Sign inQuests
Quests are tasks that non-player characters give to players, such as killing a monster, gathering items or carrying a message, in return for experience, money and items. In Classic they are the main way to level a character, and many of them tell the story of the world in small pieces. A character usually earns most of their experience between levels 1 and 60 from quests.
Getting quests
Characters who have a quest to give show a yellow exclamation mark over their heads, and a dot on the minimap. A grey exclamation mark means the player is not yet high enough level for it. When a quest's goals are done, the character who should receive it shows a yellow question mark. Quest givers are not only people: wanted posters, letters and items found on monsters can start quests too, such as the poster for Wanted: "Hogger", the gnoll Hogger, in Elwynn Forest.
The first quest giver many humans met was Marshal McBride in Northshire Abbey, and few Horde players forget Mankrik in The Barrens, whose quest Lost in Battle sends them to find his wife's body.
The quest log
The quest log holds up to 20 quests. Once it is full, a player must abandon one before accepting another, which made the log a constant puzzle in Classic: players kept quests for dungeons they hoped to run, quests they could not yet finish, and quests from distant zones, all fighting for space. The log groups quests by zone and colors each one by difficulty compared to the player's level: grey for trivial, green for easy, yellow for about right, orange for hard and red for much too hard.
Each quest has an objective, a description and its rewards. Many offer a choice of item, typically one for each kind of armor, so a group of different classes can each take something useful.
Kinds of quests
Most quests ask the player to kill a number of monsters, collect items from them or deliver something. Some send the player to escort a character, survive a timed event, or explore a place. Others are:
- Chains, where each quest leads to the next. Some run for dozens of levels and across continents, such as The Missing Diplomat in Stormwind City, the Tower of Althalaxx in Darkshore or In Dreams, Tirion Fordring's story in the Western Plaguelands.
- Elite quests, marked in the log, which send the player after elite monsters too strong to fight alone. Big Game Hunter in Stranglethorn Vale is one.
- Dungeon quests, which can only be finished inside a dungeon. Many players' reason to visit The Deadmines was the last step of The Defias Brotherhood, which asks for the head of Edwin VanCleef.
- Class quests, which teach abilities or give class items, such as a warlock's quests for new demons.
- Collection quests like The Green Hills of Stranglethorn, in which players gather all the missing pages of a book, often by buying them from other players.
Experience and rewards
Quest experience depends on the quest's level, not on how hard it was. A quest gives its full amount to characters up to five levels above it, then less with each level after that, down to a small amount once it is far below the character. Players learned to finish quests while they were still yellow or green rather than leaving them until they were grey.
At level 60, quests give extra money in place of the experience they would have given, which made late-game quests a source of gold. Many quests also raise reputation with a faction, and several reputations, such as the Argent Dawn or the Timbermaw Hold, are earned mostly through quests.
Quest rewards in Classic were often the best gear available while leveling, and some, such as the items from Blackrock Depths quests, stayed useful at level 60.
Later history
Later expansions raised the quest log limit to 25 and later more, added quest objectives on the map and tracking arrows, and made quests share credit more freely. Quest helper add-ons, which showed where to go, became so popular in Classic that Blizzard eventually built the feature into the game. Classic Era and WoW Forever keep the 1.12 quest log and quests.
Sources
Categories: Game Mechanics
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