Actually one of my favorite thgins about MMO's is travel and not feeling that running over a hill is the way to my next quest, because to me that is a developer spoon-feeding the player. When you are traveling you can always come across something amazing that you did not expect perhaps it is a player with the entire set of T6 in WoW, or perhaps it is a portal to a new dungeon you have never visited in Asheron's Call 2. Patch day in Ac2 was pure joy for me, I would go around and searching for new places to explore. This did make Ac2 feel more epic to me.When I play games like Age of Conan and Everquest2 I see dozens of quests around me, and you can accept many of them, but then none of them feel important because of that stupid here's something to do player, go do it. We'll even put little sparkles over your quest objective (now in WoW and AoC).Maintenance gameplay is actually really important I think to add to the overall severity of what you are doing. It's important to have variety though. For example, I would much rather pick herbs and make consumables than fight monsters and skin them. Oh, and Ashenvale is one of my favorite zones. If you really think about the zone it is divided into about five different distinct areas, most of which provide important elements to Warcraft lore, and even some that don't give elements required for the Horde. If you contrast this to every zone in The Burning Crusade where you have an interesting tile set that is simply repeated over and over and over with nothing truly unique to look at (aka every zone but Hellfire Peninsula and to a lesser extent Blade's Edge Mountains) it is easy to see how the more complicated and larger zones are more interesting in comparison.