[MUD-Dev] MMO Quest: Why they're still lousy

[Mark Mensch]

At 03:49 PM 1/14/2005 -0500, Sporky McBeard wrote:

> You want to "fix" MMORPG quests. Here's what needs to happen:

>   1) Dump the story crap - Nobody reads that stuff, nobody
>   cares. They see "Find 12 Bloody Monkey Paws" and skip the
>   rest. It doesn't matter how you frame a boring quest, it will
>   still be boring. Give the plays a tangible reason to do the
>   quest. For instance, if you were in a city filled with zombies
>   and the power shuts off, a quest could be to restart the
>   generator. The quest is already built into the zombie metaphor
>   without requiring explicit exposition, and it does something
>   useful beyond netting a player more phat loot.

To say nobody cares is a bit general.  I was looking forward to the
more 'in depth' stories that EQ2 was going to publish - until I
found out that they were going to charge extra for them.

The reason that nobody cares about the story is that they haven't
been given a reason to.  I completely agree that the quests need to
have a tangible reason - and I feel that WoW begins to capture that.
But what about adding in even more?  Perhaps during the "Find 12
Monkey Paws" the NPC relaying the quest mentions that Tom's Daughter
was killed by the monkeys.  Later on in the game, the players come
across Tom.  For all intents and purposes, the NPC does nothing
special until you say something that contains the words "Sorry" or
"Daughter" or "Kid" and then the NPC activates a special quest for
those that do it.  Once you give a reason for players to read the
stories, they'll do so.  Of course that means more work for the Dev
team to write engaging encounters instead of "Find my broom, here's
a rock" but I think it would be worth it for both immersion and
enjoyment.

>   2) Change the world - MMORPG quests are fundamentally flawed in
>   that they cannot change the world. If you kill a certain NPC,
>   he'll respawn a minute or two later. What happens is that the
>   world is filled with people having the exact same
>   experiences. WoW is like a theme park with a conveyor belt that
>   just moves you through the game. The solution to this is to give
>   the player actions some emphasis in the world. In the previous
>   zombie game, you could have a human settlement that constantly
>   needs medicine and food which the players have to provide. When
>   that stuff runs out, it affects everyone, so the player group
>   which brings in supplies in a moment of need will become minor
>   heroes - as they should be. Actually, this is more of a case of
>   the world changing itself and having the players fight to keep
>   the status quo.

I feel that SWG began to experiment with this with their Cries of
Alderaan chapters.  After the Rebels won the first two chapters,
suddenly there were heavier patrols of NPC Stormtroopers - random
contraband searches, etc.  It could go father but to have a single,
or even a single group, change the world puts a huge amount of power
over other's experiences in the hands of a few.  That could
potentially be disastrous.

Mark Mensch
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