What's Wrong with Questing? @ Edge Online

Former Guild Wars writer Jess Lebow, currently with Carbine Studios with Tim Cain, has addressed a GDC audience on the topic of improving quest delivery:

For the first clip, Lebow talked about the quest delivery system in Grand Theft Auto 4 and contrasted it with the traditional MMO quest delivery system of clicking on a NPC and reading a block of text. With GTA4, the cell phone used in the quest delivery system enabled the player to be anywhere and also, fit the world better. Audience members offered suggestions such as delivery owls a la Harry Potter, communicators a la Star Trek, and the Seer Stones in The Lord of the Rings Online.

More information.

Eh? Cell phones? Heck, we've had those in City of Heroes since day one. You have to talk to the NPC at first but, after doing a few missions, you get their phone number and can call them from anywhere outside. City of Villains pushed that even further - most of the contacts there give you their number after the first mission.

Avoiding the 'block of text', even if it's in voice… that's not so easy. Sometimes pictures can take the place of a 1000 words but sometimes you just have to have the words.

In Syberia, the female protagonist uses a cell phone often, too.
Although she gets no quests from this.

Cell phones work perfectly in delivering quests. I have one and get regular quests from my wife over the cell phone. Most of them aren't that deep though. Just the regular 'Fetch this…' and 'Bring this to…' type of quests

So true.

Yeah, I got one of those today; get the gas bottled filled, so the stove will work and then you'll be able to cook dinner!! Wonder how much exp I'll get.