Yeah, Morrowind's quests never felt like chores. I think it might have been the game telling you EXACTLY what to do in Oblivion and Skyrim that made them feel really dull.

Variable conditions to complete quests, variable rewards based on level of completion, timescale of completion and if you can stick some kind of moral or technical deviation somewhere in there then suddenly you have a quest/miniquest that can be done more than once in a lifetime (and sometimes, even in the same gameplay :p).

For example instead of "collect 10 of these" you can have "collect as many as you can before it gets dark!". The reward can vary between something not worth your time for a low number of items collected, to something powerful for a lot. Almost all major RPGs have had this to a degree at some point or another, the Golden Saucer in FF7 is full of things like this.

Another aspect is that miniquests and minigames should normally involve mechanics that aren't used in the rest of the game. They are designed as fillers and breaks from the main game, so why use the exact same mechanic as the rest of it?

"Rather, come up with something that already exists in the game world, and give it a two or threefold purpose and allow the player to experience it. Most games use quests as filler, that offer no real value, just a random task to be optionally fulfilled."

This. Any location that isn't a dramatic story related place that you'll never go back to, all locations should have at least two purposes, and at least one of those should be beyond the point you first encounter it, to increase re playability of that area.

That sounds better for gameplay mechanics, but for realism, I would advise designers NOT to do this for the sake of those who RP or want finding quests to also be a challenge.

I don't think streamlining fetch quests with silly ideas of realism is the answer to adjusting the problem with quests in general. I think the answer is in the narrative and the environment, not the system.

Fetch quests are just a fact of life in RPGs. One thing I like about how Skyrim handles them, though, is that you have a decent chance of finding something interesting if it's a location you've never been to: a skill book or a word wall, for example, depending on the location.

Cause epic quest is epic.

While this may be true in many cases, even WoW is starting to come out of their shell a bit and are creating more story driven quest-lines. But I digress.

We're comparing games we develop to those expedited by AAA developers like Blizzard, and we simply can't do that. The reason behind long and tedious progression is due to it being a subscription based game. Meaning they want you to play it for as long as possible before getting bored, which they've most certainly mastered.

I've made this point several times before, but most games here just won't be subscription based, which kinda makes it completely moot for the progression to be tedious. It's these "Minor MMO's" where the game then has to focus on tying the story into these quests in a believable fashion.

This is a case where if it doesn't quack like a duck, no matter how much it looks like one, no one is going to think it's a duck.

MMO's are predetermined by players to have tedious questing, equipment, stats, ect., and if the game doesn't fit the trope, they become confused and easily turned away. I think this semi-related article sums it up best.

Everyone has this "amazing" and "original" idea about how to change the paradigm of a genre, but unfortunately, they all suck. And what's worse is that these people don't even fully understand the genre they're trying mess with in the first place. That's like trying to redesign an automobile's engine without understanding first how the original engine works.

TL;DR If you read nothing else, at least take this:

Before you try "revolutionizing" the MMO, start by actually developing a traditional MMO first and THEN see what can be improved. I promise you'll understand why your original idea sucks.