Out of order

One part of WoW I get annoyed about is being sent back to the same place multiple times to complete various quests. I really try to pick up all the quests and if there is more than one quest in the same area I can get them all done at the same time rather than going back and forth. This doesn't always work out though when you are on a quest chain that keeps sending you back in, or if you have a wandering quest NPC that you didn't happen to find the first time you were in town.

If you were wondering, this happened to me yesterday. I had logged out the night before next to a camp of ogres because they dropped a quest item I needed but I didn't have time to finish it before. It took forever to finish the quest, the drop rate was horrible, but I finally collected all the items I needed and made my way back to town to turn it in and sell all the items I had filling up my bags to make more room. After finishing up my business there, I still had some time to play, so I headed over to another enemy camp and killed a bunch of mobs, then their leader to complete another quest, which didn't take too long this time because all I had to do was kill a certain number of them. Now it was time to log out, so I went back to town, turned in the quests I had completed when I notice an exclamation point on my minimap that's moving. I thought I had gotten all the quests here, but I guess this little guy somehow evaded me the first few times I looked around, so I walked on up to him and checked out what he had to say. He tells me I need to kill some ogres, and not just any ogres, but the exact same ones I had been killing not too long before. I wouldn't have minded so much except that the drop rate was so bad on the other quest that I probably could have done this new quest times over in the process and wouldn't have to head back there next time. Oh well, I guess I'm just gonna have to suck it up and get it out of the way.

While I may not be happy about that particular turn of events, I do find that TBC really cut down on stuff like that and I'm glad they did that. I can think of many times in the Azeroth quests on the way to 60 that you run into the problem of going back and forth a bunch of times to finish quest lines. The main one that sticks out in my mind is the Kurzen quest line in STV. Man was that an annoying quest line, and while they nerfed Kurzen in one of the latest patches, it still gives me a headache every time I come upon that area and know that I'm gonna have to run back and forth there at least 3 times. I really think the original idea was to keep people playing, making things take longer than they needed to but keeping you busy enough that you didn't realize you could be making progress a lot faster if you weren't doing all the running around. I won't say it was a bad idea, but I do think it made some people frustrated with the game, and I would expect that lots of casual players just gave up after a while. Now it seems they've figured out how to provide a wider variety of quests with TBC to get us through levels faster, and for casual players that's a plus.

I actually think this change came about due to the success of endgame content before the expansion, and the fact that they had a lot more ways to keep people interested, even if they couldn't level up any higher. The original release of the game seems to be sort of a test to find out how the majority of players will play the game and I think the expansions will cater to them mostly, but keep others interested too in various ways. Once they found out that players who hit the level cap would continue playing they focused their efforts on expanding what they could do at that point. The main focus seems to be the hardcore raiders, and I base this on just how much content there is that involves instances and raids. I can count the number of battlegrounds and arenas combined on two hands, but I don't think I can count the number of new instances with both hands and feet, let alone the old world instances that many people still run in the process of levelling. The complexity has also gone way up it seems when it comes to boss fights, and with the reduction from 40 man to 25 man raids they have made it easier for guilds to get groups into the instances, but no easier for them to get through. Pair that up with all the reputation rewards and the number of various factions there are, as well as flying mounts that are only available at 70 and you have a lot of stuff for everyone to do even if they hit the level cap.

It's a little discouraging that I'll probably never see most of that content, but the fact that I haven't even made it to level 70 yet with a character keeps me coming back so I can keep pushing forward. I'm hoping with WotLK they will continue to improve on their content, and with what they have done so far I'm almost certain they will be able to improve the game even further.