World of Warcraft is disgustingly popular, rolling over all the competition like a Katamari of online magic. But what makes it so popular? I think I've got an answer.

[This is technically Part III of a series of articles, but the first two are verbose and sucky so I redid this one. Reading the others is not needed at all, but you can find them here: Part 1 Part 2]


Even babies play it...

The first thing a new Warcraft player sees is a friendly looking NPC with a giant golden mark over his head. More than anything else, this gameplay element is what made the game so popular: the idea of the quest. Every bit of the path to a level cap was laid out, quest by quest, golden mark to golden mark. It was a new system for MMO progression.

It was accessible. No other MMO at the time could make this claim. Games like Anarchy, Lineage and Final Fantasy dropped you in a relatively safe area with little or nothing to go by. There may have been an NPC standing by, but they didn't say much. There were quests, but few and far between. Attempting to level purely on questing would be impossible. Most notably, the NPCs that could give you quests were unmarked.

Yes, these games were and are typically grind-fests. The player entered the world and hit monsters until they gained a level, and then hit slightly stronger monsters. WoW had quests, other games were just a grind. There, article done.

But wait. What is the first quest in World of Warcraft?

Kill 10 foozles, where a foozle is some creature of undoubtedly evil origins. You turn in quests, and get new ones telling you to kill more foozles. The major difference between WoW and other games was that it told you to kill foozles; the other games just expected you'd figure that out. Other quests had players occasionally gather things from the environment (killing foozles on the way) or take a delivery from one NPC to another (killing foozles on the way). In fact, the latter mission type more often than not led to a whole new area filled with golden exclamation marks, completing the cycle.

What World of Warcraft did that no other game has is hold the player's hand. This design choice has garnered them millions of subscribers and many more dollars. The system of hand holding carries the player through all their levels, until they reach the cap. This where the "real game" begins. Players who come this far and continue to party and raid would probably have been playing even if the quest system didn’t exist. It’s the millions of people who level once a week or who reach the cap and start an alt that make WoW as popular as it is, and they play because of the quest system.

There’s other evidence to support this. For example, the other MMO to take a piece of the new MMO market, Age of Conan. Many have suggested that Age of Conan's major failure is the lack of quest content after level 20. Another highly anticipated MMO is the yet-to-be-released Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. It too models its leveling in a quest-by-quest structure. MMOs that don’t take this hint fly under the radar.

For something so small, the golden exclamation mark has had a tremendous impact on not only a game, but a genre. The little guy doesn't get enough credit.