Good article.. and sometimes us MMO players need to be reminded that every bit of 'adventure' we are experiencing was built by someone else... using whatever tools they had.
The 'mystery' of any MMO quests is usually gone within the first week or so... go to the forums, get the walkthrough. Single player games or MMO's.. makes no difference.. odds are someone else has figured it out and like a Magician who shows you his secrets... you end up disappointed and your adventure is diminished.
Sandbox is really hoping other players will give you an adventure. You have some tools the devs make.. an environment.. but the 'storytelling' is usually just roleplay and the exchange of goods or combat. The process of Sandbox 'adventure' is not much different than Questing 'adventure'... its still some other human being (or a humun being who created code to create random adventures) that your hoping will be fun to play.
Most end-game content involved Player vs Player because its the simplest form of adventure... other players are smarter than game NPC AI... they use their tools more effectively... they counter your tactics.. they learn.. whereas NPC's never really learn (without a patch).
Again, PvP is about some other player being your content.. your adventure. How ironic that all the anti-social communication (smack-talking and insults and 'I hate yous') are being directed towards the people who, if they did not log in, you couldn't have your 'combat' adventure with. No enemy in PvP = No combat adventure. So... trash talk away... till you find yourself alone... bored to tears... with nothing else to do.
But I digress...
Every adventure depends on two parites:
1. YOU logging into your character and interacting with someone/something else.
2. Someone else (player or pay-by-the-hour developer) scripting and interaction back with your character.
Now there are vairous 'qualities' of interaction. Some are more involved.. some are quick and dirty.. some are just plain poorly made. Every interaction requires the tools to allow it to happen and some involve elaborate scripts and 'chain of events' to bring you to the end.
But ultimately, MMO content is supposed to be 'limitless'... but the hard & cold fact is that it is very much limited based on how much other people are willing to contribute... players or devs.. and if they still find it FUN (or profitable) to do that.
It can take months for a dev to create scripted content and new game tools/systems to support that content. It usually takes players less than a week to master that content and then line up on the forums demanding more.
Lets be a bit more realistic. The fun parts of MMO's is usually not the background story or getting some item that is out-dated in a year anyway.. its hanging around with other players and interacting with them.. being social.. sharing a common experience for the sake of entertainment and to express ourselves as we cannot often do in 'real life'.
A good game recognizes that its really just a tool a community of niche-interest players want to use to interact with each other. Pre-written scripted quests are just another tool to encourage that community to interact.. have fun.. and keep paying their salaries.
A quest-less MMO predating WoW is A Tale In The Desert. You try and build a community and gaining technological achievements. Though it has its own grind in gathering resources to make items and buildings it is something completely different.
And this Saturday a new shard will open. Before a tale ends when people have passed a lot of tests, with a new one to start again so you can start from scratch - which is at times quite nice. As a test a new shard is started before the other tale has ended. This gives newcomers a chance to build their own part in the world (though when you join later in a tale, you can often join a guild which has lots of buildings for your use). ATITD has a 24 hour playtime trial (can be spread out over at least a few weeks).
My attitude on quests is that if you're going to have them, make them simple to use. In the Internet age, a mystery only exists until someone posts a spoiler ... then most people just follow the walkthrough. If people are going to give up and google for spoilers to keep up with the powergamers anyway, you might as well let them get the walkthrough in-game.
Even in the UO father christmas picture, the "quest" to make that happen was still composed of the same get/find verbs - it's just that the players decided the objective and the reward was simply the screenshot. It was like being given a big box of random lego bricks instead of being given a set to build with step-by-step instructions.
( personally I like to see quests as either repeatable minigames or as mods to how the world reacts to your character - I like story quests, but I see them as single-player game content rather than MMO world content)
I always thought the title Everquest was ironic. I played that game for several years when it was essentially the only game in town and actual questing wasn't something I did a lot of. The epic quests were great though and I always enjoy long quest lines that have a truly rewarding reward at the end of the chain as opposed to the simple kill 10 x or gather 15 y where you get magic pants.
A quest, IMHO, is supposed to be something epic, or close to it. It's supposed to be hard and arduous. It's supposed to mean something and be memorable. Fine, have a few cheapies for tutorial purposes. Or not.
But I think the OP misses the point really. Whether XP is driven by quests or kills or escorts or whatever, the generating factor is the XP grind. That is the modus operandi of main stream MMOs. If you want something different, get rid of XP. Get rid of levels.
I might add that the XP for questing in EQ was minimal. Nobody quested for experience in the old days. In WoW that is turned on its head. But as I say, in the long view it doesn't matter - the driver is the grind, not the details.
Exactly. The real culprit is the concept of XP. The 'quest grind' of today exists because it is a much better than the old 'mob XP grind'. If you get rid of quests without addressing the problem of XP tehn you are just back to the old 'gruind mobs for XP' issue and a worse game. You have to step away from the XP concept entirely and defien progression in a new way and then quests can be made epic again and the game can remain fun.
I would say the issue does not lies in the quests themselves but the "need" to be leveled as fast as possible.
If you would remove levels in MMO people wouldn't need to rush through quest to access the largest pool of players, they would take the time to enjoy them.
With levels in MMO you can only play with characters of your level range. Now comes the issue not everyone levels as fast or slow as the other and what to do with friends joining the game later?
The levels while being a good way for players to feel a progression, makes them all grind up to the cap so they can group and "start" enjoying the content together. Funny MMO are supposed to promote group play but levels are one of its biggest issue.
I would say the issue does not lies in the quests themselves but the "need" to be leveled as fast as possible.
If you would remove levels in MMO people wouldn't need to rush through quest to access the largest pool of players, they would take the time to enjoy them. With levels in MMO you can only play with characters of your level range. Now comes the issue not everyone levels as fast or slow as the other and what to do with friends joining the game later?
The levels while being a good way for players to feel a progression, makes them all grind up to the cap so they can group and "start" enjoying the content together. Funny MMO are supposed to promote group play but levels are one of its biggest issue.
I agree with this whole "need" that these players have and I use levels very loosely in terms of character progression. If less emphasis was placed on progression, maybe players will pay attention to other aspects of an MMORPG if placed enough emphasis such as crafting, exploring etc. Games like EVE and pre-NGE SWG are considered revolutionary because of lack of "levels" and a linear progression because people are on there doing whatever the hell they want.
Give people more options, open it up and make the game less about character stats. Not only is this linear form of progression (and the repetitive nature of it) is killing the MMO experience, its also turns communities horrible and selfish. It seems like companies that emphasize community (or at least take it into consideration) are the ones that are pulling ahead in the long run. Just compare WoW with very little attention made to community and its development to something like EVE which would sit on the other extreme where they make it a point to constantly include features to encourage community building.
Community isn't everything but it can have a heavy influence on a person's gaming experience, good and bad.
I am an honest to goodness quest junkie. I love a deep storyline fed though quest, I love chasing clues and I love the way an exp bar moves with the nice chunk of exp that turning in a quest gives. I'm also the kind of player that pays for a game and develops a sense of loyalty to it if my game play can go on keeping me motivated and that means lots of quest.
I know there are a lot of people on forums who bad mouth the questing part of games but I like to call them descendants of the cheat generation. The next phase of the paid for power level me bunch that I remember from old EQ back in the day. That Shadowknight who didn't know what his spells did cause he bought the account on ebay and would train half of the Plane of Nightmare on the entire group and the one at the next camp. The begger who couldnt be bothered to kill a few things to buy their spells or that annoying halfling that jumped up and down in your face trying to annoy you into helping him quest and buffing him just to make him go away.
Just the other day in WoW a newer guildy said after being drug though half the dungeons in Azoroth and finally making it to 80, "and now the real game begins!" I thought to my self do some of these people really want to just log in and pick a premade 80 and do dungeons and loot? Unfortunately I know the answer is yes, I played the public test realms for a while and the spamming for pre-mades was horrible. It doesnt say much for that popular type of gamer and any integrity they might have but its got to the point where people look at you strange if you actually want to play the base of the game.
And yet again there are always a bunch of love the new newbie zones of the next xpac. They make excuses these days cause its not popular to say it. I just wanted to see what it was like, or I want one of every class, ect .. ect. The truth is that questing plays heavily on the natural human instinct the drives us to improve our selves. I know its not the only way to get that in a game but personally I would rather be rewarded for a task well done than endlessly watch plate and chain wears roll need on cloth when they think nobody is looking. I would rather quest and discover any day than run around in a decorated shell zone for pvp rotating though death - grave yard - run to fight - death .... I mean seriously battleground players do know that they are running around in circles yes? Ok maybe the grave yard campers are not.
Maybe I'm too old school I don't know, maybe I'm a dreamer, but I love the emmersive feel of a fantasy world that beckons to be discovered and an intriguing story that has me champion its cause in a quest series. Don't get me wrong I think a good dungeon run is great fun when the group are decent folk with a sense of humor. With out the quest though I kind of feel like I might as well be shooting ducks on a window sill.
Call me a fool but there was a time when gamers like me were many.
Great article once more, I so agree. I've been for years on UO freeshards scripting and plain "providing background life/interaction". I remember once when I was still a player only, the Shard I just tested was totally devoid of people.
But they had a massive repertoire of lines and keywords scripted for the many NPC available. So I walked around and chatted with those. Plain stupid? Maybe, but the "conversations" that came up were funny as hell for several hours ... Than I walked into a building and suddenly I got an environmental message telling me suddenly a cold gush of air sweeps past. I was immediatelly on my toes trying to figure out what had happened. Did I step on something? Did I move something? Was it just a wind blow and random? The whole shard was so stuffed with environmental effects and possibilities to interact with things that suddenly I behaved like I do in a "real world": anything seemed possible, I was plain playing around trying to understand what the rules are.
And that is something I believe most designer overlook when they try to do quest-free worlds: there needs to be "content" in those worlds. But this type of content is not premade "do A for B because I tell you so" but instead a myriad of ways you can interact with the world. Which means you need to design and program your MMO from a totally different angle: every piece of it needs to be measurable targetable. UO managed this with the map-piece and static-piece system. Nothing was pre-rendered, it is literally a patchwork of things and you just have a file telling you at what spot what "things" (!) are. UO you "render" realtime.
I'm fascinated by tries by a small team of UO enthusiasts to make a true UO 3D - but keeping exactly this design. If someone wants to check, it is called UO Iris (2) and back than, years ago when they started I was part of that too - when I still pretended to be a guy as times back than for girls in that scripter/coder scene was tough lol. Meanwhile they've progressed a lot and it starts to look pretty good when you consider them amateurs.
I see the same problem in MO beta, they have the wish to resurrect UO but in a 3D environment but ... it doesn't seem they understood that the INTERACTABILITY is what drives a quest free MMO. No more worlds that are a pretty background for the "content" but the "background" being the content itself. People and objects, map pieces, water, trees etc. THIS is important. And technically challenging of course.
That is what AtitD relies on too, even though I'm not fond of the time limited thing, let people shape a community and produce content and than wipe it is not what I see as reasonable game design. But it uses the world as the content node and that makes it viable. In Irth Online (the developer actually being former UO server emulator devs, I've followed their stuff for years) tried the same, set up a client in 3D that is using the UO tiling-to-make-it-targetable system which allows interaction with the world. Unfortunatelly they had too little technical experience and founding in my opinion to make it polished enough and sustain through the rough release phase. And it takes longer to attract and grow a community that is bound by self-generated content so to say.
I've a simple story to make clear what I mean with that. When I was on an UO freeshard years ago with extremly strict and flat advancement (this is about roleplay stupid, no skills needed for that) pretty much nobody was online. It was plain too boring even with extemly intricate systems for EVERYTHING one could come up with. Before you say "how stupid, I knew that doesn't work" wait a minute. I'm a chatter box when it comes to playing, I enjoy talking with people and interacting with them, numeric advancement is a secondary or even tertiary thing to me. That makes me perfect for those worlds as ... content provider. Basically the owners of the shard learned pretty soon (one could see on the server status page who is online) that when I logged in ... others logged in too. Other players came to my farm to just talk with me or let me tell them the latest gossip or watch me do my stuff. They did their own (game engine defined) jobs, brought me ressources, gifts, whatever - and we all enjoyed it. When I was not logging in, pretty much nobody was showing up online. Does that mean I'm awesome? No, it is the basic problem of "reward" that makes a game attractive. We play because we like being rewarded, games reward more easy than work does.
Now what lacks tremendously in my opinion in most MMO designs is the understanding that besides "direct rewards" in numbers, advancement etc. which people provide by quests and top-bottom defined game mechanics, there are very strong "indirect" rewards too. Like crafting something for someone who is HAPPY about it. It is not about the crafting and maybe the skill or xp advancement that comes with it. It is about making someone HAPPY. Or chatting with someone, learning some rumors, some tale, whatever. Those things - as Scott is totally correct - are badly done by machines but some (!) people are very good in this. And the human component as a content provider is very lacking in current game designs. Basically we are stuck with two problems: making a world that someone can interact with (world does NOT mean mobs) is technically very challenging. Populating it with people who DO interact with it and provide content means you need to attract those people first hand and this takes time. I'm totally convinced that EVE is relying on this concept and needed a crucial time to grow its population to be an "organic" content provider. And SWG was designed from scratch to be a MMO like this but when the organic parts (taverns for example, I just followed the forums on this) were removed in this "more top to bottom" revamp they killed the auditory which had been attracted by those game design specifics.
Edit: On a side note ... I don't believe that quests are better as content provider as people prefer that. Nobody reads books or watchs movies because at the entry they are told "the heroe will have to fullfill the task x and than he gets xyz". We do that because we want to know WHAT HAPPENS. Quests are completely contradiction to this, they tell you in advance what will happen. Intricate quests mask this a bit but still ... the outcome is the same, you perform a defined job and you know that thousands do the same and will. Random loot is basically only a try to overcome the predictedness of this gameplay system. Social/indirect reward systems though we are plain born into in daily life. We are all accustomed to them and don't need to re-learn enjoying those. So I believe that works with a lot of people, it just needs to offer enough broadness of options to just do something. Once the world behaves "world" like enough you switch back from your standard "I need content provided by the game as quests" thinking into "ok, now I'll make this my world, put my stamp on it".
Example: I'll never forget the times of Dark and Light beta, they had a physics engine like thing and those gliders. Spent hours flying around, exploring, just to see what is there and ... can I make it over this mountain? Now DnL had no quests too. Unfortunatelly except killing mobs and gliding there was little to do. One day I attacked a Dodo and well ... it was clearly stronger. So I started running away. As a seasoned MMO player I'm aware of the server border limit (several servers are calculating/simulating the whole, each a piece, once you reach the border of this chunk you can get over it but mobs usually don't as that eats traffic ressources between the single servers which is very limited). Basically that system makes the mob turn around and not follow you all the time at least at the chunk border if not earlier. So one "exploits" the system to run to a server chunk border and is than save, the mob turns around. Not so in DnL ... I have no clue how long I did ran but oh my god it was faaaaaaaaaar. And the Dodo behind me all the time. It started to become old but dying wasn't funny in DnL so I needed a solution. That was when I stopped playing a top-bottom game but thought about a way out. I decided to run up a hill - which due to the physics made me slower and the Dodo hit me a few times - than jumped from a small cliff with my glider. Dodos can not fly. The Dodo stood there, I was all "YEAH!" - and died. Why? Because I had forgotten that the physics causes updrafts on cliffs above land than this wind just caught me and smashed me right next to the Dodo against the cliff. Why do I tell this? Because that experience was so unbelievable, it brought me out of the "box works like this" thinking. I started to think about DnL as a world and what else I could do, not as a game. And I started trying a lot of weird things to see if I can interact with this and in case of physics it should happen that ... It did not, I had seen all the world interactability that existed. Which brought me back to boredom. But just the idea that there could be so much more added a lot of fun. Something similar happened to me with some of the more recent EQ2 event quests. They added effects like falling asleep and waking up somewhere else dreary, blocks that stomp from the roof on you and make you tiny, traps from the bottom you need to avoid or disable or they will hurt you - those things add new dimensions to the whole thing suddenly. I'm now walking around in dungeons watching the roof and floor more carefully. The "map" has become more than a scenery like in a theater that plain looks good but something that interacts with me and vice versa. That is what most MMOs lack in my opinion. Trees, buildings, lakes, it is all just there to look nice but apart from that is has no function. So quests are all the variety you can have.
Played: Pretty much any fantasy MMO, some did not even make it to release ... Favorites: UO, EQ2, Vanguard, Wurm Online, Salem, ESO, Creativerse Playing: ESO, Creativerse, Guild Wars 2 Anticipating: (sigh) ... maybe Ashes of Creation
Back in the olden days of Wow (when we walked uphill in the snow, both ways), the most riveting quest for me was one called "The Missing Diplomat" where you discovered the King of Stormwind had been abducted. It had 17 steps of travel, killing, being a spy, beating up a lowlife, talking with those in the highest echelons of power and at the end of all those hours of immersive and highly engaging gameplay, it left you hanging. WTF? Everyone complained about how frustrating it was!
But 3.5 years later, that quest is still riveting precisely because it left me hanging. I remember it fondly even though it was resolved by a later quest chain that seemed to have kind of an afterthought and cheesy explanation.
An associated and very memorable quest chain was the attunement to Onyxia (raid boss), which had (I think) 28 separate steps to complete. Since Onyxia is now retuned for the level cap and no attunement is required, most pieces of the quest chain were removed.
So much lore there, it really does make me sad. It was a very immersive and engaging story.
joking aside i find it ironic all these how to make a MMO colums recently when i'm writing a book about well...being characters in a MMO (think .Hack, lots of meta-game lingo flying around as you save the world)
I agree with some of the comments on the first page. I want an mmo with like five huge, excellent, addictive quest-lines than hundreds of bad quests. To me its like the bad push saying, 5 perfect push-ups are better than 20 bad push-ups.Plus, I want mmo's to be more realistic.
[...] Just the other day in WoW a newer guildy said after being drug though half the dungeons in Azoroth and finally making it to 80, "and now the real game begins!" I thought to my self do some of these people really want to just log in and pick a premade 80 and do dungeons and loot? Unfortunately I know the answer is yes, I played the public test realms for a while and the spamming for pre-mades was horrible. It doesnt say much for that popular type of gamer and any integrity they might have but its got to the point where people look at you strange if you actually want to play the base of the game. [...]
This here is another reason why MMORPGs suck of late. With open PTRs, you allow, and encourage to an extent, players to dive into unfinished content. When said content is released, it's already old news to some. You allow the gamer to ruin things for themselves.
Additionally, not everyone goes to PTRs. They don't have the time, computer can't handle rough programming, no interest etc. Now what you have is a cultural divide in your playerbase, further contributing to the suckiness of things.
PTRs are necessary, absolutely. But it should be a random, selective thing used as the *tool* it was intended to be, not as a 'rich get richer' (knowledge) opportunity.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc. We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be. So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away. - MMO_Doubter
I like the old Darkfall deal, where if you had enough faction with NPCs they'd offer you a job or tell you who might need help. That was simple, effective and often led to tales of nearby adventuring spots. Plus you had the big story quest(s? I forget now if there was more than 1) and the ones I remember were doozies, way outclassing what Bethesda put out later in Morrowind/Oblivion.
I always thought the title Everquest was ironic. I played that game for several years when it was essentially the only game in town and actual questing wasn't something I did a lot of. The epic quests were great though and I always enjoy long quest lines that have a truly rewarding reward at the end of the chain as opposed to the simple kill 10 x or gather 15 y where you get magic pants.
A quest, IMHO, is supposed to be something epic, or close to it. It's supposed to be hard and arduous. It's supposed to mean something and be memorable. Fine, have a few cheapies for tutorial purposes. Or not.
But I think the OP misses the point really. Whether XP is driven by quests or kills or escorts or whatever, the generating factor is the XP grind. That is the modus operandi of main stream MMOs. If you want something different, get rid of XP. Get rid of levels.
I might add that the XP for questing in EQ was minimal. Nobody quested for experience in the old days. In WoW that is turned on its head. But as I say, in the long view it doesn't matter - the driver is the grind, not the details.
Exactly. The real culprit is the concept of XP. The 'quest grind' of today exists because it is a much better than the old 'mob XP grind'. If you get rid of quests without addressing the problem of XP tehn you are just back to the old 'gruind mobs for XP' issue and a worse game. You have to step away from the XP concept entirely and defien progression in a new way and then quests can be made epic again and the game can remain fun.
I'd say the real problem is developers defining every friggin' thing you do as a "quest". You're absolutely right - a quest is supposed to be an adventure. Most of what is labeled quest nowadays is menial labor for loot and xps. And you prolly shouldn't even get XPs for make-work like that Character growth is supposed to be reflected by XPs earned. How does returning 10 rat tails to someone grow my character in strength, wisdom, intelligence, dexterity, constitution, or charisma?
Actually, I'd think doing that would result in a negative to charisma lol.
The fact is that WOW has the abilty to create huge varieties of quests. They can fly - use diffrent mounts - veicles - in other word do billion diffrent quests that are never the same. No other game can do that atm (maybe Vanguard but since its in maintanance mode we all know it wont happen. MMO games have evolved. Unless these games do MASSIVE variety in diffrent ways of actually doing self driven content (wich no games do now adays) then its a childish dream to think Ultima days will ever come back. BTW - Somehow I think the writer forgot to realise that EVE is probably the only game in today markets that still is 100% playable without doing any predefined questing.
I don't think an MMO should have self-driven content; not really. When I think of an MMO, I think of a group of developers actively behind the scenes coming up with actions and events to keep the game alive and moving forward. A team that listens to the player-base and develops content that takes into account their wishes (while still maintaining vision and personal flavors), I think, will be more successful in the long run. Of course, this route also runs with more risk; unhappy players being the key risk here.
Now, in regards to player-driven content, I think room should be given for players to have a controlled impact, something that can lend itself to developers creating more content in the long run.
That makes me think of Kingdom of Loathing. There is generally only one story quest per player level but there are various side-quests that you can choose to take if you so desire. Each quest is expected to take you until the next level to finish and the level 11 and 12 quests often take upwards of two levels each to complete (at least for newbies and low-skill characters in Hardcore).
Compared to something like Guild Wars, KoL barely has any quests at all but they are all designed to be fairly epic. The really cool thing is that the developers hang out on the forums and have a weekly Q&A Internet radio show. This constant dev-player interaction lets Asymetric crank out new content and UI tweaks that they know the players will like because the players have asked for them.
Granted, KoL is a browser-based game starring stick-figures so their handful of developers (except CDMoyer who focuses on improving the UI) can focus all of their efforts on new content since they don't have to worry about constantly coming up with new art, classes, races, etc.
Comments
Good article.. and sometimes us MMO players need to be reminded that every bit of 'adventure' we are experiencing was built by someone else... using whatever tools they had.
The 'mystery' of any MMO quests is usually gone within the first week or so... go to the forums, get the walkthrough. Single player games or MMO's.. makes no difference.. odds are someone else has figured it out and like a Magician who shows you his secrets... you end up disappointed and your adventure is diminished.
Sandbox is really hoping other players will give you an adventure. You have some tools the devs make.. an environment.. but the 'storytelling' is usually just roleplay and the exchange of goods or combat. The process of Sandbox 'adventure' is not much different than Questing 'adventure'... its still some other human being (or a humun being who created code to create random adventures) that your hoping will be fun to play.
Most end-game content involved Player vs Player because its the simplest form of adventure... other players are smarter than game NPC AI... they use their tools more effectively... they counter your tactics.. they learn.. whereas NPC's never really learn (without a patch).
Again, PvP is about some other player being your content.. your adventure. How ironic that all the anti-social communication (smack-talking and insults and 'I hate yous') are being directed towards the people who, if they did not log in, you couldn't have your 'combat' adventure with. No enemy in PvP = No combat adventure. So... trash talk away... till you find yourself alone... bored to tears... with nothing else to do.
But I digress...
Every adventure depends on two parites:
1. YOU logging into your character and interacting with someone/something else.
2. Someone else (player or pay-by-the-hour developer) scripting and interaction back with your character.
Now there are vairous 'qualities' of interaction. Some are more involved.. some are quick and dirty.. some are just plain poorly made. Every interaction requires the tools to allow it to happen and some involve elaborate scripts and 'chain of events' to bring you to the end.
But ultimately, MMO content is supposed to be 'limitless'... but the hard & cold fact is that it is very much limited based on how much other people are willing to contribute... players or devs.. and if they still find it FUN (or profitable) to do that.
It can take months for a dev to create scripted content and new game tools/systems to support that content. It usually takes players less than a week to master that content and then line up on the forums demanding more.
Lets be a bit more realistic. The fun parts of MMO's is usually not the background story or getting some item that is out-dated in a year anyway.. its hanging around with other players and interacting with them.. being social.. sharing a common experience for the sake of entertainment and to express ourselves as we cannot often do in 'real life'.
A good game recognizes that its really just a tool a community of niche-interest players want to use to interact with each other. Pre-written scripted quests are just another tool to encourage that community to interact.. have fun.. and keep paying their salaries.
SWG/STO/(SWTOR)
A quest-less MMO predating WoW is A Tale In The Desert. You try and build a community and gaining technological achievements. Though it has its own grind in gathering resources to make items and buildings it is something completely different.
And this Saturday a new shard will open. Before a tale ends when people have passed a lot of tests, with a new one to start again so you can start from scratch - which is at times quite nice. As a test a new shard is started before the other tale has ended. This gives newcomers a chance to build their own part in the world (though when you join later in a tale, you can often join a guild which has lots of buildings for your use). ATITD has a 24 hour playtime trial (can be spread out over at least a few weeks).
My attitude on quests is that if you're going to have them, make them simple to use. In the Internet age, a mystery only exists until someone posts a spoiler ... then most people just follow the walkthrough. If people are going to give up and google for spoilers to keep up with the powergamers anyway, you might as well let them get the walkthrough in-game.
Even in the UO father christmas picture, the "quest" to make that happen was still composed of the same get/find verbs - it's just that the players decided the objective and the reward was simply the screenshot. It was like being given a big box of random lego bricks instead of being given a set to build with step-by-step instructions.
( personally I like to see quests as either repeatable minigames or as mods to how the world reacts to your character - I like story quests, but I see them as single-player game content rather than MMO world content)
A quest, IMHO, is supposed to be something epic, or close to it. It's supposed to be hard and arduous. It's supposed to mean something and be memorable. Fine, have a few cheapies for tutorial purposes. Or not.
But I think the OP misses the point really. Whether XP is driven by quests or kills or escorts or whatever, the generating factor is the XP grind. That is the modus operandi of main stream MMOs. If you want something different, get rid of XP. Get rid of levels.
I might add that the XP for questing in EQ was minimal. Nobody quested for experience in the old days. In WoW that is turned on its head. But as I say, in the long view it doesn't matter - the driver is the grind, not the details.
Exactly. The real culprit is the concept of XP. The 'quest grind' of today exists because it is a much better than the old 'mob XP grind'. If you get rid of quests without addressing the problem of XP tehn you are just back to the old 'gruind mobs for XP' issue and a worse game. You have to step away from the XP concept entirely and defien progression in a new way and then quests can be made epic again and the game can remain fun.
Good read.
I would say the issue does not lies in the quests themselves but the "need" to be leveled as fast as possible.
If you would remove levels in MMO people wouldn't need to rush through quest to access the largest pool of players, they would take the time to enjoy them.
With levels in MMO you can only play with characters of your level range. Now comes the issue not everyone levels as fast or slow as the other and what to do with friends joining the game later?
The levels while being a good way for players to feel a progression, makes them all grind up to the cap so they can group and "start" enjoying the content together. Funny MMO are supposed to promote group play but levels are one of its biggest issue.
I agree with this whole "need" that these players have and I use levels very loosely in terms of character progression. If less emphasis was placed on progression, maybe players will pay attention to other aspects of an MMORPG if placed enough emphasis such as crafting, exploring etc. Games like EVE and pre-NGE SWG are considered revolutionary because of lack of "levels" and a linear progression because people are on there doing whatever the hell they want.
Give people more options, open it up and make the game less about character stats. Not only is this linear form of progression (and the repetitive nature of it) is killing the MMO experience, its also turns communities horrible and selfish. It seems like companies that emphasize community (or at least take it into consideration) are the ones that are pulling ahead in the long run. Just compare WoW with very little attention made to community and its development to something like EVE which would sit on the other extreme where they make it a point to constantly include features to encourage community building.
Community isn't everything but it can have a heavy influence on a person's gaming experience, good and bad.
I am an honest to goodness quest junkie. I love a deep storyline fed though quest, I love chasing clues and I love the way an exp bar moves with the nice chunk of exp that turning in a quest gives. I'm also the kind of player that pays for a game and develops a sense of loyalty to it if my game play can go on keeping me motivated and that means lots of quest.
I know there are a lot of people on forums who bad mouth the questing part of games but I like to call them descendants of the cheat generation. The next phase of the paid for power level me bunch that I remember from old EQ back in the day. That Shadowknight who didn't know what his spells did cause he bought the account on ebay and would train half of the Plane of Nightmare on the entire group and the one at the next camp. The begger who couldnt be bothered to kill a few things to buy their spells or that annoying halfling that jumped up and down in your face trying to annoy you into helping him quest and buffing him just to make him go away.
Just the other day in WoW a newer guildy said after being drug though half the dungeons in Azoroth and finally making it to 80, "and now the real game begins!" I thought to my self do some of these people really want to just log in and pick a premade 80 and do dungeons and loot? Unfortunately I know the answer is yes, I played the public test realms for a while and the spamming for pre-mades was horrible. It doesnt say much for that popular type of gamer and any integrity they might have but its got to the point where people look at you strange if you actually want to play the base of the game.
And yet again there are always a bunch of love the new newbie zones of the next xpac. They make excuses these days cause its not popular to say it. I just wanted to see what it was like, or I want one of every class, ect .. ect. The truth is that questing plays heavily on the natural human instinct the drives us to improve our selves. I know its not the only way to get that in a game but personally I would rather be rewarded for a task well done than endlessly watch plate and chain wears roll need on cloth when they think nobody is looking. I would rather quest and discover any day than run around in a decorated shell zone for pvp rotating though death - grave yard - run to fight - death .... I mean seriously battleground players do know that they are running around in circles yes? Ok maybe the grave yard campers are not.
Maybe I'm too old school I don't know, maybe I'm a dreamer, but I love the emmersive feel of a fantasy world that beckons to be discovered and an intriguing story that has me champion its cause in a quest series. Don't get me wrong I think a good dungeon run is great fun when the group are decent folk with a sense of humor. With out the quest though I kind of feel like I might as well be shooting ducks on a window sill.
Call me a fool but there was a time when gamers like me were many.
Great article once more, I so agree. I've been for years on UO freeshards scripting and plain "providing background life/interaction". I remember once when I was still a player only, the Shard I just tested was totally devoid of people.
But they had a massive repertoire of lines and keywords scripted for the many NPC available. So I walked around and chatted with those. Plain stupid? Maybe, but the "conversations" that came up were funny as hell for several hours ... Than I walked into a building and suddenly I got an environmental message telling me suddenly a cold gush of air sweeps past. I was immediatelly on my toes trying to figure out what had happened. Did I step on something? Did I move something? Was it just a wind blow and random? The whole shard was so stuffed with environmental effects and possibilities to interact with things that suddenly I behaved like I do in a "real world": anything seemed possible, I was plain playing around trying to understand what the rules are.
And that is something I believe most designer overlook when they try to do quest-free worlds: there needs to be "content" in those worlds. But this type of content is not premade "do A for B because I tell you so" but instead a myriad of ways you can interact with the world. Which means you need to design and program your MMO from a totally different angle: every piece of it needs to be measurable targetable. UO managed this with the map-piece and static-piece system. Nothing was pre-rendered, it is literally a patchwork of things and you just have a file telling you at what spot what "things" (!) are. UO you "render" realtime.
I'm fascinated by tries by a small team of UO enthusiasts to make a true UO 3D - but keeping exactly this design. If someone wants to check, it is called UO Iris (2) and back than, years ago when they started I was part of that too - when I still pretended to be a guy as times back than for girls in that scripter/coder scene was tough lol. Meanwhile they've progressed a lot and it starts to look pretty good when you consider them amateurs.
I see the same problem in MO beta, they have the wish to resurrect UO but in a 3D environment but ... it doesn't seem they understood that the INTERACTABILITY is what drives a quest free MMO. No more worlds that are a pretty background for the "content" but the "background" being the content itself. People and objects, map pieces, water, trees etc. THIS is important. And technically challenging of course.
That is what AtitD relies on too, even though I'm not fond of the time limited thing, let people shape a community and produce content and than wipe it is not what I see as reasonable game design.
But it uses the world as the content node and that makes it viable. In Irth Online (the developer actually being former UO server emulator devs, I've followed their stuff for years) tried the same, set up a client in 3D that is using the UO tiling-to-make-it-targetable system which allows interaction with the world. Unfortunatelly they had too little technical experience and founding in my opinion to make it polished enough and sustain through the rough release phase. And it takes longer to attract and grow a community that is bound by self-generated content so to say.
I've a simple story to make clear what I mean with that. When I was on an UO freeshard years ago with extremly strict and flat advancement (this is about roleplay stupid, no skills needed for that) pretty much nobody was online. It was plain too boring even with extemly intricate systems for EVERYTHING one could come up with. Before you say "how stupid, I knew that doesn't work" wait a minute. I'm a chatter box when it comes to playing, I enjoy talking with people and interacting with them, numeric advancement is a secondary or even tertiary thing to me. That makes me perfect for those worlds as ... content provider. Basically the owners of the shard learned pretty soon (one could see on the server status page who is online) that when I logged in ... others logged in too. Other players came to my farm to just talk with me or let me tell them the latest gossip or watch me do my stuff. They did their own (game engine defined) jobs, brought me ressources, gifts, whatever - and we all enjoyed it. When I was not logging in, pretty much nobody was showing up online. Does that mean I'm awesome? No, it is the basic problem of "reward" that makes a game attractive. We play because we like being rewarded, games reward more easy than work does.
Now what lacks tremendously in my opinion in most MMO designs is the understanding that besides "direct rewards" in numbers, advancement etc. which people provide by quests and top-bottom defined game mechanics, there are very strong "indirect" rewards too. Like crafting something for someone who is HAPPY about it. It is not about the crafting and maybe the skill or xp advancement that comes with it. It is about making someone HAPPY. Or chatting with someone, learning some rumors, some tale, whatever. Those things - as Scott is totally correct - are badly done by machines but some (!) people are very good in this. And the human component as a content provider is very lacking in current game designs. Basically we are stuck with two problems: making a world that someone can interact with (world does NOT mean mobs) is technically very challenging. Populating it with people who DO interact with it and provide content means you need to attract those people first hand and this takes time. I'm totally convinced that EVE is relying on this concept and needed a crucial time to grow its population to be an "organic" content provider. And SWG was designed from scratch to be a MMO like this but when the organic parts (taverns for example, I just followed the forums on this) were removed in this "more top to bottom" revamp they killed the auditory which had been attracted by those game design specifics.
Edit: On a side note ... I don't believe that quests are better as content provider as people prefer that. Nobody reads books or watchs movies because at the entry they are told "the heroe will have to fullfill the task x and than he gets xyz". We do that because we want to know WHAT HAPPENS. Quests are completely contradiction to this, they tell you in advance what will happen. Intricate quests mask this a bit but still ... the outcome is the same, you perform a defined job and you know that thousands do the same and will. Random loot is basically only a try to overcome the predictedness of this gameplay system. Social/indirect reward systems though we are plain born into in daily life. We are all accustomed to them and don't need to re-learn enjoying those. So I believe that works with a lot of people, it just needs to offer enough broadness of options to just do something. Once the world behaves "world" like enough you switch back from your standard "I need content provided by the game as quests" thinking into "ok, now I'll make this my world, put my stamp on it".
Example: I'll never forget the times of Dark and Light beta, they had a physics engine like thing and those gliders. Spent hours flying around, exploring, just to see what is there and ... can I make it over this mountain? Now DnL had no quests too. Unfortunatelly except killing mobs and gliding there was little to do. One day I attacked a Dodo and well ... it was clearly stronger. So I started running away. As a seasoned MMO player I'm aware of the server border limit (several servers are calculating/simulating the whole, each a piece, once you reach the border of this chunk you can get over it but mobs usually don't as that eats traffic ressources between the single servers which is very limited). Basically that system makes the mob turn around and not follow you all the time at least at the chunk border if not earlier. So one "exploits" the system to run to a server chunk border and is than save, the mob turns around. Not so in DnL ... I have no clue how long I did ran but oh my god it was faaaaaaaaaar. And the Dodo behind me all the time. It started to become old but dying wasn't funny in DnL so I needed a solution. That was when I stopped playing a top-bottom game but thought about a way out. I decided to run up a hill - which due to the physics made me slower and the Dodo hit me a few times - than jumped from a small cliff with my glider. Dodos can not fly. The Dodo stood there, I was all "YEAH!" - and died. Why? Because I had forgotten that the physics causes updrafts on cliffs above land than this wind just caught me and smashed me right next to the Dodo against the cliff. Why do I tell this? Because that experience was so unbelievable, it brought me out of the "box works like this" thinking. I started to think about DnL as a world and what else I could do, not as a game. And I started trying a lot of weird things to see if I can interact with this and in case of physics it should happen that ... It did not, I had seen all the world interactability that existed. Which brought me back to boredom. But just the idea that there could be so much more added a lot of fun. Something similar happened to me with some of the more recent EQ2 event quests. They added effects like falling asleep and waking up somewhere else dreary, blocks that stomp from the roof on you and make you tiny, traps from the bottom you need to avoid or disable or they will hurt you - those things add new dimensions to the whole thing suddenly. I'm now walking around in dungeons watching the roof and floor more carefully. The "map" has become more than a scenery like in a theater that plain looks good but something that interacts with me and vice versa. That is what most MMOs lack in my opinion. Trees, buildings, lakes, it is all just there to look nice but apart from that is has no function. So quests are all the variety you can have.
Played: Pretty much any fantasy MMO, some did not even make it to release ...
Favorites: UO, EQ2, Vanguard, Wurm Online, Salem, ESO, Creativerse
Playing: ESO, Creativerse, Guild Wars 2
Anticipating: (sigh) ... maybe Ashes of Creation
Back in the olden days of Wow (when we walked uphill in the snow, both ways), the most riveting quest for me was one called "The Missing Diplomat" where you discovered the King of Stormwind had been abducted. It had 17 steps of travel, killing, being a spy, beating up a lowlife, talking with those in the highest echelons of power and at the end of all those hours of immersive and highly engaging gameplay, it left you hanging. WTF? Everyone complained about how frustrating it was!
But 3.5 years later, that quest is still riveting precisely because it left me hanging. I remember it fondly even though it was resolved by a later quest chain that seemed to have kind of an afterthought and cheesy explanation.
An associated and very memorable quest chain was the attunement to Onyxia (raid boss), which had (I think) 28 separate steps to complete. Since Onyxia is now retuned for the level cap and no attunement is required, most pieces of the quest chain were removed.
So much lore there, it really does make me sad. It was a very immersive and engaging story.
NERF MAGIC PANTS!
joking aside i find it ironic all these how to make a MMO colums recently when i'm writing a book about well...being characters in a MMO (think .Hack, lots of meta-game lingo flying around as you save the world)
I agree with some of the comments on the first page. I want an mmo with like five huge, excellent, addictive quest-lines than hundreds of bad quests. To me its like the bad push saying, 5 perfect push-ups are better than 20 bad push-ups.Plus, I want mmo's to be more realistic.
This here is another reason why MMORPGs suck of late. With open PTRs, you allow, and encourage to an extent, players to dive into unfinished content. When said content is released, it's already old news to some. You allow the gamer to ruin things for themselves.
Additionally, not everyone goes to PTRs. They don't have the time, computer can't handle rough programming, no interest etc. Now what you have is a cultural divide in your playerbase, further contributing to the suckiness of things.
PTRs are necessary, absolutely. But it should be a random, selective thing used as the *tool* it was intended to be, not as a 'rich get richer' (knowledge) opportunity.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
I like the old Darkfall deal, where if you had enough faction with NPCs they'd offer you a job or tell you who might need help. That was simple, effective and often led to tales of nearby adventuring spots. Plus you had the big story quest(s? I forget now if there was more than 1) and the ones I remember were doozies, way outclassing what Bethesda put out later in Morrowind/Oblivion.
A quest, IMHO, is supposed to be something epic, or close to it. It's supposed to be hard and arduous. It's supposed to mean something and be memorable. Fine, have a few cheapies for tutorial purposes. Or not.
But I think the OP misses the point really. Whether XP is driven by quests or kills or escorts or whatever, the generating factor is the XP grind. That is the modus operandi of main stream MMOs. If you want something different, get rid of XP. Get rid of levels.
I might add that the XP for questing in EQ was minimal. Nobody quested for experience in the old days. In WoW that is turned on its head. But as I say, in the long view it doesn't matter - the driver is the grind, not the details.
Exactly. The real culprit is the concept of XP. The 'quest grind' of today exists because it is a much better than the old 'mob XP grind'. If you get rid of quests without addressing the problem of XP tehn you are just back to the old 'gruind mobs for XP' issue and a worse game. You have to step away from the XP concept entirely and defien progression in a new way and then quests can be made epic again and the game can remain fun.
I'd say the real problem is developers defining every friggin' thing you do as a "quest". You're absolutely right - a quest is supposed to be an adventure. Most of what is labeled quest nowadays is menial labor for loot and xps. And you prolly shouldn't even get XPs for make-work like that
Character growth is supposed to be reflected by XPs earned. How does returning 10 rat tails to someone grow my character in strength, wisdom, intelligence, dexterity, constitution, or charisma?
Actually, I'd think doing that would result in a negative to charisma lol.
I don't think an MMO should have self-driven content; not really. When I think of an MMO, I think of a group of developers actively behind the scenes coming up with actions and events to keep the game alive and moving forward. A team that listens to the player-base and develops content that takes into account their wishes (while still maintaining vision and personal flavors), I think, will be more successful in the long run. Of course, this route also runs with more risk; unhappy players being the key risk here.
Now, in regards to player-driven content, I think room should be given for players to have a controlled impact, something that can lend itself to developers creating more content in the long run.
That makes me think of Kingdom of Loathing. There is generally only one story quest per player level but there are various side-quests that you can choose to take if you so desire. Each quest is expected to take you until the next level to finish and the level 11 and 12 quests often take upwards of two levels each to complete (at least for newbies and low-skill characters in Hardcore).
Compared to something like Guild Wars, KoL barely has any quests at all but they are all designed to be fairly epic. The really cool thing is that the developers hang out on the forums and have a weekly Q&A Internet radio show. This constant dev-player interaction lets Asymetric crank out new content and UI tweaks that they know the players will like because the players have asked for them.
Granted, KoL is a browser-based game starring stick-figures so their handful of developers (except CDMoyer who focuses on improving the UI) can focus all of their efforts on new content since they don't have to worry about constantly coming up with new art, classes, races, etc.