So I was thinking about the elder scrolls series the other day and discussing it with my friend and our discussion turned to markers in questing. For discussion sake, how would this MMO play out if markers were removed?

In Morrowind, you got off the boat and that was it. One quest (Find Cassius) with one city (Balmora) and the rest was up to you. Figure it out. And exploration and questing in that game was arguably its greatest achievement.

In Oblivion, things were a bit easier with markers leading you to the destination when you got close. But still you needed to explore a bit and generally listen to the dialogue to get some information.

In Skyrim, it got much worse. Now you had a map marker as soon as you got the quest showing exactly where to go and worse yet you couldnt even turn it off or play the game without it. You still could listen to the the text if you wanted but it was largely irrelevant.

In ESO, Its now even worse. Every quest giver has a mark on their head and then the game puts marks on your maps with marks on the items and marks on the people and marks on everything that you need to do. Listening to the dialogue is completely pointless and using your brain is even more pointless. You can't turn off the markers on the maps or the quests or the objects or the NPCs. Exploring the new town you entered and talking to everyone is largely a waste of time. Go up the the guy with the marker, skip all the dialogue and head to the next checkpoint.

Now imagine if ESO played like morrowind. You get out off the boat at level 3 and you have no quest markers and no place you have to go. Maybe the captain says something like, you better find and Inn and get yourself a warm meal cause this city gets dangerous at night. Now you head over to the local inn where you start talking to people and they start telling you about delves and dolmans and quests that might be needed in the surrounding area. You go out to the farm outside of town and a little kid is crying outside of his house and tells you his Dad and mom were taken and doesnt know by who. You start thinking, go explore this area looking for them or maybe go back to town and ask about it? At this point in time you actually have to listen to the NPCs talk, pay attention to what they say, and even possibly take a note or two.

I think questing and exploring would be so much more fun in this environment. When you completed a quest, it would be so much more rewarding.

Is this sort of questing even possible in a modern MMO?