It'd be easy enough for them to do now, on a basic level. A daily quest picked up on proximity/kill-credit for one of the mobs that everyone gets credit for if they do any damage, for a bag of random loot.
 

Are you sure it's not going to be one of the content patches during the spring 2011?

C out
 

I would think that while the feature is *possible* before the next expansion, Blizzard would rather put it into the next expansion for marketing reasons. They need a big new feature for the next expansion, just a few more levels and another hero class isn't going to cut it.
 

I think we will see some sort of new quests introduced in the latter life of Cataclysm that will attempt to explain the disconnect between the Outland and Northrend areas as they pertain to the Cataclysm events.

Right now it's a tough pill to swallow, because the player is forced to accept this disconnect on the premise that Blizzard will somehow explain this with the storyline leading into the next expansion.

I'm with Copra on this one, as I see this as an ability that they could implement now, or at anytime in the near future. I just dont see it as something worthy of a marketing/design goal for the fourth expansion.
 

They will probably need some kind of (so called) dynamic questing. Rift does it and GW2 does it and if it is a success (I am not sure), it could become a real problem for Blizzard.
 

The pre-cataclysm events were public quests, so the capability is already there.

The problem with PQs in general is getting critical mass in a certain area in order to properly populate the quests. That runs headon into WoW's "cities as game lobbies with instant teleport to dungeons" direction.
 

They already have the mechanism for this. Remember putting out the fires for the Headless Horseman in the villages, that's on some sort of automatic effort-based trigger to get the Horseman to land and fight him / get the loot pumpkin.
 

The sad thing is when Blizzard does so everyone will think they invented that shit in the first place.

Everyone quotes WoW for MMO mechanics but forgets that MMO's are much older.
 

I consider the "Kill Zalazane" quest as a public quest and personally, it seemed annoying to wait around not sure if it was finished, starting or on cooldown to get it over with. I also think these quests seem to also be in the same class as the storyline/have to wait 30 minutes while it finishes (see DK Battle for Light's Hope Chapel or Battle for Undercity) -- which is fine the first time, overkill on your alternate characters when you just want to speed rush through everything. They could at least make it dynamic and change a bit for each class.
 

I can't believe they haven't added player housing yet, be a great gold dump.
 

I have a hard time seeing how WoW would do this. Even after they revamped all the old world it is still a ghost town leveling up. PQs would be deserted like in WAR. They could copy RIFT and make them random depending on population in area, but still with the Dungeon Finder System and the world so spread out, I don't see how they would get enough people together to do a PQ. The only thing I could think of is a system like the Dungeon Ginder system that teleports you straight to a PQ in progress or like a BG but you fight NPCs.

I'm sure they will be looking at RIFT for inspiration seeing how WAR, STO, and others games with the system in place hasn't worked well enough for them to want it. If they do do it, I expect it to come with an instant travel button.
 

oh it will happen, eventualy. how? you know how you have a quest pop up nowadays when you cross a certain boundary in a dungeon without speaking to anyone, or how you can turn it it (including getting tangible rewards - talk about lollore) without having to speak to someone?

now imagine this on a larger scale. doesn't seem like too much of a stretch.

whether they will wait to implement it till next expansion? they might, just to make it seem like more then what it is and milk more money out of it.
 

Tobold, you're cheating now lol. We all saw that leaked time-chart from Blizzard and know the release times of all their future project. The "Public Quest" feature is just a random guess that might make it to the project (god forbids). Maybe you're guessing that Public Quests are going to be the default/norms for MMORPGs and I really hope not. The same reason why I really hoped that Quest Driven Content to not be the norms after playing WoW in 2004 but guess what happened then? :)
 

In a sense, public quests have already existed... sort of.

In the Wrathgate chain, horde and alliance both had an epic, cinematic quest to free Undercity, it took a certain amount of time and reset, and when it began all manner of people who were not grouped could participate together.

The same with defeating Ragnaros in mount Hyjal.

So I agree that things like this and the putting out fires in Halloween will continue to be implemented, but in my opinion the 'public quests' doesn't make a very compelling feature to market an expansion on. Most people I feel would be neutral on the prospect and not especially excited.
 

Weren't daily quests introduced mid expansion?
 

I wish they had capitalized on this long ago. The other feature I'd love to see go hand in hand with this is the warhammer kill collector quest giver. If a quest was to kill 10 foozles but you killed them already on the way there or while doing another one you just turned it in when you got to him without having to go back and kill 10 more.
 

You know why housing won't come in WoW? Because its a support nightmare and Blizzard don't want to do support, for them its a bad necessity.
 

I'm not so sure if Blizzard is going to include public quests WoW. Th've already copied most of good ideas from latest MMOs and public quests were not among those. If Blizzard decided it was good idea we'd already have it on live servers.

I agree with release date :P
 

It's only been a month since Cata released and we're already talking about the next expansion, lol!