Tigole, medlem af en af de mere toneangivende Everquest guilds, Fires of Heaven, har i stykke tid været udvikler på World of Warcraft. Han er åbenbart ikke under nogen synderligt streng NDA, idet at han for tid til anden afslører lidt af hvad Blizzard går og pusler med. Senest har han skrevet et forumindlæg, hvor han gør rede for hvad Blizzards design filosofi er mht. quests, og hvilken tiltag de tager for at gøre dem så sjove og spændende som muligt.

We wanted the challenge in the quests in World of Warcraft to be the actual steps of the quest rather than figuring out who to go to and what they want. Our philosophy is that cryptic quests where you cannot figure out who to speak with or what exactly they are looking for is rarely fun. It might be fun for the first guy to figure everything out and post it to a spoiler site, but then after that it is simply annoying. We want people to have fun playing the game — not to feel obligated to crawl spoiler sites.

The quests in World of Warcraft can be repeatable or non-repeatable, as well as limited by level/class/reputation/race/alliance. This gives us a tremendous amount of flexibility. Because quests can be non-repeatable this allows us to give very high experience rewards. The way the game currently plays, you are most effective if you are constantly questing. This keeps everyone moving around the world. You don’t simply find a camp with a decent respawn and *grind* — you’d be less effective if you did that.

Certain quest items will drop for everyone in the group if they are on the quest (and only if they are on the quest). This encourages grouping. Rather than arguing with someone over a named spawn, it’s to your advantage to invite them into your group so you can both finish the quest easier.

The level limitations on quests also allow us to point you in the direction of level appropriate hunting grounds while telling the story of WoW.

As for the types of things you’ll do on quests, they range from everything from messenger deliveries, collections, bounties, escorts, defend-the-objective-missions, to numerous other event-driven objectives. We’ve tried to tie as many game systems as possible into the quest system to make it as robust as possible.

Læs mere: Tigole’s forumindlæg. (Den er ca. midt på siden)