Whatever Happened to Class Quests?

#0 - Feb. 17, 2009, 5:18 p.m.

I remember way back when, before The Burning Crusade was close to even coming out, the thing i looked forward to the most while leveling were the class quests. They offer a unique experience that not every character gets to experience as well providing a quest string you're sure you can get something out of (anyone do a long quest string only to find that the reward is for every class and spec but yours?)

When the burning crusade came out I rushed to my trainer at 65 and 70 hoping to see some new class quests. Again in Northrend I was expecting some unique epic quest string for each class, but I remain dissapointed.

Maybe in later levels class quests can provide a special piece of gear? A unique upgraded ability? Possibly even a couple of extra talent points?

Does anyone else even miss class quests? Or am i justified in thinking that Blizz got a little lazy?

Bornakk

#24 - Feb. 17, 2009, 6:20 p.m.

Class quests are something we would like to do, but is something that takes a lot of time and requires all classes to have them really otherwise the other classes just get upset. One of our developers covered this in a recent BlizzCast Q&A:

We love to do more there is just some trickery involved with class quests, the main problem being that – at least we’ve learned in the past – that we don’t want to roll these things out piecemeal, so a couple classes at a time. We did that with the hunters and the priests and the fan reaction wasn’t really good. Although they did like the quests it’s just that I think everyone wants their own class to get a quest and we agree we think that they should.

Q u o t e:
See, the funny thing is, Blizzard's been removing some of the few class quests they had. Druids can train aquatic form now, the level 60 pally/warlock mounts are trainable, hell... even epic flight form is available at the trainer.

Most classes get some sort of questchain to give them a class-defining skill, like rogues and pickpocket, or the warrior stances, or warlock pets. But after about level 20, the quests sort of vanish.

We may allow the abilities to be learned easier, but for the most part the quests can still be completed if you look for them but if players miss the quest giver we don't want that to hinder their game experience and force them to put on low level quest tracking to find the right NPC to get an ability.

For big epic quest lines like the Warlock Dreadsteed mount, this is something that makes sense to be trainable as completing it in the original way isn't really possible anymore. Either you bring in level 80 characters and stomp all over it or wait until your character is level 80 and stomp on it yourself. We don't feel is makes a positive impact to force players through the quest line when these options are available and would rather have them move on to more exciting things.

Bornakk

#84 - Feb. 17, 2009, 6:55 p.m.

Q u o t e:

You should require that people do the class quests for their class defining abilities. If they choose to shortchange themselves by not doing them, that is their fault.

And not really fun, so, yeah...

It is interesting though that in just a few posts there is a bunch of different opinions on how to handle class quests and the topic in general, weird huh?