I'm in too much of a hurry to read quests!

There is something in WoW questing in Warlords of Draenor that bugs me, but in reality, it's more my fault than it is the game. Or is it?

When you're on a quest, and you need to get to a spot, let's say it's on top of a hill, and you can't find the path that gets you there. I've had times when I've searched for half an hour or more looking for the way to get there. It's frustrating.

Now, sometimes the path was really just right there by the quest giver, sometimes I think the quest giver pretty much informed me of it by walking there himself. Of course, I had already run off to start the other 4 quests I had gotten in the same spot.

What is happening is I just click on the quest giver, say “yeah, yeah... Just give me the quest...” and expect the circles on the map to guide me. 90% of the time, that works just fine. Sometimes, not so much.

The “quest purists” out there are pointing at the screen saying “Ha Ha!” Nelson Muntz style. And to be fair, yeah, I'm not treating the quest with the respect it deserves.

But it's not about THIS quest. It's about ALL the quests. All the quests I have to do to achieve the objective I have set out for myself. If I want to get “That next level” in time X, and it's abundantly clear right from the get go that I have to do a LOT of quests, each one is going to have to be pretty quick. The problem, then, is that I'm playing “The wrong game.” I'm playing the “Level my Garrison” game, but I have to play the “Do a bunch of seemingly unrelated quests so I can unlock the level 2 Garrison” game first.

The developer has forced this by combining all the games into ONE huge game, and cross gated it's sub components together in a less than flexible manner. I may WANT to play the “Explore Shadowmoon Valley” game, or I may want to skip right to the “Garrison Management” game or even the “Group Raiding” game. It could be argued that “Explore Shadowmoon Valley” and “Garrison Management” are linked in that one provides followers for the other, but there is no reason to make me get the followers first. And it could be argued that neither of those games give me the skills to do the “Group Raiding” game.

What if it was different? What if I could just work on my Garrison if that's what I wanted to do today? Sure, I'll need to do SOME of the content in Shadowmoon Valley (Or wherever else.) when I get to a spot in the “Garrison Management” game where it's needed, then I go find that location and do that quest. The difference is, I would be doing the quest because I WANT to, not because I have to to get to the next one. And I would know that there are only a few quests in the short chain before I get what I want, in this case a new follower or a building unlock. I would be far more inclined to give that quest the respect it deserves.

What if instead of being organized by levels, the quests were organized in “atomic chains” (In this context, atomic means an unbreakable component of a larger system.) When I get to the quest hub, I'm there for a reason, and I only see the quest that's germane to my current goal. All the others are just NPCs standing there with no “?” Over their head. I don't feel as though I need to do all the quests there, I just do the one I'm there for and I can give it my full attention while keeping my immediate goal in mind as well. I have “flow.” When I finish that quest, it sends me to the next hub, conveniently nearby, where only the subsequent quest is available.

To a large part, World of Warcraft already has this functionality. Quests open up other quests, and “lead in” quests start chains of quests. But these chains are too big, you find yourself suddenly surrounded by quest givers all with unrelated quests while on the original chain. Too much “The quests are for leveling” and not enough “The quests are for preforming a specific function in the moment.” You lose “flow” and fall into the “Just gimme the quest, damn it...” mode.

Here's an example of this “flow.” I have a follower, Fiona, that spends her day puttering around in the Herb Garden in my Garrison. Of course, she's a follower that gets unlocked through quests. Except I didn't unlock her the first time I did the quests... I don't know why, I probably leveled, or saw something shiny, or whatever. Why? Because there were just too many quests in the chain / hub / chains that started in the hub. Not only that, but I had no idea that Fiona was a follower I could get. I didn't realize this until I was looking through the follower list and found a follower I wanted because she had an ability I was short on. It told me what quest gives her, but that was useless information because it was at the end of a chain. I had to research the chain on thottbot.

What would have been better would be for the yet to be unlocked follower to tell me the lead in NPC for the follower's quest chain. In Fiona's case, it would make sense if it was someone in the Herb Garden. I talk to them, they give me a lead in quest, etc, etc, 4 or 5 quests in a single linear chain later I have Fiona. There could of course, be multiple ways to open the lead in quest. I learn a LOT more about Fiona in the process because my primary focus in on specifically doing the quests that unlock the follower I want at the moment, not in just doing arbitrary quests as fast as I can just so I can level.