At a BlizzCon 2018 press conference earlier today, lead game developer Ion Hazzikostas fielded questions from a dozen journalists regarding World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth and the future of the game, including its upcoming patch, Tides of Vengeance.

The future of World Quests, the proverbial thorn in many players' sides, was the subject of one journalist's question -- particularly, how successful have they been at forcing players to engage with the world Blizzard has created and how does the design team intend to address the tedium and repetition many players feel World Quests invite?

Hazzikostas had this to say in response to the inquiry: "Overall, World Quests are the best expression of outdoor, in-game, daily content we've had over the past expansions. We love leveling [but we] pretty much never revisit 90% of the world again after that, aside from collecting herbs ... or something along those lines.

"World Quests ... open up the entire world as a gameplay space [and] in that way, they're a step forward. I do think that there is a bit too much repetitiousness (sic) in the type of world quests ... in Battle for Azeroth. It's something we're looking at. A lot of the time, you look at the map and you're just going around, picking off the rare elites that you can go kill quickly and easily, and that's what Emissaries boil down to regardless of which zone you're in."

He continued: "That's a mix for us of looking at the types of World Quests we create, making sure there's enough variety of them, but also the bucketing for how they're spawned. We've had structures in the past where we very rigidly dictate [which sets of quests spawn where]. 

That said, we're looking to continue to build upon [the system]. We like the game to use the outdoor world, but I think there are lessons to learn from other, more sandbox style game types we've had in the past that aren't just 'hey, go here, kill eight creatures, free the six prisoners from their cages. [There are] other ways of telling stories that have a mix of things -- a mix of things we did on Timeless Isle, things we did on Isle of Thunder -- kind of looking at ... systems we've had in the past years and finding ways that we can introduce new things."

Images via Blizzard Entertainment.