I used to think there was something grand and noble about the idea of a quest, that is until MMORPG developers got their slimy hands on them. Quests have become so pedestrian and cliched that they no longer have any real meaning within a MMORPG context.
Many years ago I naively convinced myself that MMOs needed more quests. At the time I believed that they were a possible solution to solving the problem of what MMOs had become: an ever increasingly complex raiding game. Well, now that I’ve seen what quests have done to MMOs I freely admit I was wrong about quests.
2004: The Year the Quest Machine Was Invented
Since the introduction of World of Warcraft back in 2004, quest directed game play has become the dominant form of MMORPG. The addition of quests — often termed “on rails” game play because of their similarity to the rigidity of amusement park rides — has radically and inextricably changed the how MMORPGs are designed and played.
During the first few months of WoW’s release, despite the euphoria of finally having actual tasks to do, I sensed there was something wrong. Former EverQuest guildmates that had migrated over to WoW with me who used to be group-minded and friendly were now self-absorbed and oblivious to my requests to form a group.
Intoxicated with their new-found independence and power, most players naturally felt no need to group up. It was like they were in a trance. Who can blame them, they were playing WoW the way it was designed. It then dawned on me that the core design of WoW with solo-friendly quests and easy leveling was the culprit.
In the Beginning…
Before the advent of quest-centric game play, MMORPGs like EverQuest and Ultima Online were largely designed around opened-ended game play where character progression via leveling and itemization was the main focus of players. Other important activities such as socialization, cooperation, and exploration were all all required for the player to survive, succeed and advance in a harsh and unforgiving world. These conditions created a fairly cohesive and memorable MMO experience and more importantly it created a real sense of community and social order in the player base.
Then MMO fast food arrived on the scene: World of Warcraft.
From the outset WoW was always designed to be a MMORPG that was designed to be more accessible (read: more profitable) and seen as a welcome antidote to some of the excesses perpetrated by the SOE EverQuest design team. You see EverQuest had rapidly transformed from a grouping MMO to a raiding MMO that required long hours of time to realize individual progress via gear acquisition. At the time WoW seemed like a breath of fresh air as it appealed to time-starved, casual gamers that had grown up and now had jobs and families of their own.
Most people may not realize that quest-centric MMOs are a bit of an accident. A couple of years ago, Blizzard developer Jeff Kaplan admitted as much in a GDC presentation. During the WoW Friends and Family Alpha test in 2003-2004 many testers complained when the quests ran out. Blizzard was puzzled by this but then decided to put quests in all of the zones. So the truth is that questing was never fully thought out; it was implemented because alpha testers asked for it. This was a big mistake.
Almost 7 years after the release of WoW, quest-directed MMOs have created more problems than they were designed to solve. I believe it is now time to get rid of quests altogether from MMORPGs.
First let me briefly state what I think a MMORPG should be at its very core…
The Ultimate Quest: Survival
Back before the introduction of the quest-centric MMO, there was only one quest: it was called survival. In those golden days of MMORPGs, the only way you could survive to experience harsh and unknown environments was to self-actualize your character. People who play MMOs today need to be made aware that back then players willfully placed themselves in an unforgiving world fraught with peril and extreme difficulty. The MMOs today are in no way shape or form resemble what players had to endure. Comparing the challenges faced by players in EverQuest to WoW is like comparing Navy Seal training to a yoga class.
There was little talk of experiencing “fun” back then, instead we were rewarded with a feeling of pulse-pounding exhilaration and unrelenting wonder. We were excited, awestruck and frankly privileged just to be part of an online virtual fantasy world.
In those days, we experienced deeper game design that existed harmoniously with other elements. Players would seek to advance their characters by doing the following:
- Gaining more skills and abilities via leveling up by exploring and grouping
- Getting better armor and weapons by defeating monsters by exploring, grouping, bartering and crafting
- Becoming a better player by learning from experience, experimentation and by doing all the above
Each one of these design elements created synergy and cohesion with other game mechanics such class interdependency and the need to socialize. Creating cohesive mechanics that require that players master their skills to overcome adequate challenges is the foundation of good game design.
During that golden age, developing the ability to survive meant you could pay the price of admission for each progressively harder zone that you would encounter on your travels. Hard won character advancement was required in order to explore and experience exotic and dangerous lands. Those conditions came with a price that we willingly paid to have the privilege of being part of an amazing virtual fantasy world.
So here are my main reasons why I feel it’s time to get rid of MMO quests as we know them, once and for all:
Reason 1: Quests Erode Player Autonomy and Freedom
Do you like being told what to do in your spare time? I certainly don’t but that is exactly what is happening when MMO quests have become the focus of today’s MMORPGs.
When a MMO developer creates a world full of quests the player purposely feels compelled to complete them all. This completion compulsion is mandatory and it is how most video game players are taught to play video games. In fact most video games have linear quest lines that must be completed or in the words of the film version of Gandalf: “You shall not pass!”
This compunction to walk down the blissful golden path is hard to resist as it is precisely the way the MMO developers intend you to experience their creation. They use quest mechanics and their rewards as a way to unlock and reveal plots, story lines and treasure. Not your stories and unique experiences mind you, but theirs.
When players had the freedom to do as they pleased we didn’t need any stories and quests handed to us. Instead we created our own. Each player was autonomous and we had ownership of our own destinies. Each server evolved into its own distinct personality and character. We chose to either awake or ignore villains like the Sleeper.
For the most part, there were no NPCs telling us what we had to do and where we had to go. We defined our own enjoyment and we experienced adventure on our own terms. Each day introduced its own unique set of circumstances. One day you might group with different players in a particular area; the next day you might choose not to group and sell items by a bank or in a tunnel or role-play in a tavern.
Today most MMOs players are willing prisoners of a totalitarian mindset that claims to know what you want and what is best for you. Players are shackled to the whims and imaginations of game developers who fancy themselves great writers, poets and artists.
Thanks to the inclusion of quests, your virtual fate is predetermined as every stage of a player’s progression and location is mapped out well ahead of time on some game designers blackboard. When you get on the train to Hogwarts Academy don’t be surprised that it always ends up at the same destination.
Reason 2: Quests Weaken Socialization and Community
Quests have turned MMOs into single-player games where players don’t really need other players to progress.
Once upon a time, MMORPGs used to pride themselves on being massively multi-player role-playing experiences. Back then, being part of a good community was a great source of pride for this new and developing genre; socializing with other players was one of the joys of being part of a virtual world. Contrast that with today where players are more apt to behave like mindless robots and slobbering zombies as they run back and forth from one quest-giver to another and avoiding all contact with their fellow players in the process.
MMOs have transformed into quest delivery machines instead of communal experiences they used to be.
All that matters now is finding an NPC with an exclamation mark as players run around like frenzied contestants in the Amazing Race. Why bother to explore when your only objective is to find the next NPC with a big yellow exclamation point hovering over their head like a neon sign in Times Square.
Questing creates a selfish and mercenary mindset within the player. Quests have forced us to turn our gaze inward instead of outward. When people don’t need each other, the result is the horrid and fractured community that you see in most major MMOs.
Solo quests now typically occupy the majority of the introductory to middle to level cap content. This is unfortunate because this type of content sets the tone and essentially molds and creates the character of the player base. By the time players are expected to start socializing and cooperating with other players in groups and raids it’s far too late.
We only have to look at the sorry state of the WoW community — at least what’s left of it — for evidence of this.
Reason 3: Quests Have Become Routine and Trivialized the MMO Experience
As Michael Hartman noted in his great article, today’s MMO quests have replaced one form of grind with another. Quests have become mundane and are no longer considered special due to the fact that every MMO has been bombarded and overwhelmed with them. And most of them aren’t even true quests, rather they are simple tasks.
Many people admit they do not even read the quest text anymore. Besides how immersive is it when the same NPC wants you and every other player to recuse the same princess over and over again?
These so-called quests have reduced MMOs to transactions: complete the quest and you get money and perhaps an item. So where’s my next piece of cheese?
To make matters worse, more monotony and drudgery were added with the contrivance called “daily quests”. Each day the player repeats the same mindless kill 10 rats type of quest. MMOs are not supposed to feel like a job yet now they do when the “content” runs out.
The problem is that quest content is finite leaving the player confused and wondering what to do next. By then the player has been weaned with the expectation that there will always be another NPC on the horizon with yet another quest. Not only is quest content finite it is also extremely expensive to create.
No longer a rare occasion, quests have become so prevalent that they are now the de facto MMO experience to the exclusion of pretty much all else. Quests have monopolized most of the development time that should be going into new features. This singular focus is imbalanced, unhealthy and is a big contributing factor to the current malaise of boredom and tedium out there in the MMO community.
More purple items can not cure this disease.
Reason 4: Questing Makes Players Lazy and Stupid
Questing has created arguably the worst players in MMO history; they have become lazy and stupid and it’s really not their fault. MMO players are the victims of low expectations fueled by shareholder demands to make them accessible. Developers have created MMOs where players don’t have to think for themselves as they blindly follow the orders given them by the quest giver NPC.
Quests are a slacker’s dream as they rarely ever require any semblance of effort, intellect, bravery or courage to commence and complete. You don’t even have to convince an NPC to give you a quest, as every quest giver NPC is open 24 hours a day like a convenience store and has vast resources of gold and items to bestow upon every player that interacts with him.
Players should have to work in order to get information from a NPC that would lead to an assignment, task or quest. There should be some form of effort involved whether it be from intimidation, bribery, having a reputation or just being friendly. Nothing of the sort is asked of today’s MMO player as developers want players to skip all that “boring” stuff and get them killing monsters immediately.
Quests have made players unwilling to think and act for themselves as they chase the next piece of quest cheese. Players have been given a sense of entitlement and are largely reliant upon the MMO for their nightly entertainment via quests.
Like welfare in the real world, questing has instituted a sense of dependency and expectation within the average MMO player. Instead of players looking to each other to create their MMO experiences, they look to the developer like a small child looks to their parents for sustenance. This is extremely unhealthy and has created a demographic of spectators waiting to be entertained.
So who cares if many MMO players have become lazy and stupid? If you still play and care about MMOs you should.
Often the most important and least scrutinized facets of a MMO are the players themselves. With such a deplorably low caliber of players these days, it has the effect of eroding the enjoyment of the remaining MMO players. Without actual “good” players there wouldn’t be much of a MMO. I submit that most of the good players have already left the genre and the tipping point has been reached which again is related to the obvious erosion of socialization and community which is given mere lip service by MMO developers.
Reason 5: Quest Rewards are Too Generous
Quests offer far too many rewards that have the side effect of lessening the importance of other aspects of MMORPGs such as gear that drops from mobs and gear that is crafted by players. Quests are so generous that players never really have to worry about getting better gear. In fact Jeff Kaplan admitted in that same interview that quests are now considered the preferred way to progress in WoW.
Want to find out if players *really* like your quests Mr. Game Designer? Remove all the experience, gold and items as reward and see if players still love your quests. Let’s be honest, without the ridiculously inflated rewards most people would not even bother to do quests. So if quests are not really fun for players without artificial incentives what is the point?
(The unfortunate fact that people have become brainwashed by reward based game design and are unwilling to do anything that does not yield some kind of personal gain or benefit is a discussion for another day).
I challenge any major MMO company that still insists on having quest-centric design to remove all incentives from quests to put their money where their mouth is.
Imagine a MMO with No Quests
Just imagine for a moment what your current MMO world would be like without quests? What would you do? Where would you go? Most typical MMO players today would probably feel disoriented at the prospect because they’ve been playing so many years without any autonomy or freedom; they are used to mommy and daddy holding their hands every step of the way.
Is this how you really want to experience your favorite virtual fantasy world?
If nothing else, the removal of quests would show players how weak and shallow MMOs are these days. Players would see MMOs for what they actually are: simplistic treasure hunts that take place in child proofed playgrounds with little substance and no real impact on the world.
Another thing to consider is that the introduction of quests has pretty much stopped innovation and growth in other more important facets of virtual world design. Quests are a distraction and sleight of hand that prevents players from noticing that the emperor has no clothes.
Conclusion
No one can deny that the continued reliance on quest-centric game play has perpetuated a creative stagnation in the MMO industry as most companies have resorted to making yet another variant of WoW. I often wonder how long the player community is going to keep falling for this ruse. I suppose as long as new players continue to replace the ranks of disenchanted players companies like Blizzard will continue to milk the same tired formula and calls for change will go ignored.
Will quests ever be completely removed from MMORPGs? Not likely because for it to have a realistic chance of success the level of difficulty of the MMO across the board would have to be increased significantly to compensate.
But the days of typical Blizzard style quests may be coming to an end as other developers are starting to re-think how the current quest orthodoxy has negatively impacted how players experience MMORPGs and the communities that play them. It seems one such forward thinking developer Arenanet with their upcoming Guild Wars 2 has already started this process of re-examination. Perhaps someone has finally realized that MMOs have the potential to be far bigger than thousands of quests that comprise a massive virtual “to do” list.
As far as the WoW juggernaut, a few years ago Richard Bartle made a bold claim that got him into trouble from 11 million screaming WoW fans but it bears repeating for its wisdom:
I’d take over World of Warcraft and I’d close it. I just want better virtual worlds. Sacrificing one of the best so its players have to seek out alternatives would be a sure-fire way to ensure that unknown gems got the chance they deserved, and that new games were developed to push back the boundaries.
I’d like to expand on his statement and take it a step further. The best thing that could ever happen to the MMO genre would be for WoW to fail. If that were ever to happen it would be the only way other companies will finally stop imitating and start innovating. Nothing is forever. Just ask Activision who cancelled the once popular Guitar Hero franchise. Today’s hero is tomorrow’s zero.
As a long time MMORPG veteran I feel that not only do we need real innovation, we also need to resist the temptation of empty distractions like quests and return the genre back the founding principles that once made this genre great: challenge, community and respect for player autonomy within the virtual world. These are the indeed the values that made massively multi-player role-playing games great in the first place. We don’t need to reinvent a wheel that has a flat tire.
-Wolfshead
In the deepest sense I agree with this view, almost wholeheartedly. On the other hand, even WoW has ‘different ways’ of progression, as can be seen from the reports on people levelling up (ouch) only by crafting skills or other means. Also on the challenge side, we (me and my two brothers) have been three manning the normal dungeons and have been doing that through the last two expansions: the purple pixels we get from the drops are more worth it than the ones gotten through quests and/or full group randoms.
I wouldn’t go as far to scrap all the quests, though. If you take the ‘typical’ fantasy literature (for example), the quests are always involved, be it from destroying the One Ring or saving the kingdom from invading hordes of uglies. In most cases the quests as such are small parts of the ‘hero’s’ journey to the completion of the story, something current MMO’s are missing completely.
There should be quests, few and far apart, but with meaning and that meaning should be combined with the dynamic world: the changes players cause should remain. We should be able to change the world, if not completely, by minor things.
Great post (can’t expect less from you, really… 😛 )
C out
A few days ago in Rift I was standing in the courtyard of one of the magnificient castles. There were a few entrances left to explore and although I knew better, I imagined to find a complicated labyrinth behind one of them. I wanted to explore.
But I didn’t. Instead I decided that I would have to hurry to get back to the quest giver now that I had completed the quests. I needed to hurry, so I wouldn’t have to fight through the respawning mobs again.
I still haven’t finished exploring that castle. And maybe it is for the better, because these entrances I saw are probably sealed doors. After all, I already did all the quests in that castle.
One of the other big problems with quests is designers slipping key character skills and abilities into quest chains. This ensures that players have to complete all quests for fear of missing out on some other form of the game that will remain unlocked or unknown to them unless the quest is completed.
As usual, a terrific post.
I think one thing that always bothered me about WoW was the mixed message behind it. You’re absolutely right – the quests do create a sense of not wanting to group up and being able to do most things on your own without any kind of assistance. The problem is that in the later stages, you do need people for various things. If you have any intention of being a raider, you need 9 other or 24 other people to go with you. You may need some of those people to even help you gear up. I mean, we have the Dungeon Finder, but it’s mighty painful to go without people you know. Although it could be seen as another nail in the coffin and another example of Blizzard catering to those who want to do everything by themselves.
Then you have the types of quests that you mentioned that don’t provide much of a challenge and usually come with guaranteed drop rates for the quest items and typically provide a decent reward. When a character reaches max level, the mixed message comes into play again. Raiding does involve some amount of work and not every boss you kill is going to have a drop for you or offer some amount of personal gratification every single time. People balk at having to read up on strategies and know their specs and their gem choices, etc. They don’t teach you that when you’re level 25 in Hillsbrad. They teach you to kill X and return things to Y and something marvelous will happen. It’s not always like that.
I think if games did eliminate quests there are other ways for toons to level that could cater to what type of player they are. I know some games have ways to gain experience from farming (most currently do) or gathering professions, but also from crafting professions. Each piece of armor you make gives you experience and also would encourage the player to level that profession and be more self-sufficient, by not relying on quests to gear them up. You can gain experience from exploring and by leveling Archaeology. Even PVPing. I think there are already a number of things in the game that could take the place of questing, they would just need to be expanded upon and made more plausible for doing such a thing. The groundwork is already there, we just need someone to take the initiative and make it happen.
You echoed my thoughts perfectly, excellent posts. You know what quests should be like? Coldain Prayer Shawl. I’ve never had more fun trying to finish a questline than that one. It was nigh-impossible, but, boy, did I have fun trying.
Heck, the Shaman Epic Weapon questline in EQ was amazing fun for me. I’ve never had quite the feeling of accomplishment since as when I hefted that spear for the firs time.
Tanek I agree with you. Those were quests in the truest sense of the word. A quest is something that should take you a long time to complete. A quest should be an all consuming passion. A quest should almost like a vocation — not killing 10 rats for Farmer Brown.
“No one can deny that the continued reliance on quest-centric game play has perpetuated a creative stagnation in the MMO industry as most companies have resorted to making yet another variant of WoW. ”
The problem with statements like “No one can deny” or “Everyone agrees” is that they are a lie. There are plausible denials and I don’t agree.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion (and yes, by now we get it. Blizzard and WoW are the debbil.) but don’t project that onto me or other readers, or you are foisting your opinion onto others as surely as you think Blizzard is doing so with their gameplay. And you hate that. So you can imagine how I feel about your blog.
Straw men and vast sweeping statements are the staple of internet argument. And you know what they say about arguing on the internet.
Tell us your opinion, but at least play fair.
I usually try to avoid prefacing my statements as I did in that particular instance. But in this case I felt so strongly that I took the liberty to do so. Sometimes the truth is so obvious and apparent that one feels compelled and confident in expressing it.
However, if I just made a single statement without an actual argument to back it up then you would be right to call me out on that. Of course you are free to disagree with me.
Have to agree with Wolf here. The statement you quoted is true in every sense and you will need to prove it’s not. When the most successful company on the block has created this formula that includes 100s of quests, new companies follow their lead and instead of questioning the content tool, they duplicated …creative stagnation. Making up new ways to do a quest is not, in fact, an innovation. It’s a remodeling of the old idea. It’s creative stagnation.
I agree 100%, but I also know MMOs have become so expensive to make that creating any new AAA MMO that only focuses on one playstyle is never going to go anywhere. And the average MMO gamers these days doesn’t want that level of challenge, they want to steamroll everything and collect their shinies.
I think the real mistake MMO companies (and Blizzard in particular) are making is that they’re trying to force everyone to play the same game on the same field. 2004 WoW was head and shoulders above everything else on the market at the time. 2011 WoW has nothing to offer other than ‘It’s big because it’s big’, and hardly anyone is happy.
It puzzles me because sharded MMOs are the perfect vehicle to deliver an online game that plays very differently from one server to the next, instead of a pvp flag and a few rules nobody follows like we have now. If you want a group-centric game, you join a server where all the mobs are elite and there’s fewer quests. If you want a challenging solo game, you join a server where all the mobs are tougher and have more abilities but everything is otherwise the same. If you want the ‘normal’ difficulty, you join a regular server like we have now. If you want hardcore world pvp, you join a server where everything is capturable. And so on, you get the idea.
I agree with the sentiment here, but disagree with the proposed solution. I think you are right that sharded worlds bring the advantage of offering different styles of gameplay. But the problem is no company, not even Blizzard, can afford the customer services required to uphold these rules. The hard coded rules you propose in most cases will wind up being restrictions on gameplay instead of it defining gameplay. For these separate servers to truly offer different styles of play, you have to pretty much design different games.
In the case of WoW, I think it would be easier to pull off PvP and PVE servers. RP, as much as I want them to be offered, are impossible to manage. For starters, the server rulesets are extremely poorly thought out (interestingly, Rift just modified theirs in order to make it easier for them to enforce them). The policy would need to be redefined, which is the easiest part of the solution. The other part still relies on implementing game mechanics and environmental structure encourages certain behavior and discourages others. The reason this will never happen in WoW (other than its old) is that the design direction tends toward encouraging all behavior, good and bad.
In the MMO I’ve been armchair designing I solve some of the issues you outline with quests by separating “normal” quests into 2 separate categories, Tasks and “real” Quests.
Tasks are essentially what almost all quests are today… the kill 10 rats/ collect 10 rat tails/ deliver this rat skull to the witchdoctor/ etc:.. they would be simple, solo-able, and give minimal rewards.
Quests are much more involved, much more difficult, and almost always require some sort of cooperation with other players… a good example would be the lvl 60 hunter/priest epic wpn quests, or the warlock epic dreadsteed quest, or the MC attunement quest… quests should be fewer (only a few per character lvl), but more involved, more difficult, and more rewarding.
by splitting them up, you allow people to lvl up w/ tasks if they want, or if they don’t have time to complete a quest. but you also let people who want to explore, and do truly epic things the opportunity to do so, and you reward them appropriately.
by splitting things up this way it mostly solves issues 2-5 that you bring up… but it would not solve the player autonomy issue… but I don’t think it is financially feasible to do so.. and I’m not so sure that most players actually want to be autonomous, in fact there is lots of research on human behavior to back up the idea that people WANT to be told what to do and how to act… just look at how pervasive religion is in our society.
Lastly, I would have “hidden quests” that are basically quests/tasks that never show up in your log and instead you have to discover them by talking to NPC’s, or exploring and finding a mini-boss’s lair, or just happening a cross an item in the game world and then tracking down its rightful owner.
I don’t know how you feel about links so feel free to delete this one, but it’ll take you to a more thorough explanation of the type of quests I’m describing.
http://diltz.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/quest-types/
Writing to agree with Genda. I read your articles because they are a refreshingly different viewpoint from most of the blogs I frequent. You’re a smart writer, with a very different opinion from my own, and I enjoy that.
But large parts of this article were personally insulting. “Mommy and daddy”? “Brainwashed”? You don’t have to have parental issues, or be brain dead to enjoy the simplicity that comes with the “on rails” experience.
I used that colorful terminology to make a point: that MMOs largely treat their subscribers like children. As an adult, I resent being treated like a child. Sometimes you have break a few eggs to make an omelet.
Here you go again with those rose-colored glasses…
I *think* I actually agree with the general sentiment that provokes all your anti-WoW articles, though occasionally you spend so much time ranting that I lose track of the reason behind the rants. In other words, without going back to find any of my previous comments, I don’t *mean* to sound “hostile” (for lack of a better word) but probably sound that way on a cold read. With that in mind…
You say: “MMOs are not supposed to feel like a job…” yet name one that doesn’t? Every single one starting with UO to EQ has been extremely demanding of players’ time.
Then, with that one comment essentially saying (my words) “MMOs should be fun” I also find gems such as:
Players should have to work in order to get…
There should be some form of effort involved…
There was little talk of experiencing “fun” back then…
and a few others, but three is enough, eh? That last one is a bit of a doozy. Games — no matter the genre or form — are supposed to be fun. You continually put on your rose-colored glasses then stick your head in the sand talking about EverQuest, yet here you’re saying it wasn’t even fun? That’s certainly not what my friends said daily who tried to get me to play it. Then I watched over their shoulder for awhile and “played” their character briefly and decided no, it wasn’t fun. 🙂
Back before the introduction of the quest-centric MMO, there was only one quest: it was called survival. Taken in its simplest form, the same could be argued for even the faceroll-easiest of the faceroll-easy MMOs: don’t die. Players don’t set out with the goal of dying. Usually.
Did you ever present a “solution” to the “quests problem?” Other than “make them go away?” You presented three bullet points for how to play “back in the day” which I’ll shorten to “we improved our skills and our character by exploring, killing monsters, crafting, bartering and socializing.” All of which is still true today, the only difference is the proliferation of “quests” to tell us to go kill those monsters and so on.
Listening to you makes EverQuest sound like this kickass fantasy PvE sandbox only… it wasn’t. It was the original themepark. Go to this zone for this level bracket, then move to the next zone. Kill monsters. The only difference between EverQuest and a grinder like Lineage is the respawn timer. EverQuest had massive, massive downtime. That is single-handedly the reason why there was so much “socialization” as you call it. Yes, mobs may have been difficult and grouping was certainly recommended and preferred, but again I point out how many players put a lot of time and effort figuring out “solo builds” so they could do their own thing. The bulk of EverQuest was either sitting around chatting or running and chatting. Occasionally there was some combat, followed by more downtime. There was nothing else to do but chat with those other people in your group or in the other groups ahead of or behind yours while camping out waiting your turn at the Big Bad Boss on a slow respawn timer. Is your “solution” simply that we be required to group up and go kill “challenging” monsters all day? Got news for ya, bub, maybe that was “fun” (or apparently not, based on the sentence I quoted above) “back in the day,” but it doesn’t cut it now. You called it “hunting” back then, we call it “grinding” now. It’s just as mindless as the solo Kill 10 Rats quests. You can romanticize it all you want, but I’m just going to call a spade a spade. I watched my friends play EQ and it was just a boring grindfest that happened to have some funny and memorable chat during the downtime. But I also have lasting memories and friends from IRC. It’s the chatting (socializing) that’s the most memorable, then followed by something like say your guild first downing a Big Bad Boss or whatever. Even then, it could be argued that if it’s a guild/group of friends victory scenario then the social aspect of that victory is prioritized over the progression aspect. Maybe.
Nothing of the sort is asked of today’s MMO player as developers want players to skip all that “boring” stuff and get them killing monsters immediately. You sure about that? We usually read developer after developer talking about how much time is spent writing the quest storylines or whatever then you get to the comments section and it’s the players themselves saying “whatever dude, I just wanna kill shit.”
If nothing else, the removal of quests would show players how weak and shallow MMOs are these days. These days? Ha! MMOs have always been weak and shallow games. The *only* feature they have over every other genre is the number of players per server; in almost every other way MMOs are inferior when it comes to actual game design and game experiences.
Players would see MMOs for what they actually are: simplistic treasure hunts that take place in child proofed playgrounds with little substance and no real impact on the world. Ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, a lot more players than you give credit for do see that already? And perhaps that’s all they ask for? Might not be “enough” for you or me, but we’re in the minority and we’re not the only ones footing the developer’s bills. Do you really think Farmville “players” think they’re “real gamers” or are they just enjoying some instant button-clicking gratification while spamming their cousin’s Facebook every day?
I could go on and one with counterpoints to nearly everything you’ve said here. I’ll stop because this is getting too long. I’ll try to swing it full circle and end on a positive-ish note by un-snipping one of your quotes I mentioned above:
There was little talk of experiencing “fun” back then, instead we were rewarded with a feeling of pulse-pounding exhilaration and unrelenting wonder. We were excited, awestruck and frankly privileged just to be part of an online virtual fantasy world.
There! Just take a step back and read that paragraph a few times. You used some very powerful and evocative words there, which is why mere “fun” doesn’t even begin to describe how we all felt back in those early days. It was more than “just” fun. It was exciting, and we were awestruck! Hell, I went from simple 2D games on nearly every gaming console ever made until there were faux 3D games on the Vectrex, then throw in early computers. I remember being excited and awestruck bumbling around my first primitive (ugh, how so!) big world (for the time) 3D RPG, Drakkhen (what a mess that was). For multiplayer RPGs we were stuck with BBS’ or MUDs, etc. IRC was great for chatting (duh?) then in the later-90’s 3D Avatar Chat came out, letting us chat while moving primitive avatars around small primitive 3D virtual worlds, though there was nothing to do other than chat. Then MMOs came out and we had the chat, the RPG characters/avatars, the 3D fantasy world *with monsters to fight* ooooh gameplay! It was new, it was exciting and it was filled with mostly like-minded people. But now? 3D worlds have been done for well over a decade now, that isn’t new anymore. Chatting isn’t new. Multiplayer games aren’t new. Big virtual worlds aren’t new. “Gaming” is becoming mainstream and that is reflected in the “communities” (MMO or not); it’s not just a few hundred thousand fantasy RPG nerds world-wide chatting and killing pixel dragons anymore.
It’s one thing to cry out for and demand “better,” whatever that may be. It’s one thing to ask for “innovation,” whatever that may be. (I say that because we collectively love to use that word without ever defining what we mean by it when we say it.) But rather than look forward, it seems you’re stuck looking backwards to EQ. I just described how that paragraph was so awesome and conveyed your emotions through the words you used. That paragraph also perfectly illustrates why every time I comment here, I use the phrase “rose colored glasses.” EQ wasn’t as wonderful as you make it out to be, but it was your first “special MMO experience.” It popped your MMO cherry, to put it crudely, and we always remember our firsts, even if we choose to ignore why we’re no longer with them.
I agree I have a certain amount of nostalgia for my first MMO. Point taken. At least I have a sense of perspective that is probably missing from the average MMO gamer that started playing MMOs a couple of years ago.
With great power comes great responsibility. I hold Blizzard to an exquisitely high standard. As the world leader in MMOs they should be doing far more than they are currently doing (which is barely anything) to advance the genre. Currently they are treading creative water and the recent loss of 600,000 subscribers confirms this. Because there is no real gaming press to speak of that is actually doing their job with real journalism I feel a responsibility to take them to task and end up doing much of the heavy lifting.
Many current WoW subscribers are very unhappy and express themselves on the official forums only to have their posts deleted within hours. If those threads were allowed to stand free from Blizzard censorship my so-called “anti-WoW” articles would appear to be more mainstream.
Daily quests are a disgrace. They do feel like a job. That is what happens when you do the very same quests/content each day.
There’s a massive difference between something that feels like a “job” and having to “work” for something. Daily quests were a horrible invention and their creation was an open admission that MMOs have become transactional in nature because of shoddy and expedient game design of “oh crap our players have run out of content…”.
I didn’t play EverQuest to have fun or to be amused. I played it because it was a completely unique and immersive experience. I don’t particularly like the word “fun. I find the word constrictive and limiting.
Fun is subjective. Some people find running marathons to be fun. Others would find it torture. I penned an entire article on “adventure versus fun”. The search for fun comes directly from video game culture which puts instant gratification on a pedestal above all else. If a MMO makes you experience fun, I’m not against that but there has to be something beyond just seeking out fun for sheer amusement.
The solution to the “quest” problem is to have a truly dynamic world where players can help to shape the destiny of their virtual world. The current quest paradigm employed by every MMO developer today is nothing more than repeating the plot from the movie “GroundHog Day”. The world remains essentially static while the player continues to improve and learn to beat an unintelligent bunch of NPCs.
EverQuest wasn’t boring for me. Knowing that anytime you could die and never find your corpse was terrifying and added an element of perceived danger that MMOs like WoW have completely removed from the genre.
Not only do I miss the challenge, I miss the socialization from EverQuest. Why do people have to be killing mobs 99% of the time? You see Blizzard has determined that this is what players want — to be killing constantly at the expense of socialization. Downtime was where people made friends and actually talked to each other. Yet I’m not claming for more downtime.
Players have figured out that reading quest text has no real effect on the outcome of them actually completing the quest — despite the intentions of the developers. The min/max mentality has taken over as the primary way MMOs are played. Players are just grinding quests as much as they were grinding mobs.
If nothing else, the removal of quests would show players how weak and shallow MMOs are these days.
The idea of virtual worlds is to completely immerse the player and to create a suspension of disbelief. Of course MMOs are not real worlds — actually just bits of code and graphics in the end. As I said, quests are a distraction because MMO devs can’t figure a way to advance MMOs into something better. For all intents and purposes, these devs have died creatively. They’ve stopped thinking and worse, they’ve stopped caring about making a better MMO.
I don’t think we disagree that much. But in a way you’ve answered your own question. There is nothing new and that is the heart of the problem. So you seemed upset with me that I refuse to accept that there will never be anything new.
EQ wasn’t perfect by a long shot and I took SOE to task many times for squandering the great opportunity and leadership that they had. They are still screwing things up after all these years sadly.
I’m not saying let’s go back to EQ; we all know that will never happen. All I’m saying is that it’s time to take a long hard look at quests and see how they’ve impacted the MMO experience.
Quests are a sacred cow that’s time has quite frankly come. Most people are sick and tired of quests now. They finally realize what a sham they are and that it’s nothing more than “Simon Says” and Paint By Numbers all rolled into one.
Just think of the important memories and friendships that millions of WoW players could have made but never made — all because Rob Pardo and Jeff Kaplan decided to fill every waking moment in Azeroth with quests. Quests have robbed millions of MMO players of some amazing experiences. Blizzard in their ivory towers has a whole lot to answer for.
At the same time, I’d argue that lazy players are equally, if not more to blame. Azeroth still has plenty of nooks and crannies to explore, especially with flight in the “old world”. Too many players want the experience handed to them on a golden platter, instead of just going out in the world and seeing what there is to see.
…of course, I’ve argued for years that I’d rather the world be more dynamic, so I agree with you there… I just think we can’t let players off the hook.
Players play the game they are given. Design is hands down the keystone of social problems in games.
There will always been evil, lazy, elitist, and dumb players. All that matters is how the environment they play in is designed to bring them together for the common goals of the game. If the design does not answer to it, the players can’t be blamed for playing the game as it is.
Nonsense. Games are, by nature, a collaboration between players and designers. The community is as well. If players are completely blameless agents of obedience to designer whim, we might as well populate a WoW server with bots and see what they do and compare that to a “live” server.
Perhaps MMO and MMORPG have become loaded terms. I agree that the leveling phase of WoW encourages solo play (I don’t agree that that’s a bad thing). Since multi-player implies playing together, and outside of running dungeons while below the cap almost all WoW levelers are alone (other than guild and other chat channels), I propose Massively Parallel-player Online Game–MPOG or MPPOG and the usual variants to describe games like WoW (outside of the endgame, anyway).
Or maybe not, Wolfshead. True MMOs seem to be pretty rare and it would be silly to criticize and complain about a type of game you (seem to) hate.
I was nodding throughout the post, it was an amazingly good read (as always).
One thing that Rift did right, in my opinion, are the story quests. Some are kind of bland, but most of the chains go out with a bang and reveal more lore and history for the area you’re in. It’s a pity that to unlock most of them you have to go through all the normal quests first.
I don’t think I would mind if I was in an MMO that would leave me in my own devices 80% of the time and threw me a really well written Story Quest now and then to flesh out the story behind the zone I’m in.
I find it absolutely mind-blowing that some of the most outspoken (ableit often well written) anti-Everquest articles / responses come from people who never experienced the game itself. Scott (above) openly admits to playing EQ only very briefly and only on friends accounts yet, he claims to know a tremendous amount about the inner workings of game mechanics, as if he were a seasoned pro. This could be likened to someone playing a current generation game just to the point of leaving the newbie isles (which I hate btw) and calling it quits right there. How immersed can one get into a game he/she only gets from only brief snippets of gameplay? Seriously. It angers me to the fullest, seeing people argue against something they have little knowledge about.
Furthermore, over the years we have grown accustomed to this type of EQ-bashing. Those who never experienced MMOs in their “golden age” take these sentiments as gospel and swear off any opinions that may argue otherwise. We see it all the time. As people like Wolfshead and other prominent bloggers champion for more in-depth gaming experiences, younger and more outspoken gamers come in and proclaim us “oldies” only see the MMO world trough rose-colored glasses. Yet sadly, these “new generation gamers” who have no benchmark to compare their experiences to. This is all they know and they fight adamantly to save their ways of gaming. Yet, gaming companies seem to give them first dibs on voicing their opinions, regardless of their gaming experience.
You would have to be blind not to see that the current crop of MMO’s on the market are stale and lack innovation. The recent loss of $600,000 subs to WoW is testament to this. All many of us ask for is a change from the current norm. Yet, I do not see this coming any time soon as those with the power are reluctant to use it and those who would fight for change, lack the power.
I have to wonder: Who really wears the rose colored glasses?
Agreed. There is something to be said for the long experiences of veteran MMO players. Those who never knew MMOs before WoW under-appreciate this.
I don’t think they ought to praise and worship veterans, but I do think it wouldn’t hurt to recognize that they have comparative experiences that newcomers lack. Veterans aren’t always right, but they at least have deep experiences to draw their opinions from.
Have you tried UO? Did you play when it first came out? It’s interesting to see someone largely argue for a game dynamic that didn’t quite pan out.
No game can be all things to all people. That’s why people have their alt MMOs now…
I made a post about quest design innovation a few months ago. I had Rift and WoW in mind when I did it: http://goo.gl/0muJJ
I agree whole-heartedly with your assessment.
Yes having the option to level via a massive amount of quest has truly ruined Wow. Why if it were not for this cruely destructive optional activity Wow would obviously be at 20 or 30 million subsribers.
Thanks intranets for finally explaining why Wow could only scrap up a middling 11mil+ paying customers.
You people say this without acknowledging that WoW had far fewer quests in vanilla than any other expansion after …and at no time has the record for new customers been broken. Players aren’t here for the quests. You will have to prove otherwise.
10.4 mil now 😛
@Jason: I’ve admitted my personal EQ experience was limited every time I comment here. I had enough to know I didn’t like it, but most of my MMO blogger friends *loved* it and have explained away every question I asked about my experiences and theirs. Everything I say I based on that, and if my questions or their answers didn’t cover a topic, I don’t discuss it. Just like I don’t claim to know how WoW is today when I stopped playing the day Burning Crusade launched. I don’t need 200+ hours of /played time to regurgitate what everyone has been telling me for the past 8 years repeatedly.
WoW lost 600K subscribers because of its lack of innovation? Guess all those complaints of “this shit is too hard (heroics)” and “the leveling is too fast, I’m done already” don’t count? Why the hell would WoW (or ANY established MMO) “innovate?” MMOs “innovate” during development (or… not) but you’re not going to get some genre-altering ZOMG “innovation” out of the live team. If you’re lucky you’ll get little evolutions of things, otherwise the live team is going to attempt to tweak things based on the data they see, not what jaded veterans or so-called “hardcore” forum blowers claim they want.
I suspect that for the most part, Wolfshead and I want the exact same game. We’re just going about the “I want it!” part differently, and while I think there’s certainly some value in things that were attempted “back in the day” I’m not going to rely on what once was as the genre’s messiah because if that were true, we’d still be playing games with all those features.
I’m also not going to bash “quests” because I can read between the lines in this post and the previous few, and when they’re distilled Wolfshead seems to be (my perception anyway) really complaining about the way progression works these days. We’ve all become slaves to the progression, and as a result, more anti-social and self-centered. It’s “me me me! Faster faster faster! More more more!” What the devs continue to call “quests” *are* a needed function in my opinion, just not quite in the way they are currently implemented, which is nothing more than a Progression Pez Dispenser. Click the ! and run to points A, B and C, kill monsters E, F and G, and bring back their guts or body parts (seriously, who wants this nasty shit?) for XP! Yay! *DING!* and GOLD! and FACTION POINTS! Woooo! And LOOT! Yippee!
I brought up all the downtime in EQ in my first comment. EQ was “social” in that players spent so much time camping or waiting their turn so, as I said, there wasn’t much *else* to do so we all chatted with the others. I can rattle off several former EQ playing friends of mine who made lifelong e-friends from EQ. Just as I did over IRC. It was the interplayer communication and so forth, whether or not there was actually any RP happening, that touched that social nerve with us. But EQ also had slow vertical progression. Ever notice that as the years go by, every MMO that uses vertical progression gets faster and faster? Less and less downtime, so less time we feel any “need” to chat or socialize. Who has time to “waste time” chatting when I’m not out of Rest XP yet? And so on. The vertical progression is faster because that is what we keep telling the devs we want. They provide faster and more shallow leveling, etc. and we complain we want it even faster, giving us less reason to give a single shit about any other player because we’re addicted to that XP bar (or whatever) increasing. Yet look at the handful of non-vertical progression-based MMOs out there and we read of a lot more player interactions and socializations. Even if it’s EVE and it’s more corp intrigue from someone being a dick and infiltrating then disbanding an enemy corp. But still… in order to get there, social ties had to be formed even in that deception. You don’t get Pez Quests to do that kind of stuff.
I completely understand your arguments here however, what many people fail to comprehend is simply this:
As MMO gamers, are we REALLY asking for “me me me! Faster faster faster! More more more!” or are these the childish requests of a heavily vocal group that Game Developers seem to endorse most?
It has been argued into it’s grave. For every one of us who argue for a more sandbox, “off the tracks” style of gameplay, we have 3 screaming back in defense of their roller-coaster ride. This is perceived as a difference in population, when in reality – it may just reflect a difference in two communities… One being more vocal than the other.
Despite your beliefs, it is important to realize that there ARE many gamers out there currently without a game to call home simply because current game developers have become complacent in the stagnation of their designs. Moreover, up and coming development of newer “innovative” games are consistently squashed under the weight of what a “successful” product should be. Somewhere along the way, developers simply forgot that a good, well-designed product will be profitable. Instead, development sits stagnant because “success” is now defined comparatively to WoW (and its heavily emulated quest-centric game design).
As you said, “Why the hell would WoW (or ANY established MMO) “innovate?
The answer to that is easy. They SHOULD innovate because as a leader in their respective field, they are held at higher standards than those who impact the industry less. Sitting on an old design simply because “it works” is just poor business practice. Furthermore, business’ NEED to innovate because consumers grow tired and bored of products quickly. This is no less true in the MMO industry. By dumbing down their game design, Blizzard has managed to alleviate this problem by bringing in new customers who know no better. But how long can this last? Is the game “too hard” (as you would like to believe) or are less motivated people, weened upon a game design of instant gratification, now playing a game that is trying to win back players who previously left for more challenge? The developers of WoW really have no clue of their games identity. They react to market trends and monetary gains rather than a desire to improve upon the product and service in which they supposedly take pride in making.
We have already started to see the decline in WoW. I would argue that through the dumbing down of game elements (like quests) Blizzard has replaced customers who have left yet, by doing so they have cheapened the product in which they provide. Moreover, as leaders in MMO gaming, they have cheapened the industry as a whole.
You’re flat wrong and the very game you are referring to has proved it. WoW is not even remotely the same game it was in vanilla (ok it has some of the same classes and races, but its night and day otherwise). They have “innovated” in that Blizzard way since the beginning. Raid dungeon design has been one of the greatest areas of innovation, unmatched by any other game currently (though Rift is trying). Old MMOs *do* try to innovate, i.e. bring new things to the game to keep the life blood fresh. You need to explain how WoW has *not* innovated before I buy this argument. But the point is MMOs are perpetual and persistent worlds. Of course they change. Of course new things are added. It’s a great reason so many subscribers are unhappy with not being able to access the old world. Now Cata has *not* been innovative in any way, hence his statement that they lost subscribers because of it. It’s true. Name a single new idea that came with Cataclysm that hadn’t been done before (again, raids are where most of the innovation takes place so there’s a hint). You probably won’t be able to answer that if you haven’t been playing since Burning Crusade. I’m not sure why you have joined the conversation if you have no idea what WoW is like today, but maybe I have misunderstood where you are coming from. If you haven’t been playing, then you don’t know what you are talking about.
I’m also not going to bash “quests” because I can read between the lines in this post and the previous few, and when they’re distilled Wolfshead seems to be (my perception anyway) really complaining about the way progression works these days. We’ve all become slaves to the progression, and as a result, more anti-social and self-centered. It’s “me me me! Faster faster faster! More more more!” What the devs continue to call “quests” *are* a needed function in my opinion, just not quite in the way they are currently implemented, which is nothing more than a Progression Pez Dispenser. Click the ! and run to points A, B and C, kill monsters E, F and G, and bring back their guts or body parts (seriously, who wants this nasty shit?) for XP! Yay! *DING!* and GOLD! and FACTION POINTS! Woooo! And LOOT! Yippee!
Why are quests a needed function? I somewhat disagree, but maybe have different ideas about what a quest is, so explain. There already exist fantastic games that don’t use quests to deliver content.
I brought up all the downtime in EQ in my first comment. EQ was “social” in that players spent so much time camping or waiting their turn so, as I said, there wasn’t much *else* to do so we all chatted with the others.
Again, this comparison doesn’t work. If it did, it would apply to WoW that when there is nothing else to do players socialized. They don’t. Unless you label name-calling, rudeness, and offensive behavior as social (I call it anti-social, but explain). Players socialized in EQ because it was an integral part of the game. It’s what players did when their raided and when they weren’t raiding. Travel depended on it. Resurrections depended on it. Crafting depended on it. The game was an intensely social environment. That is why players exhibited this behavior you mention.
Early on – let’s say UO, EQ, DAOC – MMOs were a social and immersive environment. Regardless if this was intentional or not, it was the major part of the charm.
Today MMOs evolved mainly in their weakest area – game mechanics. Negative side effects of the “MMO solofication” passes created the play player mentality of today.
It’s an entirely different experience. Today people wait for content to be served to them like a daily TV soap. That other players were in a way “content” for other players got lost. The MMO player of today does his daily grind mostly alone and accepts company for the dungeons and quests that sometimes unfortunately require a group.
Besides that the gaze is shifted to the horizon: Always waiting for new content from the developers. Like the rabble in Rome waited for panem et circenses. Unfortunately the genre evolved into this dead end. Millions like it that way, after all.
Why are quests a needed function? I somewhat disagree, but maybe have different ideas about what a quest is, so explain. There already exist fantastic games that don’t use quests to deliver content.
I absolutely believe that — in a fantasy MMOG — Quests (capital Q) should be there. The Epic Adventure the hero(es) go through, while they have their individual smaller adventures along the way. Now, as for what we have today that devs label “quests” as many of us have noted over the years, they’re nothing more than tasks and odd jobs. Why not treat them as such?
But I say they are a needed function because they are a means of directing some content. I’m not saying keep them exactly as they are (Progression Pez Dispensers) but some (a lot of?) players don’t want to have to “find/make their own fun” constantly. I like sandboxes — my first MMO was one — but sometimes I play to just relax and blow off steam and putting the responsibility of “fun” on me, the player, 100% of the time, is just ludicrous in my opinion. Total sandboxes usually also mean “no content” so I do think it’s important to have some type of “directed content” as well, just realized differently than the “on rails Pez Dispensers” we have now.
Today people wait for content to be served to them like a daily TV soap. That other players were in a way “content” for other players got lost.
I’m of two minds here. On one side, I can agree since I do like my sandboxy elements and my ultimate goal is to see true, meaningful virtual worlds come back into focus and also have great gameplay on top of it. However, I also have to ask, despite obviously being a fan of MMOs (or perhaps the idea of what MMOs could eventually become?), why should I hold MMOs up to this lofty pedestal? I’ve been gaming since Pong and Space Invaders and every game I’ve bought, the developers designed the “fun.” That also applies to board or card games, or sports, or anything else other than MMOs. If I buy a game for my PC or 360 today, I’m spending my $60 to play whatever “fun” that team has designed. If I get a multiplayer shooter like a Battlefield or Call of Duty game, then certainly “players are the content” applies there, but we’re still desperately hoping the dev team releases new maps, just like MMO players hope for more zones, more dungeons, etc. Think how the PvMP players in LOTRO feel, fighting the same battles in the same locations over the same few keeps in the same zone for four years. Just because the genre on the box says “MMO” I no longer feel the game should be “above” anything else, nor do I feel any MMO in and of itself is worthy of me (or anyone else) spending $60 for the box then an additional $180 per year for nothing more than “players are the content.” However, I strongly agree that more of a focus should be brought back to players’ activities (again, bringing it back to having a “real” virtual world to “live” in) where there’s practically none today. And I don’t mean PvP either.
I agree with your definition of quests, but I think you are looking at it wrong in a way.
I turn on the game because it is the thing I want to do at that time. This means I have a certain expectation of that game I am going to turn on. This doesn’t change. When I want to do some heroic type gaming, I turn on God of War. When I want to do some problem solving, I turn on Defense Grid or a strategy game. When I just want to let loose, I turn on a sandbox game. What you want is an MMO that is all these things so you can turn it on and, depending on your mood, pick a style of play. Games have never done this. They cater to a specific style (or maybe 2) and players turn it on because it is the thing they want to do. In other words, don’t play a game when you don’t feel like it. But don’t demand it shifts with your play moods. That’s almost weird in my mind.
Quests are a tool. I think they are best used to facilitate NPC stories and lore tied to the world. I think all other uses of the tool are inappropriate. RPGs are about adventure. MMOs are about adventuring within a persistent world with players, instead of only having NPCs. When an MMO is sending you constantly to NPCs for your gameplay experiences, it’s not just a waste of resources (make a single player game for crying out loud if that’s the case) but it’s boring and defeats the point of the game.
@Doone
Exactly! A lot of people got into MMORPG’s 10+ years ago because they offered a unique experience to the solo RPG console games on the market. The addition of living, breathing players into our virtual worlds allowed us to go beyond the scripted content most games had at the time. We were not restricted to one form of leveling, or one form of story telling. We were finally free to do as we pleased, when we pleased. At this time, Quests were long drawn-out epic adventures, not some daily “Kill Ten Rats” chore designed to keep us busy for 10 minutes.
The ironic part about someone claiming they want to “relax” or “play on their own time” in today’s breed of MMO is that these people RARELY if ever stray from the beaten path and always play on the game developers predestined time-line. When they log on, they are instantly encouraged to find the ! above the heads of NPCs and obey their requests without having to be told to do so. Somehow these people have got it in their heads that because they can solo, that means they are playing on their “own time.” When in reality, they are really just being encouraged to do one activity over another. Busy work quests do not equal freedom.
Now this is not to say that I don’t believe in solo gameplay mechanics. In fact, as I grow older and more responsibility piles upon me, I encourage a certain amount of it. However, MMOs were founded upon the basic principles of cooperation amongst its virtual world inhabitants. As such, I’m a firm believer that Quests need to be more “epic.” Developers need to realize that we want to feel string and powerful through our avatars, not by overpowered gear being handed to us, but by collectively achieving something together that we could not do alone.
Wolfshead, you probably don’t realize this but you’ve just written an article that relates closely with the societal issues we face today in real life. A book by Bernard Stiegler entitled Taking Care of Youth and The Generations talks about this in more detail (but be forewarned, it’s an extremely difficult read). He’s the head of the Department of Cultural Development at the Pompidou Center in Paris.
In a nutshell, his books talks about how the cultivation of distraction within our society (particularly through its industries) is creating a lack of caring, responsibility, and awareness. Why this is critical is because long-term / deep attention has always been an essential element in our society’s social development and cultural memory. Without it, we are effectively neutering our ability to pass on generational awareness and knowledge (i.e. father and mother giving deep attention to their child) to the point that we are almost killing our species through distraction because latter generations eventually reach a point where they are incapable of independently caring for themselves. In effect, they are unable to become what we define as an “adult” within our society (i.e. someone who is “independent, self-sufficient, and responsible”).
But back to the world of games though. While I agree that quests are distractions, I think we need to go deeper as some others have noted. Levels, to me, are the single greatest social barrier in most games today. And if we remove them (along with the other things you’ve mentioned), I think you finally stripped away everything to the point that the reward of the game finally becomes the interactive experience itself.
A good example of this was the Traveller RPG. Its focus wasn’t so much on leveling and abilities (it had very minor skill progression) but instead the interactive experiences you had within the game. If anything, you could say the only thing that helped you within the game was resources (i.e. money, equipment, ships, etc). But note I didn’t say help you “progress” within the game because often times resources weren’t essential to getting somewhere or doing something. Or put another way, a lack of resources often didn’t limit your mobility or interaction, even though they may definitely contribute to your success or not.
This is exactly the type of MMO game I’d like to see. In effect, the world is open to you to explore and figure out on your own. You’re aren’t given a quest at 50th level to tackle a dragon in a cave on a mountain top but instead in your wanderings you discover the dragon (possibly from a rumor you heard in a tavern about a cave up there). Sure it may kill you in a single swipe but that’s how you learn the hard way. At least nothing is stopping you from interacting and exploring wherever you wish to go, be it within a dungeon or participating in a war. Games like EVE Online have this same ability and it’s very liberating. I can start a new character and fly off into zero sec space, probably being blow to bits in the process, but at least I can do it and experience it if I so choose to do so.
I guess what I’m getting at here is that instead of creating environments that focus on vertical thinking and progression, we should be creating environments that focus on lateral thinking and progression. When we do so, I think we’ll finally start seeing environments where zone activity isn’t based upon how long a game’s been out (i.e. starter zones are ghost towns a few months later) but instead based upon what’s actually interactively happening within the game (i.e. some newb pissed off the slumbering dragon in the mountain and it’s wreaking havoc on the countryside, thus putting out a call for help in all of the surrounding areas).
@Nollind: EXACTLY! I’ve been complaining for… I’ve lost count how many years now… about the penchant for vertical progression in MMOs. I understand vertical is both easy to design and balance (comparatively speaking) and dead easy for players to comprehend, but it also precludes having any semblance of the type of virtual world I’m after. You mention rolling up a new pilot in EVE and strolling out to nullsec. It was the same back in old SWG. I could make a new character and after doing the intro bits, I could join my guild hunting Rankor which was, at the time, an “end-game” (though I don’t recall ever hearing that term) activity. Anyone coming from a vertical-only progression game would be unable to wrap their minds around that concept and scream that I was gimping the group. But SWG wasn’t a vertical progression game at that time, nor was it a min/max – everyone must be *this* tall to ride – type of game. It was mostly social, and sure my blaster shots missed a lot but they did hit some, my shooting skill was certainly progressing a lot and most importantly, from the moment that character joined the guild, he was able to play with *everyone* in the guild at *any time* without having to wait until he was within a 5-level bracket and with the right gear.
Seems to be a no-brainer to me, to design so that players of disparate skill and resources can play together as easily as possible. Mark me as another voice against vertical progression in agreement with Nollind and Scott.
I do hold a potentially divergent opinion in connection with this, though. It seems that harsh death penalties are popular among the “it was better in the old days” crowd or even the heavy simulationist crowd, usually because of a belief that it makes people depend on each other more… but I argue that harsh death penalties punish exploration and experimentation. To that end, I believe that weak death penalties are important to making a lateral world work.
I think it’s that direction that Guild Wars 2 is leaning, by making death almost trivial if you have friends to watch your back and pick you up. If you die, you get back to playing *with friends* in short order. (It seems like soloists will get the shaft there, but hey, as much as I love soloing, I know I’m an outlier. After all, when I’m playing “on my own time”, I do actually wander off the yellow brick road. That’s the point of playing in my own instead of following the herd, as it happens.)
@Scott: Actually I’ve experimented with the sort of thing you mentioned in Warhammer Online and some other MMOs. In Warhammer Online, I was just starting the second tier (i.e. 22nd level) when I decided to run ahead to both the third and final fourth tiers. I actually was able to contribute quite decently in realm combat in the third tier (i.e. level 30+) and just barely in the fourth tier (i.e. level 40+). How? CC’ing. In effect, CC’s apparently worked on any level so you were in a group you could chain them to keep a higher level character stunned. Even as a healer, I was keeping guys 10 to 15 levels above me alive through my extra heals. In effect, higher level healers would do about 80% of the work in keeping the tanks up and my 20% actually was the tipping point in keeping them alive. It was a pretty cool experience, as higher level guys were thanking me for the heals. 🙂
From what I’ve been hearing from various people over the years, the big difference between vertical and lateral games, particularly from a combat standpoint, would be this. In vertical games, usually your abilities get more powerful in strength the higher your level. In lateral games, your abilities have the same strength level by default (since there’s no levels) but you’re given more flexibility in what you can do with those abilities particularly when combined with other things (i.e. resources) or other people.
For example, imagine I’m a wizard in a lateral game and I have an ability that lets me channel fire. Well depending upon how I use my ability, I can let a small steady stream of fire out so as to create a light to see in the dark. Or I can channel a massive burst of fire so it blasts out like a fireball. Even more so, depending up the resources I have, I may gain new flexibility with my abilities and also be able to focus more power from them. So I might get casting components that get destroyed when using an ability but they amplify the effect of it. Or a wand with a “ruby” gem on its point may allow me to amplify all of my fire-based spells and so on.
@Tesh: I think you have to remember though that, with regards to harsh death penalties, your viewing it from the perspective or paradigm of existing MMO world views, of which many are theme park-based. If you tilt the game on its side so it transforms from a vertical game to a lateral game though, it can completely change everything, even to the point that permadeath can become not only possible but even a purposeful meaningful act within the game.
For example, if I’m playing in an action-based fantasy MMO game, whereby my abilities are like weapons in a FPS game (i.e. my flame ability as a wizard as I mentioned in my last comment above), then my skill within the game is directly tied to me as a player, not to my character. Therefore, if I actually die permanently in the game, I don’t lose any of my skill. Because I can create another character and still have that high degree of skill with it (as long as I choose that same ability for my character). What I won’t have is my previous resources (i.e. money, equipment, etc) and social status that my previous character had.
But don’t get me wrong. I agree that if I die, especially as a newbie to the game, then there should be some forgiveness in getting back to life. Even more so, the more “experienced” you become at playing the game and the more resources and social status you have, then the more flexibility you should have for being able to get resurrected (or possibly even reincarnated) easily.
For example, when I played one MUD years ago, resurrections in the game were actually performed by other players. This was an amazing experience because it created interaction and formed connections, even as a newbie just starting the game. So when you died as a newbie the first time, you went to this black dark place but then suddenly after 30 seconds or so, you appeared naked back in town next to a priest player who had resurrected you from the dead. Needless to say, if he had to do this more than a few times in one day, he started demanding some tribute in the form of work or errands to run (i.e. a real quest). 🙂
True enough. We can even look to FPS games and their respawn mechanics for that matter. Death is just a bump in the road, a score to be tallied. You’re never out of the action for very long. Death has consequences, but they don’t keep you from playing.
I view it boiled down to a simple differentiation:
Modern MMOs are games, not virtual worlds.
When thinking on that, and considering what the differences between those things are, I realize why I’m unhappy with the large percentage of MMOs.
@Tesh: While I will admit to seeing *some* benefit to “harsh” death penalties in DDO and Vanguard (back when they had those harsh death penalties, which they no longer do) in terms of… fear (?) of losing XP or whatever… feeling you just lost hours of effort and were being set back even while continuing your adventures forward.
On the other hand, I’ll also admit to rather enjoying Champions Online which takes the exact opposite approach: rather than a penalty for dying, it gives you a bonus for surviving. Maybe they’re onto something there, or perhaps there’s a middle ground to be found someday?
@Scott: That’s a very interesting idea about getting a bonus for surviving. Reminds me of Allegiance, an MMO-like sci-fi space shooter where the longer you stayed alive, the more you got a power bonus (up to a maximum of 30 points) which contributed to your dmg output when shooting your weapons. When people targeted you though, they would see this bonus marker and would obviously want to kill you. So if they destroyed your ship and ejected you from it into an escape pod, you were fine as long as you got all the way back to a starport. However, if they destroyed your ship and immediately got the chance to destroy your escape pod as well then you were considered “dead” and respawned at your starport with your bonus marker set back to zero. Even more so, while the game allowed you to choose certain ship types at no cost, other more expensive ships like bombers and capital ships were costly thus if they were destroyed, it was not only bad for you but bad for your faction.
But even from a fantasy-based perspective, this could really add a different dimension to the game. In effect, the longer you’re alive, the more your life essence is and thus it could contribute a bonus to your ability force. Even more so, imagine an MMO world where the divine strength of your “god” was directly attributed to the strength or vitality of its followers. Taking this even farther, the more you improved the strength of your god, the more your abilities could be strengthened in turn. Hell, the god could even possibly be a player who could directly channel his power to those individuals of high social status within his religious “community” or “faction”. Thus a newbie priest may only be able to “heal” minor wounds. But other players who’ve been alive for a long time and have risen in social status with their god, could receive his boon directly, giving them a larger “spiritual” pool which would be necessary as a resource bonus to give their “heal” ability the capability of raising the dead.
What Champions does is give ‘stars’ on your portrait. Each star you earn (from successfully completing missions while surviving) gives you a 1.5% bonus to both damage and healing. Dying subtracts a star. When you get into group content (the game scales) we tend to die quite a bit at our level (upper teens) since it’s not necessarily a Trinity game. At this point everyone is pretty much a “dps” class, so to speak, with limited protective abilities and no heals yet.
Putting the few “hardcore” types aside, I look at what death penalties really do in the MMOs I’ve played and the people I’ve played with. You die solo and have a 10-30 (depending on the game) debuff/penalty. I notice a *lot* of people I guild with will just log to an alt instead of tolerating that penalty. That means players consider the penalty debuff enough of a punishment that they’d rather not even play the character they obviously intended to focus on. I do that myself quite often, unless I happen to have some travel or other activities that will take up the death penalty time. Either way, though, that penalty is making me *stop playing the game* (read: stop or put off what I wanted to do) and find other in-game activities to bide the time.
In a group, several (most?) MMOs will give a class some type of death penalty removal skill. My main MMO, LOTRO, the minstrel class can remove the Dread debuff we get after a defeat. So we (“we” = the devs) make a big fuss about creating this death penalty system then turn around and give someone a way to remove it. As if they’re going to choose NOT to? Doesn’t the whole penalty become a moot point then? All we want to do is *play together* which is, you know, kinda the whole damn point of multi-player games, right? Why penalize us so that we’d rather just log out, or play an alt, or just sit there idle or AFK until the penalty expires? I can’t think of a single other game genre that punishes failure like this. Isn’t the failure alone — especially in the company of your friends/guild/strangers — punishment enough?
I’m all for having “meaningful virtual worlds” (someday I have to come up with a better term for that) but we’re also playing a game and at some point some “game” concessions need to be made for the sake of enjoyment and playing with others.
I admire your energy to keep posting such detailed and thoughtful analyses on topics I care about as much as you and ofc fully agree on. The funny thing is that reading through most of the comments you got and also considering what I hear from my own friends and have been hearing for a long long time, everyone agrees with this – and yet, questheavy MMOs remain the current trend. where are all those players that actually enjoy the quest grind of today’s games? it seems to be a minority…
Personally I believe the ‘quest drive’ we’ve seen in the past came with powerful rewards; people like rewards and item collection, questing is just one (easy) way to trigger their behaviour. if you show players that MMOs can be rewarding just the same but in different ways, without the need for mindless quest grinds, I don’t see anyone crying for quests.
@Scott: I guess what I’m getting at with regards to things like permadeath is that harsh things can exist within an MMO world if the entire design supports it in some meaningful way (lateral design thinking). For example, adding permadeath to most theme park vertical games is simply ludicrous because it would just piss people off. So I agree, if you’re going to add penalties to a game, there has to be valid reason for it but more importantly it has to work meaningfully with the existing gameplay. If it doesn’t, then people will try to work around it or simply not play.
From my past gaming experiences, I’ve found that there are three means of returning someone to life: raising, resurrecting, and reincarnating. Right off the bat, reincarnating isn’t really feasible in most MMOs unless you design this functionality within the game in some meaningful and enjoyable way (i.e. a player can become a tiger or bear). Raising the dead is usually done if the person’s body is nearby. Resurrecting, if I remember correctly, is done when only the spirit is nearby and the body could be completely gone (i.e. incinerated by a fireball).
In terms of a penalty, raising the dead is the preferred means because it returns to person to a state of full health with no loss of resources (i.e. gear, etc). Resurrecting is the second best option because you return the person to life but they are naked with none of their resources. They can walk back to where they lost them though and recover them. Finally reincarnation is the harshest because you don’t even return to your original form but take on another. Again pretty radical but it does permit interesting gameplay possibilities if designed right.
So pretty much like you said, the penalties of death themselves are harsh enough, so why exact another penalty on top of that. I think Allods Online was a perfect example of this. When you died, you were out of PvP combat. That in itself is a huge penalty to yourself and your team. Then you had to spend a bit of myrrh and time to get back to life. Then after you were returned to life, you had to deal with the death debuff in some way. It was just ludicrous and not enjoyable by any means. From my perspective, just being out of the interactive experience of the game for a certain period of time was sufficient penalty enough.
@Syl: Oh I’ve seen those people who want more and more quests, particularly in games like WoW. I mean why do you think Blizzard is rushing to put out their content faster. The problem though is it creates this vicious rush / slow cycle where people are so excited with the quest content, they rush through it and then hit a low when it’s all gone so quickly.
I also totally agree that there is a better way as I noted in some of my comments above. The problem that I see right now though is that developers are only willing to risk making small changes which means the existing paradigms and world view are maintained. To truly make a difference experience overall, you need to take all the same game components and tilt them on their side, reconnecting them in different ways. When you do so, you create a whole new world view where what wasn’t possible before, now is possible.
Again though, it takes a holistic change to the entire complex system to achieve this. Thus you need developers who are highly knowledgeable in things like systems thinking, ecosystems (i.e permaculture principles = sustainable culture), and emergence (iterative complex design), who think outside the box or on the edge compared to most MMO developers today. The biggest drawback to this is that to most businesses this is highly risky. Therefore some companies that are trying to do this try to create “bridges” to this new type of world view. So when you enter the game, there might be some basic quests to get you going or learn the basics of the game. But the “end game” if you will is completely driven by the player.
One last point. While everyone may agree a change is necessary, the biggest problem is that everyone can’t seem to agree on a new approach. For example, most of the stuff I mentioned above I’ve mentioned elsewhere and a lot of people just see it as too radical, primarily because they are looking at my suggestions as placed within the existing world view of MMO games. It’s why I don’t really comment on this stuff very much, because the “masses” (i.e. WoW forums), for the most part, just don’t get it. Instead I just do my own research and gather my own ideas. And if one day I meet someone who clicks with the same perspective as I do, then I’ll probably start collaborating with them on solidify this design. Right now though, it’s just a hobby for me that I do on the side.
Incidentally, I was playing Fate for a bit last night, and it has an interesting take on quests. You can only have three at a time, which makes them a little more special, but the interesting part is the reward. About half of them are fetch quests (and the other half are assassinations; nothing special in the *play*, really), but the tricksy part is that the items you are sent to fetch tend to be pretty good gear. You can equip that gear and never turn in the quest if you feel like it (though I’m not sure if canceling the quest makes the gear disappear, come to think of it). You are thusly presented with a choice: keep the fetched item or turn it in for XP, money, fame and maybe an inferior item. Sometimes, it’s actually better to just keep the thing. (Or keep it for a while and turn the quest in when you find an upgrade, but then you’re missing out on other quests…)
It’s a simple design change, but it makes the quests more interesting because there’s a choice to be made that’s actually worth making.
Similarly, I’ve long argued for class-specific quests like those in the Quest for Glory games. WoW quests very rarely utilize specific talents and abilities that differentiate the classes, and conflict resolution in the game is almost always based on liberal application of murder. It just gets old.
Quests can be good ways to direct players who are afraid of making choices. Still, when quests are just laundry lists on autopilot, they do lose some of their value.
I find it hard to blieve that I am completely agreeing with EVERYTHING I read in an article about MMORPGs. I shake my head and try to realize “Am I reading something I wrote before?” But then I realize I don’t have good writing skill so this cannot be my article.
I am someone who has been playing games for a loooong time. I played MUDS, Meridian 59, UO, EverQuest oh and almost all pay to play MMORPGs ever sense. I do support Wolfshead article COMPLETELY without any ifs or buts. This is coming from someone who tried them all, this acknowledement is not coming from someone whose MMO experience started in 2004.
I think anyone who disagrees should state their own MMORPG history because I believe the only ones who disagree or can’t comprehent the reasons Wolfshead presented is probably beause they never tried other non-Quest Driven games and hence cannot comprehend.
I salute you Wolfshead and I will keep that “No Quests” sign in my website. I’ve been complaining about Quests for a long time (in Sigil Forums, 2004/2005) and kept spreading my thoughts throughout the years hoping that developers would listen. Now more and more should join us and maybe our voices are going to be heard.
Well done… well done. *Takes my hat off to you*.
I’d like to just speak out on the Death Penalty aspect a bit.
First, just for the record, my MMO “career” started initially with Anarchy Online, Shadowbane and AC2. Final Fantasy XI, however, is the MMO that really got me hooked. So, I can appreciate the differences between MMOs in the pre-WoW era compared to what they’ve degraded to these days.
That said, I saw the remark about dying and ‘being out of the game’ as being punishment enough and anything more harsh not being necessary or, possibly, “too much”.
I would beg to differ on that. They definitely serve a purpose, and it isn’t to “punish people for failure and make them waste hours of their time”, as some people I’ve seen over the past several years characterize it.
The purpose of a harsher death penalty, as I’ve experienced it, is to encourage players to be more careful about not dying in the first place. It’s supposed to suck and be something that players want to avoid as much as possible. It encourages people to play more strategically, to not rush in and “zerg” everything; to not be a “Leroy Jenkins” so to speak.
Too often these days I see players basically throwing themselves into situations without care, without strategy and without concern for failure. They *expect* to die, because, oftentimes, it’s a key part of their approach to playing. But because the death penalty is practically nothing, they res, run back… do it again, res, run back do it again. Eventually, they reach their goal through attrition alone. They died enough times to weaken the enemy’s forces and won the day.
That’s not very exciting or engaging gameplay to me.
Death has become such a non-factor in a number of MMOs that people are using it as a convenient means of travel. There’s the “cemetery hopping” in WoW to get across an area faster, for example. That should never be the case.
Foolish or careless play should be punished, just as strategic and well coordinated and executed play is rewarded. And no one who is playing strategically, using their brain and not being careless should be dying so often that it becomes a serious issue. If you’re dying so often that “hours” of your life are being wasted… you’re doing something wrong.
Let’s take my favorite all-time MMO, Final Fantasy XI and compare it with its follow-up, Final Fantasy XIV. There’s a perfect contrast there.
In FFXI, you can lose xp and/or levels for dying. Plus there’s death weakness. Dying sucks in that game and, so, it’s something that people did their best to avoid. People didn’t play so carelessly (for the most part), they used their brains more, they devised strategies to best approach a situation to ensure the highest chance of success.
Going through dangerous areas took on heightened meaning because dying didn’t mean a quick trip back from the graveyard and a negligible repair bill. It meant a loss of xp and possibly a level. That potential loss was a great motivator for people and, in my experience, made for a *much* more exciting and rewarding gameplay experience. Close-calls really felt like close-calls.
Now let’s take FFXIV, a MMO created in the post-WoW era. The game has much faster leveling… No xp loss for dying (that I recall). No level loss for dying. Death is a mere inconvenience, nothing much.
What’s the result? Sloppier, lazier and more careless gameplay.
Why? Because people don’t care about dying, so they have no reason to try avoiding it very hard.
For the period I was playing it, I would be doing levequests (FFXIV’s version of repeatable “daily” content, though it’s not really “daily”), I did not get into one group doing them where the people were at all interested in devising a strategy to win the fights without dying.
They did the “win by attrition” approach of throwing themselves in, doing as much damage as they could ’til they died… run back… rush in, do as much damage as they could ’til they died… I tried recommending actually trying to arrange some kind of strategy instead of dying over and over. The response was basically, “Why? What’s the point? You don’t need strategy”.
That’s how we “won” our Levequests. After a while I just stopped doing them because it was, frankly, lame as hell.
In games with a death penalty, dying tends to be treated as something to avoid at all cost. In games without a death penalty, it’s almost seen as part of an “effective battle tactic”.
So, I personally prefer a death penalty that actually has bite. The net results are more worth it in the long run.
Just to append my previous post…
It occurs to me that the only time I ever knew of players actively trying to not die was during a raid encounter, doing everything they can to guarantee a win.
Why take it so seriously then, when they couldn’t have cared less if they died 10 times in a row previously?
Because in a raid, the stakes are higher. Greater rewards are at risk. And, further, hours of their time is involved. It’s not a quick 10 minute “go get my old book from my cottage that’s been overrun by monsters” anymore. It’s a potentially hours-long affair that can be for naught if people aren’t on the ball.
And, with the exception of raids that have become so routine that players have them on “farm status”, it’s a pretty damn awesome achievement when you successfully take down that final boss after all that time fighting toward it.
So, just as with the time lost in losing xp or a level in other MMOs like FFXI, or Lineage 2… Seems that time is a similar motivator even in a game like WoW when it comes to raiding.
The only difference, of course, is that while in a game like WoW, it’s limited to end-game raids…. in other MMOs, it’s pervasive throughout the game.
I agree with your article 100%. My first MMORPG was Ryzom which I played at release just before WoW was released. Ryzom has very few quests and the leveling is strictly mob grinding. Mob grinding and socializing go hand in hand. Ryzom had the very best community I have ever seen (I’ve played almost all the major releases since then). For all the reasons you noted in the article, quests are the ruin of mmorpgs.
I forgot to mention that the mob grinding in Ryzom initially needed at least a group of 3 people to grind efficiently, so as soon as you logged on, you would go join a group. Soloing was practically impossible unless you wanted to wait 5 minutes everytime you killed anything. The other good thing about Ryzom is that there were no loot drops (only crafting mats would drop from mobs). Basically everything was crafted. Ryzom I would say has and still has the second most interesting crafting system after SWG.
A friend of mine and I are working on a webcomic that prominently features an MMO as part of the plot. As part of this, I’ve been thinking on the idea of the ideal MMO we would want to create for our story to include and it’s leading me to make it as in depth and amazing as possible. One thing these musings have led me to conclude is, indeed, less quests.
But no quests? I disagree.
I’ve returned to Norrath just this week and I’ve been finding the introductory zone quite fun because quests have been implemented to nudge me around, but they are taking time. I’ve gotten a quest that killing the first 15 enemies was fine, but I had to explore, kill, and grind for a few levels before I could finish that quest. A quest taking 3 levels to complete and it’s given to you when level appropriate? Interesting!
However, it makes sense for that area: I’m trapped and we’re staging a revolt to escape. Things must be done to accomplish this and I’m taking part in that. When I escape this starting adventure, I’d like the fondly remembered open world, almost sandbox, adventuring of EverQuest.
Yet, why did I fall in love with WoW if I prefer EQ’s lack of questing? Because of Final Fantasy XI…the MMO that, at launch (perhaps different now), was solo hostile. NOTHING could be done solo. I spent more hours spamming “warrior LFG” than I did playing the game. WoW let me solo. It let me feel like that adventurer in the world that didn’t need a small army to kill a bunny.
But WoW went too far with the flood of questing. So where’s the middle ground? EQ grinding, even just small groups, took devotions of time and many casual gamers can’t always hop on for more than 30-45 minutes.
My dream vision? No quests…jobs.
Put essentially what WoW has made daily quests in the cities. Simple tasks that don’t require a group nor much time. Perhaps it’s killing animals close to town for items to deliver to the local tanner and butcher. Being given items for crafting to work out. Maybe delivering missives around the city. The point is, people in the city have lives and jobs to put food on the table and make the player a part of that for daily quests. Particularly if players are allowed to be merchants and not just listing items on an Auction House, then having daily activities to participate in gives meaning to not leaving town.
Basically, when you log on with little time or don’t feel like grouping, spend it in town working on crafting and doing jobs. These could reward less xp and more money while adventuring is a more xp and a gamble on money (really, you think gnolls and kobolds are gnawing on bones but carrying around gold?) unless you find that valuable bauble.
Leave the adventuring open ended except in a few very specific cases, such as the aforementioned EQ prison revolt, or the long quest chains that span multiple levels like EQ’s class weapons (I still love you, Soulfire and Ghoulbane!). Let quests evolve into jobs around town to make a living.
I believe there’s a balance that can be struck as the pendulum has been on both ends. Perhaps, just maybe, SOE can harness this with EverQuest Next, which they are apparently modeling more towards classic EQ. Personally, I hope they take some notes from the undervalued Vanguard as well.
Excellent post, and I agree completely.
I do have one nit-pick however, because it’s something that I see said a lot about FFXI and it drives me nuts… Mind you, I’m not saying this to ‘bash’ you, so please don’t take it personally…
This paragraph in particular:
“Yet, why did I fall in love with WoW if I prefer EQ’s lack of questing? Because of Final Fantasy XI…the MMO that, at launch (perhaps different now), was solo hostile. NOTHING could be done solo. I spent more hours spamming “warrior LFG” than I did playing the game. WoW let me solo. It let me feel like that adventurer in the world that didn’t need a small army to kill a bunny.”
I played FFXI from day 1 of its US launch on PC. I was one of the many NA players who were wandering around their home nation wondering what the heck was going on. Like everyone else, I learned by playing and by socializing and, occasionally, looking things up online when the first two options weren’t forthcoming.
That said… your statement that “NOTHING could be done solo” is simply not true, and even less so for the emphasis you put on “nothing”.
True, FFXI was not soloable for most mob grinding after level 10-ish. It was not soloable for a number of quests and it was not soloable for HNM fights (HNMs). Yes, FFXI was a very group-oriented game. It was like that deliberately. That much is no secret to anyone.
There were, however, plenty of quests you could do solo. You could even do a number of the missions solo and really only needed help with those that required you to defeat a tough enemy. There was plenty of other content you could do solo. Crafting, harvesting, exploring, unlocking outpost warps (when they implemented them not long after launch), etc. etc.
All of those activities were beneficial to your character in some way or another.
So, I wanted to just respond to that bit, because, again… In my time playing it, I never had a lack of things to do that could be done solo, and I was not always out in an xp party when I was playing.
Now, perhaps those other activities didn’t interest you. You don’t care for crafting, harvesting, exploring, etc. etc. That’s fine. However, that simply means the game didn’t have solo content that you enjoyed. That doesn’t mean it had no soloable content at all. Important distinction there.
Further, as for spending more time lfg as a Warrior than you did playing the game. Again, this comes back to you, because I played the same game and was *always* playing the game, whether I was seeking a party or not. Any of a number of other activities were available to you while you had your seek flag up.
And speaking of spamming “lfg” for hours, again, this comes back to you. In all your time spamming that, did you ever try to assemble groups yourself? Or were you always waiting for someone else to invite you? I don’t know about you, but I tended to notice a trend in FFXI among the players I knew.. Those who spent all their time with their seek flag up tended to complain about “not being able to find parties”. Those who took the initiative and assembled their own, tended to be out leveling instead.
And that’s the case across the board. A good friend of mine in XI leveled their first character, getting several jobs up to 75, all the Artifact sets for them, and did tons of HNMs (Sky, etc) getting all the most sought after “top gear”. I used to call her a walking showcase. Then her character got taken away from her (boyfriend’s account and they broke up). So she started over from scratch… and did it all again. She managed to level up on multiple jobs and get all that top end gear on two characters faster than some players ever got it – if they did at all – on one.
What was the key? Initiative. She was driven to do those things and made it a point to work toward any goal she had at the moment when she was logged in.
Now, some might say “oh well, she’s a female and so things would come easier to her ’cause a lot of guys are suckers for female players”. Not necessarily. There were several other female players I knew who, like their male counterparts, chose to sit around, with their seek flag up, waiting for everything to come to them, complaining about not being able to get anything done.
I saw the difference myself. I was playing Dragoon when it was at the peak of its “lolDRG” status, got more than my share of jokes and people telling me “you’ll never level to 75 on that. DRG are useless”. Regardless, I got to 75, and even got there faster than some of those who were making those remarks. Why? Because I started assembling groups. I didn’t stand around waiting for them to come to me.
So, again, not to side-track the topic here, but it just drives me nuts when I see people making those remarks about FFXI because it ultimately comes back to how they chose to play the game.
MMOs are reciprocal games. You get out what you put in.
I have just a few things to say.
Ice Comet
Stein of Moggok
The entierity of the Temple of Solesk Ro
These kinds of quests required several things to be in your favor:
Faction Standing
Intuition to /say the magic word
Knowledge, skill, and friends
these kinds of quests had an epic ammount of time to sink in to get some gear. The drops were not always levied in your favor and the ability to gather some non ‘No Drop” items by trade to combine with your “No Drop” items in a box to create a piece of gear or the items needed to craft the gear with no or master skill. The most popular of these armors were Lambet armor. The not so popular was the paladin armor (because the paladin had to be a master smith)
Now I pull this out of my hat to make a point:
No matter what level you were, these quests were challenging and engaging and could be completed by any character. If you accidentally completed the wrong quest you could sell this armor to someone who needed it. To wear this armor was a status. To have this armor given to you was more appreciated than just handing out a purple in wow. Can you think about what it would be like if wizards did NOT have icecomet? That meant that he needed help! The Stein of Moggok required quite a bit of legwork and could ONLY be completed by certain classes (used to be favored by enchanters).
There were sooo many variables involved in doing a quest. Largely, the world was about adventure and EVERYONE had a role. Your class defined how you liked to play. Rogues getting caught theiving (though it did not affect the loot table), Enchanters who had made it to 30 was worth their weight in gold not just for the cc, but for the buff ONLY they could provide, Clerics were known for their ability to keep groups alive, Paladins, warriors, Shadowknights had to be multifaceted to either tank or dps at a moments notice, Bards offered a mix of EVERYTHING to the table. And so on and so forth… The quest structure, though crude, was implimented in a way where it was optional, provided a direction if you were lost that day, but did not overpower the game in a way where it was an alternative to leveling.
I honestly feel that what Ever”Quest” was in terms of “Quest” was not the ammount of non player driven inititives to get to the end game, but the journey it took to be who you were in “Their world” as it was laid out then. The quest for greatness by means not derived by a force outside of a players grasp.
Just for old times sake: Damn you Verant! Damn you SOE!
WoW devs made a huge post back in the days about the disengaging feel of grinding, and the solution to that seemed to be the ah-so-expected “just make more quests”.
Why the lack of AI development in PvE areas of MMOs? Is it really that hard or too resource intensive way of fixing the problem?
A truly diverse MMO offers both sides and mixes themepark/linear with sandbox nicely together so that the result gives variety in gameplay options without inflating the sense of progression.
I completely agree with every reason you’ve put forth, except one. This is reason 2. You claim that it’s great to have a social MMO where people NEED one another and form groups/guilds. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for helping people and being free from quests would allow for that to happen a lot more. But a skilled player needing help is pathetic.
When weak people form groups, and especially guilds, they tend to become an arrogant, closed off, selfish group that harasses and denies other players. An entire guild being selfish is far more destructive then individuals being selfish. Also guilds tend to get far to much priviledges in most MMO’s. Just because an MMO is a massive multiplayer online game doesn’t mean that you have to cooperate with people. Multiplayer in a MMO only determines that there are other people around. Multiple players playing alongside you. It’s not a massive cooperative online role playing game.
A lot of MMO’s are seeing real time combat being implemented. I like this. It’ll encourage player skill. Allowing you to murder entire party’s on your own. Like counterstrike or fighting games, a noob can almost never kill a pro. That’s exciting. No gear bullshit, or I got 5 people behind me you don’t have chance. It’ll also make battlefields in MMO’s more interesting, you’d want to hire the finest soldiers on your realm to win. Not just adding up numbers.
Making a close gang of 2 to 3 friends is useless in a guild/party world with no skill. But no worries, MMO’s will continue to go to a higher degree of skill as the engines and physics get better. Someone can enter the woods and survive alone, on the highest level of skill.
Denying people guilds and easy party capabilities allows for more depravity. You’ll be happy to find someone in the woods and you won’t be picky. It will feel more like an adventure.
I agree with everything you said, the problem is we are only a minority and no casual player wants to invest time in getting better at a game, like you said MMO’s are streamlined, including GW2 PvE so they can get as many players into the game to make money. Sadly i only see MMO’s getting worst, GW2 had a good approach but they listened to the wrong crowd (nothing to do at end game = introduce gear treadmill etc), renown hearts should NOT have been in the game that was a very bad mistake because renown hearts = Quests except you have the option of not turning the quest in after complete, even though the npc is 1 minute away -_-. And for god sake dynamic quests are not dynamic at all, they are static and repeat indefinitely until it bugs up, great ideas, poorly implemented.
“imagine for a moment what your current MMO world would be like without quests? What would you do? Where would you go?”
Played Minecraft much?
Minecraft, even though it is not a MMO actually makes my point that players don’t need to be spoon feed a steady diet of quests. If a gaming environment is rich, dynamic, and interactive enough players can find all kinds of things to do and derive enjoyment and challenge.
It’s funny: I found this post by googling why people enjoyed crafting in MMORPGs. I could never figure out the point, having a day job, to have a second job. And after all, did people go see Lord of the Rings or Firefly to check out the crafting?
Anyways, great post, good points, and I’ve changed my mind about quests. But not crafting (or it’s ugly cousin, inventory management), which I hate.
Cheers
– graftstefan