Quote Originally Posted by Nazrakin View Post
I think that the "quest hub" style leveling is definitely more interesting than npc grinding. Where games like WOW have failed, is that they often punish grouping in such a way that its never actually faster. There is a lot that can be done to make questing group friendly...
In WoW's case it mostly just needs to be less rigidly quest based. You literally cannot participate with your party if one step behind in a quest chain. If phased, you won't even be able to see them. Make it more free-form when centered around the hubs, instead of all things of interest and progression narrowly slotted into small quests, and the problem's basically solved.

I wouldn't mind hub-based questing, especially seeing as we already have hub-based leve-running and basically hub-based xp-partying. It just needs to have enough freedom, and hopefully those hubs, to an extent, can be anywhere. If my party and I want to go out into the deep wilderness and have something to do there, there really should be at least something -- it doesn't need to have quests or mechanics designed specifically for it, just enough underlying mechanics (game-wide) that it can be wholly interesting.

To be honest I think the underlying mechanics, and then playing by what advantages the game already has (a fairly vast arsenal of NPCs, guilds, and their classes) will be the make-or-break of the game, at least alongside quests that further exploration and plot in new 2.0 world.