World quests are more unpopular than ever in World of Warcraft. At least, that is what our survey suggests, which you participated in.
World quests have been an important feature in World of Warcraft since the Legion expansion. It is an endgame activity that provides you with necessary resources, gold, and also a little gear. But how much fun do you actually have with world quests?
A few days ago, we started a survey on MeinMMO to find out how you feel about the longer world quests that often come with multiple quest steps. The result was quite clear and can probably be summarized as follows: You really have no desire for this type of world quests.
Here’s what the survey showed: The survey clearly shows that a large part of you cannot get along with this type of world quests.
- 49% (equivalent to 171 votes) of participants feel that the world quests are definitely too long, even when all quest steps are visible in advance.
- 38% (equivalent to 146 votes) of you think that the world quests would be okay if you could see all the quest steps beforehand.
- Only 13% (52 votes) – about one in eight – believe that the world quests are quite good and fun.
Or to put it bluntly: 7 out of 8 players find the state of a large part of the world quests currently unacceptable.
What is the reason for this? Two main reasons are likely responsible for the fact that world quests are currently not the focus of some players.
On the one hand, the rewards are meager. World quests rarely provide good gear, and even the anima rewards ranging from 35 to 140 anima seem insignificantly small when some things cost 12,500 anima. To make this a little more motivating, the tips from our big anima guide to WoW Shadowlands are worthwhile.
On the other hand, world quests often take significantly more time than before. While world quests in Legion and Battle for Azeroth were often simple kill quests that sometimes had only a single target, that is more complex in Shadowlands. A quest can go through several stages and phases, making individual missions take 10 minutes or longer. Too much compared to back then, causing many world quests to be completed only once, leaving players dissatisfied and ignoring them thereafter.
This is particularly annoying when world quests have additional steps that are not visible in advance. This can double the time required for a mission, making the meager reward even more disappointing.
Improvements are on the way – it just takes time
Blizzard seems to be aware that world quests are currently quite unpopular among players. At least that has been indirectly acknowledged by Game Director Ion Hazzikostas on Twitter when he explained that they are looking for “the right approach for other equipment sources such as raids or world content” in the future.
With “world content,” world quests are likely primarily meant, as they are one of the few endgame activities that take place in the open world. This also includes the calling quests, which after a few weeks reward only gold – equipment is very rare.
At least Blizzard seems to have world quests on their radar, and maybe there will be improvements with Patch 9.1 – because world quests have probably never been as unpopular as they are now. Maybe BlizzConline will reveal more.
