Vanilla Questing: Was it Good?

[Zka]

It was terrible. But we like vanilla questing because it's actually challenging at some parts and the world feels dangerous. Now it's not challenging, nor dangerous.

[jellmoo]

It was better and worse at the same time. Quests were more repetitive with lway less variety, directions were vague awhich resulted in looking for the right spot for way too long, and could be downright nasty in terms of distance and difficulty.

That being said, they definitely felt more rewarding. You were much more likely to read the quest text (you pretty much had to) and then you actually felt like you achieved a small something for the NPCs in the area.

A great example of both the good and the bad was the Druid water form quest. You, as either a Night Elf or Tauren, had to venture to Lorderon with no real explanation of how to get there, sneak past an Elite that more or less one shot you, dive into the water with no real direction of where to go, and basically swim around in waters that you start to Fatiigue you looking for the right spot. It was terribly difficult, time consuming and frustrating. But at the end of it, you felt ridiclously accomplished getting a spell that was very situational at best.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

So recently I made a video about Vanilla WoW’s quest design and the possibly unintended brilliance behind it.

To summarize the video, Vanilla WoW’s non-linear quest philosophy exposed players to unpredictable adventures that were tackled differently through each playthrough. Additionally, I think the incorporation of professions into ‘regular’ quests brought life and an organic feel to the world.

What do you think? Do you think vanilla questing was good, or terrible compared to today’s modern quest design?

Video reference in signature.

It was really fun in the sense of just playing a video game. Wasn't so great if your objective (on your first play though / minimal guide assistants) to reach end game quickly. But that kind of sums up vanilla. It wasn't all about level 60. Getting there was just as important. So traveling around the world to pick up items to summon different demons as a warlock was insanely time consuming and didn't accelerate the leveling experience that much but it was an adventure to do so and gave you a meaningful reward at its end that wasn't just a level ding. It moved you into new zones you hadnt been to before and had you returning to places you had been.

It had adventure and that means a lot less structure. Some people can really enjoy that. Others cannot stand not having a a, b, c hand hold to each point as fast as possible experience.

[Torrasque]

No it wasn't. It was a lot of mindless travel, most of the time without a mount, and very low drop rates on quest items with long re-spawn times.

[Deleted]

It was definitely fun. Considering it's time of course. The fact there was no pinpointing on map and sparkles like it is today and you actually had to read directions made it more interesting.

I also like that for the most part you could pick like 5-10 quests from a hub and the go out on the hunt instead of the current philosophy, pick 1-2 quests, bring them back, pick 1-2 more. Nowadays it's way too linear, focusing each bit of the map at a time.

[Deleted]

So recently I made a video about Vanilla WoW’s quest design and the possibly unintended brilliance behind it.

To summarize the video, Vanilla WoW’s non-linear quest philosophy exposed players to unpredictable adventures that were tackled differently through each playthrough. Additionally, I think the incorporation of professions into ‘regular’ quests brought life and an organic feel to the world.

What do you think? Do you think vanilla questing was good, or terrible compared to today’s modern quest design?

Video reference in signature.

i dislike the stream-lined nature of quest design-philosophy that we have today. its not very rpg-ish. vanilla was an rpg and had u do weird things, go all over the place all the time and generally sent u on cool adventures instead of this linear A------>B shit that we have now....

[Deleted]

Yes, it was good. Had some issues of course, but it was -very- good.

I honestly can't agree with this across the board. Most of the quests in the game are kill "Y x16", which really struck me the last time I played on a classic server. It's not just "kill X" quests that were bothering me, you come to expect them as archetypal, but "kill Y x16" especially. Almost all of them require you to kill sixteen, or collect two different items in multiples of eight.

It was clearly considered state of the art to have quests with this kind of objective as compared today's prelevant "collect/kill 2-6". This often slows down questing to a horrible grind, especially when you consider the 16x something often don't come with a 100% droprate either, or only 5 or so of the required mob spawn in the area, forcing you to wait out multiple spawn cycles. Paired with the fact that most classes cannot handle pulling multiple mobs, but still take several minutes to kill one along with a food/water break after every fight, the questing experience can feel very grindy at times.

Positively, there are also amazing quests. Some of them are truly unique, and come with their own sense of accomplishment. Something that was lost even though the today's quest themes are a lot more fanciful.

[Donald Hellscream]

It was alright, bear in mind I was 13 at the time and it was my first mmo so it was all so new to me but looking back at it, it had a lot of jank shit like having to crisscross the entire world for some questlines only to be rewarded something super mediocre, I guess one could argue that the journey was the reward but lets face it no one wants to spend hours criss crossing the world on a ground mount for a completely useless item, not back then and certainly not now.

If I had to choose between Vanilla or Modern I'd go with Modern any day of the week.

[bloodwulf]

Some yes (link quest in ungoro, Rhok'Delar) some definitely no (the memes about bears/boars not having certain body parts came from vanilla).

Vanilla was also prone to a lot of Go to point A, go to point B, Go to point A again. Some people liked that, but for some you spent a lot of time retreading the same content. Also sometimes quests chains would just end unexpectedly only to be picked up later.

Any quests with monster drops were typically a pain in the ass, especially in high traffic areas like Barrens or STV. Expect to be waiting a while for certain drops, also if your drop comes from a sought after hunter pet, expect to get some flak from people camping it.

The escort quests, fuck them. The damn robochicken in Tanaris would sometimes pick fights with the earth and fall through it. Or it would say "its people need it" and fuck off. I hated dragging alts through Tanaris most because of that quest.

[Holycloud]

Couldn’t you argue that exploring is all a part of the adventure? I certainly feel it is. Queting mods really made the world smaller and took the fun and imagination out of exploration.

You can - but with things so rooted in results and how long things took there was little ROI (return on investment) for your time minus pride. Which means things to some and not others. I believe that for its time they were meaningful but I just feel like if they made a "Vanilla Zone" now it would not be well received.

[Scifix]

No

I for one am one of those that think that questing and such has gotten MUCH better over the years, questing back then was harder yes, because you died way more easily, but i was insanely boring since most quests were mostly the same, kill x amount of mobs, collect x amount of eyes from mobs that obviously have 2 eyes, but drop none...

Vanilla is overhyped because the social aspect was what made it so good and memorable

[Loosecannon]

I'm in two minds, it kind of felt more like a true RPG to me back then, especially as you could actually die doing some of the quests. I also liked some of the nuances/weird bits in the questing, few examples which spring to mind:

1. Picking a centaur clan to back in Desolace and then sticking with that side while the other side would attack you.
2. The Ghaz'Rilla Mallet quest, where you had to travel the world to find an artifact.
3. The whole BRD quest chain to unlock Onyxia's lair
4. The 'draconic for dummies' part of the AQ gates quest.

There were quite a few other questlines which I thought were pretty good, and have been massively gutted since the whole process was put 'on rails' like it is now. I also liked that some parts of a zone could be much more dangerous if you wandered into them, and there could be questgivers anywhere, and the world felt more wild.

.....That being said, there were a lot of shitty quests to kill x number of a certain mob for example. I remember one where I killed loads of crocodiles near a quest giver to find something, only to find out that I should have been killing a different type of crocodile miles away >.< so the streamlining is good in that regard.

Honestly, with the way the game has evolved to be basically endgame and nothing else, I don't think the old questing system would go down well these days, but for an engaging experience, it was much better than it currently is IMO.

[Dhrizzle]

So recently I made a video about Vanilla WoW’s quest design and the possibly unintended brilliance behind it.

To summarize the video, Vanilla WoW’s non-linear quest philosophy exposed players to unpredictable adventures that were tackled differently through each playthrough. Additionally, I think the incorporation of professions into ‘regular’ quests brought life and an organic feel to the world.

What do you think? Do you think vanilla questing was good, or terrible compared to today’s modern quest design?

Video reference in signature.

Overall I'd say yes, Vanilla questing was utterly brilliant at creating a sense of a real, open world. The need to travel back and forth to the same hubs to complete quests, empty bags and replenish the essentials (with occasional trips to the city for banking and trading) made them feel like actual places. The way the quests worked made it feel like a world through which you're adventuring rather than a story you're playing through. It also gave replay value as you could adjust and refine your path with subsequent characters - I always cite Stranglethorn Vale as a complete mess on my first visit but an absolute joy the next few times.

I can definitely see the value in the current more-linear, more story based quest design (which I feel has improved massively in WoD and Legion compared to Cata,) and I understand why some people prefer it this way, but to me the Vanilla content remains the peak of quest design in WoW.

[Lolsteak]

Vanillas design doesn't work anymore. It took lots of time to do anything. I was maybe 15 or 16 in vanilla and had plenty of time as a kid. Now I'm 29 and can't spend hours and hours every day. I can't even raid anymore. The game has changed due to the aging audience. And I am glad for the changes. I have a life to get to sorry lol.

That sounds like a you problem.

I'm sure there's games with micro-transaction shortcuts which might suite your lifestyle.

[Dhrizzle]

In terms of exploration, they were better. We didn't have the addons to tell us where things were, like Mankirk's wife. Thottbot was limited, WoWHead wasn't around, etc.

In terms of redundancy, not so much. I don't just mean killing repeatedly, since that is still there today. I mean going to one area, doing a quest, turning in the quest, only to return to the same area on the follow up to do something else.

I have always felt like the world felt more connected from classic leveling. It wasn't just complete all the quests in one hub town and move on, but you would travel from one continent to the other, only to go back on a follow up when you were done.

I have to say the bolded part is something I feel Blizzard handled very well. When you do go back and forth in WoW quests you tend to go to a slightly different part (usually deeper into the enemy camp or whatever) and you can skirt around the mobs you fought previously. I found it helped and encouraged exploration and by the time you'd done all the stages of the quest you had a good sense of the area.

I never realised how well Blizzard managed that until I played Warhammer Online and later RIFT. In Warhammer a quest would send you to a big, interesting area, ask you to kill a few enemies on the outskirts then move you on never to return. In RIFT you'd go back and forth picking enemies/items out of the same big crowd taking the redundancy to a ridiculous extreme, compared to WoW it felt like just getting to the right area was a grind.

I'm not saying that you have to like the back-and-forth way of questing, but if you do then Blizzard did a mostly good job designing them.

[Funebre]

It only felt fun because it was all new.

[Dhrizzle]

I don’t really get this way of thinking when they say they felt like just some random adventurer out of many, or having multiple {/insert artifact weapon} ruins their immersion. Did people assume they were the only who helped some farmer with his cart, or killed cookie and got his frying pan or killed that last guy in scarlet halls and got that awesome whirlwind axe... well from the beginning of the game the story pretended that you were “the” adventurer that did all that not one of many. You are the hero who came and defeated the defias and save westmill, and the only guy that gave the weeping nightelf back his locket from his dead wife (was alliance in vanilla and most of BC so I’m more familiar with their quest lines). If anything legion is probably the first time that they have you believe there’s more than just one hero as in each class has a hero who leads his order Hall.

With more low-key quests it's easier to have a suspension of disbelief about the activities. Yes we all did the same very specific things, but it's easy to imagine that there's plenty of space in the world for adventurers fighting off bandits or gathering ingredients for cures etc. It's a bit different when you're wielding a one-of-a-kind legendary weapon, being praised as the grand-master of your class and having personal time with major characters at plot-pivotal moments.

In the video you mention quest that span several zones and continents and levels, well we have plenty of those in the form of the class quest, order hall quest, artifact quest, broken shore quest. Also includes quest where you needed items from previous zones to move forward as I spent last night on my boosted shaman getting the tears of Elune in valsharah for my broken shore quest line.[/QUOTE]

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Until wowhead arrived those sites were terrible consisting largely of misinformation.

Thottbot worked great.

[Deleted]

What do you think? Do you think vanilla questing was good, or terrible compared to today’s modern quest design?

All I remember is that I got so bored of the low level quests that I almost quit—until I did my first 5-man dungeon and realized that is what I want to do in WoW. From then on I did basically no quests and just leveled through dungeons, and it was awesome.

[Deleted]

Collect 10 Hipoogriph Feathers.... walk walk walk kill 20 collect.... Kill 10 Spiders.... Mount up walk walk walk.... Kill.

They were mainly all slow collecting or a lot of running/moving. Additionally there was no mods to tell you where these things were it was just Go north! If you were at the bottom of the UnGoro Crater map that was a lot of space to look in....

U got ur 10 in 20 kills? That lucky.

Massive issue was the quest items where on a drop chance that was pritty low with no bad luck protection so if you were particularly unlucky you could be there for ages and ages killing the same mobs for just a few eye balls or livers. And that was best case you had the spot to your self in the beginning when every one was out leveling( befor spend time spamming trade in IF was the majority of players time) it could a nightmare because there was no multi tagging.

[Doki1889]

Questing in vanilla was awesome, it tied all features together. You needed to use auction house or craft stuff, or group up with other players to complete a quest. Some quests led you to dungeons and raids and gave nice rewards. Quests also made you to explore your surroundings and find other quest hubs in natural and immersive way instead of a bulletin board with a name of the zone you need to travel next.

Totaly agree. After you pass lvl 20 it actually felt like a role play. You could get in to the story if you just had enough patience to read the quest which was more or less mandatory without a tracker. It was not flat on open your map go to dat point and the objective will pop on your screen with objects flashing all around you like a stadium lights!