I spent lots of time recently knee-deep in the alpha for World of Warcraft's Warlords of Draenor expansion, and I found it a different beast from the game I'd fallen in love with almost 10 years ago. It looked the same, it sounded the same, but I never quite escaped the feeling that I was watching an actor trot about in a famous person's uniform instead of seeing the legend himself.

Never mind questionable additions over the years like the Dungeon Finder or the relative ease with which you tackle the game's challenges; I found myself most affected by the changes to the concept of secondary quest chains in MMOs over the years and what they mean for the genre as a whole. WoW still thrives on them, although to a greatly diminished extent, but even what I saw reminded me why I keep coming back to Blizzard's beast again and again after all these years.

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“ There were endless memories forged out of facing down monsters like Duskwood's Stitches at the end of a long quest chain.

It's a good system, and one that World of Warcraft nailed when it first hit shelves (yes, real shelves) back in 2004. A large part of the appeal was getting to see the characters many of us knew from the popular Warcraft strategy games "come to life," as it were, but there were also endless memories forged out of facing down monsters like Duskwood's Stitches at the end of a long quest chain or amassing hordes of Alliance friends to take down Nathanos Blightcaller in the Eastern Plaguelands. It worked so well, in fact, that competing MMOs that followed in its wake picked up the model almost wholesale, whether it was Lord of the Rings Online, Rift, or (most notably, perhaps) Star Wars: The Old Republic.

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“ Newer MMOs understand that interaction with other people lies at the heart of the genre, but they make the mistake of turning those people into a faceless mass.

There's been a definite shift away from the model in recent years, and arguably not for the better. Newer MMOs understand that interaction with other people lies at the heart of the genre, but they make the mistake of turning those people into a faceless mass. Quest chains still occasionally exist outside the main story, but they usually play second fiddle to group events that seldom require even looking at the nameplate of the player beside you. Guild Wars 2 takes this concept to extremes as quest lines don't even exist outside the main story arcs; most of the time you're swarming to attack a boss on a timer. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn's FATEs court with similar extremes (although it tempers them with secondary quest chains elsewhere), and its guildleves that replace the fun of a one-off quest chain with something like a repeatable grind.

These features are wondrous right after a game's launch; they give the impression of a thriving community of adventurers coming together for a common cause. The dynamism itself is intensely attractive, as it gives the impression that the world around is alive provided we ignore the strings pulling the puppets. Often, however, it's a fleeting pleasure. The warning signs first revealed themselves in Rift, where its titular rifts would spawn and churn for hours without anyone even attempting to to close them. Far from being threatening, they looked almost lonely. Similar sights await to a lesser degree in Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy XIV.

“ Much of the magic of playing with other people online that was still strong in 2004 has long worn off.

Pity, as it's the classic MMO quest chain that best captures the Dungeons & Dragons spirit that spawned the MMO movement to begn with. It's still the best vehicle for a shared experience outside of a raid; indeed, in those earliest days, it was the way you often encountered the friends you'd end up raiding with come the end game. It's far from dead—WildStar implemented some secondary quest chains and Elder Scrolls Online was essentially a massive compendium of quest chains but without the memorable loot—but it's lost much of its personality in the shift to a focus on single player content throughout the leveling experience. Alone, such adventures sometimes feel like plain work.

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Against all odds, the desire for the experience of the old quest chains lives on in spite of the countless innovations over the years. Perhaps developers should take notice. Not one hour into my time with Warlords of Draenor, I found myself being asked to join a group with a random paladin as we ran alongside Thrall and Khadgar in a scripted rush to close the Dark Portal.

"Why?" I asked, "It's easy enough."

"Because it'll be fun," he said.

He was right. It was.

Leif Johnson is a contributing editor to IGN who writes about video games on a ranch north of Goliad, Texas. His wife thinks he looks like Dwalin. You can chat about beards and games with him on Twitter at @leifjohnson.