In my humble opinion, quests should have an emotional payoff. Cliched quests don't necessarily have to suck, if you can write them in a way that draws in the audience.
The reason I hate 'mmorpg-style' quests is how boring and grindy and non-creative they are. Kill wolves in the forest for wolf meat for some stranger you don't care about. zzzzz. But what if those wolves were attacking a character that the game some time building up some emotional rapport with- and better yet, you have a quest for the hero to save two people in your party you really care about, but you can only save one of them? Now you're adding some interesting layers.
Make things feel at stake. What important is being lost? How are these things fragile-y existing on the vortex of non-existence? Think how your favorite tv shows do it, like Buffy or Xena-type shows, or anything that's based on fantasy magic crap. 'The world' is too general. People don't care about the world, they care about specific things. Their homelands, their own kids, their jobs, the skills they are good at. What is important to people? Relationships, love, meaning, fighting- how are all those things being challenged? Roleplaying adventure games are all about emotions and romance and what makes your heart soar! (But the Western mentality makes them based too much on capitalism or boring math or grinding chores. How utterly BORING.)
'Quest' is a big word. Back in the day, a 'quest' really meant something. I think quests should feel like a quest. So quality is better than quantity. Make maybe 10 really interesting quests with a lot of layers and have them travel to multiple areas to accomplish the quest. And when the quest is over you should feel all epic and mighty and heroic ....like you actually went on a quest. And don't make the outcome too obvious, but if you can execute it properly it won't matter if it's sorta cliche-ish. A good example is to watch the Xena episodes 'Destiny' and 'The Quest': that story to me feels more like an 'rpg quest' done right. (Okay I'm biased but I love Xena lol. I might even make a Xena rpg sometime in the future....)
I respect any writer who can get under my skin and pierce my heart. It's incredible to me. It's something that is beyond the veil of all money.