World of Warcarft:: The Teleology of Quests

The entire World of Warcraft game is structured around the pursuit of quests. When you first show up in the world, you see a quest giver who is identified by a yellow exclamation mark over his head. You right click on him and he gives your a quest. The first quest is to kill six wolves and loot them for their meat. When you complete the task, you return to the quest giver and give him the wolf meat. He, in turn, gives you a reward. In this simple course of action you learn a little about the game. You learn how your character attacks. You learn how to loot. You learn how to pursue quests. And you learn that you get rewarded for completing quests. There is a feeling of satisfaction derived from completing a quest.

As you complete quests, you gain experience. As you gain experience your increase your level. You start out at Level 1 and the highest level currently available is Level 80. Originally it was 65 and then went to 70 and 80 in the next two expansions. Quests are set up in an area to take your level into consideration. The progression of quests takes this into consideration also. So, unless you wonder off track somehow (or on purpose) your quests are appropriate for your level. That is, they are challenging but achievable. They are not too easy or too hard. And, as you complete quests, you see progress in your character's advancement.

Progress shows in a number of ways. The most obvious is leveling. An experience bar across the bottom of the screen shows how much experience you gained from the quest and how much further you have to go in order to achieve the next level. However, you also acquire better armor which makes your character harder to kill and you acquire better weapons which makes your character more effective at killing the monsters. If you acquire something you don't need, you can sell it back to a vendor for money. That money, in turn, can be used to purchase things that you need.

This is all just to show that the game provides you with goals that are challenging but achievable and provides a sense of progress and feedback to support that sense of progress. These points will tie into a larger point once I finally get back to Flow.