Idea for new quest design in WoW - Let players make their own quests

While thinking about the hypothetical WoW reset, I’ve just heard about, and about the possibility of a WoW2, maybe I have a suggestion for questing.

First, I preferred the low amount of quests and the longer time it took for quests in Classic. It had more of an adventurous feel to it. Secondly, I really dislike the questhub design with tons of kill/fetch quests I don’t even read.

Solution, have us make our own quests.

Preamble. If you were to recreate WoW. F.i., you want to restart with Classic revamped, redesigning the zones and towns (upgrading the art etc., but keep the style ofc). I would enlarge all the zones 10x and just like in Classic have travelling be a thing. I know that modern youth grows up in an instant world, where everything is accessible now and your reward is never more than 10 seconds away, but I assure you that taking in the sights, listening to the sounds and music, and actually chatting with your travel companions is so much more rewarding, if you open yourself up to it. Instead of leveling up to 100 in Diablo 4 within a week and now starting to chew up the carpet because you have nowhere to go, pauze, breathe, “stay A WHILE and listen”.

How questing would work.
First, there would be story quests, just like you do now, that take you through the story arch. They could include attunement quests.
Secondly, you would have bounty lodges. You can turn in many different drops from mobs (ears, paws, tails, scales, scalps, medallions, etc) from mobs all over the world for other resources of your choosing (gold, profession mats, etc) and turn ins would increase your faction with a particular lodge.
The other thing you could do in a lodge is negotiate contracts. You could choose to do something (kill certain endbosses in dungeons or raids, gather a certain amount of resources, kill a certain amount of mobs, etc), and negotiate a reward to complete the task and even set a timeframe for an increased reward. If you complete it you are rewarded with x, if you fail the timer f.i. you are rewarded with x-1, if you excel you are rewarded with x+1. A reward could be gold, but could also be an item (f.i. an item you would nowadays be able to buy from the faction vendor at a certain standing) that you would be able to define (“I want an axe for an orc prot warrior”).
You would start off by choosing the reward, then that reward would get weighed towards the task you’d need to perform to get it. Let’s say you want an epic axe at your lvl, and you want to kill boars for it. Well, weighed, the game would suggest you’d need to kill 10.000.000 lvl 1 boars for it, with no timer set, or only 2.000.000 if you manage the task in an hour. Surely, you know that’s not reasonable, so you would look what else you can do. How about killing mobs at my lvl? The game would suggest you kill 500 of a certain mob at your lvl with no timer, or you can slide the timer bar to where it says 150 mobs within 2 hours. A bit risky, a tight timer if solo, but could be done. You get it done, the axe is yours, you have half an hour to spare and the axe will roll +1, you fail the timer, the axe might turn out rare instead of epic.

The goal is that you can set up your own game however you want. You can choose where ever you want to go in the world, explore (exploring contracts could exist), and do whatever you feel like for however long you choose. You want to go grind 10 hours in a desert and clear all the burrows of gnolls, get a contract for a 1000 gnolls and reap a reward for what you choose to do.

Increasing in faction standing would open up more choices, as would your knowledge of the world. F.i. while you grinded gnolls for 10 hours in the desert, you came accross minibosses or rares or elites. When you discovered them, your travel log made a note, and now when you visit a lodge, you can open contracts for kills with those specific mobs, or maybe they just unlock at a certain faction standing.
The rewards get also more interesting with higher standing, and the highest standing would open up very interesting rewards (maybe dropchance buffs for legendary raid gear or specific epics).

Now, you no longer need to go back and forth to a questhub. You can plan your day, get a few contracts, set out, play all day, come back after a days hard work and reap in all the rewards.
No longer is any reward obsolete to you or not interesting, because YOU choose it.
No longer are you locked to the same zone, or competing for the same spawns, because you choose where you go and what you do.
The world is your oyster.

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All good if you remove the timer.
Timers create pressure not enjoyment and this is a game after all.
Look at how toxic M+ is cause of it.
And I stayed as clear as I could of Torghast too after it was transformed into a time race too with affixes no one asked for too.
Horrific visions would ve been even better if not for the timer too.
Its a slippery slope…this is a game…not a test in school to be done in x minutes…hours.
I know,I know,too much explaining…but no timers please.

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Sits back and shudders at the thought of WoW players all playing the Quest “Hive of Scum and Villainy. Spend at least 10,000 gold in Goldshire Inn sampling its delights”

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I think this could work really well, both in Classic and Retail setting.
They could also convert the achievement system into this contract quest system, so instead of just worthless achievement points, you’d actually get something for doing them.

The only thing they’d need to tune, is how many contracts you can have active at the same time, and that you couldn’t have 2 same contracts at the same time active.

As for the timer, it’s optional, you could choose to do the quest without a timer and get the base reward, but a timer offers an additional challenge for those that want that, and those that do should get a little extra for completing that challenge.

Rewards in contracts could be anything too. From gold, to resources, to mounts, to transmog, basically anything in game.

I’ll spend 20k on you if you dance for me without gear (but keep a tabard), in Ohn’ahran Plains.

EDIT: Oh yeah - also hurl Scottish slang insults at me.

Timer does not mean challenge but pressure.
Put timers and give armor…omg m+ all over again…
I have to keep insisting on no timers…

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Done that. I’m banned from every religious building in Scotland.

Even Pagan ones?

Yup. It seems they didnt like me yelling “yer a’ fake pagins! How come nane o’ ye’s are trensformin’ intae bears!!?”

Apparently using standing stones as targets is also sacrilegious.

Who knew??!!??

Not all Pagans are Celts, ya dingus.

I know that lol, I just wanted to be chased by angry pagans.

I spent a few nights in hospital but was worth it.

I got a few nurses phone numbers.

There should definitely be a timer for how long quests are available.
Because otherwise we have so many quests on servers saved that they cram up and waste space, impacting performance.

Imagine if M+ keys wouldn’t get auto-destroyed on weekly reset. Since Legion we would have several millions of them in the data bases unfinished, resulting in a slow server performance due to all the junk data being kept.

I have many desires in life - this aint one of 'em.

Maybe because I dont drink?

I blame this stuff…

How comes original leveling did not have a timer?
I remember only one quest with time which I absolutely hated and abandoned it cause my sanity is more important.

It did.

Dwarves had it in their starting zone, to deliver a ‘‘Scalding Mornbrew’’ to a guy in Anvilmar within 5 minutes.

In the Barrens you had to run and turn in a package in Thunder Bluff on a 45 min timer - and yes, you had to run from the Crossroads, all across the Barrens and Mulgore.

There was one in Tarren Mill as well I believe (dont know if you ran from Tarren Mill, or to Tarren Mill.)

And I believe there was a couple more.

These are isolated cases…
The idea was that everything should have a timer…which I strongly dissagree with.
One or a few isolated quests…which I might not even encounter cause I dont play that race does not affect me…
But not more than 5% lets say.
Cause I can just ignore a few annoying timer quests and ohh well thats it…but I can’t ignore the entirety of it if it comes to that.

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Those quests don’t exist anymore.

Afaik, there are no timed quests in the game outside Classic.

Why bring them up then?
As I said…they are not fun…I don’t enjoy being rushed.
And if they were removed it was likely other ppl didn’t enjoy them either.

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Because you said