[kingcj]

I liked the quest, but it was short.

Something you could do is, when you have all your quest materials done, give a tutorial on commonly used quest items. It would give the player some sense of what to do on quests, and you could have the tutorial skip-able so anxious players could move on.
This way when they complain you could honestly say that they could have had a heads up about questing if they took the tutorial.

-EDIT-

Also, the "short-cut" is only one way. Yeah, it cuts running to a quest in half, but then I have to walk all the back around the trees again? Why not place horses around the world, or make it a two way short-cut, or (this may be down the road a bit but) even do a weapon that would summon a horse? This way traveling wouldn't seem like a chore. It isn't like the scenery changes... Just some ideas.