Level Progression/Questing

[MrKupo]

I think people are fearful of the overstreamlining of what is generally a pretty complex genre. WoW for example was the pinnacle of streamlining MMOs. They made it as easy as clicking accept, killing somethings or gathering some things, and then clicking complete.

I feel that gamers today have evolved into 2 different directions. There's open world gamers and there's linear gamers. There is much fun to be had in sandbox games as you create your own adventures, but developers have to sacrifice storyline for freedom. This isn't always a bad thing: Minecraft, DayZ, etc. But many gamers want to feel a sense of progression whether it be through numbers or story. MMOs tend to straddle the line between these 2 because of the nature of the genre. MMOs are multiplayer games in which players can directly interact with each other. One would like to think that this interaction can change something in the game. In order to allow such interactions to be of any impact, stories must be broader so as to not get in the way of user creativity. But at the same time, many of these MMOs are RPGs, games that focus on progression of both numbers and story...

What modern MMOs have done, I think, is streamlined the progression to be less heavily emphasized. That means we get through the leveling and story line faster so that we may get to the part of the game where we interact with others. This is done by making text generally skippable (as actually reading it is pretty unnecessary since your log tells you everything in such a minimalist way), leveling faster, etc. The experience is even more streamlined to make initiating interaction a thing of the past. Now we have matchmaking! We don't need to ask if someone wants to party up because everyone clicked a button that says they want to party up.

The problem is that when that progression is lost, in a sense, that demographic of players is alienated. And it's not that current day MMOs are abandoning progression in the traditional sense, it's that we are getting closer and closer to a genre of MMOs that does not segregate the new player from the old and the good player from the bad. Newer MMORPGs used the progression as training for the eventual interaction with other players. As we go on, that training will no longer be needed. We will be told what move is best when it is best so that everyone is on equal playing field.

Older MMORPGs focused on progressions (which I would venture to argue is opposite of "end-game"). The levels aren't there as a middle ground from new player to actual player... the levels are there as an indicator of how far we've gone in the game and how much we've accomplished. They are not an obstacle, they are an achievement.

TLDR: Modern day questing makes leveling simply an obstacle and not a journey.