teaching patience

Here and there I read the commentary of others on various quests, and I see various complaints about quests. Things like a quest to "go see this guy in Zangarmarsh" but doesn't say just where in the zone he is; or a quest involving killing a number of a type of mob but there are not enough spawns.

The first type of quest usually results in the player looking up the coords on wowhead or similar .. and the player then whining about travelling all the way over there just to talk to the guy, who then sends you all the way back again. The smarter approach is to just leave it in your quest log and go about your business, knowing with a sure certainty that there are lots of other quests throughout the zone and you'll eventually stumble across the guy.

The “kill 10 rats” style of quests .. many players I know approach these with a one track determination, and often I'm similarly tempted. I need to stop and look at what other quests are in the same place - sometimes I focus on completing the kill count, and then look at another quest I already have and realise I now need to fight (and kill) my way through the exact same type of mob to complete some “pickup a thing” quest.

I can understand the determined approach though: you're a hero, you've got a quest, of course you're going to get stuck in. Completing quests as a by product of going about your daily business just doesn't feel particularly heroic.

What game mechanisms might be brought to play to encourage less single-mindedness?

For example: what if there was some quest involving killing 40 vicious crocodiles .. but there are only 1 or 2 that spawn in an area which you need to travel many, many times in pursuit of other quests. The spawns would need to be randomly distributed across a wide area to make spawn camping futile. The quest hub shouldn't make this quest available until maybe a fedex quest has already been completed across that area - you certainly wouldn't want this quest giver being the first guy you meet as you approach the area.

Another: a twist on the daily quest mechanism in that you keep the one quest the whole time but only one kill per day counts. No one would seriously want to do 40 kills of this type, although 7 kills might be tolerable.

What else?