16 Million WoW Quests Completed, Every Single Day

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
45,698
1
0
16 Million WoW Quests Completed, Every Single Day


Anyone who doubts World of Warcraft's [http://www.worldofwarcraft.com] popularity should heed the word of former lead designer Jeff Kaplan, who recently revealed that the game's North American servers see an average of 16.6 million quests completed - every day.

Even more impressively, 8.5 billion quests in total were completed between June 2007 and March 2009, he said. But while the game has 7650 quests available to be undertaken, he noted that the "core team of quest designers" is made up of just five people. World of Warcraft originally launched with 2600 quests available.

"We actually feel like we can't let that team get too big without endangering quality," he said at last week's GDC [http://www.gdconf.com/]. "We feel like we've got a lot of quest-making gurus at this point, and we like the energy that they have and the way that they work together."

Along with quests, he also said that Achievements can now be used by developers to direct gameplay because players are interested in racking up as many as possible. "I think achievements have now evolved to the point where players buy an Xbox 360 [http://www.xbox.com] game and look at the achievement list first, and use that to decide how to play the game," he said.

And although some games take heat from players for imitating World of Warcraft, Kaplan actually encouraged other developers to do it with some aspects of the game, saying there's no need to re-invent the wheel. Referring to the practice of using exclamation marks to denote NPCs with quests, he said, "Just put the exclamation point, why come up with a unique crazy icon? Everyone knows what it is."

16 million quests every day. How do you argue with that kind of success?

Source: Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/16m-wow-quests-completed-every-day]



Permalink
 

renegade826

New member
Feb 26, 2009
14
0
0
makes sence, over 11 Million players etc. Me and my mate have done over 100 hundred today. SO seems very easy. And you Don't argue with that success, you accept it, and take second place.
 

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
20,364
0
0
Mmmm, daily quests.

Kukul said:
5 people made 7650 quests? Now I know why they are so god damn repetitive.
Vanilla, sure. Hell, even BC.

But questing in WotLK was easily far and away the most creative and original stuff they've done yet. Chain jumping from dragon to dragon and throwing their riders off was just awesome. So as long as they keep getting better (and with the new phasing technology, I have no doubt that they will), I have no problem with it.

But man, the old world quests are painful sometimes. WotLK quests spoiled me :(
 

Rezfon

New member
Feb 25, 2008
338
0
0
renegade826 said:
makes sence, over 11 Million players etc. Me and my mate have done over 100 hundred today. SO seems very easy. And you Don't argue with that success, you accept it, and take second place.
this is only north america. It's 11 million world wide. So based on that it would be even more world wide
 

stormcaller

New member
Sep 6, 2008
2,314
0
0
I think I contribute about 2-5 of those a day.

Level 79 and I just can't be bothered questing anymore so I'm trying to instance grind like I did at 69, although time zones make that really hard.
 

oliveira8

New member
Feb 2, 2009
4,726
0
0
CantFaketheFunk said:
Mmmm, daily quests.

Kukul said:
5 people made 7650 quests? Now I know why they are so god damn repetitive.
Vanilla, sure. Hell, even BC.

But questing in WotLK was easily far and away the most creative and original stuff they've done yet. Chain jumping from dragon to dragon and throwing their riders off was just awesome. So as long as they keep getting better (and with the new phasing technology, I have no doubt that they will), I have no problem with it.

But man, the old world quests are painful sometimes. WotLK quests spoiled me :(
Sadly the only thing fresh in WotLK was the leveling/questing...The end-game content was so bland. :(
 

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
20,364
0
0
oliveira8 said:
CantFaketheFunk said:
Mmmm, daily quests.

Kukul said:
5 people made 7650 quests? Now I know why they are so god damn repetitive.
Vanilla, sure. Hell, even BC.

But questing in WotLK was easily far and away the most creative and original stuff they've done yet. Chain jumping from dragon to dragon and throwing their riders off was just awesome. So as long as they keep getting better (and with the new phasing technology, I have no doubt that they will), I have no problem with it.

But man, the old world quests are painful sometimes. WotLK quests spoiled me :(
Sadly the only thing fresh in WotLK was the leveling/questing...The end-game content was so bland. :(
I really disagree. Malygos is awesome. Sure, Naxx because we've seen it before, but I have nothing but high hopes for Ulduar. Hard Mode is the best idea that they've had yet.
 

51gunner

New member
Jun 12, 2008
583
0
0
I'm actually surprised it's not more than that. There's 11 million subscribers now, many of whom would have a level eighty character (maybe two), all of whom grind out daily quests. That, and if they're not level eighty, then they're probably still questing to hit eighty.
 

oliveira8

New member
Feb 2, 2009
4,726
0
0
CantFaketheFunk said:
oliveira8 said:
CantFaketheFunk said:
Mmmm, daily quests.

Kukul said:
5 people made 7650 quests? Now I know why they are so god damn repetitive.
Vanilla, sure. Hell, even BC.

But questing in WotLK was easily far and away the most creative and original stuff they've done yet. Chain jumping from dragon to dragon and throwing their riders off was just awesome. So as long as they keep getting better (and with the new phasing technology, I have no doubt that they will), I have no problem with it.

But man, the old world quests are painful sometimes. WotLK quests spoiled me :(
Sadly the only thing fresh in WotLK was the leveling/questing...The end-game content was so bland. :(
I really disagree. Malygos is awesome. Sure, Naxx because we've seen it before, but I have nothing but high hopes for Ulduar. Hard Mode is the best idea that they've had yet.
Well when you put in perspective the end game content of TBC with WotLK, they didnt add anything new. Its still arena and raiding.(Bgs and Wintergrasp are a joke...wished they added more stuff in WG apart from being a honour farming spot every 2 and a half hours)
 

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
20,364
0
0
oliveira8 said:
Well when you put in perspective the end game content of TBC with WotLK, they didnt add anything new. Its still arena and raiding.(Bgs and Wintergrasp are a joke...wished they added more stuff in WG apart from being a honour farming spot every 2 and a half hours)
S5 is kinda borked right now, but ... while I'll agree they didn't add anything more, I think what's there is *better* than it was in TBC. I'm looking forward to Argent Tournament, too.
 

oliveira8

New member
Feb 2, 2009
4,726
0
0
CantFaketheFunk said:
oliveira8 said:
Well when you put in perspective the end game content of TBC with WotLK, they didnt add anything new. Its still arena and raiding.(Bgs and Wintergrasp are a joke...wished they added more stuff in WG apart from being a honour farming spot every 2 and a half hours)
S5 is kinda borked right now, but ... while I'll agree they didn't add anything more, I think what's there is *better* than it was in TBC. I'm looking forward to Argent Tournament, too.
Meh, when I hit 80 I felt that WotLK ended and I was back in TBC but with more polish...Wish they added something *new*. In TBC they add Arena. In Lk nothing. While its true that its somewhat better than TBC, the game itself didnt give me the sensation it was moving forward.
 

L_Lawliet

New member
Mar 24, 2009
175
0
0
There is no way you cannot respect WoW's success. They have taken online gaming and recreated it as we know it.
 

Arbre

New member
Jan 13, 2007
1,166
0
0
Perfect. 16 millions of utterly pointless unimaginative stupid missions completed.
Per day.
Applause!
Praise humanity. It takes a human, really, to waste his life and pay for it.
 

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
20,364
0
0
Arbre said:
Perfect. 16 millions of utterly pointless unimaginative stupid missions completed.
Per day.
Applause!
Praise humanity. It takes a human, really, to waste his life and pay for it.
How many man-hours do you think are wasted in Halo 3 / Gears of War / Counterstrike / TF2 combined every day?

A hell of a lot. If you criticize MMO players for that, criticize all gamers for the same thing.
 

Brotherofwill

New member
Jan 25, 2009
2,566
0
0
Malygris said:
"I think achievements have now evolved to the point where players buy an Xbox 360 [http://www.xbox.com] game and look at the achievement list first, and use that to decide how to play the game," he said.
That is why I hate the idea of achievements.

I always thought that a lot of games before WoW used the '!' as quests, Diablo 2 definetly used it, but I'm sure some other developers also had them.
 

Fearzone

Boyz! Boyz! Boyz!
Dec 3, 2008
1,241
0
0
Does the 16 million quests include the gold sellers doing dailies?

I'm just glad to have that behind me.
 

Falien

New member
Nov 21, 2008
126
0
0
You do know that most of this number consists of repeatable daily quests, which the game basically forces you to do in order to raise reputation and get the gear/enchants/recipes required for progressing through the content?

This is not a good measure of success, Blizzard. Stick to reporting your subscription numbers... or is it that they are they going down, which would explain why we're getting alternate statistics like this one?
 

Arbre

New member
Jan 13, 2007
1,166
0
0
CantFaketheFunk said:
How many man-hours do you think are wasted in Halo 3 / Gears of War / Counterstrike / TF2 combined every day?

A hell of a lot. If you criticize MMO players for that, criticize all gamers for the same thing.
No, because MMOs really stick out for being enormous time wasters while providing a very little ratio of "experience of experience" / "time spent".
The MMOs are particularly efficient at being addictive and empty experiences as there's no real end, well beyond the timed matches of any FPS. FPS require more concentration and efforts.

FPS in MP are focused on specific maps which must be known. You can play a map for 15 minutes or 30 minutes this can be all you need.
And here you could think on random dungeons, a chore wherein you need to spend far more time since generally there's that boss at the end, to loot, which actually turns gamers into addicts very quickly and easily.
And while oen could say that it appeals to some possible materialistic instincts, it's even worse here, because there's nothing true, it's all made up. Items, XP, in MMORPGs or JRPGs, or Diablo, same story.
The worst part for MMOs is that you pay for that.
Plus, you have to consider the differences in gameplay. There's clearly a higher strategy and extreme coordination required in a FPS for example, and it is timed.
It has more to do with an intense arcade game than with a secondary job. In MMOs, a combat is generally a question of sitting and placing a few clicks here and there.
Sometimes, you may try to run away.
And that's for combat. When you move away from the combat aspect of MMOs and treat them as a whole, when you look at these quests once included into the full picture, you should realize this is an endless "adventure" which is in fact a pointless no-discovery repetition, with no time set.
Oh, listen, now you can leap from beast to beast in combat. Sure, I guess that turns turd into gold.