Forum:Quest giver/ender categories

I've been wanting to bring this up for awhile now.. After having the quest giver/ender categories tied into the race ones I'm thinking we shouldn't have done this. For example, if I were looking for relatives of a certain person using the categories, I would have to look in three different categories race, race quest givers, and race quest enders... and that's if the Defaultsort tool was used correctly, otherwise it might require even more searching. I think we should go back to just having the category on pages, and maybe use  quest givers instead. It would be more useful to find quest givers based on zone rather than race it seems to me. 21:09, March 12, 2010 (UTC)
 * Found it annoying that not all npcs would appear in the race category too, makes it harder to locate. When I created new npc articles the "common" race category were quickly changed to either quest giver or ender. As long as the  quest givers won't give any problems if the npc sends players to another zone, that would be fine by me. TherasTaneel (talk) 21:17, March 12, 2010 (UTC)

No more comments? Guess I'll start a vote shortly. 22:35, March 15, 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the foregoing. Entries in "(race) questgivers" should appear under "(race) NPCs". I have no real interest in the race of a quest giver, but I could conceivably have one in "zone questgivers". It's likely to be a small enough list that it would not be divided into "alliance" "neutral" and **"horde" (zone) questgivers**. --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 22:14, March 18, 2010 (UTC)


 * And I'm not even sure I want to worry about the NPCs who are just quest enders. Though we could make the category ' quest NPCs' and include the quest givers/enders into it... 22:43, March 18, 2010 (UTC)

I'm thinking:
 * Category:World of Warcraft NPCs
 * Category:Quest givers
 * Category:Quest givers by zone
 * '''Category: quest givers
 * Category:Quest enders
 * Category:Quest enders by zone
 * '''Category: quest enders

OR:
 * Category:World of Warcraft NPCs
 * Category:Quest NPCs ← Merger of Category:Quest givers and Category:Quest enders
 * Category:Quest NPCs by zone
 * '''Category: quest NPCs

-- 05:10, March 19, 2010 (UTC)

How much overlap is there between Quest NPCs and "all NPCs"? In any case, I'd be more for the "quest NPCs" than "quest givers" and "quest enders". I would have to ask for a couple examples where someone would want to look up a "quest ender" specifically, and through a category at that. Question: Would a given quest NPC be in three of these categories, then? WoW NPCs + "quest NPCs by Zone", ... and also (or not?) in "Quest NPCs"? --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 19:56, March 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * I'll use the Wetlands as the example zone.
 * Lets say a holiday quest giver appears in every zone, it would be silly to use a category for every zone right? so they would be placed in Quest NPCs
 * Now a normal quest giver or ender found in Wetlands would get the category Wetlands quest NPCs which would replace Wetlands NPCs.
 * Wetlands quest NPCs — Will have two parent categories Quest NPCs by zone and Wetlands NPCs
 * Quest NPCs by zone — Should only contain categories of zones like Wetlands quest NPCs, Thunder Bluff quest NPCs, and Zangarmarsh quest NPCs
 * The category Quest NPCs will be more or less empty except for the few world NPCs and the category Quest NPCs by zone.


 * I tried to make it simple, but I don't know if in doing so make that explanation more confusing... 20:14, March 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * TL;DR version: A quest starter goes in "(zone) quest NPCs".  "(zone) quest NPCs" goes in "(zone) NPCs" and "quest NPCs by zone".  (Unstated: said quest starter also appears in W.o.W. NPCs)


 * Is there a reason to keep "Quest NPCs by Zone", if we don't differentiate Quest NPCs by race (or other factor)? --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 20:25, March 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * WoW NPCs is a parent of Quest NPCs so no. User:Coobra/Motley Garmason -- Created that example to show what will actually go on the NPCs article. I also created the category chain for the example.
 * Category:World of Warcraft NPCs
 * Category:Quest NPCs
 * Category:Quest NPCs by zone
 * Category:Wetlands quest NPCs


 * Also created User:Coobra/Flame Eater to show an example of what goes in Quest NPCs. -- 20:48, March 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh, I see what you're saying... That Category:Quest NPCs by zone isn't needed since Category:Quest NPCs won't have any categories in it. Hmm, I was just thinking for the future, cause we never know what might be placed into the category... I was just modeling the categories like Mobs by zone, NPCs by zone, and Objects by zone, thought I would continue to process. 22:11, March 19, 2010 (UTC)

I'm starting to think about not caring about quest enders... I'm really not liking the category name  and leaning towards just doing the quest givers as. Some input on this would be lovely.

That would make the category tree change to: 21:33, March 28, 2010 (UTC)
 * Category:World of Warcraft NPCs
 * Category:Quest givers
 * Category:Quest givers by zone — Or just do away with this, and have the individual zone quest giver cats in the quest giver category.
 * Category:Wetlands quest givers


 * In the example you provided, I'd say it would be best to have "Dwarf quest givers" and "Wetlands quest givers". All quest givers in a zone could be categorized like that. But maybe that's just me. -- 21:47, March 28, 2010 (UTC)


 * But my goal to get rid of the quest giver/ender categories and just have the categories. 01:04, March 29, 2010 (UTC)

Since I can't quite sort through that, here's what I have to say: Yes, we shouldn't have done it the way we did. That said, here is what we should have:


 * Category:World of Warcraft NPCs
 * Category:Quest NPCs
 * Category:Quest givers
 * Category:Wetlands quest givers
 * Category:Quest enders
 * Category:Wetlands quest enders
 * Category:Quest NPCs by zone
 * Category:Wetlands quest NPCs
 * Category:Wetlands quest givers
 * Category:Wetlands quest enders

This looks to me like Coobra's first response. That said, this would be solved if we had SMW; then we could just search for the cross of "Category::Wetlands", "Category::NPCs", "Category::Quest enders". Le sigh. :/ --Sky (t · c · w) 06:19, April 4, 2010 (UTC)
 * That looks to me like that might be a good candidate for "Category:Quests by zone", actually.

Given the poll result so far, it's clear no one searches for quest giver/enders by race... As such the category change will start happening... soonish, probably using the latest model, as shown by Sky. 20:40, April 23, 2010 (UTC)

Continuation
Thought: We should move NPCs which are both starters and enders to the more general category of "zone quest NPCs". The same should go for NPCs which don't have the quests listed; I know there will probably be a couple out there which are stubbed, and I just ran into one on my bot account (not actually running as a bot atm). --Sky (t · c) 01:00, June 28, 2010 (UTC)

Another thought: While we're at this, maybe it would be a good idea to move, in general, all NPCs that we would otherwise find in game to "Category: NPCs" rather than the more general cat of Humans. That should uncrowd "humans" substantially to be both a parent category and to be a category for humans which aren't NPCs. We could even classify the mobs as well. Obviously, we'd only need to do this for the larger categories... Hmm... --Sky (t · c) 01:07, June 28, 2010 (UTC)


 * Hmm, I think splitting the quest givers into two different categories based on if they also end quests might get a little confusing and would probably be best just to keep them together, as their categories will be relatively small as is. As for splitting the racial categories, I personally would like to keep them together. It was my main reason for wanting to merge all the quest giver/ender racial categories back into their main category. 03:21, June 28, 2010 (UTC)


 * Guess I'm leaning towards the single "quest NPCs" category over separate "givers" and "enders" categories myself. --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 17:19, June 28, 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh, I remembered what I thought would be more useful than knowing "quest giver" or quest ender: The side that the given quest NPC is on: whether he is for neutral, alliance, or horde quests. We should be subcatting first using the affiliation, rather than by whether the NPC is a giver or an ender.


 * Eg
 * Category:World of Warcraft NPCs
 * Category:Quest NPCs
 * Category:Neutral quest NPCs
 * Category:Wetlands neutral quest NPCs (or possibly Category:Neutral quest NPCs in Wetlands)
 * Category:Horde quest NPCs
 * Category:Wetlands Horde quest NPCs (or possibly Category:Horde quest NPCs in Wetlands)
 * Category:Alliance quest NPCs
 * Category:Wetlands Alliance quest NPCs (or possibly Category:Alliance quest NPCs in Wetlands)
 * Category:Quest NPCs by zone
 * Category:Wetlands quest NPCs


 * Not sure of the naming myself, but this is a more useful subdivision in my mind. We can add in the layer of quest givers if necessary, but that should come after we've separated by the above. --Sky (t · c) 17:35, June 28, 2010 (UTC)


 * Hmm, that could be better... 18:56, June 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * Hmm, I've decided I don't like it... the whole point of these projects was to condense the quest givers and quest enders categories. And currently not only is it going back to the way it was, it is now making things more complicated with the quest NPCs categories...


 * I say we just get rid of those, go back to just the NPCs categories and split off the quest givers/enders by faction instead.
 * Category:Alliance quest givers
 * Category:Horde quest givers
 * Category:Neutral quest givers
 * - 14:24, July 6, 2010 (UTC)

It's not actually, it's  (I hope you weren't interpreting it as  ). This is far more useful than knowing the general "Alliance quest givers", until such time as we have SMW or such&hellip; When we have that, I can agree that having your scheme would be far more useful. Go poke Wikia about it or something. :P --Sky (t · c) 18:01, July 6, 2010 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by 'condensed'?


 * Hmmm..mmm I say we go back to  quest givers,  quest enders, and  quest givers. 02:49, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

Off topic comment
I knew I shouldn't have put that last option there on the poll lol. 04:58, April 20, 2010 (UTC)


 * It's not entirely unreasonable - in all honesty most of the time I just run through the entire world looking for ! marks, or would use a map with locations marked on. I suppose the second version matches more closely with "by zone", but it's not a category list. (And yeah, it's never a good idea to put a "silly" answer on a poll, because it'll mess with getting any useful results). 10:52, April 20, 2010 (UTC)


 * I suppose (as one of the "silly" responders) I should explain that I chose that answer basically to say that I don't search for NPCs using categories. I guess I didn't really understand the question. Is it about looking for the NPCs in-game? Or looking for the article? Looking for a specific NPC? -- Harveydrone 19:15, April 20, 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, it's not a matter of searching for quest givers, but a matter of keeping races together and not on 3 different categories, if one was looking for a specific say.. Dwarf. Instead of looking for that dwarf (or that dwarf's family members) in Category:Dwarves, "Category:Dwarf quest givers", and "Category:Dwarf quest enders" you would only have to look in Category:Dwarves... because of the 'quest givers/enders' would be zone related instead. 21:40, April 20, 2010 (UTC)
 * In that case my answer holds: I don't look for quest givers (or NPCs in general) in categories; I search by name using one of the navigation search links. If that were another choice then that would be my vote, though it might not inform the discussion topic. -- Harveydrone 20:35, April 23, 2010 (UTC)