If the early game had very long quests closer to Crucible (my earlier experiences with Crucible had it around a 90~120 minute quest) right out of the gate, I doubt this game would still be around. The early game is to get you used to the play mechanics of the game. I played SWG, CoH, and SWToR they pretty much had the same talk to everyone in town go into wilderness do a few things come back. DDO has that as well, you see it more in the other areas (the Harbor just has the one quest like that). Plus DDO has walk ups, quest givers next to the quest. So DDO is diverse when it comes to questing and some packs require a lot of walking to get run quests (Sentinels of Stormreach has most of its quest in House D but one that takes you back into the Market and then through Searing Heights to get to it).