In addition to leveling up as you fight bad guys, World of Warcraft will also feature quests. The majority of player actions in the game will revolve around quests. To date more than 14,000 quests have been created and more are added each day. To quote Blizzard, "We're planning a vast number of quests, that provide meaningful amounts of experience and lots of good loot." There will be plenty of quests in your starting city, and once you start leveling up quests will gradually lead you outside where it is more dangerous. These quests can range from quick gathering quests to those that require you to complete a number of objectives to fully finish, to much lengthier endeavors requiring a group effort and many hours to complete. Some of the quests will be repeatable and their rewards will be smalll. On the other hand, the one-time quests will offer the rarest items and large amounts of experience points on completion. With this variety of tasks, gamers with one hour a day or gamers with all the time in the world will love World of Warcraft.

Quests are themed to specific areas. This means that the types of quests in the Night Elf regions will be noticably different than the ones you find in the Dwarf regions. Quests often have multiple reward choices, so players will be able to select the reward that interests them the most. Quests help gradually lead players into into new areas. This helps players become familiar with their surroundings at a good pace and opens up new challenges for them as they expand their boundaries into the world of Azeroth. Single-step quests are available for busy people without a lot of time to play, and large, multi-part quests that build to epic conclusions are available as well. Most quests can be done by the player, but some will require groups. This means you can team up with strangers or take your whole guild for a quest. Only by completing certain quests can you discover new items and traits.

 

Speak with an NPC with a gold exclamation point over his/her head and you will receive your mission.

NPCs with a gold question mark are characters that you have started quests for but have completed.

If you see an NPC with a silver mark it means you need a higher level to begin that quest, so you should return later.

What separates World of Warcraft from other MMORPGs is the sense of progression from quests. As you complete quests for NPCs they will acknowledge your growing skill and importance. Your quests will take you through the storyline and around the world. You will get the feeling that you are actually a part of the world and you matter.

The types of quests you will encounter are "FedEx" quests (transporting something), collection quests (collect 20 human skulls, or 8 Scarlet Crusade armbands), rare dropped item quests, bounty quests (kill a certain number of something), escort quests, defend-the-objective quests, and even something the team called "pumpkin quests," which are non-combat quests that rely on stealth or exploration to find an object and bring it back to the requestor. You will also encounter "bread crumb" quests which are small clues to new quests that spawn off of a quest you are currently on. Some quests can have quests inside of them that are three or four layers deep. These can be obvious or they can be inside a note that dropped.  

• Quests that you have started on will appear in a Quest Log and they will be color coded by difficulty level.
• The details of each accepted quest will be easily available in the log, and they include the quest’s requirements, which NPC to speak with once those requirements are satisfied, and the rewards that will be available.
• You may quit a quest at any time, and you can reacquire them at any time as well.
• Quests will also be divided up in the log by region to help players identify which ones to work toward completing depending on where they happen to be in the world.

1 The Mass Graves, southwest of Garren's Haunt, were made to accommodate the...impressive...number of deaths Tirisfal suffered when the Plague first came. The bodies in these graves have so far been spared an undeath, but the Scourge now send Rot Hide Gnolls to gather the corpses and use them to bolster their armies. Per the wishes of Brill's Magistrate Sevren, your task is twofold: slay the Rot Hides at the Mass Grave and Garren's Haunt, and gather from them the Embalming Ichor that gives them life.

2 Your task nearly complete, you kneel down to inspect the belongings of a recently slain Rot Hide Graverobber. On his maggot-ridden corpse hangs a small purse of gold, and clutched in his arms you find a grotesque severed head--a head that looks like it has something to say...

3 "You don't look like a rot hide. Good. I had lost hope... My name is Alaric, and I was once Thule's head servant and bodyguard. He used his magic to "protect" me from the Plague of Undeath, but instead his spell gave me an unlife from which I cannot escape. And after creating the cursed rot hide gnolls, Thule beheaded me... and gave my head to the gnolls as a plaything! Please, take me to my body. I believe the gnolls buried it in Fenris Keep, near the stable, in an unmarked grave."

4 The head calls itself Alaric and implores you to carry it to the remains of its body. According to Alaric's disembodied head, its once-attached carcass now lies in a grave located near the stables of Fenris Keep. Feeling perhaps a small bit of pity for the head, you graciously decide to accept the quest and so begin the journey to the crescent-shaped Fenris Isle, located south of The Undercity, within Lake Lordamere. More servants of the Scourge have taken up camp at Fenris Keep. After battling your way to the stables, you find a shallow grave that matches the description given by Alaric, containing the remainder of his person. Delighted at the reunion, Alaric hastily reassembles his anatomy. He gives you his thanks as well as a pair of boots he declares he no longer requires. This quest is at an end, but Alaric has further use for your able body should you be willing to assist him.