Are you questing impaired?
This can take many forms:
- Inability to read the quest text to identify objectives.
- Inability to go in the right direction to find either the quest objective or the quest giver.
- Inability to see the quest giver or objective even though it is right in front of you.
- Inability to follow spoken directions by helpful players over vent.
- Inability to research, or worst case find quest guides.
- Inability to follow quest guides once found.
- Inability to find a location even with a loc mod or even a quest helper that clearly marks the location on the map.
- Inability to differentiate between one variety of a mob and another (eg: young & grisly)
- Unfortunate ability to delete/ store in the bank/ send to alt/ vendor/auction required quest items.
If you relate to any of these, you may be quest impaired and should seek some professional advice.
Now I suffer from all of these at some point in time, but then being male I am at a natural disadvantage.
My wife will be only too happy to tell you that I suffer from a wires form of tunnel vision.
If she puts the sauce bottle to either side of the cupboard, I won’t see it. If age puts the sauce bottle at the front, in the middle of the cupboard, I won’t see it. In fact if my glasses are on the end of my nose, I will spend 10 minutes looking for them before noticing the quizzical expression on her face and realizing how stupid I both look – and are.
Quest text.
I read it, I reread it, I close the quest window and think:
What do I do now?
Direction.
My wife tells me that being male I have the natural ability to locate true north at any time, anywhere.
Ummm no I don’t!
Don’t ask me why when my mini map arrow is pointing north, and I want to go north, I turn around and go south.
Blind spots.
If the quest objective/giver is right in front of me, 5 seconds away, I will spend 2 minutes running in circles looking for the spot (getting further and further away) to the extent that I will often complete other quests in my log earlier than the intended quest because I am so far afield that I stumble across the objective (luckily I wasn’t looking for it, because I wouldn’t be able to find it).
Sometimes this is a terrain thing, you know, mountain, cave, building etc. but often enough it is nothing more than my nose obscuring my objective.
Spoken assistance.
I dread asking for help over vent, because I get the:
oh that one’s easy. Just go to x, pick up y, and return it to z
Commence running around in circles for 10 minutes until I ask again.
I think my mates are used to this now, because when I express my inability to find the objective I get:
hang on, nearly there, I will show you
Which is weird because when I asked the 1st time they would be starting an instance, I guess it is east enough to summon them back.
Inability to find guides.
Ok I don’t suffer from this per se, however I can’t settle for just one, I have to go to WoWhead and google, and follow the first 3-4 pages of search results before I have composed a 10 page guide on how to do the simplest quest.
Inability to follow guides.
Which leads me to this point. I can read and understand all the guides, from the quick tips in quest info sites, through to leveling guides like James. However when it comes to the execution of the instructions, the wheels fall of my cart.
I do the quests in the wrong order, I get lost, I kill the wrong mobs.
Level 1 to 80 in 3 days my arse. .. It will take me 3 days played to get to level 10.
Location, where?
I installed coord mods years ago, have 2 or 3 quest helper type mods installed. I’m standing on the right coord, there is a big flashing icon on the mini map and big map. But, where the hell is the quest objective?
That mob is different to this mob?
One boar is the same as the next right?
Not when it comes to WoW quests. One river is the same as the next, unless you are fishing for quest items. One entrance to Black Rock Mountain is the same as the next, right?
I doubt I need to say any more, it’s painful to fill your pack with vendor trash killing the wrong mobs.
Where did I leave that thing?
My bank etc is either overflowing with unnecessary quest items, or the quest item is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or I delete/sell the item only to pick up the quest tomorrow.
Any other symptoms of quest impairment you can think of?
edit: (post original draft, pre release)
I have made up for my cruelty to animals…
Ohhh.. and just quietly… I picked up Teleport: Dalaran last night (No thanks to WoWInsider for sending me to my near death at the Horde quest giver… Alliance Quest here.). So yes, I dinged 71 during a time exchange (for tomorrow night) grinding session.
For the record… the average Gnome would probably have dinged 72, but I was running around in circles, within circles… Quest Impairment FTL!
Gnomer and Out!
Have you put a camera inside my head?
I really recognize myself…
I don’t get quest done half as quickly as most other players.
The aids I’ve found most effective is a combination of Lightheaded and Tomtom. Lightheaded often gives coords for quest objectives. Then I click them and get an arrow and a spot where I’m supposed to go.
But still… there are times when I’m just like you. Running around, blind, thoughtless, clueless…. Bah. Is it only that I’m old and half senile? Or is it just a complete lack of talent?
As a mere male i suffer from Treehomocideophobia ….which now extends not only to a fear of paper based instructions but also electronic ones
To get around this i did the following
1 tossed out questhelper….bloated memory resource hungry peace of code.
2 Installed Carbonite.
3 Click on the pink circle for auto track.
4 follow HUD arrow until distance is 0 yards or the arrow is now pointing behind you.
5 look for mob, npc, pickup item or whatever your meant to do. mouseover usually comes up with carbonite window saying you need to kill this monster for quest abc
6 the above works most of the time if u dont find the quest item immediately then and only then do i challenge my phobia
7 i read the quest…no joy then
8 search Wowhead comments no joy then
9 Thottbot
the thing i try to do now is see if the quest giver gives me anything….if they do i drag it onto my action bar….when i get to stage 5 i go through the active quest items to see if any required for current quest.
Warning this often totally kills the story line….Often I haved found myself going to find what i need to do only to find a great story line hidden behind.
Now i read the quest story blurb on occasions but not the instructional bit.
hope this helps but i became so level 80 and geared focus the quest were a means to XP and achievements
Now you see, sir gnome. You and I have the excuse that is linked to an ever-shrinking, semi-redundant chromosome.
Larisa must find some other excuse.
Two points I would like to add:
1: Dear Blizzard. After several years of Kill X, Collect Y, I have almost gotten the hang of frequently going to Wowhead and rereading the quest to see if I am e.g. killing things for an item that is gathered, or killing things in the wrong area of the map, or running to the south-west when I should be going south-east (I swear that irl I am much better with east/west orientation than in-game).
Now you have introduced quests that require me to ride…vehicles? I must collect Storm Clouds and runaway from Thrym after he spawns, continuously looking for him due to my inability to read NPC emotes? I must free an archmage near Amber Ledge by doing…nothing at all? You seek to shake the very foundations of my questing.
2: I have a propensity for abandoning quests, only to really wish I had them later. E.g. abandoning quest X because I’m leaving the zone, only to turn up near the objective of quest X another three times within the next 15 minutes.
I will drop yesterday’s daily for H VH in order to join a PuG for today’s daily: H CoS. Of course, we will wipe horribly at the hands of the Infinite Dragonflight (please Mr DK, can you pick up both groups of mobs so I can keep spamming Holy Light and maybe keeping your undergeared butt alive, assuming you don’t get crit-gibbed). I will leave the group to join a guild run of… H VH. And of course no-one wants to help me complete my saved H CoS since we’ve downed a boss.
Sometimes I just grind. It’s so pleasantly monotonous, repetitive and doesn’t remind me that I’m quite capable of getting this Siege Tank stuck by myself thank-you-very-much, without 10^16 scourge trying to re-enact GTA around me.
I was appalled at the number of quests I noobed up. I’m still appalled at the number I noob up the second time around (ok, there’s this rift. I think it’s that way. Hmmm. Ok there’s an arrow on the mini-map, just for morons like me, and yep, it’s pointing in the other direction. Oh and look, while I was thinking this I was swimming steadily downwards, and… help?).
Brilliant post, Gnomer. Keep it up.
Hehehehe! I was just picking on my husband for his blind spots. We were both on our alts and I was helping him with a quest my alt had already done. He had to pick up little tablets or something. I kept running to the next one to wait for him to pick it up and watch him run past me. “Hey here’s one here!” I’d say and he’d come running back.
After finding the majority of his tablets for him I asked “Shouldn’t these have that sparkley glow thing on them for you?” He said they did but shrugged and said I’ve always been better at noticing the little things on the ground than him.
For me, It’s the killing the wrong mobs. A pig is a pig is a pig. If I’m told to kill pigs I’ll kill pigs or pig like creatures until Keste speaks up and points me at the right pigs.
My weakness isn’t so much the go to X, kill Y, and return to Z. My weakness is the go to X, kill Y, use Q on Y before killing or on Y’s corpse, and return to Z. After about 30 minutes of no drops, I resort to WoWHead or reading the quest text.
LMAO
I think everyone has been guilty of some of that from time to time.
I will constantly (maybe in an over-excitement to kill things) gleefully grind away on mobs I THOUGHT were quest mobs, only to find I’ve been killing the wrong ones for 10-15 mins.
You know what they say, ignorance is bliss.
I suffered from another variant last night, unfortunately it coincided with a server downtime…
The horizontal-vertical illusion.
Sitting perfectly on the x,y coords. Thinking that there is some special gimmick to spawn the quest mob (as there was a special gimmick for another one of the quest mobs).
15 minutes till server shutdown….
14 minutes till server shutdown….
13 minutes till server shutdown….
12 minutes till server shutdown….
11 minutes till server shutdown….
10 minutes till server shutdown….
9 minutes till server shutdown….
8 minutes till server shutdown….
7 minutes till server shutdown….
6 minutes till server shutdown….
5 minutes till server shutdown….
4 minutes till server shutdown….
3 minutes till server shutdown….
Ohhh it’s on the floor above me….
2 minutes till server shutdown….
1 minute till server shutdown….
Ahhh there it is….
Server shutdown in 15 seconds…
You have been disconnected from the server…
I thought I was going blind when I couldn’t find the quests in Icecrown on the helm and Sword. I had to squint, and found these disapportionate ! on them.