In my last post I talked about how World of Warcraft lacks community play from levels 1-70. These are some suggestions as to how the questing system of WoW could be better integrated with party play. Imagine we are discussing a new game which borrows liberally from World of Warcraft's questing system but introduces the following new features. Some are original, and some are inspired by older games.

1) Introduce a Partying Experience Incentive
Playing World of Warcraft, the bonus to experience a player gets from grouping is miniscule. In fact, you’re never told you’re getting a bonus. Instead, we would implement an obvious experience bonus to players who defeat enemies in groups. This could be as simple as a numerical bonus per party member, or as complex as a chaining system where parties who defeat enemies quickly garner larger and larger experience bonuses. Regardless of how it was implemented, there would be user interface notification.

2) Mark Players with Similar Quest Logs
Implement a marker of some sort over the heads of players with quest logs similar to your own. The game already allows players to inspect the gear and talent trees of others, so why not allow the same for quests?

3) Global Questing LFG
It's already possible for players to enter a LFG channel for specific quests. Rather than specifying a quest, players could be shown a general list of others near their own level. The automatic party formation used in other parts of the game could also be implemented, prioritizing players in the same region for grouping. By default this auto grouping would be set to on, tossing new players into parties right away. Meeting stones would be added to quest hubs allowing parties to teleport their members.

4) Joint Quest Log
As soon as a party was formed, the player's quest log would switch to a "Group Quest Log." This quest log would display all of the quests that each player has.. No indication would be given as to which quests were held by which players; all quests would be shared automatically upon entering a party. Each quest description would also show the quest reward specific to the player, which leads me to the next section...

5) All Quests Repeatable
As long as a single member of the party has a quest, the entire party does regardless of whether they had already completed it. For players doing it for the first time, the reward would be the experience and items as normal. For other players, they would receive no experience, but have a gold reward. This reward would be similarly scaled in value based on the difficulty of the quest. This way, every member of the party has as incentive. Alternatively, the quests would return gold based on player level rather than quest level. This would encourage high-level players to assist lower levels in quests.

6) Group Quests of a Different Kind
Most Group quests in current-day WoW are of a particular kind: defeat a few individually strong enemies using a combination of tank, healer, and some damage dealers. Rather than facing a few strong enemies, groups could take on many smaller enemies with perhaps one slightly-stronger leader. Each of the mobs would be no more powerful than one that a party member could defeat on their own without major risk; in this way, the quests encourage group work but do not require any particular sort of party makeup.

What these ideas aim to do is provide an experience that is very similar to that of end-game World of Warcraft, but accessible from any level. This would not only rectify the lonely and somewhat boring experience of leveling in World of Warcraft, but present the level 70 community with a group of newly capped characters far more prepared to take on the more challenging content.

...man, I'm sick of talking about this game :P