Quest based leveling: Future problem?

[Masamune1004]

I am at work so cannot write the 14-page manifesto of why I believe quest-driven leveling (aka, quest-grinding) is the root of all evil. But at its core, quest-grinding almost implies solo play. Now, before you go and say "But you can quest together!" How many people do guildleves together? How many people quested in WoW together? Rarely does it happen. To contrast, for monster-grinding, you pretty much have to party with others to gain exp at a reasonable rate. This is because to kill monsters that yield exp you need to fight things way higher than you (i.e., impossible to kill consistently by yourself).

There is the key. One incentivizes solo play while the other incentivizes party play. I prefer to play with others.

I think having quests is good, but I think they should serve a small role to advance the story or lore, not be a means of progression because you then spend most of your time running around, talking to npcs, and killing things solo. Why not just play a solo RPG?

So basically what you're saying is, you like to do things one way, so everyone else should be forced to do things the same way? Because you'll still be able to grind mobs in exp parties if you want, nobody will force you to do these quests. And why does it have to be one way or the other? Maybe some people like both solo and party content. Also playing solo in an MMO =/= solo RPG. There are many things in an MMO that you can't get from an offline RPG, like the social aspect (linkshells/free companies) and the economy. By your logic everyone who crafts and gathers exclusively should play offline crafting games.

They are comparable in this case. Skyrim had hundreds if not thousands of quests. All hand crafted by devs. It would take more than that number of quests to level 7+ combat classes and 12+ crafting/gathering classes to 50, even if the exp gain was 1 level per quest. And in order for those quests to not be boring they would also need to be hand crafted by devs, else we just may as well keep leves.

These quests might be leves for all we know, and even if they aren't, I honestly don't think we need trash quests for DoH/L, leves are fine for those. And I hope they aren't hand crafted so we can get more of them, considering that the quests in Skyrim were still pretty boring to me after a while.