Some of us remember a time when MMORPGs used to advertise how many square kilometers or miles or space their virtual world had as a selling point, even if 97% of that space was empty scenery. Likewise, there used to be a time when games would boast about their quest count, hoping to impress us with Big Numbers that might equal lots of content to enjoy.

Play LOTRO for freeThose kinds of stats aren’t usually parroted by studio marketing arms these days, except for Lord of the Rings Online, which continues to trumpet its quest count with each expansion announcement. However, with more than 15,000 quests in the game, it’s no longer a worry of running out of things to do but feeling overwhelmed by too much to do. So what could be done about this?

We can of course debate whether or not having “too much content” is a problem at all. Having not enough is an issue, no question, but too much? Just do what you want to and ignore the rest; why are we even talking about this?

While I’d agree that the quest count of LOTRO is not the most pressing problem, but it does come with associated concerns. First, newcomers to the game might feel compelled to do every quest they come across, especially when it’s not clear what quests need to be done for a zone’s story arc. Getting bogged down in the thousands of quests can artificially slow an otherwise delightful progression through Middle-earth and keep people in zones for longer than they wish due to a concern that they’d be overlooking something important.

Second, it can be occasionally difficult for even veteran players to filter out the noise from the substance. Sometimes there are quests that you don’t need at all, including repeatables, but there’s a chance that missing a quest might fail to trigger its follow-up and leave you stranded in a storyline.

Third, too many menial and inconsequential quests populating the game — busy work, let’s be honest — obscure the truly great stories tucked into some of these sidequests. If you’re hunting for great narrative, you don’t want a bunch of clutter and fluff getting in the way.

Fourth, the quest density makes completionism runs miserable. It’s satisfying to fully finish zones, but it’s a huge time hog. I’ve even seen a few remarks by developers saying that even they don’t have the time to do all the quests when they play. So why should we?

As LOTRO continues to grow and expand, it’s created an unwieldy mountain of content, zones, and levels that are intimidating to the greenhorn and old-timer alike. Calls have gone out in various quarters for SSG to pause on adding stuff in the pursuit of trimming all of this content down or streamlining the experience somewhat.

That’s a tricky road to travel down, but it may be needed. We only need so many quests per zone to complete the meta deed, so any past that are superfluous aside from narrative and rewards. Pruning the least-interesting and perhaps most annoying of these quests could declutter the landscape somewhat and make for an overall smoother journey.

Another option would be to go the SWTOR route where only the big epic story is needed and can be solely used to journey to the level cap. Other quests would be disabled, visually, unless a player toggled them back on. This would be pretty extreme and no doubt controversial, but it would be helpful especially for alts.

I think there’s a more creative solution that doesn’t have to cut any content while still streamlining the experience. Let’s say, hypothetically, that a zone has 150 quests in it. Why not divide those into three “paths” of 50 quests each, thematically linked together in a kind of loose story arc.

Then, upon entering a zone, each player would be given a choice for that character to pursue one of those three paths. Maybe they want to go on an adventure helping the common folk reclaim and rebuild a shattered land. Or they could quest with an archaeologist learning about First and Second Age history from uncovered items and tombs. Or they could pick a path that aggressively seeks out and exterminates the lingering orc and goblin presence in the land.

Pick a path, the other 100 quests go invisible, and you do the full path to get the quest deed meta before moving on to the next region. Boom.

Now you’ve preserved all of the quests while giving players a real, consequential choice at the outset and improving the replayability of that zone. Instead of doing All The Things, you’re only doing a third of the content before moving on and are intrigued what it would’ve been like to pick one of the other paths. And now you’re turned your quest count from a slightly oppressive number to a useful asset.

That’s just spitballing a few possible solutions for SSG to consider if and when it might squish, prune, or streamline the quest count. MMORPGs may thrive on a wide variety of content offerings, but they also need to be tidied up and refreshed from time to time or risk being overgrown by useless remnants of past development.

Every two weeks, the LOTRO Legendarium goes on an adventure (horrid things, those) through the wondrous, terrifying, inspiring, and, well, legendary online world of Middle-earth. Justin has been playing LOTRO since its launch in 2007! If you have a topic for the column, send it to him at [email protected]/topic/y.