Over the years, RPG’s in general have drifted away from presenting a long-term challenge toward being more convenient and supplying instant gratification. MMO’s with add-on systems implemented by their developers encourage players to find a quicker and easier way to doing almost anything in-game without it being done automatically. Instead of entering cheat codes, they simply change how the games function for them.
Think of World of Warcraft’s questing system. From its inception, it was never truly challenging. Most quests involve one having to kill “X” number of creature “Y.” There are of course quests that differ from the norm, and players clearly relish them, but on the whole the most thinking one needs to do is figuring out where the particular mobs are. Even then, NPC’s usually give sufficient directions.
Despite the system catering well to even children, QuestHelper was created to eliminate the need for almost any thinking at all. It blurs the line between levelling and mindless grinding even more. It’s a relatively small add-on for World of Warcraft that truly lives up to its name. It will direct you to exactly where you need to go in order to complete quest objectives, display waypoints on your map and direct you from quest to quest in order to minimise travelling times. It automatically adjusts with your character’s level and party status too.
QuestHelper is but one of many add-ons that completely minimise the thought processes required of players. There’s an add-on for almost any activity imaginable in World of Warcraft these days – from completely re-skinning the game interface to automatically determining the best price to sell one’s items. They’re freely available on the web and installing them is quite simple. The most popular of them work very well. However, after extensive use one quickly begins to realise that when all the answers are provided without the need for any thought, the word “quest,” quickly becomes an inaccurate description for what players are actually doing.
Perhaps the lack of the need to think is why players feel less accomplished in games such as WoW these days, and as a result get continually more fed up with them. Blizzard has gone beyond the point of return with WoW’s current add-on system, but hopefully they’ll learn from it and it will be for the betterment of their future projects.
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