Sheep shearer and imp catcher are unironically great quests and infinitely better than “do tob”. For one thing they actually have dialogue and even the iconic “quest complete” interface. Imp catcher even has a cutscene! Imagine that. But lets skip past the extremely obvious and go into the other reasons why they’re good quests.

Imp catcher does two things. The first is that it establishes that imps are annoying little shits who like to steal whatever they can get their hands on. Now maybe this is a common trope in fantasy genres but every universe is different and you have to establish your own “rules” in whatever you make. It gives an otherwise bland and nameless NPC a little bit of character. Killed an imp for a jug of water or an flier for Bobs axes? Hah, typical imps. The second thing this quest does in is give insight into the relationship between Mizgog and Grayzag. Why did imps steal Mizgogs beads? Because Grayzag summoned hundreds of them to mess with him. These aren’t just random NPCs in a tower, they have relationships and rivalries. They are people who live on Gielinor, not some animated polygons who exist to take up space.

What about Sheep Shearer? Well the entire premise is that your character, fresh off tutorial island, needs a job. A simple job to kickstart your adventuring career. This is a roleplaying game after all. So you go to Fred the Farmer gives you a job (and also teaches you about how spinning wheels work). We learn things about Fred. He is a simple dimwitted farmer who is extremely paranoid about a “Thing”. Again, a character who lives in this world. Some mysterious monster. It makes sense that a farmer with no combat training would be terrified of a monster in the world of runescape. Be honest, the first time you did this quest as a kid were you like “damn I better watch out for this ‘thing’”?Because I certainly was. It wasn’t a simple job anymore, I was constantly on the lookout for some sort of monster.

Both of these are cute little quests that do a good job of world building. Not everything has to be a grandmaster quest where you slay a dragon. They both have their place in the game. Also they were made 20+ years ago. The game back then was made by 4 guys in their basement, not a multimillion dollar corporation who records record profits year after year. I’ll give the Gowers a little bit of slack on this one. A night at the theatre does nothing. All we get is a line of dialogue that shows this mysterious dude works for someone who wants to embarrass Verzik. Not kill or injure, just embarrass. So idk, maybe Verzik has a really spiteful ex? This is assuming you didn’t auto complete the quest which is truly the biggest crime. Imagine automatically completing imp catcher because you happened to have four beads in your inventory at some point in your life. At least both quests have funny, fourth-wall-breaking dialogue when you show up with the right items at the start. A quest without a quest complete screen. It doesn’t get any lazier.