Quest Driven

An MMORPG is refered to as a Quest Driven MMORPG when its core content designed around completeing quests. When the player is forced to follow quests/quest lines in order to progress. When the player is asked to explore area A then area B then Area C until the max level. Basically it is when the player is hand held to show their way through the MMORPG content in a linear fashion even if they have several options (more than one area to explore).

Quests alone are not bad but when you force a player to do them is when his experience becomes extremely limited just like a rail road to a train. There are usually an overwhelming number of quests that reward XP which forces the player to finish them to progress. Otherwise the player is hurting himself by not doing so.

Quest Driven MMORPG ruin the players gaming experience in many ways and I will list a few examples:

ONE: If a game forces the player to finish quests in Newbie Area and once a chain is completed (hence his level is appropriate for next level) the player will get a quest that sends him to the next area. This destroys the exploration part of an MMORPG.

TWO: Spoon Feeding players content is a weak game design. Especially when the player get a ridiculous amount of quests (which I call errands) at a time. The player will lose interest in all these quests, they don’t feel special to him and the majority of players don’t even read the story behind the quest.

THREE: Grouping and Communicating with other players is discouraged because players are too busy to finish their quests and most of the time every player is on a different part or on different set of quests than the other players. Even if a group is established sometimes a player or more are not on the same quest as the others (or he needs to do the previous quests) in this situation some players are missing content and wasting their time in the group which discourages them to continue and even if they all are on the same quest the moment they complete named quest the group will break instantly because everyone wants to go back to town to get their reward.

The list goes on. Basically Quest Driven MMORPG disguise a “grind” by marketing it as “Quests” but personally I’d prefer to “grind” or simply do whatever I want than spending 50% of my gaming time running from point A to B to C..etc