours per day for 5 days?

I certainly wouldn't be.

The World Questing system was designed to be opportune to those with lots of time and those with little time. It's doing a pretty good job of solving a difficult problem.

It does. I like it for that reason. My gripe is that, as stated above, when two players play an equal length of time, but in differently sized segments, they do not receive the same rewards.

Someone playing only on the weekends might miss out on the Nightfallen Emissary quest that pops on a Tuesday. It doesn't matter that he plays for 21 hours that weekend, he will be missing out on something that his friend, who played 3 hours each day during the week, received.

That is what I personally liked about reputation grinding back in Vanilla and TBC. It didn't matter when you played, or for how long at a time. Wanted to grind Aldor reputation? Go kill demons in the appropriate zone for 12 hours straight. Timbermaw reputation in Vanilla? Go farm owlbeasts in Felwood until your eyes bleed. No restrictions on how much reputation could be made per day, or when it could be made.

I enjoy the World Quests, I just don't think they are fair in their rewards.

[Flarelaine]

I like the system. It may yet become boring, but right now, it's fun. Also flexible.

[Midoree]

I like the current system but do feel that there are too many world quests spawning. It should have started a bit slower, and if you missed out on 3 days then there would be a chunk expiring soon etc. The current system means there are loads of quests all the time.

[unholytestament]

Honestly I don't understand the claim that World Quests provide variety compared to dailies. Excluding the profession quests and the Kirin Tor missions the vast majority of the objectives are direct copy pastes of pre-existing quests that you've already, more than likely, completed on your way to 110. Not only that but repeats are far from uncommon and I've already done a number of them upwards of three times now in just over a week.

Objectively there is nothing different between the two except for the tangible rewards received from WQs and the fact that they're just recycled content instead of new quest.

I don't hate the system, but I hardly see how so many can herald is as superior to the older model in terms of mechanics. I still find myself sitting around waiting on resets and you sure as shit have to do them whenever they pop up if I want some semblance of progression since they reward such an utterly pitiful amount of reputation per quest now. Overall they seem nice for casual players or people who want to hammer out gear, but they're also a part of the problem when it comes to one of the worst iterations of reputations we've had in a while.

It's actually a plus that many of them are the same quests you did while leveling. With the level scaling and the tagging system you have 110s questing alongside people still leveling.

[ZazuuPriest]

BIG NEWS: If you miss a few days/weeks in a game youre going to be behind and you should be, now get off the soap box

[Lime]

What makes World Quests different from Daily Quests, however, is that, in addition to providing reputation, they are also your primary source for artifact power, and crafting recipes and materials. Only the Daily Heroic Dungeon rewards more artifact power than the World Quests, and even then, most of the World Quests often provide more for less time spent.

This just simply isn't true for a lot of players. The AP gained from world quests is a decent number, but that's also a number that isn't up for most of the day. If you were to spend a good sizable chunk of your days doing WQs for AP, you'd fall considerably behind the people spamming dungeons for AP.

The only way WQs are going to be your primary source of AP as of PvE'er is if you only play long enough just to clear out the big WQs that reward AP. The only sustainable AP WQs provide is from PvP World Quests which refresh every 2-3 hours, but those are a drop in the pond compared to dungeons.

World quests are only your primary source of AP if you have somewhat limited playtime.