What went wrong?

[lamaros]

You sort of answer yourself there; content 'must' be in large part of "kill _number_ _specimen_" variety because we're unimaginative fucks as species, and find it hard to come up with stuff beyond fetch/talk/kill as activity for the "quest". There being 7 basic plots total in storytelling etc.

Err. Kill quests are common because they're easy to make, not because people can't imagine more interesting things to make.

Eh, and:

I was including LBRS and BRD as max level dungeons because they were run by max level characters as much as the others were. The loot from them was still relevant at max level at release and they were still challenging at max level. Strat, Scholo, UBRS, LBRS, BRD. Strat was basically considered two zones in one. LBRS was not commonly completed in one sitting (you could bypass and do half at once). BRD was like three dungeons in one, including the end which was almost never completed except by max level players.

People still run Gruul for the DST, that doesn't mean Gruul is T6 content. BRD was a leveling dungeon, LBRS was leveling/max level. UBRS was a raid.

[tmp]

Err. Kill quests are common because they're easy to make, not because people can't imagine more interesting things to make.

Isn't the difficulty of coming up with something more elaborate and engaging at the same time part of the reason why kill quests are "easy to make"?

[lamaros]

Err. Kill quests are common because they're easy to make, not because people can't imagine more interesting things to make.

Isn't the difficulty of coming up with something more elaborate and engaging at the same time part of the reason why kill quests are "easy to make"?

If "having more time" is difficult then I'd agree. But I would suggest that being limited by time or money (not being able to hire 50 quest designers instead of just a few) isn't difficult, exactly.

[Hoax]

I felt forced to grind several times on a dwarf priest getting to 60 at launch.  I might have been doing it wrong though.  Could have been that I fell behind and many friends/guildees were EST.  Could have been all the pvp.  Could have been I hate diku-pve and skipped quests if I thought grinding might be faster.  Also I found the pve in wow to be as uninspiring as any pve has ever been since EQ1.  Oh Ehm Gees!  Quests with exclamation marks to tell me where to get them from!!  Fuck me and let me have your baby!?     

Sounds like you people are where I was at come WoW, but playing catch up.  PvE in diku's is boring and shitty.  It sucks and therefore you dont enjoy it.  I look forward to the realization and admittance after we repeat this same pattern with WAR.  Please dont let me down and fail to blame it on some random bullshit not the fact that you are still doing killquests and fedexquests without the awesome loot system or the adhd replayability and speed runs of Diablo.

If your going to make a mmo with a gameworld, make it a sandbox or doom it to being the same type of suck.  That should be the lesson but instead we're having another thread about wow.  Gee golly we rock.

But I guess I should quit posting here if I'm only going to complain amirite?  Who the fuck posted that anyways, what a fucking retarded comment...

[cevik]

Cevik is just a troll that goes after low hanging fruit (it's easy to fuck with us on this topic).  He's not a fanboi.  Hell, I have doubts he even plays AoC.  Lum and someone make slightly inaccurate/debatable points and lamaros (shocking!) hops on it, Cevik joins in and harps on the "WoW content at launch" angle. 

To be fair, I seriously seriously seriously think you guys are fucking crazy when it comes to wow at launch.  Like honestly, no trolling, I'm being serious "Me" and not "Cevik" mode here, you guys are really fucking freaking me out when it comes to what you think wow was like on launch.

But, color that with the fact that I've been playing WoW lately instead of AoC.  But to be fair to both games, the reason I've been playing WoW vs. AoC has nothing to do with either game, but more IRL things.  Yes, sadly, Cevik exists not just in troll form here, but also in real life.  It's enough to make one cry.

But really, you guys are fucking strange when it comes to what you think wow was like on release.

[Count Nerfedalot]

Current MMO's go wrong in exactly the same way as every business venture.  Namely, people overestimate what they're able to do given their time and budget.  Until we get developers with reasonable goals matched with investors with reasonable expectations (HA!), we're going to get the same slurry of partially finished stuff at release. 

This.  And to elaborate...

Software developers are optimists.  My rule of thumb is take any coder's best time estimate and multiply by PI.  I've been using that formula for the past 15+ years (of my 25+ yr career) and find it's accurate to within +/-10% about 90% of the time, both for myself and for others.  The 3x factor is the difference between hacking out proof-of-concept code that works but is unmaintainable and non-integratable vs architecting real code that integrates well with the whole, is tested, robust (not subject to failure due to bad/unexpected input), documented and reusable.

Also, Project Management rules.  I'd be willing to bet serious money that Blizzard has some awesome project managers driving their projects.  If those guys aren't making well into 6-digit salaries with hefty completion bonuses and stock options, then they are being seriously underpaid and should look into finding work in the real world and stop wasting their professional careers in gaming.

[cevik]

...as much as Cevik wants to "tl;dr" it wont make the valid points go away...

Go quote one valid point from the post I "tl;dr", I'll come back when you're done.

Okay, the reason you couldn't find one is because he spent the whole time talking about how I'm an alcoholic drug abuser, as if it's something I haven't heard already heard a million times.. from my own mom none-the-less.

After that he explained how f13 would make a totally awesome focus group for mmog development.  It wouldn't.  I can prove it, someone already used you as a focus group for mmog development, the abortion that was SWG came out of it.  And the only person less qualified than the average f13 poster to comment about the state of the mmog industry is Raph "I totally thought HAM was a good idea, seriously" Koster.

Actually, I think I completely understand where Raph was coming from with the HAM thing, so Raph, if you're reading this, send me a pm, I'm always looking for a good acid dealer.

[Morfiend]

Go quote one valid point from the post I "tl;dr", I'll come back when you're done.

You didnt wait long enough.

Very few expected to even like AoC upon logging in, it was quite a surprise that many of us enjoyed it.  Even schild liked it, I honestly never thought I'd see him post something positive about an MMO ever again.  Funcom offered hope for a slight change in how an MMO would play out and didn't succeed, heaven forbid we discuss that as a fact and proceed to question why.  The main reason people are expressing their disappointment is because AoC actually came close, the first part of the game is great but as you play more all of the problems start to overwhelm you until you want to leave.

I think that was a VERY valid point. In fact I think you tried to make close to the same point in a post also.

[lamaros]

An MMO

I don't think you can get away with that yet. (I tried to hold back, but quoting it again was too much for me).

[Falconeer]

For what it's worth, I leveled to 60 in original WoW as a horde character starting immediately after release and never grinded.  And I don't randomly kill mobs as I travel, either.  I did play rather casually, though, so I did have a decent amount of rest xp.

That's the thing. Many of you grinded in dungeons in WoW, with a group. That was content and was advancing your characters.
In AoC, you (generic) refused to do dungeons, to form group and to basically do what you did in WoW. As I said earlier, the group content you did in WoW you just skipped in AoC and claimed it doesn't exist.
Take out all the dungeons from WoW and tell me if you hit 60 without ever grinding before the recent XP quest boost.

Other points about WoW being more polished and with more content than AoC at launch still stand.

[lamaros]

The more interesting question would be, why were more people grouping and doing dungeons in WoW than AoC? (If what you propose is actually the situation). Getting the players to want to use and enjoy the avaliable content is just as important as having it there.

[Falconeer]

The more interesting question would be, why were more people grouping and doing dungeons in WoW than AoC?

I answered that question so many times, Lamaros:

Reason 1 - WoW low-mid level dungeons were easier than AoC ones. Less stress, more instant gratification.
Reason 2 - WoW itemization was so much better that you cared about huning good equip. In AoC not so much.
Reason 3 - WoW happened in 2004, solo playing was needed but grouping in dungeons was still considered both the norm and kinda cool. Nowadays the often mentioned MMOPLayer Burnout kills it. People can still appreciate some group crawling but it better be a Free Looting Machine or they can't be bothered at all.

[cevik]

I think that was a VERY valid point. In fact I think you tried to make close to the same point in a post also.

So he rehashed the exact same thing I had said earlier in a long rant about how my alcoholism and drug abuse entertains him and I'm somehow trying to make "valid points go away" by "tl;dr"ing the post?

So I guess I'm trying to make my "valid points go away" when I said "tl;dr" about a post that was 85% a flame because Miasma is pissed that I think he's a short bus asshole because he ranted that the dev bad touched him in a different thread and 15% a rehashing of the same point I already made.

Or maybe, just maybe, because I called you guys a bunch of pricks because of the rampant WoW revisionism around here (both in this thread and in the 1 million shipped thread), you got your precious feelings hurt and you also were just looking for a reason to flame me.

But you are right, I should be nicer, you guys are all precious little snowflakes after all.

[Miasma]

I brought up your drunk junkie ways because they are a legitimate issue to your increasingly insane thoughts.  You are actually blaming everyone else on the board and insulting them in your ridiculous attempt to convince yourself of your infallibility.  Whenever I read one of your posts I am reminded of angry drunks sitting in the corner blathering about how everyone else is wrong and that they're the ones to blame and how they're all out to get you.  I mentioned it because no one should take anything you say seriously, they should just remember that worthless drunken relative that most people have in their past.

You're not even a good troll anymore, you're on the level of a fifteen year old stratics punk.  All you've got is profanity, a willingness to alienate absolutely everyone and the ability to overdramatize and make shit up.  I mean you just blamed us for the NGE for fuck's sake.  Check yourself in to rehab and get a nice long term psychiatrist you sad little fuck.  If you put half as much effort into getting clean as you do defending a fucking video game from the assault of other nerds on the intarweb you might actually get better.

By the way, this is all coming from someone who used to lurk, read and enjoy your articles.  I would usually think afterwards "wow, I hope that poor guy doesn't kill himself, I kind of like him".

[Lakov_Sanite]

I find a recurring theme of those who praise AoC saying that it would be a good game "If only people could appreciate it" I'm not sure how pixelated tits got to be highbrow around here but it's confusing.

[Mrbloodworth]

Very few expected to even like AoC upon logging in, it was quite a surprise that many of us enjoyed it.  Even schild liked it, I honestly never thought I'd see him post something positive about an MMO ever again.  Funcom offered hope for a slight change in how an MMO would play out and didn't succeed, heaven forbid we discuss that as a fact and proceed to question why.  The main reason people are expressing their disappointment is because AoC actually came close, the first part of the game is great but as you play more all of the problems start to overwhelm you until you want to leave.

Not sure who the original poster of this is, but thats basically it, for just about everyone. The game needs work, lots of it...But this isn't surprising to me. I will mostlikely be back in about 4-6 months. I am potentially the biggest supporter of AOC on this board, hopefully with out crossing into fanboy territory.
 
The game, and its concepts are great, the combat superior, the pacing of action incredible. But so many thing are buggy, or frustrating, or lack in "hook" that i have returned to LOTRO, mainly because i want to see its new changes (that are bad ass by the way, the quest window is sweet) and , its a game me and my girlfriend can play together, because i have machines that can handle it.

Thats the rub.

[Nebu]

If you're saying that AoC is CoH combat in a fantasy setting with added itemization, then that's a large step in the right direction for the future of MMO's.  If they can manage to fill out the itemization tables while improving the worldly feel of the game, this title may gain popularity in the coming months.  Eve is proof that consistent improvements can grant rewards in customer loyalty. 

[Falconeer]

AoC combat is better than CoH's. Come on!

[cevik]

I brought up your drunk junkie ways because they are a legitimate issue to your increasingly insane thoughts.  You are actually blaming everyone else on the board and insulting them in your ridiculous attempt to convince yourself of your infallibility.  Whenever I read one of your posts I am reminded of angry drunks sitting in the corner blathering about how everyone else is wrong and that they're the ones to blame and how they're all out to get you.  I mentioned it because no one should take anything you say seriously, they should just remember that worthless drunken relative that most people have in their past.

You're not even a good troll anymore, you're on the level of a fifteen year old stratics punk.  All you've got is profanity, a willingness to alienate absolutely everyone and the ability to overdramatize and make shit up.  I mean you just blamed us for the NGE for fuck's sake.  Check yourself in to rehab and get a nice long term psychiatrist you sad little fuck.  If you put half as much effort into getting clean as you do defending a fucking video game from the assault of other nerds on the intarweb you might actually get better.

By the way, this is all coming from someone who used to lurk, read and enjoy your articles.  I would usually think afterwards "wow, I hope that poor guy doesn't kill himself, I kind of like him".

tl;dr

EDIT:  Actually I did read and I wasn't blaming you for NGE.

I was blaming you for the original release of SWG.  It's the virtual world you guys claim you want.  It sucked.

[cevik]

If they can manage to fill out the itemization tables while improving the worldly feel of the game, this title may gain popularity in the coming months.

I don't think the major complaint is the loot tables, at least not anymore.  Those exist and there is plenty of loot for all.  Now it's "gear doesn't matter enough1!1!"

I know it's somehow become "trollish" to think that WoW didn't ship as the best game eva! but that's basically the same complaint people had with WoW loot through the first year.  It took a total revamp of both the look and the stats on Tier 1 gear and quite a few theorycrafters proving that gear did matter before those complaints ended.

EDIT:  And before I am accused of making up facts about poor little WoW, I present the wonderful look of pre-1.9 Nemesis (t2 warlock gear):



Bask in it's glory, go ahead, I dare ya.  I personally forgot that they had to revamp BOTH t1 and t2 before anyone used the stuff.  Of course, wow shipped as the best game ever, so surely I must have photoshopped this.

[tmp]

If "having more time" is difficult then I'd agree. But I would suggest that being limited by time or money (not being able to hire 50 quest designers instead of just a few) isn't difficult, exactly.

Well imo it's more of the same really then -- the requirement to "have more time" for not-so-ordinary quests is caused directly by the fact it's more difficult to come up with such not-so-ordinary quests. Seriously, it's easy to say 'oh they're absolutely no harder to invent' but i'm sitting here and trying to come up with something that can't be immediately simplified to "go there and kill/fetch/talk/go back" just so i can confirm to myself what you say is true ... and i can't, really. Nor for that matter i can think of (m)any quests i've done in multiple MMOs that couldn't be simplified in exactly the same manner, and would somehow break that mould.

[Rasix]

I personally forgot that they had to revamp BOTH t1 and t2 before anyone used the stuff.  Of course, wow shipped as the best game ever, so surely I must have photoshopped this.

I don't remember this.  I was in a bleeding edge, server first guild pre-TBC. T1/2 never went unlooted and unequipped (except in normal DE situations).  It was simply better for raiding than anything else out there (expecially due to the smattering of resistances).  Other gear wasn't even partially viable until DM and the 20 man instances.

Your second comment makes no sense, what are you trying to say? Initial attempts at raid gear looked bad (current incarnation of Nemesis looks pretty neat)? How iis that material to the topic here?

And while you still grab ahold of the low hanging fruit, it's all immaterial to the discussion of what went wrong with Conan.   Context.   AoC may be able to get it's itemization correct in a short period of time, but it doesn't change that it shipped with, in some people's opinions, poor itemization.  It's being evaluated in relation to the current MMO market.  I have no doubt they'll be able to turn this around in less time than it took WoW to realize they were doing itemization wrong.  But then again, they have WoW's efforts in this area to build and improve upon.   For both good and bad, they aren't doing this in a vaccuum (or in a fucking time bubble from 5 years ago, get over it).

[Lakov_Sanite]

I think they key here is go big or go home.

If you released an FPS today that had the best targetting system in the world, the best story and the best game play except that it had doom 1 graphics? It would fail horribly.

AoC got the graphics right but the principle is the same, the bar was raised and people have expectations. Are these expectations realistic? of course they are because it's a 'game' market. Players are the ones who dictate what is good enough for their money not developers and they have the final say with their wallets. People aren't saying they expect every game to be as well funded or developed as wow but they certainly dont plan on paying monthly for less.

AoC went wrong in that they were following the design philosophy of 2000 when it comes to games, rushed out the door, poorly planned and poorly managed. It's actually no fault of any one thing but a general lack of attention to all of the elements of their game.

BTW is alchemy working yet?

[Falconeer]

it shipped with, in some people's opinions, poor itemization.

Not "some". It shipped with ridiculous itemization. Then it got a significant boost in like 2 weeks but that's not nearly enough and, 2 weeks or not, it technically shipped with laughable itemization.
And yes, that's one of the things that hurt subscriptions the most because perception was, and will still be for a long time, of a game with a very poor carrot at the end of the itemization stick.

[cevik]

I don't remember this.  I was in a bleeding edge, server first guild pre-TBC. T1/2 never went unlooted and unequipped (except in normal DE situations).  It was simply better for raiding than anything else out there (expecially due to the smattering of resistances).  Other gear wasn't even partially viable until DM and the 20 man instances.

I'm sorry you don't remember it.  Google it I guess.  I at least found screenshots of the equipment before.  For warlocks Tier 1 and Tier 2 were almost all stam and int before the revamp and they DRASTICALLY increased +dmg after the revamp, i.e. they took gear that was useful but "meh" and made it excellent gear.  They also redid the graphics at the same time.  Hell Tier 0.5 was considered literally worthless (at least for locks) until you could turn it in for purplez just before TBC was launched.

I'm not saying anything epic went unlooted.  Of course, I also I doubt it goes unlooted in AoC.

Initial attempts at raid gear looked bad (current incarnation of Nemesis looks pretty neat)? How iis that material to the topic here?

The current Nemesis looks fucking awesome, but that's exactly my point.  At release the Tier 1 stuff looked terrible.  Even a year after release, when the Tier 2 stuff was introduced into the game it looked terrible.  It took them quite some time to make it look awesome.  But people here want to pretend WoW shipped with all that content.

Did AoC need to ship with more?  I'm not the expert you guys are, so I won't answer the question.  My beef in both this thread and in the 1 meeeeellion shipped thread hasn't been with the people bitching about AoC, it's been the strange alternate reality revisionist history people are presenting about WoW.  It makes me cringe to see otherwise sane people suddenly try to pretend WoW shipped with the stuff that it has today.  I'm just trying to understand, why are we lying about the state WoW shipped in?  Is it somehow relevant to the conversation at hand?  Am I supposed to be a good boy and ignore all you mmog experts as you pretend WoW shipped in a state that it clearly didn't?

EDIT:  I went back and checked the patch notes for 1.9, which was the updated artwork/stats patch for tier 2:

# All of the Tier 2 Class Armor sets have been updated with new art.
...
# Many of the pieces from the Tier 2 Armor sets have received updated statistics. The armor sets with the most extensive changes include the Netherwind, Nemesis, and Judgement sets. Other sets received fewer revisions, or none at all.

So as you can see, Nemesis was one of the more drastically changed sets of armor, which may color my opinion about how much t2 had to change before becoming useful.  Before the Nemesis patch, there were gear pieces for nearly every slot that were considered to be better than t2 armor for a lock.

[Nija]

You can write about it forever but it boils down to two VERY CORE THINGS.

1) Announced all this REVOLUTIONARY AWESOME SHIT which was over-hyped Petery Molyneux style into the fucking ground.

2) DELIVERED ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THAT AWESOME REVOLUTIONARY SHIT AT RELEASE. None. Nothing worked 100%.

HOIST THE FAILURE SAILS MATES, WE'RE GOING HOME </Sinbad>

Anything beyond those 2 facts is just salt in the wound. Big fucking salt swords stabbed into a gaping wound.

[slog]

You can write about it forever but it boils down to two VERY CORE THINGS.

1) Announced all this REVOLUTIONARY AWESOME SHIT which was over-hyped Petery Molyneux style into the fucking ground.

2) DELIVERED ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THAT AWESOME REVOLUTIONARY SHIT AT RELEASE. None. Nothing worked 100%.

HOIST THE FAILURE SAILS MATES, WE'RE GOING HOME </Sinbad>

Anything beyond those 2 facts is just salt in the wound. Big fucking salt swords stabbed into a gaping wound.

While I'm not a big fan of Nija and his "exploit to win" philosophy, I Lol'd.  Dead on!

[lamaros]

If "having more time" is difficult then I'd agree. But I would suggest that being limited by time or money (not being able to hire 50 quest designers instead of just a few) isn't difficult, exactly.

Well imo it's more of the same really then -- the requirement to "have more time" for not-so-ordinary quests is caused directly by the fact it's more difficult to come up with such not-so-ordinary quests. Seriously, it's easy to say 'oh they're absolutely no harder to invent' but i'm sitting here and trying to come up with something that can't be immediately simplified to "go there and kill/fetch/talk/go back" just so i can confirm to myself what you say is true ... and i can't, really. Nor for that matter i can think of (m)any quests i've done in multiple MMOs that couldn't be simplified in exactly the same manner, and would somehow break that mould.

This just means you have a pretty average imagination, I'm afraid.

When you can't think of something yourself, look at WoW examples:

Bombing quests. Pretty simple. Pretty different. Pretty fun, eh? But to get a bombing quest to work they likely had to add code so that you could use certain items while mounted, and maybe other things. So to add in this new exiciting quest they not only:

1) Need to add areas just for the bombing quests (because the mobs have heaps of hp, hit hard, and wouldn't work in areas with normals mobs and the like).
2) Need to programm new funcationality to the engine.
3) Other stuff that probably needs to be done that I don't know.

The time these quests is not the time needed to come up with idea, people have heaps of ideas of stuff they would like to do (apart from you, it seems), it's just that to do a lot of them you have to create a whole lot of stuff.

Look at another WoW quest, the Warlock Dreadsteed quest:

They have an Idea of what they want to do, you have to go to this guy, he gives you a recipie list, you have to colect the recipie list, then eventually you use the stuff he makes you to summon a special boss and kill that to win.

It's really a simple quest, just a delivery quest with some collection components and a kill aspect, but compared to other quests it takes more time to make. Why?

Because more kill quests are killing something that already exists, they just point to a group of monsters or a boss and make up a reason to kill them and add another item to their loot table. This quest requires a whole new encounter to be designed just for it.
Because it has heaps of steps that tie in together and have to make sense. It's requires several NPCs, several newitems, an area for the special NPC to hide in, blah, blah, blah.

They are pretty simple mechanics you're working with in MMOs, but that doesn't mean that putting a whole chain of them together is just as easy as putting together one or two, it's obviously not. And it certainly means that when you want to do things that go beyond the boundries of what you can currently do then you need time to make it possible.

I'm certain that the quest designers at nearly every mmo come up with awesome ideas all the time, only to be told "just not possible, sorry" when they try to find a way of doing them.

I could probably find dev quotes on this topic if I could be bothered to, but I can't. I know I'm correct.

[UnSub]

I find a recurring theme of those who praise AoC saying that it would be a good game "If only people could appreciate it" I'm not sure how pixelated tits got to be highbrow around here but it's confusing.

Because it's MATURE - it says so right on the box. 

[tmp]

Bombing quests. Pretty simple. Pretty different.

That's "go there and kill shit. with bombs".

Look at another WoW quest, the Warlock Dreadsteed quest:

They have an Idea of what they want to do, you have to go to this guy, he gives you a recipie list, you have to colect the recipie list, then eventually you use the stuff he makes you to summon a special boss and kill that to win.

It's really a simple quest, just a delivery quest with some collection components and a kill aspect, but compared to other quests it takes more time to make. Why?

I don't really care it took longer to make. At the end of day it's still "go talk to guy, fetch shit, kill fozzle".

We were talking of how easy it is to invent quests that are actually different. So surely, if it's so easy and if it's just me that's mentally handicapped to the point i can't think of such quests immediately ... it should be easy to either provide numerous examples of such quests already done, or invent a few here on the spot? And yet all you did was just provide me with more of the same old. And a weak imo argument that the only reason we don't see these awesome ideas the designers come up with all the time... is because it requires extra code. Well, everything in MMO requires extra code. If the developers cannot allocate some of their code-writing time to enhance range of available quests (the core of MMO nowadays) ... then i'd have to conclude that's just poor planning on their part and really no excuse anymore.

[Sky]

It's so amazingly simple to come up with quests beyond kill or fetch. But people don't want that. Reading text is niche.

[Slayerik]

Exactly Sky... I wonder how many people in the game just gave up on the Old Tarantia investigation quest once 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 didnt work.

It definetely isn't as easy as some people think...or else we'd have a ton of cool quests in every game. That's just not the case.

[Lantyssa]

Exactly Sky... I wonder how many people in the game just gave up on the Old Tarantia investigation quest once 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 didnt work.

I'd hope not.  It was bafflingly simple.  And one could use brute force to get the answer anyways.

[Threash]

Very few people actually care enough to make good quests worthwhile, me included.  The whole questing thing only took off as an alternative for the mind numbingly boring Everquest grinding for exp system, it was simply a faster way to level.  Personally i couldn't care less wether im doing quests or grinding, ill do whichever one levels me faster as long as the grinding is fast paced.  Theres a huge difference between sitting in one spot with a full group single pulling mobs for several hours in order to get 1/20th of a level if you don't fuck up and die and mowing through entire dungeons worth of mobs 3-4 at a time by yourself for half a levels worth.  Long elaborate multiple step quests with a plot line= loot, fast kill shit/delivery quests = exp.  As long as the exp flows fast enough you don't need the second type, its just fucking grinding and running back to npcs to turn shit in.

[Sky]

Having exp in mmo is the root problem of why they suck. Well, right after the thousands of people. Look at the massive pile of great ideas that didn't go over because it wasn't an expedient way to 'xp'

Just admit you're there for epeen and to watch the progress bar fill up and not for the story, let the devs deliver on that for you. Maybe it could be a new Vegas venture, a slot machine that dispenses gear.

The whole questing thing took off as a way to try and inject story and lore into mmo gameworlds because nobody gave a fuck about reading books or even what npcs had to say.

It's pathetic and the main reason I don't bother with mmo much. I'll milk the few good single player rpgs that come out every year and let the masses waste their time and money in mmo.