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Quest Content is What Made CoS
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Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 2,767
CoS, a great game that could have been and should have been, but failed miserably due to shitty marketing and other parameters mostly correlated with mismanagement.
I am generally not a "potential" fanboy, although I had played such "greats" as Vanguard and AoC when they had released, but this game had some of the best content I had ever played in an MMO and I think that it deserved to still be around with the other indie titles that are barely eking out existence.
The quest quality was nothing short of single-player:
There was a lot of challenge, click-and-point style objectives and extremely cleverly done story twists that occupied the early-mid part of the game involving the various factions.
Puzzle quests, quests that forced you to read the dialogue and figure out what to do made it both challenging and frustrating, but only to the point where you had to persevere and be rewarded for the experience.
It did have it's grinding parts, but relatively pale, even in comparison to AAA titles like WoW.
The storyline and dialogue was both interesting and decently (since there were errors at times) written and the magnificent artwork really made you feel immersed.
It was also VERY challenging, especially compared to it's contemporaries at the time, but this might have been a deterrent for newer players to the genre..
So I've been keeping up with the latest MMO's including WoW and noticed that (at least for WoW: Cataclysm) the quality of quests has improved, but not to the point where I could ever compare it to CoS'.
I think that CoS, similar to AoC with respect to combat, was way ahead of it's time in terms of quest content. The immersion and other wonderful qualities of CoS (graphics) were laudable, but I think that it's best was simply it's quest content.
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
Comments
I would do anything to have this game back. I swear, I have not been as immersed in an MMO since Ultima Online and I think it even surpasses UO, if not most other games I've ever played.
I just loaded up the soundtrack again and it hurts listening to it. Aside from being fantastic, it just reminds you of all the experiences you had. One thing I really loved about the quests in TCOS is that EVERY quest had a good story attachment to it. EVERY quest had something important for that character or fleshing out the world going on behind it.
What's amazing is that the story actually threw plot twists your way and there were multiple fantastic story arcs going on at once. I think I only made it to level 37 or so, but I wish I could have experienced all of it.
I love its combat system, it's just awesome.