Since having let my subscription to Warhammer Online lapse, I've moved on to Atlantica Online, a free turned based MMORPG in the style of Final Fantasy games. Currently I have a level 28 character, but I'm not sure how much longer I plan to say with Atlantica. The game has an extremely weak story line and so far I've only seen 3 types of quests, but we'll get into that later. The game does have a ton of features and options to keep you busy, but from my point of view it seems like it's just one big grind.
Questing - Having reached level 28 I would have thought I would be doing more than just 3 types of quests by now. So far the only quests I've seen are tutorial, fetch and kill quests. Tutorial quests are actually very good and I'm glad they have them, some are extremely easy and should never have been created, but for the most part there useful. As I said earlier there are a ton of features and options in the game so it's good to have these tutorial quests to help you learn the game and yes even at lev 28 I still get many tutorial quests. Fetch quest are exactly that, deliver this or go talk to that person and you're done. Then there are kill quests which either tell you to go kill x number of these monsters or kill a boss. That's it. I'm not sure if there are other type of quests later on, but having played to lev 28 at this point it's pretty sad those are the only types of quests I've seen.
Traveling with Auto-Move/Teleports - One of the features that you'll uses pretty much the entire time you're playing is auto-move. Basically when you get a quest you don't have to do anything except click the auto-move button, then you can go make yourself something to eat or watch TV. The auto-move feature will take you exactly to where you need to go, so when you come back all you have to do is talk to the person or kill the monster then click auto-move again and it will take you back to turn-in the quest. Honestly Atlantica is unplayable unless you have a TV in the same room because a good portion of your time you're not even playing, you're just waiting for auto-move to take you to where you need to go. Later on in the game you'll get Teleportation Licenses, basically these allow you for 1 day (in game time) to teleport anywhere you have already been, which is great cause it saves you a ton of time(Atlantica Gold), however they're expensive so you won't be using it all the time.
Above is a screenshot of one of my auto-move runs. I had to go to Rome to use the warehouse so I could store some of my items, since I don't have enough money to buy a teleportation license I had to run back to where I was questing. As you can see it took about 27 mins, 27 mins! While a bit on the high end it's nothing unusually to have 10-15 min auto-move times. While I like having auto-run cause I'd rather the computer run for me than having to waste my own time, it makes me wonder why they even have a 3D game world to begin with. Why not just make it a top down map where you move from locaton to locaton similar to Mythos. There's no monster agro so unless your character runs directly into a monster your fine.
