Back in the day I used to play a little bit of WoW and recently I started playing Starwars Old Republic with a friend and the only reason I am playing it is for the amazing story and dialogue system. The game play is just painfully bland.
I just sit back in my chair click on a bad guy and just press 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and if my health gets low, 6.
The missions are all the same in every area. Talk to guy A, go to are B, kill 10 of those, collect 20 of that, kill guy C, report back to guy A.
And I think the same thing with my reward of new armour "Are these numbers bigger than my current numbers?" Then off to the next area.
If it wasn't for the story and dialogue I would never play it.

With ESO, If it does anything like what we have already seen, I will cry.

Has there been any info about how the missions will play out at all?

Nope, no info. More than likely though it will be the same as WOW/Skyrim/every RPG with a mission-style quest system ever.

We will probably see some of these, but probably not as many as in a typical MMO.

Just like there are only 6 movie plots, games have the same limitations and similarities between them:

Quests:

http://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/6175/

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/UnSub/022009/3303_Kill-10-Fedex-Princesses-The-10-Basic-Types-of-MMO-Quests

http://word-of-shadow.blogspot.com/2008/05/rpg-quest-types-not-much-variety.html

Plots:

http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/plots.htm

http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html

http://serpent231.tripod.com/cliche.shtml

As you say, it's the writing, the dialog and the story that sets one RPG from another one. The quests are going to follow typical formulas, they have to. But, good writing can disguise this or make it unobtrusive or unnoticeable.

Runescape had the best quests ever, IMO.

AHAHHA! YES! Im not ashamed to admit that too. lol

When you look at everything in plain view take away the story of the books and films even RPG's and what do you get ? The same formula to them all, a love story is still a love story, murder story is still about a murder. Its the characters and the journey between the start to the finish of said piece of media, and how those characters grow.

For me the best MMO missions/quests are in a game called The Secret World. They have riddles, sabotage, kill and puzzle missions. Some will require knowledge of Morse code and painters of the renascence period or of serial killers from the 1800's. Some are just plain old go to location A kill XX amount of creatures and return. But its the way the setting of the game world has been created, you are doing the same things in other mmos but its the way the game world has been created to give the player an illusion that this is all new. It draws you in so you want to know more.

The best mission I had was in a haunted fun fair park, and you had to ride on a roller coaster to the end to find the ghost that was feeding off the dead children's souls.

I am kind of hoping to see something of the same in TESO as I see in TSW where we can find investigation quests or riddles/ puzzles to solve. All bound up in a story set in Tamriel.

Agreed here. Everything from a quest involving one of the hardest boss fights I've ever had the misfortune to do (it costed me millions...) to another that had one of those mirror puzzles similar to Zelda that took quite a few hours to do, and everything in-between.

Ah the nostalgia...

But yeah, in most typical MMO's, you're going to have very similar formatting of quests no matter what; it all depends on how well they disguise it.

Maybe they'll be.
But I don't think that they have to.

Take one of Morrowind's quests for example, you were ordered to go to Vivec and get Wraithguard from him.

Looks like a plain and simple quest:
From starting NPC A go to NPC B.
Do NPC B a favor to get access to NPC C.
Do NPC C a favor to get the item.
Bring the item back to NPC A.

BUT:
You could have simply broken into the room of NPC C, smashed his head and taken the item from his dead body.



Well that's a bit radical, but making quests like the ordinary TES quest would also do the trick:
"Get item X, no matter how."
Steal it, buy it, find it in an old ruin... it's up to you.
"Get rid of person/organisation Y, no matter how."
Kill them, persuade them to leave the country, tell them to hide and lie to your quest giver... your choice.

Same goes for dungeon quests. If you had to recover a certain item from a dungeon or kill a certain person in a dungeon, you could have (a) killed every thing in that dungeon or ( sneak through the dungeon and reach your target unseen.
Maybe you don't know it but there are not many other games where you can choose in such a situation.
In most games it's "kill the 20 NPCs to spawn the boss and afterwards the item will be added to your inventory automatically".

And sorry to say so, but that is what really makes the difference between a RPG and a good RPG.


Now the main reason why we don't see things like small decisions and pacifistic solutions in MMOs is simply because the publishers earn more money the longer it takes you to play through the game. So why should they give you the opportunity to get around a 10 min fight with a 2 sec button click?


Thinking about that I wonder:
Is it even possible to play through 150~200 hours of leveling without being bored of whatever has to be done?

Quite a bit of info, actually. Just from a quick google search, I got this: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/821/feature/7230/Questing-in-the-new-Tamriel.html/page/1, and this: http://www.edge-online.com/features/elder-scrolls-online-what-makes-good-quest/

Aside from the logistics of questing though, I think even the 'collect 10 pelts' deals can be interesting if the gameplay is fun. That is far more crucial than being smart about quest layout, and from the sounds of the OP I think you agree.

I tried the open beta of FF14 recently, and I can totally sympathise. Click enemy, hammer 1, 2 when you're allowed to, and 3 to heal. Repeat ad nauseum. Fall asleep on keyboard.

That's why I'm so on board with ESO. Choosing just 5 skills out of such a huge pool, even for two hotbars, is gonna make me sweat bullets, and of course the active combat will keep me very involved. Heck, even the requirement to just face your opponent is refreshing, never mind having to aim.