Massively Overthinking: The unforgivable sins of MMORPG quest design

Last week, I was continuing my first trip through Lord of the Rings Online’s Gundabad (yes, I am behind), and I bumped into some questing that drove me up a wall. Naturally I complained to the most effective nearby person, our LOTRO columnist Justin.

“I was in there last night doing more Gundy, and I did this one quest where I’m killing hobgoblins and blowing up their loot and rescuing dwarves, and all the while I’m seeing these boxes that are unclickable, and I’m like, SSG better not be about to have me come all the way back here and redo this entire run of camps for a second quest it could’ve just given me the first time. So I finish rescuing all those losers and back at town GUESS what they want me to do for them, that they somewhy couldn’t ask me to do for them while I was literally already there and so were they?”

Justin just laughed and laughed at me and told me to try to kick the football again, which is fair.

Now, I play a lot of old MMORPGs, and I’m very accustomed to old-fashioned quest jank. I’ll forgive a lot! But Fate of Gundabad came out in 2021, so I tend to find these sorts of “kill X, now return to me, now go back and loot something near X thereby killing more X, now return to me, now go back and kill the boss of X, whom you have already killed four times doing the first two quests” fairly unforgivable in a modern MMO. I guess it’s debatable whether a modern expansion for an old MMO counts. At least it’s consistent?

Let’s talk about the worst questing design out there in the MMO genre for this week’s Massively Overthinking – with love in our hearts, of course, because you’ll notice I am still playing LOTRO fondly with all its warts. Tell me about the unforgivable sins of MMORPG quest design: Which MMOs have the most obnoxious quest design, and what about the questing doesn’t work? And as a bonus, tell me which MMOs don’t make these mistakes!

Ben Griggs (@braxwolf): I would say that I mostly enjoy NPC escort quests – the first time, anyway. After the forth or fifth time waiting for Lalia to pull every single mob in her zig-zag route to the exit (it’s RIGHT THERE, Lalia!), I’m ready to hoist her onto my back and carry her out myself!

Brianna Royce (@nbrianna.bsky.social, blog): I should say here since I didn’t in the intro that LOTRO’s sin actually has a useful name: “Bears bears bears!” That little phrase was coined by Warhammer Online’s Paul Barnett a thousand years ago – because that’s how long this has been a problem in MMOs.

I want to give a little hat tip to an MMO that actually handles this pretty well, and you’ll be shocked to hear which one: Star Wars Galaxies. Specifically, the NGE. See? Now, I was not remotely a fan of the NGE smashing and in some cases deleting our sandboxy skill trees and replacing them with stock levels and classes and a quest grind. However, the actual questing design is pretty impressive for a mid-aughts MMORPG, as when you complete many legacy quests, you’ll get a little comm message prompting you to the next one, so you don’t have to run back and forth, just on to the next camp or planet. Again, lots of MMOs have this now, but back then, it was extremely uncommon – an uncommon W for the NGE, especially. I have to admit here that sometimes janky questing feels good precisely because it does invoke an older-school vibe – Project Gorgon is coming to mind. That game doesn’t just not hold your hand with its questing system; it spits in your hand. It won’t tell you what to do or where to go, and you’ll be running back and forth pretty much the whole time. And yet somehow, I don’t hate it. Go fig.

Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes.bsky.social, blog): “Pray, return to the Waking Sands.”

There are a lot of things I can forgive Final Fantasy XIV for, but the quests during the latter half of A Realm Reborn where you had to constantly head back to the HQ in Ul’dah when literally every conversation could have been a linkpearl message (aka an email) was the worst. It hasn’t gotten quite better, but it’s never been as bad as it was then. Hoo boy.

In terms of games where the questing works best, I’ve got to nod in Elder Scrolls Online’s direction, at least for the most of the latter game stuff I’ve experienced and especially for the side quests that crop up. Those were always the more interesting portions of the series in single-player and that definitely continues in the MMORPG.

Except for the Necrom quests. “Use my ghost sight!” “Use my ghost sight!” “Use my ghost sight!” If it weren’t for Scruut, that whole story line would have been miserable.

Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): My running theory is that the developers and art teams are so in love with these fantastic areas they spent so much time creating that they really, really, really want you to appreciate them and not zoom through them. Hence, the repeated backtracking and overabundance of quests in certain areas. The thing is, this can be addressed by utilizing the space over the entire course of the game — give us really good story reasons to go back — rather than stopping us dead in our tracks and handing us 100 redundant quests to keep us from moving on too fast.

Sam Kash (@[email protected]): I’ll bring up the quests that I wrote about this week in Havenhold – actual, factual, rinse-and-repeat the same quest until you leveled up enough to move on. I’m serious too! When you are starting out in Havenhold, you are guided by a little map icon on where to go to do the quest. Entering it takes you to a simple little instance to complete. It only takes five or so minutes to knock out, so that’s not so bad. But then you have to go to another instance and do the exact same content. Then do it like 10 more times until you’ve hit level 5 so you can go to the next quest.

Now, I get that it’s an early beta, but come on, that was brutal. However, the really crazy decision was that in an actual MMO, I wasn’t able to do any of those quests with friends. It was all solo instances! While I’m picking on Havenhold, I also want to mention forced questing gameplay, be it solo or group content. Let the people play how they want to play!

Tyler Edwards (blog): The one mentioned at the top is a classic. It’s particularly frustrating because I actually like being sent back to familiar locations when it’s done intentionally with a good narrative reason, but too many games just lazily sending people back to quest in the same exact area they just finished have poisoned the well against the idea.

There’s also the old favourite of “I need seven boar livers but apparently half these boars don’t have livers.” Gods that sucks.

I’m going to throw a bit of a wild card answer, though, with something so common most people probably don’t even consider it a design sin: going back to NPCs to turn in quests. Yeah, it’s something almost every game does, and depending on the setting it may be narratively necessary, but it’s pretty tedious when you think about it, isn’t it? It’d be pretty easy to come up with some magic means of communication to allow remote quest turn ins without breaking immersion, and certainly sci-fi and modern setting games have no excuse to send us walking back to turn in every quest. I’m looking at you, SWTOR!