Daily Perpetual Quests: Killing the Fun of Exploration in MMORPGs

 

I haven't played many MMORPGs (Massive Multi-Player Online Role Playing Games), and I don't know if I would officially count Diablo Immortal as one in the same way that World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, and The Elder Scrolls Online are MMORPGs.  For the sake of today's article, I'm going to count it as one for simplicity's sake and because it has a lot of the hallmarks of what makes an MMORPG:

• Online Requirement
• Player vs Environment in a shared world
• A Hub world/city shared by other online players
• Optional Online Co-op and PvP

For the sake of this article, I'm focusing on Diablo Immortal and The Elder Scrolls Online.  Since The Elder Scrolls Online's initial release in 2014, I've probably spent close to 500 hours (100+ hours with my first two characters, about 200 hours with my character I used playing the Morrowind DLC, and 100ish hours with other characters tooling around) traversing all over 2nd Era Tamriel.  For Diablo Immortal, I've put in significantly less time since it was released on mobile in 2022; maybe around 30-40 hours?  But in that time, I've pulled away from both MMORPGs all for similar reasons executed differently: perpetual daily quests.

What I mean by a perpetual daily quest is a "randomly" generated quest designed to be completed in a single play session, often with a reward that you can regularly find while playing, but is made easier to acquire, often including experience points.  There can also be the chance of higher reward loot from drops by completing a daily randomly generated dungeon.  Or daily login rewards that are designed to entice the player to stick around a bit longer.  You start up a game and log in to your particular server, and you get a reward for logging in that day.  You then check what the daily quests are, such as "Open 20 Treasure Chests," "Complete 3 Side Quests," or "Kill 1,600 Monsters."  Some of these you could probably complete while doing your main quest.  But before you leave the town where you previously came to sell all the loot that was previously making you encumbered, you have to check out the daily procedurally generated solo/group dungeon to try and score more loot, which you'll likely end up selling or scrapping because it's rarely as good as what you recently purchased.

And if your game has crafting, you can't forget about the daily crafting writs that give you experience points with minimal effort and help make use of all of the materials you've been hoarding since day one.  Creating a greatsword, sabatons, and gauntlets at the blacksmithing station, then two bows and a healing staff at the woodworking station.  Then you craft a robe, some epaulets, and a cap.  Then you go over to the enchantment station and craft a glyph of Absorb Magika, and craft a potion of Restore Health at the alchemy station.  You take all of these writs down to the harbor, where you put them in their respective crates, and then collect your experience points and your payment for all of your hard work.  These rewards then "require" you to head back to your respective station to break down the items you received, because that Galetite Dagger is not the type of weapon your Dunmer Warden uses, as well as all of the other items and materials you just received. Then bank all of the items before you actually head out to do some adventuring.  This whole process usually takes me about 20+ minutes, and maybe it's just me, but in a game like Diablo Immortal, 20 minutes is about how much time I can invest in a mobile game in a single sitting.  The Elder Scrolls Online I can invest about an hour or so before I realize the time is now 12:30 AM and I need to get some sleep before The Squire wakes us up five hours later.

And all of this, for me, gets in the way of actually adventuring out in the world.  And sure, I could just not do any of the time-consuming activities mentioned up there, and while they're designed to entice the player, they're also functional in terms of experience points earned.  And because experience points in MMORPGs are earned differently than in traditional RPGs (Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest), where you gain exp from killing monsters, a chunk of exp gained in MMORPGs comes from completing quests.  Even smaller daily perpetual quests can earn more exp than spending the same amount of time only killing monsters; usually, but not always, the case as there are exceptions.  And the whole point of gaining experience points is to level up, and leveling up lets you explore deeper into the world, and, Odin forbid, if you're playing in a PvE area, you're going to need to have a "community-approved" build if you want to succeed beyond your first encounter with another aggro player.

At the moment, I'm not playing The Elder Scrolls Online, and that mostly happened after completing the Morrowind DLC, although I was starting to do some main quest activities on the mainland of Morrowind and no longer on Vvardenfell.  This was just about a year ago, in 2025.  I had other games I wanted to spend my time on anyway.  I felt like I had lost the drive to play because all of the pre-adventuring activities were eating into the time that I would have spent actually doing quests.  The same with Diablo Immortal.  I had been following the plot for quite a while and enjoying this entry in the Diablo franchise, but then it just became too much with daily quests, dungeon raids, and monthly/quarterly/seasonal themes that dragged me away from what I had been doing.  Oh, I have a red dot next to my quests, what's this?  Oh, I'm now doing some dark versus light month-long campaign only accessible by going to some basement in a tavern?  I couldn't even tell you where I was regionally to warp back there.  I think the only way I could get back into Diablo Immortal is to start (another) new character.

All of these "Hey, do these new quests; finish crafting these writs for 150% exp; login for the next six consecutive days for a 500% XP boost for 1 hour; new Season of Blood & Hammer with increased 2% chance of Legendary loot drops starts July 1st!" have kind of done it in for me.  I love the lore in Diablo and The Elder Scrolls, but I can't with whatever this model of what feels like disincentivising actual adventuring is called.  And maybe that's just me.  And that's okay.

I'm going to go play Super Lesbian Animal RPG.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian