Another World of Warcraft Beta Journal
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The one thing that seems to set World of Warcraft apart from other online role-playing games is the high level of questing content. It won't take new players long at all to realize that questing is a central component of World of Warcraft and if the pattern of the beta continues into commercial release players will find themselves getting at least a third of their experience points from questing alone. The quests are easy to find: NPCs with golden exclamation points above their heads offer quests; NPCs with silver exclamation points above their heads have a quest that can be acquired in the next five levels; and NPCs with golden question marks require something from the player for a quest the player is already on. It's a simple system and it works well. Best of all there are a ton of quests, even at this early stage in the game. I never found myself without a quest, and most of the time my journal, which keeps track of missions quite nicely, was full and I had to decide which one I wanted to do. I actually had to sit down and spend some time putting them in order so I could cut out as much running from point to point as possible. The quests, although creative and fun, might not be up every player's alley since most of them seem to rely on killing a set number of creatures, or killing certain creatures for a specific number of drops, or they rely on the player to shuttle an object from one NPC to another. I enjoy the questing in the game; it keeps the content flowing and provides a reason to be hunting instead of just camping on a good spawn area for hours (which might be required at higher levels; I'm not sure). Quests also serve to give some history of Azeroth and the local environs.
