Disscussing MMOs Today

There is something that seems to be so heavily ingrained in the current mindset of MMOs I fear it will never be done away with until something comes out that completely changes the way we think about MMO advancement forever. The insane amount of quests in MMOs.
Every MMO I have played post-EQ seemed have quests be the main, and sometimes only, worthwhile way to gain experience and items. EQ2, Guild Wars, Vanguard, WoW, LoTRO. They are so overly saturated with quests it is sickening.

Quests should not be forced upon you. Quests are supposed to rewarding and challenging. A quest that says, "Collect 10 bear pelts and get this trash sword." are neither, but you must do them anyway because it's usually the only way to get experience or get slightly harder, slightly better quests. It would be alright if there were only one or two of these every set of levels, but in most games there can be like 20 per zone.

Having quests being the driving force behind a game also make the game completely linear. The same sets of quests are for everyone, regardless of the class or individual playstyle of the player, based solely on the fact that you can select from a multiple of rewards and the exp gained alone. This makes a boring, straight-forward, "Go to this zone, complete this quest chain, go to next area, complete this quest chain, go to next area, ad infinitum," scenario. Furthermore, with everyone doing the same quests, everyone you meet has the exact same gear. How can you possibly say that is a rewarding experience? Do you want to be like everyone else? Call it elitist, but I find owning a piece of gear and people saying, "Wow, that is awesome, where did you get that?" to be one of the best moments of gaming.

The final beef I have against catch-all quests is the destruction of community, as Fahn has already touched upon. MY VERY FAVORITE aspect of MMOs is community. I love being in groups for hours, talking with other members, making new friends, or exchanging stories. I am quite aware that sometimes there can bad times, but I feel the good far outweigh the bad. In EQ, which had static camps, there was enough time to have some great conversations. The trend of quests have ruined this. Speaking with the experience freshest in my mind, I will use LoTRO as an example. There are many, many quests in that game, most of the better ones requiring a moderately sized group to complete. But people do not look as other group members as companions or possible friends, only as a means to an end. As soon as you have completed the quest, and your use is complete, they can drop you, without so much as a word. I have seen this happen many times, and I always wonder if they don't so much as speak in group, why not just go play a single player dungeon crawler? Without active members there can be no community.

Also echoing Fahn, the one game that I feel has achieved the closest to what I feel as a workable quest system had the least quests of all. Ironically called EverQuest. Who remembers the epic quests? The time poured into them, but the reward from being able to show off your new weapons? Anyone ever played a wisdom caster and got a Testament of Vanear? Sure it took a long time, sure it was based on chance, sure it sometimes seemed mind-numbingly boring. But the gains were worth it by far. This is not just some rose-colored glasses nostalgia sort of thing. Nothing since has given me the feeling that game did, not even close. These quests were few and far between, which made them so much better. You could go through that entire game without ever touching a quest if you wanted to. Some people just didn't want to put in the time required. But if you did, you got such a feeling of satisfaction that cannot be put into words. It wasn't the driving force, is was the extra challenge. It was the reason why.

I fear that we will always be under the shadows of questing. Until we come to a completely new system, something most of us can't even comprehend until it is upon us, I will just have to keep holding on to that future day.

I just wrote this earlier somewhere else and seems appropiate here

Ideally, there shouldn’t be an “endgame”. What I want is a living, breathing virtual world, a sandbox in which to have fun I much prefer the journey more than the goal…I did the raiding thing in EQ, guild officer and eventually leader of one of the top 5 raid guilds on my server pre-PoP. Was way too much like a job PoP basically destroyed that guild with all the keys and such

In so many ways the original EQ had it right….remember logging in for the first time? Wearing rags with a rusty dagger, 3 food, 3 water and a scroll? And a damn orc pawn starts beating on you The original Naggy and Vox really didn’t have quests for them, they were just big ass dragons that we killed for the fun and loot.

Some may disagree but I also miss static camps. You got to know people…. And that worked through all the levels of EQ, from low to high. Used to have the best time killing and bs’ing for hours. I’m still in contact with EQ folks from launch, never met em rl and likely never will but still keep in touch and care about them. I can say that I have never kept in contact for long with anyone from any game since…. You are moving all the time and everything is so quest focused in newer games that you never get to know people really well. And then the fun when suddenly you’ve been there the longest and become group leader, crafting a kick ass group.

Sorry, didn’t mean to write a novel

Originally Posted by Amsra

Sorry, didn’t mean to write a novel

You have a long way to go to take that title!!

haha aye, just look at the few posts before you :P

Anyway, I agree. It's amazing how much EQ got right. I too loved camps, however I am not entirely sure they are necessary, but man that would be great, to have a game that did that again.

As for raid targets, I for one enjoyed the raids, PoP included. Something so empowering about taking down a large target. And I do believe you have to have some sort of endgame, something to accomplish, Dragons to kill and so on. Don't get me wrong, I love Sandbox games, there is one out for free called Wurm online. It's got old EQ style graphics and they are terrible, animations are atrocious, but I have more fun playing it then I do any other MMO out right now. It's very much a sandbox game and I would love to see a large company like 38 take it and fix the graphics and improve upon the combat. It would make a killing.

That being said I agree, Raid mobs don't NEED to have a quest associated with them, just having them as targets with loot is enough. The ability to say, "We took down King Tormax" back in Velious was a proud statement and everyone knew it.

To finish up on Raids, I believe that they should be designed to take a large force, they should not be available every day and basically, should be designed so that maybe 5% of the population ever gets to defeat them, if that, 5% maybe way to large.