Quests added to mob tooltips on the PTR
by Mike Schramm 
Mar 3rd 2009 at 5:00PM
The Godmother over at ALT:ernative ducked into the PTR recently, and noticed something new: Blizzard is apparently testing adding Questhelper-style notes to tooltips of the quest-related mobs you come across. This looks so familiar that I thought it was an addon, but no, apparently Blizzard really is planning to tell you when a mob you're looking at happens to be the target of a quest.It shocked me for a second -- not only is this dumbing down the questing game even further (maybe someday we will have a large red arrow pointing out a quest target from zones away), but it seems to be an awfully big break in immersion. Blizzard is basically telling you that "this is the mob you need, right here," and actually reading the quest text becomes even less necessary.
But then I realized that tooltips themselves aren't exactly paragons of game immersion -- it's already a little jump in the reality of the game to see a box with a mob's name and level whenever you mouse over it. Tooltips are already where the UI meets the road, so to speak. And as for the "dumbing down" of the game, most experienced players already had this functionality through addons like Questhelper and MonkeyQuest anyway (and if you do plan to complain that this makes things way too easy, make sure Questhelper is out of your Addon directory before you start typing). But if the tips stay in the game when the patch goes live, questing will be that much easier for people who stick to the basic UI.
Filed under: Patches, Items, Analysis / Opinion, Quests, Leveling, Wrath of the Lich King
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Darnon Mar 3rd 2009 5:04PM
The default UI already puts an arrow on your minimap in the case of some quests that are a distance away.
Khadan Mar 3rd 2009 5:06PM
Now I wont bother to download that super laggy Questhelper. Cool.
Keyra Mar 3rd 2009 6:20PM
These were my immediate thoughts as well - it should improve my framerates some more, and DRASTICALLY improve my processing.
Matt Mar 4th 2009 3:25AM
Carbonite FTW : )
Hereticae Mar 3rd 2009 5:06PM
Questhelper already does this, so it looks like blizz may be going around and looking at useful features from useful addons and integrating them.
Braundo Mar 3rd 2009 5:18PM
I welcome this. Along with the in-game ItemRack (albeit a basic one), I will be able to trim down my add-on list by quite a bit.
Horris Mar 3rd 2009 5:21PM
This is nothing new. Blizzard has taken cues from the addon community in the past. Previously added features that started out as third-party addons include: Scrolling Combat Text, the LFG tool, and the in-game calendar.
Chewy&Go Mar 3rd 2009 5:22PM
Blizzard has been know to do this often in the past.
Hansbo Mar 3rd 2009 5:22PM
And don't forget the older ones that we're now taking for granted: Quest tracking and more than one action bar!
veil Mar 3rd 2009 5:46PM
pew...don't remind of the days before multiple action bars. they were the suck. tho i do miss old-school popbar. saved my ass as a first-gen hunter with a bajillion tracking and aspects.
Jason Mar 3rd 2009 5:10PM
And this can help prevent visiting Wowhead as much, too.
Rapiermaxim Mar 3rd 2009 5:12PM
It's not really dumbing down anything, it's just like an ever active quest tracker. Essentially all it's doing is telling you that you have x/y of this mob, which is also exactly what the built in quest tracker does.
I would hate it if they put big question marks on my map with 'ants' going back and forth. I was on quest helper, but I started levelling an alt without it... It takes forever, but I love being forced to read what the NPCs are saying! :)
Caustik Mar 3rd 2009 5:16PM
I hope this will not turn into a Quest Helper integrated - I hate this addon so much, it removes all the pleasure you can have in searching (and well, they have already removed a big part of the difficulty by making quest items spark in the environment).
I have a bad feling about this.
muffin_of_chaos Mar 3rd 2009 5:26PM
You must be kidding. Or intensely masochistic.
Or pretty new to the game, I guess.
Joshua Ochs Mar 3rd 2009 5:41PM
On this, I have to disagree. The sparklies indicating quest items have been one of the best things added. At first I thought it was "easy-mode", but it allows the game designers to make more immersive and seamless environments. Instead of a Crystalsong Carrot being a big, orange, *obvious* thing so you know to pick it up, they can make it blend in perfectly with the surroundings. You only notice them if you have the quest, and they don't stick out the rest of the time.
As for the quest tracking, I swear I don't have any kind of addon doing it, yet my tooltips have been showing that I have "x/y" taken care of for quest foo. Now this is only for quests I am on; it doesn't show quests the mobs might be for that I don't have (which is fine).
Caustik Mar 3rd 2009 6:04PM
Well, I guess I'm masochistic since the wow vanilla beta then :P
Jay in Oregon Mar 3rd 2009 6:59PM
The current build on the PTR has it as an option that is disabled by default.
So if you want to keeping your gaming/levelling experience "pure", you can leave it turned off.
Tuhljin Mar 3rd 2009 6:44PM
When questing, I use sites like Wowhead to find things that are hard to find, but addons like QuestHelper that hold your hand as you go about questing go too far in my opinion. It's not just making the game easier, it's making it stupidly easy. Perhaps useful for leveling your 4th alt to max level or something, but it really kills the whole "RP" element from "RPG" (and it doesn't have anything to do with having to be on an RP server or something). People that just click on NPCs, accept the quest, and go out and kill some mobs aren't playing the same game I am (I'd argue it's not much of a *game* at all at that point), and while it's their right to play that game if they like it, if that were how Blizzard actually released WoW, I wouldn't have purchased such a mind-numbing thing.
Tuhljin Mar 3rd 2009 6:46PM
That said, I approve of this addition (hopefully if it's toggleable, but I'd generally have it toggled on). I don't find quest tracking to be a break in immersion, and I see this as more of an extension of that than an attempt at going the route of questing-killer addons like QuestHelper.
Cyanea Mar 3rd 2009 7:01PM
The "RP" elements of RPG died for me the fiftieth time some quest NPC told me "To the north" when he's standing on the southern tip of a zone.