Quests: Now With More Grind
The supposed solution to the tedium of mob grinding was the implementation of huge numbers of quests. The best example of this, of course, is World of Warcraft. Every new zone or town has one or more “hubs” with merchants and quest givers. The quests then cause you to move about the zone doing this or that task, killing X of Y mob, gathering A of B items, and the like. The idea was to give players a story and a reason behind all of their actions, rather than just running from place to place killing every mobbie they saw.
EDIT: The discussion of this original post inspired me to rework it, add to it, and publish it as a huge article on Bright Hub. I invite you to check it out here:
New Grind, Just like the Old Grind: Quest Heavy Advancement
Your comments inspired me to examine the issue in even more detail. I hope the new article will inspire even more analysis from the readership.
I think EQ1 did the right thing with quests. There weren’t that many in the game, and you had to actually work to find them (no huge !!! over the npc’s head). Every EQ quest had a huge story arch and/or some bit of significant lore attached to it. This was especially true of the class epic quests for the class epic items. You’d do the quest and find out a nice bit of class lore in the process, making your character seem all that much cooler. You’d also, of course, get your class epic reward… making your character seem all that much cooler.
Basically, I think that is the right formula for questing. Keep the quality/content high, the quantity very low, the length epic, and the rewards super awesome.
Jyn the only problem with EQ’s questing style (i’m not complaining, I LOVE the game) is that it only works in a game based on mob grinding. I would argue, however, for eliminating experience from questing entirely.
Here’s an interesting thought though- in these games we’re always trying to get “experience” to become more powerful. In EQ, where the quests provide rewards, story, and faction changes but no real form of experience, you have to kill stuff to become more powerful. When you become level 20 you can say “I have killed X many opponents in combat and that is how I became so powerful.” with EQ, but with WoW the questing experience is so much greater than the experience gained from killing monsters that essentially you would have to say, “The real reason I am this powerful is because I get more powerful the more I do work for people.”
In real life you can become a better soldier in one of two ways, training and participating in combat. Questing is like this: A woman loses her purse and you walk 100 yards away and find it. You bring it back and she says, “Oh you found my purse!” *POOF!* suddenly you become stronger, smarter, and you instantly acquire the knowledge and training to be able to execute top-level martial arts techniques (or you have to go hand a guy a 20 dollar bill and THEN you instantly have martial arts skills).
It just doesn’t make sense, not one bit of it! In the Elder Scrolls series (at least Morrowing and Oblivion, I have not played the others) they have a fantastic solution to this issue. Questing only affects your reputation, which it normally would- for instance becoming the bagger at the local grocery store that everyone knows is always the most polite and helpful. All of your character levels are gained through advancing the skills you picked to be your focus.
For instance a warrior gains levels by fighting with his weapons/armor of choice, a mage gains levels by casting spells, and a thief would gain levels by sneaking around and picking locks and such. The reward of attribute changes are granted only by executing the skills related. You don’t get stronger by picking flowers, you get stronger by using your muscles. You don’t become more agile by fishing, you become more agile by regular stretching. You don’t become smarter by killing rats (you’ll know more about killing rats I guess) you become smarter through study and debate.
To give experience for quests is to break this natural cycle. Imagine, in WoW, someone who never does a quest and spends 40 hours a week killing mobs. Then you have someone who spends 40 hours a week questing. The person that’s just killing mobs will have killed countless numbers more than his peer, but he will be far far behind in level, and therefore power. This counterintuitive system of granting power for aid instead of power for work is an abomination of what question should be in my opinion.
EverQuest handled this well. Kill to become more powerful.
WoW handled this poorly. You’re more powerful not because you fought lots of guys, but because you talked to a guy before and after you killed them.
————————————
Role-playing has always been anchored not just in the idea that you are becoming someone else, but that the person you are becoming is doing something adventurous and exciting, something you might read a book or hear a story about. The original Neverwinter Nights was possible one of the most captivating games I have ever played. It was quite literally like reading a book and I got to choose what happened. If a woman’s husband went missing then if I decided it wasn’t interesting enough to pursue then I let it fall to the wayside, while if I felt that my character was a do-gooder that pursued every evil they were aware of to its end then I would do everything in my power to help as many people as possible.
In MMO’s the story loses its importance because of the emphasis on playing with other people. I know some people strongly disagree with this idea but I believe it’s true; The sole purpose of playing an MMO is to play with people. Now, whether you solo the levels to be able to group at the end-game is up to you and the designers, but you wouldn’t be playing the game if you were alone in the world. You can’t very well have a story with thousands, or even hundreds, of meaningful heroes. This is why you see instances. Imagine watching Stargate: SG-1. Every episode they go into an “instance” and defeat a “boss.” The “instance” may be just going on an adventure, and the “boss” may just be solving a problem, but the formula remains the same. The story is interesting (to some of us) and so we continue to watch the television show. The reason you have instances is simply to let players experience an adventure in isolation from others- to create a place in the story for characters to BE the story.
Instances, in fact, are the only part of an MMORPG that I would consider to be similar to a standard RPG. The story is suspended outside of an instance in an MMO, even if there are quests, because the world is static. When you kill the ogre chieftain in a book the tribe falls into civil war or at least some degree of disarray. When you kill the ogre chieftain in an MMO he respawns in 15 mintues. [see EverQuest for respawn timer insanity]
You may help this farmer clear his field of harvesting machines gone rampaging but tomorrow they will still be there. And the day after. And the day after that. Where is the story? Where is the sense that your hero is impacting the world?
EverQuest is worth mentioning now. It is the perfect example of the no-story RPG that i’m suggesting exists outside of instances for one reason- it has no instances (at least it had no instances in the timeframe that i’m talking about it in). EverQuest is complete and total immersion- in a game that realistically has no ties to it’s single-player counterparts. You find a place to “camp” and you “pull” mobs to your group to butcher endless waves of endlessly respawning baddies. There are no quests to give you direction (although as I previously mentioned this kind of direction is not engaging like it would be in a single-player RPG), and you’re left to make up most of the story for yourself. There is actually a bit of lore in the game but you have to really hunt for it.
In single player RPGs we play the game to enjoy the story. With MMORPGs tending to lean towards an end-game focus now we’re playing the early levels only to get to the later ones. The story is lost because it’s no longer the purpose of play. When you don’t make an impact on the world the story is meaningless. Why should you care about the farmer with a werewolf wife if she will always be a werewolf and he will always be asking for someone’s help? No matter how you wrap it, stories are about CHANGE. Characters change, the people they meet and the places they go change. That’s what makes them interesting- take change away and your story is done.
[Quests don't matter. Muckbeast I agree with you, I would rather have a taskmaster]
Regardless I believe that MMORPG’s are NOT actually RPGs any longer. The element of story is lost. We are holding onto a very loose interpetation of “Role-playing Games” where just because you have a character and they gain levels and you speak with their name in front of your text it makes it an RPG. These elements really have nothing to do with Roleplaying, just ask your local Vampire roleplaying club (if you have one, i’m happier not knowing if I do or not
).
MMORPG’s aren’t really RPGs anymore. They’re naught but a shadow of their single-player brethren in terms of story, but they offer an unparalleled opportunity for player-to-player interaction. I think that the genre could benefit greatly from a shift in focus towards rewarding social interaction and away from storytelling. Doing away with the quests of today is defenitely something I think all of us should be behind, but at the same time there would need to be some pretty extreme gameplay changes to make it happen. The story-less world outside of instances would have to disappear and groups would need to become fluid like they were in the days of EverQuest.
“MMORPG’s aren’t really RPGs anymore. They’re naught but a shadow of their single-player brethren in terms of story, but they offer an unparalleled opportunity for player-to-player interaction. I think that the genre could benefit greatly from a shift in focus towards rewarding social interaction and away from storytelling.”
Well said!
Quests work so much better in singleplayer games, they are usually more complex and interesting, something that is almost impossible in a persistent MMO.
Muckbeast already listed the disadvantages. I will add one more thought: TO-DO-LISTS. This is what quests and achievements have become for me. I see a wall of ! over heads and have a list of achievements that I can browse. This is the players to-do-list.
Originally, quests were meant to give players something to do. To provide an interesting story. Nowadays they are part of the levelling process. Or of the daily chore, as daily quests.
The problem is, everything else got lost. People are questing, levelling… to the endgame content. Everything before is soloing boredom. And quests make it at least somewhat interesting.
Dungeon instances are then the most social thing you can experience in WoW, except chatting before the auction house in a major city. Raids usually demand strict team speak and chat discipline, one of the many reasons why I think raiding stinks.
I think this shows that something is fundamentally wrong with the World of Warcraft. It is a wallpaper world, you cannot interact with it. Questing and killing, completing achievements – that’s it. This is actually not what makes MMOs interesting, it is promoting loot lust and egoism.
One of my friends is still, again, playing WoW. He told me on Friday that achievements are a great thing, because “it makes people raid Naxxramas again who already raided it and who already got their gear”.
Basically, it gives them something to do… because there is nothing else “to do” in this game!?!? This is a tragedy.
We need more MMO WORLDS, not combat and loot lust driven wallpaper worlds. WoW is the ultimate proof into what modern “MMORPGs” degenerated.
What it boils down to is that grinding is tedious and often involves min/maxing xp:loot:time ratios. Quests give you direction and a better interface with the world. Because you are asked to collect the 9 rat tails, you’re able to just go do that and collect your rewards. You don’t have to think “Do I kill some rats or some boars today?”
Quests are like Windows. Sure, you CAN learn to do everything via code and syntax, but why? Point and click = better for the user. And really that’s what it boils down to. Quests are simpler to the user. They help to keep them interested.
In regards to the burnout that occurs, as illustrated in Muckbeast’s post: Fluid quest systems. What do I mean by this? Well, let’s use Threshold as an example. Threshold, due to it’s playerbase size and the fact that it’s text-based makes this far simpler. In Threshold there are invasions that occur at various times. Often these times are during heavy storyline events which can actually occur due to a single, or multiple, player’s actions. Threshold’s world is fairly fluid. Recently the Fighter’s Guild was tasked with culling the orcs around the city. There was no quest reward for this. It was just part of the ongoing story. However, it would have been a wonderful time for a quest. Enabling the heads of orcs beheaded to be turned in to Sir Cobalt would have given a very interactive, fluid quest. A quest that came about, was counted, and then when the storyline was over, removed, would have been in keeping with a fluid quest system.
Clearly a much, much larger game, like WoW, would involved a lot more time and forward preparation for such quests. But a team devoted entirely to making new quests, giving different rewards (primarily XP and Coin, but possibly also faction and/or gear on a level appropriate scale) would create a completely different interactive environment.
The problem with quests is that they are static. I think one thing WoW does show is that “collect 9 rat tails and turn them in to me” does work for making people more interested in grinding. The real issue is when those 9 rat tails aren’t part of the plot. If you want your quests to count, make them fluid. It would eliminate the “I’m on step 8, but you’re on step 2″ because if you’re saying that, chances are steps 3,4,5 and 6 are already gone. Luckily though Prince, who had been kidnapped, is now found, but the King needs soldiers to go bust down the gates of his evil nemesis….all part of a new quest.
An interesting thought was that many modern MMOs have much “gamier” yet still primitiive and repetitive mechanics, while old MMOs had more of a “world to live in” feeling. Life does not get too boring, even if I do always the same rituals and stuff each morning. Brushing teeth, eating breakfast. In a GAME I do not want that. In a WORLD, it is something I love and got used to.
This comment was made by someone regarding the shutdown event of Tabula Rasa, at Brian “Psychochild”’s blog.
Quests for the most part I think are best used as an advancement path for solo players out in the world, or confined to instances for groups. The rest of the group content needs to be “dynamic world” based. Meaning you take on groups of NPCs to reduce their population, or conquer objectives they hold. Tabula Rasa had this with the control point defense.
Warhammer also did this to a degree with the public quest system. Really though this is something you aren’t going to find outside sandbox games. Good deal of MMO players actually enjoy been mindlessly led around by the nose from one quest to another.
We need to talk more about quests. How about Warhammer and their “public quests”.
*adds some grind and cheese* yummy.
I absolutely hate questing. I’d rather grind, personally. However, SOME have been fun, especially the WotLK quest chains. But vanilla WoW quests? Shoot me in the face.
And drop quests? Don’t even get me STARTED. Having leveled one character 1-80 with my boyfriend, and working on a second, we almost always group up to quests. Drop quests are evil for grouping.
The implementation of questing as a primary mechanic and activity has been disastrous for virtual worlds and MMOs. I in August of 2008 I penned an article at my blog titled: The Unintended Consequences of Quest Driven MMOs where I covered all of the negative aspects of this new type of activity.
http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=358
The problem is that quest driven gameplay makes the player focus on the “me” instead of the “we”. Instead of making and experiencing your own stories “Hey, remember that time we got lost in the dungeon and barely made it out…alive?”, the player plays the part of an actor playing the part in the quest designers story. As players, we’ve traded our freedom for the security of quests. No wonder people get sick and tired of WoW when they create new characters — they are forced to play through the exact same quest lines. This has the added effect of exposing the glaring weak link of current MMOs — they never change. Van Cleef still must be killed; Morladim still haunts the graveyard at Raven Hill.
Even the very best quests of EverQuest (a MMO with hardly any quests…) suffered from the problem that WoW has. They force the player to become totally self-absorbed and focus inward instead of their fellow players. For me, the whole point of playing in an online game was the interaction with players. Sadly, my fellow players have become incidental and useful idiots thanks to the short-sighted game design principles over at Blizzard.
The unfortunate thing is that the current crop of WoW players will never know what it’s like not to be spoon fed quests and content. They will never experience the autonomy of being able to explore a world without a “questgiver” tell them what they must do.
MMOs are now glorified single-player games in the vein of God of War and Zelda where players are led around by the golden carrot of rewards. That is the sorry state of MMOs in 2009, ten years after the introduction of EverQuest.
“The sole purpose of playing an MMO is to play with people.”
We need to shout that from the rooftops and maybe someone out there will listen! Somehow the mainstream MMO community has forgotten that. Why? It’s because we’ve become fat and lazy. We’ve become seduced the eye candy and polish of WoW.
“You may help this farmer clear his field of harvesting machines gone rampaging but tomorrow they will still be there. And the day after. And the day after that. Where is the story? Where is the sense that your hero is impacting the world?”
“In single player RPGs we play the game to enjoy the story. With MMORPGs tending to lean towards an end-game focus now we’re playing the early levels only to get to the later ones. The story is lost because it’s no longer the purpose of play. When you don’t make an impact on the world the story is meaningless. Why should you care about the farmer with a werewolf wife if she will always be a werewolf and he will always be asking for someone’s help? No matter how you wrap it, stories are about CHANGE. Characters change, the people they meet and the places they go change. That’s what makes them interesting- take change away and your story is done.”
Bravo! Great point. Quests are meaningless because we all know NOTHING WILL CHANGE IN THE WORLD no matter what we do. The lack of a living, breathing, dynamic world full of consequences and choices is the problem here. I’d rather see the thousands of hour spent on crafting all of those so-called “quests” at Blizzard put into making a virtual world has the ability to change. Let me build towns and cities. Let me destroy towns and cities. Let me make my mark on the world dammit. Stop being so bloody lazy and unimaginative Blizzard.
Jedi, you should consider starting your own MMO blog. I find your opinions very worthwhile.
“Let me build towns and cities. Let me destroy towns and cities. Let me make my mark on the world dammit.”
Wolfshead, you’re on to something with this statement! Think communal Starcraft/Command and Conquer/Civilization/etc. Think of it from the street-level though, and now apply traditional (or, hell, completely new) fantasy game themes. I prefer medieval/fantasy, but I guess it’d work with any setting.
It might be pretty cool to see a game with maybe 1 or 2 stock cities that allow for people to meet up, band together, and go off to start their own village. They could upgrade their village and design their own buildings etc. according to their own whims or strategies. Eventually, more people will flock to them and it would eventually become a city. You could build walls and defenses and whatnot, and other player-ran/built cities could try to conquer yours. Sure, midnight raids could happen (they did happen, after all) and you could wake up to find your city sacked and either taken over by the other city or completely destroyed… allows for a lot of possibilities.
What if you could start your village almost anywhere in the game world? People would battle over choice geography. You could clear in-game forests for building, or maybe you would just build a tree-city up high. Port cities, island nations, mountain-top monasteries/fortresses… that kind of community-based progression combined with individual character development/progression. This kind of a project would be an epic undertaking. I’m not sure anyone could pull it off (or if the technology exists) with a graphical game (though I’d love to see it done with Oblivion or better graphics). This might be just the type of thing for a MUD, though.
Wolf: Absolutely amazing posts. Thank you!
I want to build on one point in particular:
I hate quest based advancement, but in games like WoW even I am forced to follow most of the quest lines. Why? Because half the time they are the only way to get gear. Quest rewards are often hand crafted to have stats that you would actually want. They also tend to be the easiest and best way to get high quality gear (blues or better). If you don’t do the quests, you are basically at the whim of the random number generator that is very unlikely to drop things you want. Or you can try the AH, but the best stuff is bind on pickup so no luck there either.
So even if you would prefer exploring the world organically, and just doing things on your own, you get forced into these quest lines as it is the only way to adequately outfit your character.
Before the Bind on Pickup obsession, at least you always had the option to buy things from players or from the AH. In DAoC, crafted gear was the best, so you were fine there as well. But in the modern quest driven game, the majority of “best gear” during the level up phase is from quests.
Today’s MMORPG players are not really MMO-RPG players. They are neither MMO nor RPG players. Especially not RPG players.
WoW is played by nearly everyone out there. But not as a sandbox, you are lead through the mostly solo player content by “!” above the heads of NPCs.
Converted Counter-Strike, RTS and former Blizzard/Diablo players are one of the reasons why this game shifted towards 1. single player game, 2. combat combat combat and 3. PvP, player vs player combat.
Raids remain as some form of organized mass monster gangbanging, but this is not really playing a “Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game”.
This reminds me of a neighbour and his holiday in Italy. He had no idea what to do in his vacation.
He would really have needed a “!” questgiver to direct him to the colloseum, Pompeji, and so on. He at least managed to visit the Petersdome on his own.
Aren’t questgivers something like the guys hired at Club Resorts to entertain customers? To make them play tennis, beach volleyball, take a trip to a nearby city and so on.
So I dare to say: Without quests, the humans of Stormwind would not have left Nortshire Abbey yet!!!
- is this not just sad…^^
I totally agree with wolf, the idea of an MMO is playing with other people whether you are talking to them or taking their stuff. And yes dynamic changing worlds really are what is needed, even if it means toning down the graphics quite a few notches.
There’s still just as much a place for quests in a Dynamic world game as any other. Thing been they’d be dynamically generated needs based quests vs static story focused quests. For example if an army of orcs migrates and threatens a city you’d reasonably expect quests becoming available to go help fight them/thin the numbers. Or helping a caravan you happen to notice been attacked and been rewarded for it.
This is where the MMO genre really needs to look towards RTS empire type games of various flavors where the world is quite capable of “running” itself in a logical manner without player involvement. Even simple systems of this nature tremendously enrich the games, if you get NPC cities and such interacting on the level the do in say galactic civilizations II then you’ve just re-invented the genre.
Agree with Muckbeast, these quests can have rewards but it shouldn’t be things not available through exploring dungeons as you see fit or crafting/looting.
Thanks for the kind comments folks! Also let me apologize for my bad grammar in parts — normally I proofread my posts and articles but in this case I was very passionate about the subject matter and hit the “submit comment” with abandon.
Serith78: “There’s still just as much a place for quests in a Dynamic world game as any other. Thing been they’d be dynamically generated needs based quests vs static story focused quests. For example if an army of orcs migrates and threatens a city you’d reasonably expect quests becoming available to go help fight them/thin the numbers. Or helping a caravan you happen to notice been attacked and been rewarded for it.”
I agree with you 100%. I’m not against NPC generated quests but they need to be dynamically generated and reflect the needs of the people/town/city at that point in time. Then quests given from NPCs would make perfect sense. I just don’t want to come back with another character and find that the the very same quests are still being offered with the town in the exact same state as last time i.e. Help us, the Defias Brotherhood is terrorizing our farms!
I recently listened to the lastest Blizzcast where the Blizzard bigshots such as J. Allen Brack were all congratulating themselves on what a success Wrath of the Lich King is. It made me sick to be honest. Here we have the top dogs in the industry bragging about how wonderful their pitiful quest driven MMO is yet they are still using the very same Pez dispenser NPC questgiver technology that was created 7 years ago. There is precious little innovation in WoW and I can’t understand how Blizzard can be so proud of their minute achievements. They brag about phasing in the Death Knight starting area but Lord of the Rings Online had that when they launched a few years ago. Hardly an innovation.
Muckbeast: “I hate quest based advancement, but in games like WoW even I am forced to follow most of the quest lines. Why? Because half the time they are the only way to get gear. Quest rewards are often hand crafted to have stats that you would actually want. They also tend to be the easiest and best way to get high quality gear (blues or better). If you don’t do the quests, you are basically at the whim of the random number generator that is very unlikely to drop things you want. Or you can try the AH, but the best stuff is bind on pickup so no luck there either.”
Blizzard has trained us all well. We are like trained dogs now. We do tricks for our “rewards”. We roll over for loot. We play dead for loot. Pavlov would be proud. I agree that the player that doesn’t do quests is at a serious disadvantage. You’ll make less money and get access to less loot. Quests *should* be optional but for the majority of the player population they are not — they are required.
Jyn: “It might be pretty cool to see a game with maybe 1 or 2 stock cities that allow for people to meet up, band together, and go off to start their own village. They could upgrade their village and design their own buildings etc. according to their own whims or strategies. Eventually, more people will flock to them and it would eventually become a city. You could build walls and defenses and whatnot, and other player-ran/built cities could try to conquer yours. Sure, midnight raids could happen (they did happen, after all) and you could wake up to find your city sacked and either taken over by the other city or completely destroyed… allows for a lot of possibilities.
What if you could start your village almost anywhere in the game world? People would battle over choice geography. You could clear in-game forests for building, or maybe you would just build a tree-city up high. Port cities, island nations, mountain-top monasteries/fortresses… that kind of community-based progression combined with individual character development/progression. This kind of a project would be an epic undertaking. I’m not sure anyone could pull it off (or if the technology exists) with a graphical game (though I’d love to see it done with Oblivion or better graphics). This might be just the type of thing for a MUD, though.”
Now that is the kind of MMO I would want to play! Give me a reason to care. Give me a reason to become emotionally invested in a virtual world. It stands to reason that if me and my buddies spent weeks and months building our own little village somewhere and populating it with NPC guards, vendors, fortifications etc. then we’d feel emotionally and viscerally tied to that little village. Suddenly doing a silly “daily quest” would become meaningless in the grand scheme of things. We log on all the time to make sure our small part of that world was running smoothly. Heck, we could even set up our own NPC’s and have them give quests to other players.
Give players a sense of OWNERSHIP in their virtual world. That my friends is the future!
I can imagine Blizzard bosses patting themselves on their backs. They made money, after all. But they lead the MMO genre into a dead end. WoW is just a copy of EverQuest, DIKU-MUD-heritage. As the Warcraft RTS was also a copy of Command and Conquer, and Starcraft put the same into space. Diablo from Blizzard North might have been their most creative idea so far, an action version of “Dungeon Hack” games.
They are unfortunately by far too successful, their marketing too good, and I am totally convinced they serve us Starcraft II and Diablo III with some modernizations and people will love it. They waited long enough so that people will buy the games without hesitation, and the new generation of gamers will for sure love them.
They use tried and true formulas, their strength is polishing great ideas.
With WoW, they made the MMO accessible and attractive for non-MMO-players. They also cater specifically to the achievement faction of MMORPG-players and hordes of solo players that never experienced a true MMO world before WoW. – But WoW makes Explorers and Socializers burn out. Their latest changes to the difficulty of the raid game shows that they want all those soloplay addicts raid, too. As if raiding would be the holy grail of MMO gaming.
They appease the masses, they are the McDonalds of MMORPG gaming. I like McRib a lot, but I could not eat it each day.
Wolfshead is right, Blizzard really trained us well. They created themselves an image that is more outstanding to me than all their successful games together.
WoW’s gamers are absorbed in detail discussions about this or that class buff, while they miss the bigger picture. This is why I am glad to have blogs where people talk about flaws of the system.
I follow many blogs, and it seems to me that many WoW players noticed that something feels “wrong” about the game by now, despite all the even-more-polish the game got again in WOTLK.
It cheers me up that I am not the only one who is fed up by WoW’s gameplay and do not get told that millions enjoy it, so I must be WRONG. In usual forum tone I usually come up with an analogy, billions of flies eat sh**, so it must be good.
There are so many talented designers out there, I really hope for some future MMOs to succeed. But neither “Champions Online” nor “Aion” seem to be to my liking. I do not like the new comic hero trend in games and the movies, Aion has some odd new age philosophy touch that I do not like either.
Guild Wars 2 is supposed to be more MMO-style than GW1, it has been delayed to late 2010/2011.
The MMO genre needs to evolve. If only to please a certain old, self-proclaimed veteran who is totally frustrated and bored by WoW.
I love reading this discussion. I want to just sit back and read, but I worry if I don’t add a comment to update the ‘recent comments’ nobody else will keep the discussion going. So please just accept this weak comment as designed for that higher purpose. Keep it going!
Before this turns into a Blizzard bash-fest, I’d like to argue that what Blizzard has done is only going benefit the gaming industry overall.
Before getting to that point, I’d like to list some things I think Blizzard is good at:
-As mentioned, their ability to polish their games is
amazing. I’d say second to none.
-Their CGI team is nothing short of amazing.
-Their writers come up with awesome back-stories and game
stories (lore). I personally loved the stories driving
Warcraft 3, Diablo 1 & 2, and Starcraft.
Now sure, their RTS games may be based on C&C, but they did C&C a lot better than C&C did. Invention and uniqueness of idea may be great, but is there nothing to be said of innovation? I’d say Blizzard is a great, innovative company.
Which brings us to WoW. The innovations they made to MMOs are simply too numerous to list. The result was (along with help from the popularity of Warcraft 1 & 2) the move of MMOs from relative obscurity to the mainstream. All Blizzard did with WoW is find a previously untapped niche (which turned out to be an enormously huge niche), the casual gamer.
Naturally, the things that keep a casual gamer occupied are not enough to keep a serious gamer occupied for very long. WoW is a very good game in terms of being able to cater to its niche. What I think most Blizzard bashing stems from is serious gamers’ frustration that there is currently no good game on the market that caters to their needs. WoW is the only good, well-made game, but it’s not what gamers want, so it sucks.
The things we’re talking about, such as linear questing, etc. are always going to appeal to the casual gamer and so, short of remarkable innovation, there is always going to be a market for it from here on.
The best thing about WoW is that gaming has been opened up to a whole new world of people. The world is actually starting to show an understanding of gamers, whereas before it was widely regarded as an obscure, unhealthy obsession. Some of those casual gamers may even convert to serious gamers, and our population will be on the rise, which will raise the demand for games that cater to serious gamers. We just have to be patient for now.
Some casual gamers will try other games and say, “This game is nothing like WoW, it sucks.” That’s fine. They’ll always be casual gamers. But, some of them will try other games that were designed for serious gamers and say, “This game is nothing like WoW, omg it rocks!” Then we’ll have them! Muhuhahaha!
[...] Muckbeast writes an insightful post about where he thinks questing has both succeeded and failed in MMOs. [...]
Really? What innovations? WoW is the ultimate graphical DIKU mud, with about 10% of a good DIKU mud’s features.
WoW brought incredible accessibility along with enormous polish, a dash of humor, and Blizzard’s attractive art style. That is actually a lot, so I am not saying that’s nothing. Accessibility is more important than most people realize. Heck, its the feature that is helping console’s kick the PC in the nads.
But lets not get ahead of ourselves. When it comes to actual features, WoW has removed 100 features for every 1 it has added when you compare WoW to a top notch MUD. Heck, there are even graphical MMOs out there now and from the past with more features.