Pointless Topic: A matter of scale.

[Fabricated]

I was bored one day and while riding over to Loch Modan to help a friend I noticed I had never taken the north gate exit. Ever.

I found a quest there that made me crack up. You have to find a Dwarf's friend who has been missing for "days" I guess and how they haven't found him despite looking everywhere.

The thing is, the friend in question is rotting about 100 feet away on the other side of a hill.

I don't have a widescreen monitor, but I'm confident if you cranked the widescreen res up a lot you could capture the whole thing in one shot.



I know MMORPGs have to scale things down to a logical manner since it's not really all that easy to make hundreds and hundreds of square miles in virtual real-estate, and that players may not WANT to spend 2 hours running from town to town, but it's almost comical here. The guy could have HEARD his friend getting mauled.

"I can't find my friend, and he's been missing for days! I've tried everything! I tried looking out the window, I kinda looked around when I came outside to get the mail, what else could I have done? It's cold out!"

[Alkiera]

here, I spliced them together and resized so they fit on a sane person's monitor... sorta.  Well, it's easier.  I lined them up as best I could, using that log that is right out front.

Alkiera

[pxib]

That doesn't bother me as much as that they don't ask the GUARDS who are LEVEL 30+ and presumably PUBLIC SERVANTS for a little help... and THAT doesn't bother me as much as that so many of the plots involve somebody's death... when really they should have run back from the graveyard and reclaimed their corpse by now.

[Ironwood]

Funny.  For those of you who bought the EXCELLENT guide to WoW that contains the Penny Arcade comics, this one will ring a bell.

There's a PA comic in there where a quest giver says 'I want you to fetch me that book' and he points to his coffee table.  The guy in the armor replies 'But it's RIGHT THERE !!'

It's a cracking wee joke that had me laughing for ages at the expressions on the face.  See also :  Things to do in Wow; Wear Clothes.  Things Not to do in WoW;  Not Wear Clothes.

Again, the naked orcs expression of rudeness is priceless.  Sachant put together a solid book there.

[Lt.Dan]

A-ha how's this.  A WoW thread that mentions EQ2!

There's a quest like that in EQ2: get some guys armor from the blacksmith in the smithy right behind him.

[Mesozoic]

Lazy quest design for lazy players...how did we not see this coming?

[Righ]

It's the end of the world as we know it.

[jpark]

A-ha how's this.  A WoW thread that mentions EQ2!

There's a quest like that in EQ2: get some guys armor from the blacksmith in the smithy right behind him.

There you guys go again - always bringing up EQ2!  :-D

There are some damn funny quests.  How about conducting the rats in Stormwind by the trammel with the flute to clear the area?  Or the turtle escort quest - which upon returning the great tortoise to his home - receives hell from his wife about his long absence lol.

[Phred]

To put it in perspective, it's a L10 quest. People getting it are just leaving the newbie area.

[Righ]

Or the turtle escort quest - which upon returning the great tortoise to his home - receives hell from his wife about his long absence lol.

Wait... there's a turtle you have to escort from near Un'Goro Crater to Steamwheedle Port who gets told off by his wife...

I had no idea that the games were *that* similar.

[Ironwood]

Er, isn't that what he's talking about ?

[Polysorbate80]

There are some damn funny quests. 

Also quest names.  "Ineptitude + Chemicals = Fun" still gets a chuckle out of me.

[naum]

My favorite was a starter Orc quest to pick slap snoozing peons…

 

[jpark]

My favorite was a starter Orc quest to pick slap snoozing peons…

 

Now try poking those peons repeatedly.  Their comments are hilarious.

(Turtle quest I referenced above was from WoW.)

[Alkiera]

I did a quest in beta with a dwarven hunter that involved collecting stuff from infected gnomes to add to a gnome fixing machine, that actually turned the infected gnome into a chicken, once you did the final turn-in.

Alkiera

[jpark]

How about that quest that starts in Winterspring where you get 3 mechanical yetis (midget size).   You then travel to 3 NPCs in different zones and release the yeti on them to frighten them.

Talk about funny.  The little Yeti chases the NPC around the camp while he / she screams in terror.

[Kageru]

"Are we there yeti?" ... brilliant quest.

[pxib]

Well okay, to add a little point to the pointless:

I think the trouble in the OP's quest is the disconnect between physical scope and narrative scope. The quest's narrative is classic myth: A friend lost and slain in the woods, revenge exacted upon the beast which killed him. The truth of the quest involves a two short jogs and an easy kill. It's very possible, in fact, to have killed the beast by accident while hunting for the corpse... then have to kill it AGAIN.

If a quest giver says "Hey, go talk to my pal inside," and that turns out to be no more than a few steps, the quest becomes invisible. The player may roll his eyes (as I did when I first played the human starting area in WoW), but there's no shattered expectation. If the quest giver says "Seek the black sage, Begael, lost to history these thousand years!" and it turns out he's right behind the woodshed... that had better be played for laughs.

I think this is fundamentally similar to my problem with the use of death as a plot device in deathless games. In the narrative, death is finality... all is lost. In reality, not only will I never have to worry about dying, but neither will any creature I kill or any NPC I fail to save. Everything resets. I've only seen Shadowbane try to come to terms with this, and it failed to take advantage of its conceits in its quest structure.

Generally, I think it would be realitvely easy to scale down the narratives rather than scaling up the world, and I don't think it would hurt player excitement.

[Der Helm]

...  Shadowbane ...  its quest structure.

Wtf ?

Which quest structure are you talking about ?

[SurfD]

Actually, Asherons Call made a fairly good effort to tie the whole "Death" and "Death with no lasting consequences" bit together in their lore.

In AC, you were attuned to a Lifestone, which you would ressurect at whenever you died, and then you needed to go get your corpse and recover whatever items had dropped on it should you desire to do so.

The Lifestones were an item of semi recent, but lost magic. Recent enough that people still recalled periods in history where death actually WAS final, but lost in the sense that no one living knew how to create one (I seem to recall that Asheron was the only person who could make a lifestone, and he had been missing for however long).

They threw a twist with this into the works when (if i remember correctly) a major even in the game was the destruction of a Town by one of the enemy groups, AND the destruction and PERMANENT death of all its (NPC) inhabitants because someone actually managed to destroy the lifestone near the town (no stone to resurect you at = you actually DIE)

They also had funny bits, like when an assassins guild was contracted to take out the master smiths who were makeing an (at the time) very higly desired set of special armor.  The assassins "killed" the smiths repeatedly, eventually causing them to rack up enough stat loss due to repeated ressurections (AC gave you a temporary penalty to your max stats for every death you took) that they were unable to make the armor any more.

All in all, AC had probably the most believable meshing / explanation as to why death wasnt permanent that i have seen in a very long time.

[Comstar]

Viewable distance.

Graphics.

Content.

Pick 1. Unless you're WoW with 5 million customers making 500+ million dollers a year and can ignore that sort of thing.

[squirrel]

"Are we there yeti?" ... brilliant quest.

Yup a memorable quest in WoW for sure. I still have the summonable mechanical yeti reward - don't want to use it cause i know it won't be as fun as scaring the goblins.

[TheWalrus]

Viewable distance.

Graphics.

Content.

Pick 1. Unless you're WoW with 5 million customers making 500+ million dollers a year and can ignore that sort of thing.

Apparently a lot of people disagree with you.

[Phred]

"Are we there yeti?" ... brilliant quest.

Yup a memorable quest in WoW for sure. I still have the summonable mechanical yeti reward - don't want to use it cause i know it won't be as fun as scaring the goblins.

Appearantly 1.9 makes it a unlimited charge cooldown item. You have to go back to Everlook and talk to her to get it though.

[SurfD]

I was under the impression that 1.9 was going to let Engineers make the Mechanical yeties, not that they were removing the charges on the normal trinket, and replaceing it with a general cooldown.

[Phred]

I was under the impression that 1.9 was going to let Engineers make the Mechanical yeties, not that they were removing the charges on the normal trinket, and replaceing it with a general cooldown.

I don't think so. I havent checked on the test realm but the patch notes tell everyone to talk to her again, not just engineers.

Oops just reread the patch notes and you are right. It is engineers.

[kaid]

Also I believe it makes an ambient pet instead of a combat drone so you can run around with a leetle yeti chasing you around.

kaid