WoW Vanilla questing was garbage

This shit isn't acceptable
m.youtube.com/shorts/hssA0Q16CWE

WoW is garbage
MMOniggers should be lined up and shot

Mmo quests havent really evolved that much

Yes they have. Go check The Elder Scrolls Online, they all have voiced dislogues, and proper plot without any fetch quests

rather doing quest like that then help set up two gay characters with eachother.

Wtf based algorithmbro
I saw this video like 10 minutes ago

ESO sucks so bad tho.. why does anyone play that garbage? Classic wow was even better than that before microtransactions ever existed.

Turtle wow added npc voice acting to the game

proper plot without any fetch quests

Until player missions actually affect the game world for all the other players it's not a proper quest.

yeah where's all the unskippable RP dialogue and heavily scripted sequences that have a 50% chance of breaking on the next patch and a 5% chance of being fixed in the patch after that

Until player missions actually affect the game world for all the other players it's not a proper quest.

Says who? Your autistic standards?

It's exaggerated but there are definitely quests in vanilla that have you go back to a location several times to do different things that you could have just had me do the first time around.

grandpa is already getting alzheimers

Very few. Most of them were picked from different npcs and I remember this because I did a lot of routing.

ummm yikes this ain't chief. don't you knwo that old = good? walking around for 3 hours to kill 500 wolves was soul actually because I was 14 years old and listening to linking park and drinking mountain dew and every game now is shit because I'm not 14 anymore

I really liked ESO until I started playing some of the expansion questlines and the difference in writing quality was staggering. Everybody was now gay and a refugee and I couldn't find a guild that wasn't filled with homos so I stopped playing which is a shame because I really liked the world, the combat and the way drops work in the game. I like to collect gear and when you collect a single piece of gear you have it forever on any character.

bro just spend 3 years playing only our game to max everything

nah

too bad the combat feels like shit and >crafting bag

Runescape did it better. Quests were miniature Point and click adventure games. and mass monster murder was reserved for slayer. Well at least OSRS still does.

The fucking harpy quests in the barrens why

orc killing peons

alliance music in background

kys

Yeah crafting is unmanageable without the crafting bag. There are 48859283829475883 materials and your inventory spsce is extremely limited. The game blatantly creates this problem and then sells you the solution, which is the infinite crafting bag

nooooo a short humor video about this 21 year old game which launched with tons of lore inaccuracies must be lore accurate reeeeeeee

Kys.

ESO mogs pretty much every other MMO currently out in terms of quest designs and fun

How so? Got any examples?

You're brown

Normalfags BEGONE

Ok you really really really are autistic, brown, and you live in your mom's basement

Just in the Nelf starting zone you have an example with the cave of spiders that you have to go 3 times

Btw if you actually send the report you'll get banned

Getting your account suspended nigger%.

WoW questing is fine especially the OG expansions

WoW quests were filler trash. Tigole didn't expect you to actually READ any of that shit, his MMO philosophy was that gamers will rush to endgame to raid and nobody should care about the boring grind you have to suffer through to get to the raids.

What if I remove every context from the quest so it seems it's stupid

Vanilla wow questing sucked past lv 30 or so. Too much zone hopping just to squeeze out a few quests or killing 50 enemies in an area for one quest because the item drop rates sucked. It was very obvious what zones were half finished in content.

Literally cant remember any quest that does this.
And I level over 200 characters to 60 on both side and every zone possible

If that is fine then I don't know what you would consider garbage

There's no context, the vast majority of the time it's just some uninspired excuse with a couple of lines of dislogue that no one even reads

And I level over 200 characters to 60 on both side and every zone possible

Because you have brain damage. Your brain just makes alternative realities to cope with the trauma

Better than pretentious quests like Destiny 2 that force you through unskippable segments that nobody cares about. And I’m not defending WoW except by virtue of it being the norm for its time but at least with WoW you can zone out and play a game. With modern cutscenes you get 10% gameplay 90% narrative that some film school failure is pushing on you. As bad as WoW quests are they’re 100% gameplay (usually)

Fun fact: only zoomoids hate vanilla wow

I think that what you're trying to say is that only people who have rose tinted goggles like vanilla Wow.

He's never found an item at the end of Uldaman that grants him a quest

He's never zig zagged all over the world trying to figure out what they were for

One stop being in Ironforge even if you're Horde due to how great the find was

All to culuminate at these great gates to Uldum in Tanaris and wonder what's beyond them

Boy did they shit the bed hard when they finally made that fucking zone. Wow was already mostly dead to me, but that shit double killed it.

Fpbp

nah a lot of zoomers unironically like older mmorpgs believe it or not

I can't be the only one who thinks Korean MMO is better than The West right?

But enough about horde players

Korean questing is worse, leveling is worse, p2w is worse, UIs are worse, environments are worse, controls are worse, but combat and characters are better.

maxing everything

That's completionism shit, I'm just talking about the quests, you only need to grind a couple dozen hours to be able to do all quests; most quests give enough xp rewards for you to start others.
For questing and general sense of progression, OSRS mogs all the competition

korean mmorpgs are garbage
the west invented the best early mmorpgs like everquest

asians aka bug people are the reason the greedy fat retarded CEOs of the west started adapting faggot cash shops and gacha. Koreans had all that bullshit early on when western mmorpgs were pure kino

I can't imagine they like the real old ones, it's surely mostly just WoW (every MMO still plays exactly like it 21 years later)
Won't see them playing Tibia n shit

first time in a while ive seen a genuinely cripplingly autistic anon

theres a lot of zoomer tiktok channels who play P99, turtle WoW and the upcoming monsters and memories.

is this the point we're at?
some zoomer retard posting bait tiktok or short just like that and no one bats an eye?

The quests were actually what set WoW apart from the competition. Every other MMO at the time had barely any quests or quests that sent you across the world on a waste of time trip but in WoW there was an unlimited supply of quests that take only 15 minutes

Oh boy i can't wait to hear all the female voice lines

It's fun for what it is (an online elder scrolls) but as an MMO it's hot ass. You're overpowered like half way through level cap ffs and all the enemies drop aggro and rubber band so bad there's no point in fighting anything

Sorry gramps, times change, go do your

collect 40 bear asses with a 5% drop chance

quests

thats a bad point
EQ had more adventure filled questlines while WoW was just littered with filler garbage

I much prefer the gnoll fang quests and epic questlines in EQ over WoW collect 8 boar asses for the 92nd time but now they're green in every zone

collect gnoll fangs

:OOOO

collect boar asses

:(((((((((

WoW collect 8 boar asses for the 92nd time but now they're green in every zone

Yeah, every zone follows the exact same structure but has a new coat of paint

Lvl 1

collect 10 boar asses

Lvl 59

collect 40 fel boar testicles

but WoW had both errands and adventure questlines? Like the diplomat or tirion quest line

classic has best quests ever created for mmo
scepeter quest takes player to secret locations off-map which are created soley for him and launches massive zone-wide events affecting everyone, not just the player or his guild.
this has never been replicated ever since, also whole idea of the quests being solo experience and never affecting other people and thus the world is repugnant.

not gatekeeping was a mistake

retard who only played brainrot nu mmo slop

no one likes those, a better example is the warrior whirlwind weapon quest, the paladin/warlock mount quests etc
long questlines with major rewards.
Everquest is filled with these type of quests for all classes even at low levels.

You're brown

classic has best quests ever created for mmo

If you have brain damage, yes, absolutely

You're going at it from the jaded 20-years-later PoV. Back in 2004, people were still reading the quest text and you would have to wait for all your party members to finish reading the quest text before moving on

ESO quests are pretty based

lil bro the fucking AQ gong quest is not a good example for good quest design lmao absolutely dogshit tier quest

and it's a really bad copy of EQ's sleeper tomb which is a cool concept but at the end of the day its dogshit tier for a mmo to limit it to a few giga losers who never log out

I played at launch the first major tip passed around was instant quest text even back in 2004, the only quest line I actually read back then was duskwood quests more specifically mor'ladim's.

no one was reading over 500 filler tier shit quests text

I just play on increased xp rate private servers and skip every quest that involves RNG loot

Vanilla WoW was the only time WoW ever had good writing. Not surprised the voice acting obsessed subhumans prefer modern WoW or trash like ESO.

modern WoW and ESO are brainrot garbage same with ffxiv

You're as brown as you're wrong (very)

You have to have brain damage if you think that the low effort, lore inaccurate, extremely repetitive, uninspired vanilla "quests" are any good. They're in fact the worst in the 21 year history of wow

There are some very few exceptions (actual quest lines) but the absolute vast majority of it is terrible

the biggest mistake MMOs made was forgetting they were chat rooms with elaborate mini games that facilitate ice breaking.

I still remember most of the soulful questing in vanilla. Helping the Felwood furbolgs, the mystery in Dustwallow Marsh, STV, etc. Total kino.

NOOO0 YOU CAN'T JUST SEND ME ON A HIGHLY EFFICIENT KILL 30 STRANGLETHORN VALE RAPTORS QUEST I NEED TO WATCH AS THRALL AND JAINA AND ANDUIN AIR OUT THEIR INTERPERSONAL DRAMA FOR 15 MINUTES IN A LONG BORING UNSKIPPABLE "ROLEPLAY" CONVERSATION, AGAIN!

why are retoilets like this

MMOs are fine for kids, you have that spark of excitement and wonder and you can run around 'discovering' shit and that can be fun. As an adult there's no reason to play them, unless you're an ERP freak.

Uh oh, found the grumpy Ultima daddy.

this is someones adult male son who wears dresses

sad

fan of voiced questlines calling anyone else brown

fan of post-vanilla WoW calling vanilla WoW lore inaccurate

lol
just lol

Based.

retard cant read

notice how we made fun of 30 boar asses quest?
the kill quests are fine everyone loves the STV quests because you just go full murder mode and chill

tons of exp from mindlessly slaughtering shit

turn in like 10 quests at a time as you finish them all up

classes start actually feeling complete around these levels also, items are no longer garbage tier

right around the corner from your mount

gay tranime freak has a shit opinion and randomly brings up erp out of nowhere

many such cases

turdle wow

Troon russoid central

You're bullshitting. Most people don't use addons when they start playing, especially in 2004. Or are you gonna claim you were a leader of an elite raid guild in 2004. I'm telling you people used to read the quest text

that's not an addon it's in the settings

That reputation grind to get a nether drake in BC was so sovlful

You're a retarded reroilet baby that never played vanilla WoW, and it shows. There is no difference between kill 30 boars and collect 30 boar asses quests. None. In vanilla WoW, quests are a supplement to grinding. You want quests that send you off to kill a lot of enemies, be they quest to outright kill them, or quests to collect a lot of loot from them. The only time collect 30 boar asses quests are "bad" is when you're max level, and no longer benefit from experience gain.

you didn't need addons for instant quest text you stupid fuck, nice job outing yourself.

pajeet is this retarded

lol

Modern WoW quest design

Go inside the mine and kill 5 peons

Giant arrow pops up on your screen pointing towards the cave entrance

You level up after killing 2 of them, and all the peons scale up to your level

Then the quest giver gives you a skype call and tells you to go further in and get 3 bags of gold (they glow so bright the shine takes up half the screen so you can't miss them)

Then the quest giver skype calls you again and tells you to get into an on rails vehicle for a totally epic scripted section

While on the on rails section he skype calls you again to talk about his dead gay boyfriend

The reward is a green item scaled to your level, it has stamina and your classes main stat

It's worse than your heirloom armor

It's my bad I thought he meant "instant quest accept" because instant quest text just seemed like something not worth bringing up

I stopped playing WoW before your country even got internet access.

There is no difference between kill 30 boars and collect 30 boar asses quests. None.

Not him, but that's wrong.

In later zones especially, drop rates became ass, and different enemies shared spawn allocations so that you'd have 10 players farming just 1 or 2 boar spawns. And you'd need 5 kills for every 1 item drop.

So you'd be running around / waiting for spawns (along with many other people) just for a 10% droprate item, so progression wasn't even guaranteed per kill.

This guy played at launch and fucked your mom

America had internet before india little pajeet bro

I like this kinda quests > without FUCKING drama/moral-questioning quests

wow

good writing

its THAT time again, huh?
lets start

undeads in the horde side by side with supposedly peaceful tauren

tauren druids

female nelf druids

male nelf warriors

nelfs in the alliance

no kingdom of alterac

no kingdom of stormgrade

teramore is a tiny fucking iland

most dwarf clans gone minus one in the hinterlands and one in the blackrock

paladins are evil

undeads are good

goblins are neutral

Yeah, wow has always been garbage.

they all have voiced dislogues

Kill yourself, slowly and painfully.

WC3 chad

based

So you'd be running around / waiting for spawns (along with many other people) just for a 10% droprate item, so progression wasn't even guaranteed per kill.

That's normal RPG mechanic. I bet you never farmed a 0.1% drop rate item

Stop projecting your brown fetishes on me.

No, farming enemies isn't an rpg mechanic.

loot tables are definitely an RPG mechanic

You're kind of changing the point, I'm just saying that those two types of quests were quite different.

But to take the bait and defend my honor, I play OldSchool RuneScape, I know all about ridiculous grinds and drop rates.

Why are chuds so triggered by voices? Hearing a voice gives your zoomie ADHD anti social ass anxiety?

Actual Old mmo quests werent like this. Thanks for posting the game that killed the genre

Overcrowding makes everything but pure "talk to NPC" quests worse, if you're going to bring that up, then it's also fair to mention it makes all types of quests worse, including the intercept the Defias Messenger one, or that one quest in the Loch Modan cave that has three-four named mobs you need to kill that seemingly have like a thirty minute long respawn timer and if you're playing on a fresh server there's like four five man groups all standing on their spawn point spamming AoE abilities to get the tag.
Enemies sharing spawn locations is only an issue if you're retarded (or other people are retarded but that falls under overcrowding issue) and you have Ogre Warriors and Ogre Mages sharing a spawn and you only kill Ogre Mages because they drop the item you need for the quest while hoping someone else will kill the ten already spawned Ogre Warriors.
The one time kill quests are undoubtedly superior to collect asses quests is when you don't care about mob experience and just want it done as soon as possible so you do it in a five man group or something. In a regular solo non-overcrowded environment (what designers had in mind when they were making vanilla WoW), they're the same thing.

the poorkid mmo where you dont even group up with others and solo the entire time

lol

Nooooo it was retail that ruined the lore!! Vanilla wow was perfect1!! Also, I'm a real woman!

A lot of the class/race/gender combinations were purely for gameplay reasons and you can debate if they were good or bad, but ultimately it's a videogame. Alterac is there, it's just already been destroyed. Same with Stromgarde, there were quests that sent you to both in Vanilla. The rest of your post is schizo babble.

Conveniently ignoring that I was replying to the post that implied modern WoW has better writing than vanilla WoW.
WC3 chad would not be crying about neutral goblins, that's a LARPer.

You shouldn't farm a fetch quest

underrated post

at least you can group up for the messenger and everyone gets credit.

in vanilla you can't really benefit from grouping for drop quests because only 1 quest item drops at a time causing you to have to stick around for every member to finish the quest and taking far longer.

Weren't we just talking about quests in WoW? 98% of those were solo; even "elite"/group quests were often soloed
And stop changing the topic you fuck

I wish the third world never got internet access

You're not a woman

lying

lil lad you can stop being a BIG FAT LIAR right now

I'm sorry, child, adding voice acting to a basic bitch quest doesn't make it revolutionary.

it was an RPG where you played as a common grunt. not like modern capeshit-inspired WoW with NPCs sucking your cock for being super special

They're not basoc bitch fetch quests, that was the entire point you dumb brown tranny

doesnt matter. if theres no in-lore explanation why it have changed (that doesnt take much effort to do btw) thats a bad writing
what you are doing is coping

Same, we need less stinky indians on the internet

I literally just saw this in shorts the algorithm is a fucking lie shit is being pushed on purpose by people who want it pushed.

Most of my life's vidya time has spent playing these two shitty games, WoW and RS (and both their variants (classic, oldschool, hardcore...))
I lived and breathed this garbage, how dare you suggest otherwise

what did assclown gold say

one quest in runescape is more complex than the entire war campaign in warlda warcraft

these big number mmos like wow and ffxivarr have no quests worth paying attention to unless you think shit like one piece is worth your time. runescape and its clones have the best quests around and even then people just use questhelper and just skip through everything

"basoc"

self projection

wew

cos wow never had good writing, bar for good writing is to have consistent setting with attention to the detail. wow writing is sigmar-tier. just make up most crazy cocaine indusced-shit you can come up with and dont bother to explain anything. its magic bro.

listening to a grown man who let his teeth rot out of his mouth while sitting 10 seconds away from a sink and tooth brush for 15 years straight

What made vanilla questing so good was the unknown and figuring things out. There were only a few sites back then (thottbot and a few others) and obviously no glowing arrows pointing the way. You'd frequently talk to other players or group up to help. Playing on a PvP server added to the excitement. Even if modern day WoW quests have more depth they will never recapture that experience.

Yes I am sure there's some pajeet assigned to you deciding whether your autistic ass should watch a wow short or anime shorts

the OG expansions

???

MoP and WoD and Legion are OG xpac

Alterac was destroyed in a mission in WC2, kiddo. Stromgarde's destruction is part of the mystery behind it. Not everything requires a ten minute NPC exposition.

chuddy in his (yes, his, ywnbaw) mom's basement typing in his greasy keyboard is just finding out about typing on a phone

yeah assclown is a nurgling but if there's one thing he knows it's warldarwacraft

Wow vanilla

You grab a bunch of quests that are about killing different level groups or bosses in different areas, also going to far away lands

You have to constantly manage how to approach your journey to be efficient, manage your consumables, build your character, decide how to spend your money, what skills to level up, what masteries to level, engage with players and team up with others to take on strong enemies that can kill you any time, threatening you with losing progression

nu-wow quests

Here is some shitty minigame filled quest with a literal Simon Says tier gameplay

Enemies don't even scratch your healthbar, also you are loaded with money and loot, you don't have to think about anything

I will take vanilla thanks

Retail WoW fan that can't even attempt to defend dogshit retail writing so she needs to go ummm actually all WoW writing was always bad like who cares dude. Need I remind you again that this conversation started with a retoilet saying retail has better writing than vanilla? Do you agree with that statement?

As far as I'm aware he only ever played like 20 minutes of OSRS in his life (for a sponsored stream) and had no idea what he was doing, don't think he even did the most basic quest let alone the actual good shit

But yes, nothing comes close to matching its quests in depth, variety, and rewards.
Ignoring early garbage like "Clock Tower" that the Gowers shat out in an afternoon

his malformed tranny hands can't spell properly

many such cases

I just find funny how everyone is accusing each other of being brown, retarded, a tranny and autistic

I'm only two of those things.

There's nothing wrong with fetch or kill quests, they involve actually playing the game

thats how you can tell we are all giga loser WoW players

it's a vanilla escort quest

leftists used to call people straight white males, but they realized it wasn't a very good insult since being a straight white male is a good thing and everyone wants to be one

wow vanilla is better than your favorite game

arguing about 20 year old MMOs

on Anon Babble

You can just take autistic and retarded for granted.

it's the darkshore one where you get omega ambushed at the edge of a contested zone

even when im mentally prepared for that quest the fucking npc somehow still gets insta sniped

unfortunately ESO does not have any gameplay

delete this

neverwinter quests were more questlike.

Quests in an mmo are great but realistically the more dedicated the players, the less time they'll spend on quests and more on bosses/dungeons/raids.
Quests are still extra important since everything realistically in an mmo is gated behind a quest of some form. So they need to be quality and feel rewarding. OSRS is hit and miss since some higher-tier get you fuck all (night at the theatre). OSRS is pure jank but at least it has variety. Some important bosses though have no quest prerequisites (jad/zuk)
FFXIV (I haven't played much WoW actually) just barely keeps you moving along. Once you out-level content (basically unheard of in osrs) you can go back as a different class. 99.9% of FFXIV is gated behind main scenario, unlocked with main scenario, and if it is a sidequest well there's main scenario to get there.
tl;dr if the quests suck the rest of the game probably sucks but if you copy the most basic mmo formula hard enough it will be playable with enough content and players

Wait I might be totally wrong about this. WoW basically invented the mmo formula and their quests sucked.
But they were the first to market with the whole modernized third-person perspective so that probably explains it.
the absolute state of the genre

what?

10 seconds after starting an escort quest

hear a sound

youtube.com/watch?v=5cFj6T9lOtM

WoW was not the first, but it did have a lot going for it

established world based on the success of the RTS games

absolutely MASSIVE interconnected world

to this day, the best controlling and most responsive MMO

the excitement of the unknown

m.youtube.com/watch?v=TamM9Ub0tV8&pp=ygUaY2FwdGFpbiBncmltIGVzY29ydCBxdWVzdHM=

Fluid controls was the major milestone
not to mention it looked decent but also didnt require a super computer to run.
I also liked how quickly you got into game and the lack of load screens, crazy to think you can go from one end of an continent to the other without a single load screen while its competitors were still using a zone based world (not that zone based is terrible but load screens sucked dick back when SSDs were basically non existent)

>established world based on the success of the RTS games

Speaking of that, whatever happened to the Leagues MMO?

I've never touched LoL, I've never even seen Arcane or anything, but I was genuinely very, very hopeful for that. From what I gather the studio only puts out hits, and there's an entire universe of lore they could have built from.

Felt like the last chance for good, fresh blood in this genre.

you just reminded me of the whole "weird" thing from the US election last year.

I quit wow in cata and wow "classic" in 1st phase after layering predicatble turned it into complete shit, been playing private servers off and off and having fun which you are incapable of
cry more

obviously in development hell and I think its been rebooted like 3 times now.
Thats another big issue with mmorpgs nowadays I imagine dev teams are a mix of different mmo eras so some want the original soulful old school mmo, some want to reimagine a WoW type mmo, some want shit wars 2, and then a nice chunk of retards want final trantasy 14.

they cant decide on how to do the game

crazy to think you can go from one end of an continent to the other without a single load screen while its competitors were still using a zone based world

It's that exact thing that made playing FFXIV for the first time feel so jarring. Every zone is separated from the other by a loading screen, and there were invisible walls everywhere, going from WoW (2004) to that (played in ~2022) felt stupid.

Barely felt like an open world MMO. Even OSRS basically removed its loadtimes (as miniscule as they were, like half a second).

in dev hell because they thought they were better than making a themepark tab target holy trinity mmo.

what, entire kingdom? destroyed? just like that? no survivors whatsoever? no refugees in other human kingdoms lobbying to reclaim and restore they homeland? damn! great and consequential writing continues to impress me.

Are you going to answer the question?Does vanilla WoW or retail WoW have better writing?

ywnbaw

To this day I have no idea how they were able to do it.

Literally nothing wrong with voice acting if it's done by a cute Japanese girl.

I've tried to get into eso on like 6 separate occasions and between the hideous combat and garbage animations, I really cannot get into it. I also just don't like any class or even the class/weapon/skill system itself, it's just not for me. Looks like the TES fanboy's wet dream though, honestly wish I were one.

why would you go killing your peons as an orc? i don't remember a quest like that

Correct

vanilla by miles. should I explain to you how nelfs in alliance is infinitely more shit writing which ruins entire setting compared to some marvel bullshit I dont even know about and have no desire to? Its already completely ruined by the first, you cannot ruin it more.

Yeah I really loved the fully open world, XIV was okay but the loading screens between zones felt lazy. I've seen people say it was because it had to run on a PS3, but that doesn't seem like a very good excuse considering PS3 released in 2006 while WoW was able to run on early 2000's shitboxes. Even a lot of """MMOs""" today still have individual zones instead of a massive open world.

and then theres dranei in outland surviving just fine despite their entire civilization being overrun by orcs and fighting orcs back
really makes one think
shouldnt you stop making fool out of yourself?

LARPing retoilet fan can't even read a simple two sentences long post

no wonder you love voice acting so much lol

And what if Kael and Illidan hadn't showed up to help them? Almost like they would have been wiped out. Really makes you think...

Why did you complain about goblins being neutral if Warcraft III was your first Warcraft game? They were a neutral faction in Warcraft III, too. If Warcraft III was not your first game, why do you even care about story consistency when Warcraft III already ruined it by making orcs dindus, a far greater crime than any of the complaints you listed.

I played vanilla on a crappy laptop over dialup and it ran just fine outside of the big cities (I was also on an oceanic server in the middle of the US because it suggested that to me and I was a retard kek). FFXIV has no excuse.

Vanilla WoW is old and so many tried to dethrone it as best MMO, but mostly fail in the following.
1. Instanced world
One of the biggest thing about WoW is the fact it all feels fluid, natural, living social situation. Its the main thing why i love to revisit the game, you never know who you meet on your adventures. Its immersive.
2. Fun first, balance second
The balance in the game is a mess, but i love it. Its better than complete homogenize of the genre. Every class feels and plays special. Only sweaties care about the 2% dps or whatever.
3. Tradeskills feel impactful
Again, they're not balanced what so ever, but they feel their own special thing - and all of them have something 'big' going on for it. The blacksmithing is giving nuggets of good gear, its horrible money sink - but in the endgame you will be able to make some of the best gear possible.
4. Overall polish
Everything sounds good, feels good, looks good. There's no big game breaking bugs or so.
5. Memorable
All the zones are distinct with their own themes, storylines, look and MUSIC. Its insane how far they went to develope some areas like STV, Duskwood etc. Look at Ashenvale and Elwynn - both are 'forest' but completely different feel and athmosphere. Amazing.

turtle wow schizo

There were still humans despite getting attacked by orcs, and undead, and demons. Is it that unbelievable that a couple draenei stragglers managed to survive until Illidan showed up? The human kingdoms outside of Stormwind, Gilneas, and Kul Tiras were more or less destroyed. Also there were Dalaran refugees, and I'd imagine there are some NPCs for Alterac and Stromgarde as well.

People need to look beyond the tab target standard. Basically every possible setting has been done with it.
But all Riot can do is make a poor bootleg copy of a warcraft minigame

WoW was always garbage, it simply pioneered the optimal treadmill of garbage delivery

Nahhhh
WoW was the best thing around in 2004. Kind of like the only thing that could beat Fallout 3 was the old STALKER games back in 2008.

TESO is fucking bad, specially now

WoW was proto-social-media addiction with a laundry list game attached
both just so happened to feed into each other
ask yourself if you'd play a 20-hour single-player game with the gameplay of WoW
the answer is obviously not

yeah welcome to MMOs
The gameplay is shittier because it has to work for everyone on different continents but the benefit is that you can play it with anyone and make friends and socialize and shit.

God if the industry wasn't so mindfucked we could have an MMO with skilling on something like the Planetside 2 engine.

you know what is not funny? dickwolves

WoW (every MMO still plays exactly like it 21 years later)

You dumbass niggers have been saying this stupid shit for 21 years and for 21 years you've been wrong

The more cutscenes and awful voice acting and useless "story" stops that are added to quest designs the worse they are
WoW pretty much perfected MMORPG quests back in vanilla with some outliers, stuffing quests full of "story" does not make the story nor gameplay better, text bubbles and quest descriptors are superior because your mind fills in the blanks, same as reading a book.

Old school MMO:

Primary way of leveling is just grinding mobs but you get to go wherever you want as long as the monsters are level appropriate. Quests are infrequent but often serve as major milestones.

Modern MMO:

Quests serve as primary way of leveling, but you are basically railroaded to follow a very specific path through the open world. on top of that, Quests are often trivial, dialogue heavy and very repetitive.

As a jaded FFXI boomer that basically hates everything about FFXIV you can probably tell my preference here.

you only need to grind a couple dozen hours to be able to do all quests

a couple dozen

modern mmo's make everything scale to your lvl now and pose zero challenge so you can go wherever and spam 2 buttons and slay everything in your path

You can probably do ~150 of the 170 quests without any external grinding (or any significant amount at least, a few hours maybe), just being carried by quest xp rewards
If you're an ironman, something like SotE would take a while to get the requirements for though yes

Me too

WoW had questing actually be a viable way to level up. Everquest the best way to level up was to just grind mobs.

WoW had the best quests of the big name MMOs at the time it launched. That's how bad other MMO quests were.

the polish in wow isn't appreciated enough, in the tiniest things like the sounds of items when you move them in your inventory

Does nu WoW even acknowledge the existence of the world outside the current island the expansion is on? This to me is the saddest part of what it has become.

Then go back to that same mine and kill their ringleader
Oh wait, there's more, fetch these dumass trinkets

Meanwhile quests in Modern WoW:

Grab a magic flower so I can give to my disabled gay vitiligo lover and you can watch us have gay sex

It was fine when it was new. Playing through it a couple of times gets tedious.
However, if you're one of those braindead boomers that has over 2k hours and 10k dollars spent on the game, you're literally brain damaged beyond repair. No amount of coping will fix that.

For some reason I remember different quests from different quest givers sending you to one location??