Raids and the games before them...

[Venkman]

There's just too much implying going on here ;)

Well, I was more making the case for expanding the game past the basic Diku kill-loot-heal-repeat process. Not getting rid of it, but adding either totally seperate or complimentary "games".

Oh I see. Yea, I've wondered since SWG was being met with derision whether it wouldn't just be smarter for a company to launch a game for one type of audience (in the case of this genre: diku) and then over time replace certain features with ones that would allow the integration of more virtual lifestyle-like systems.

Start with a proven success and use that to bankroll into innovative thinking. I thought SOE would do that with EQ1, and they did, after a fashion. But they ended up just focusing on new ways to play the same game. WoW could do one better by enhancing and introducing different games.

Though it's not like they'd need to.

[Rithrin]

Why not just add in the innovation right from the start alongside the proven method? No need to start off by limiting options then opening them later...

[Venkman]

The problem is that the more you add into your feature list for launch, the more money and team size you need to pull it off. And the more complex your final test becomes, because it's attempting to integrate a wider array of features. So, basically, if you want a broad featureset all complete and well playing, you need to convince management or VC folks that it's worth the even greater risk.

Scaling into innovation meanwhile means you can focus specifically on the known desired features and therefore tap a well-defined market. With the success you gain here you can fund the innovation you want later. Some of this innovation will be appreciated by your existing players, but it can also be used to market the game to new players, getting a potential bump in PR (good PR) and therefore raising awareness of your game which may have begun to plateau in interest due to age and the launch of other titles.

In a way, SWG would have served as a great example of this had it come out right. One of the problems was that the most polished system (resources, crafting) was one with a relatively narrow appeal (relative to what the success of the brand should have driven). Had they launched with combat being awesome, supported by a good narrative based questing system (not just spamming mission terminals for what felt like procedurally-generated test) and with well-integrated PvP, they could have gained their initial success and then launched a good crafting resource system and then vehicles and then Cities and then JTL, all of which radically changed the game.

So it's not just a matter of what you launch, it's when you can afford to launch it and in what order best serves the amount of type of players you want in your game.

[edlavallee]

Scaling into innovation meanwhile means you can focus specifically on the known desired features and therefore tap a well-defined market. With the success you gain here you can fund the innovation you want later. Some of this innovation will be appreciated by your existing players, but it can also be used to market the game to new players, getting a potential bump in PR (good PR) and therefore raising awareness of your game which may have begun to plateau in interest due to age and the launch of other titles.

Can you really scale your way into innovation? Are you really going to gain new customers with this new innovative game play or just retain your existing ones longer, or none of the above? There needs to be a business case to support new innovations and I wonder if adding them in afterwards is enough of an event to attract new customers (subscriptions) and pay for the development. Some of the meta games discussed here are (IMO) not big enough to be that big splash to generate that good PR and attract new customers who were not interested enough in your base game to subscribe. I guess you are banking on enough people in the undecided category who need very little to tip them into committing cash.

[Venkman]

No easy answer to that really. "Innovation" has very broad definition. Look at the iPod. It wasn't the device nor iTunes software. It was the entire ecosystem that included a music industry convinced their songs would move at $0.99/ea. That was the coup. MP3 players existed and are easy to make by themselves.

Now, in this genre? People return to games all the time. New players come to the game all the time. The marketability of a game never stops as long as the game itself keeps pace with convention. Fun never gets old. It just gets redefined by newer entrants into the space.

What would be more innovative, something to compel players who aren't here? Well, depends on how many you want to attract. For example, any new growth WoW enjoys is going to be incremental anyway. Do they want the Eve player? Why bother? Not only is Eve fundamentally different, the players themselves want completely different things (or, well, the same things, but gotten very differently). And they're just not that many of them. Eve "done right" is still no more than 125k subscribers, and the game already done right. Same question could be asked of the SL player or the ATITD player or the SWGUO player.

What about new players though, the players WoW itself chased and who are being targeted by so many companies unwilling to come to this genre as it is defined today? WoW minigames? WoW PDA games? WoW cellphone adventures? WoW board games? As long as they interface with the game world itself, and everything done remotely ties back in, why not? This was what I think SOE missed when they extended the brand to other genres and platforms. EQ, like Warcraft, is a game system first, lore second. If you offer more games based on that lore, you need to offer those games based on that game system as well. Otherwise, you're asking your current cash cow to take time away from the experience they love to go play a momentary distraction.

[Soln]

Darn, something up with yr blog link, can't comment, so responding here:

Would a game with ok housing, ok crafting, ok economy, ok questing and ok combat and everything else being the same do as well at launch as a game with great questing and great combat? If not, then maybe focus on doing what the players expect done right first, yet with an eye towards how the total system will be scaled later.
So it's not just a matter of what you launch, it's when you can afford to launch it and in what order best serves the amount of type of players you want in your game.

that's the obvious problem for niche and small/new MMO entrants -- identifying what players want and ensuring there's enough of them of sustainability.  I like the idea of trying to cater to certain players, because that's pretty much what providers are doing already with all the new Korean grindy and PvP MMO's coming up.  I just would like an MMO that caters to the special-snowflake me.  But there's the rub -- building the perfect customized widget for everyone, right?  So I want to agree with you, but I'm just not sure about whether you can offer a specialized game and survive.  "Specialized" could just translated into, "biased" if you think of certain MMO's being tilted towards achievement, combat etc.

Secondly, from a PjM point of view I think you are right about the incremental approach in complexity.  Read this from a guy who's designed&built MMO+ sized systems.  Starting small and introducing complexity is the way to go.  But again, I'm wringing my hands: how can small providerX launch their title with a small or a limited set of functionality and not get blasted and dismissed by the early adopters?  Who really have a lot of influence in shaping opinions?  Even if they are wrong?  The Eve example or even EQ2 kind of, makes sense of just running a business well for awhile and how players get attracted to other good players.  But is Eve really a realistic or reproducible business model?  Again, I want to agree with you but it just seems really risky or just hard to launch something with stuff "missing".

[Raph]

I agree that it's critical to nail the core features that form the backbone of your game.

However, I disagree that is is possible to grow into real innovation.

The issue here is one of interdependence. SWG couldn't have been done by cutting out the crafting system from launch, any more than you could integrate a crafting system like that into WoW. How on earth would you retrofit deformable terrain into WoW? That's just one example of the many prerequisite features that are needed to replicate that system into WoW' framework. Do you remove the auction house in WoW in order to provide scope for merchants?

To grow into a given feature, you have to have the right foundation to build on. By targeting your scope narrowly at the outset, you usually preclude even the possibility of adding certain sorts of features later on.

[Venkman]

LOL! I forgot to give the entry a title :) Fixed it.

Better conversation here anyway ;)

So I want to agree with you, but I'm just not sure about whether you can offer a specialized game and survive

But see, we actually agree. The game with "great questing and great combat" I reference is, of course, the likes of GW and WoW ("great" is debatable of course, but the game to which I compared it was SWG, so yea, WoW is great, much better on those two features). What Blizzard et al is what everyone else does: identify an audience and give them a game. What Blizzard does better is more deliver the more appropriate experience.

And when I say "audience", I mean a certain span of players. The WoW player is pretty much not the Second Life player for example. WoW didn't target world builders. The business reality for this space though is that there's a hell of a lot more WoW players than SL players.

But that brings us around to the core question: does player count matter the same to everyone?

This is the reason I only am mildly curious about MMOGchart. The number of subscribers between all these games is irrelevant to me. Linden Labs is not complaining about the money they're making any more than CCP, eGenesis or Blizzard is. Different companies, different goals, different needs. There's room for all of them because "MMOG" is a stupidly-vague catchall term that basically includes as its demographic anyone with an internet connection and a willingness to fork off money for a digital experience. MMOGs are not a target market. They're a meta-market, with sub-targets within. As such, every game breaks down into different sub categories. The number of players in Eve is irrelevant to the number of players in WoW. Identify you player, give them their game, scale your business for success.

The key isn't to launch with a small or limited set of tools expecting to scale over time. It's to launch with the right tools for the playerbase you want and can expect to get. Then, based off of that success, you introduce new features and systems that grow your playerbase even more.

Like WoW for example. If they wanted to add housing and player vendors and space combat, they could. Would that bring in 6 more million users? Probably not. But it would contribute to retention, and that can be as important in this genre of game jumpers.

[Venkman]

The issue here is one of interdependence. SWG couldn't have been done by cutting out the crafting system from launch, any more than you could integrate a crafting system like that into WoW. How on earth would you retrofit deformable terrain into WoW? That's just one example of the many prerequisite features that are needed to replicate that system into WoW' framework. Do you remove the auction house in WoW in order to provide scope for merchants?

I'm having deju vu here. Man, I wish I could remember where we discussed this before!

SWG's crafting and WoW's have very different requirements. The latter is built mostly on the consumables really, whereas in SWG, everyone was walking around with something that was crafted. It was a more purely integrated system. More importantly, the motivations of play in each game are very different. WoW players by and large live off of game direction mostly, playing an RPG to "win". SWG was more a sim by comparison. Doing nothing in SWG was still doing something. Doing nothing in WoW is not advancing, in a game all about it.

But there's some cross-over. Housing, for example. If WoW introduced controlled housing (no blight, no content blocking) with a vendor system, that wouldn't be enough. They'd need to also model, in 3D, every piece of quest junk we've ever picked up so we could decorate the places. Vendors would be linked to the AH, but would offer other services as well, maybe even Enchanting and Smithing. Maybe that's enough, maybe not, but it would be very different, allowing players to personalize a game they otherwise can only do by battling loot tables.

They could extend into some other features as well, other lifestyle components that probably wouldn't appeal to the majority of the players, but would offer alternative things to do that are just as relevant. We already see how many players want a broader experience in WoW. The game that launched opened their eyes to a new genre (or a better way to play it) but now they want more. To get that more they currently have to make a big sacrifice, be it games with far less fun combat, far slower advancement, gimped PvP or whatever. So instead of branching out, some choose to stay and accept the relatively gimped lifestyle tools. People did this in EQ1 too. Can't count how many weddings I attended. I'd say more actual people did that sort of stuff in EQ1 than they did in games built for that sort of thing, because the latter generally lacked where EQ1 (and now WoW) shined: the game-directed fun factor.

Complex? Way much. Needed? Maybe not. They're successful (as was EQ1) already. An interesting thought experiment for those with more time to think than to actually pull something like it off? ;) Yes. Will I ask myself rhetorical questions and answer them? You bet!  :-D

[tkinnun0]

To grow into a given feature, you have to have the right foundation to build on. By targeting your scope narrowly at the outset, you usually preclude even the possibility of adding certain sorts of features later on.

You can add them in new content, you just can't retrofit them to old content. WoW is adding flying mounts in their expansion, but they are only usable inside the new continent, because the old content has been created with limited player mobility in mind. So I'd say the more directed (i.e. less worldly) your play experience is, the easier it is to add new features.

[Venkman]

Same as JTL for SWG.

However, I often wonder about that "limited mobility" in the old world thing. I think the current engine would handle flying mounts just fine. Even though the griffons/bats/airship in game now all travel along prescribed paths, it is rendering everything in real time.

The reason I think flying mounts are being restricted to Outlands is because it's yet another compulsory feature to get people to buy the expansion. I could imagine within six months or so we'll get a "surprise" patch announcement.

[Jayce]

However, I often wonder about that "limited mobility" in the old world thing. I think the current engine would handle flying mounts just fine. Even though the griffons/bats/airship in game now all travel along prescribed paths, it is rendering everything in real time.

Actually, I don't think it is.  I forget where I read it - might have been here - that the current areas have lots of "facade"-type graphics that are displayed to you when flying.  If you somehow ended up in a section of the sky not currently reachable by griffin/wind rider, you'd see gaping holes in the backgrounds.

This is why all the NPCs fade out then back in when you land.

[tkinnun0]

There's lots of land that's effectively empty but surrounded by steep mountains, Stormwind only has one side, the airport near Ironforge has a bunch of NPCs dancing but is inaccessible and so on and so on. Could it be fixed? Probably. Would it be worth it? Probably not.

To put the World-vs-Game debate in programming terms: in a World every module is connected to every other module, but in a Game every module is connected to at most 3 other modules. That is why Worlds collapse under their own weight once they go beyond certain complexity.

[Morfiend]

However, I often wonder about that "limited mobility" in the old world thing. I think the current engine would handle flying mounts just fine. Even though the griffons/bats/airship in game now all travel along prescribed paths, it is rendering everything in real time.

Actually, I don't think it is.  I forget where I read it - might have been here - that the current areas have lots of "facade"-type graphics that are displayed to you when flying.  If you somehow ended up in a section of the sky not currently reachable by griffin/wind rider, you'd see gaping holes in the backgrounds.

This is why all the NPCs fade out then back in when you land.

That was posted in an interview (or Q&A) with one of the WoW devs. It was in responce as to why flying mounts wouldnt work in the pre-expansion lands.

[Telemediocrity]

But see, we actually agree. The game with "great questing and great combat" I reference is, of course, the likes of GW and WoW ("great" is debatable of course, but the game to which I compared it was SWG, so yea, WoW is great, much better on those two features).

Let's agree to highly disagree on this.  WoW's questing and combat, if marketed as a single player game, would be considered by many to be almost unplayable.  People only give it a pass because the bar for MMO content is set so low.

[Merusk]

Blizzard's first stab at questing was in Warcraft 3 as the Rexxar campaign.  Folks thought it was pretty novel, fun and accessable.  If you played it you'd see it relates very closely to WoW's current method.

Neither method is in any way shape or form different from your traditional RPG quest interface, with one major exception.  You don't have to just miraculously know that you need to talk to NPC Smith to get the nob-slobbering quest.  He has a pretty gold ! to let you know it.  Accessibility, amazing.

No, it's not going to be amazing to the folks who preferred the arcane process of either finding the right keywords, or decrypting the byzantine language some dev felt he HAD to put in as a quest 'hint.'   However, spoiler sites made both such quest irrelevant in 1999, so why pretend like they don't exist and keep them.  Just toss it into the game and remove an inaccessibility folks bitched about from the game.

[Telemediocrity]

I think there are more elegant ways to steer people to quests than the exclamation points, IMHO; everything from barkeep rumors (as AC does) to lore imparted in some way (monster utterances upon death, etc.) that leads you to the quest, or just talking to the interesting NPC hanging out in town. 

The whole goal should be that the game isn't absurd if you don't have spoiler sites - the goal should not be to dumb it down so much that everything is just as easy without a spoiler site as with.

[Jayce]

The whole goal should be that the game isn't absurd if you don't have spoiler sites - the goal should not be to dumb it down so much that everything is just as easy without a spoiler site as with.

I think that by this you put yourself in at least as small a niche as anyone who can't do without massive grind/open PvP/combat of any kind/permadeath/name your niche characteristic.

The popularity of spoiler sites, even for single player games, leads me to think that the mainstream wants hints.  They want to participate in a storyline, not attempt to be a (RL) supersleuth or play "find-the-NPC-needle-in-the-world-haystack".

[Venkman]

Telemediocirty describes WoW fairly well. Spoiler sites will give you details, but for the most part, WoW quests, as well as the NPCs that give them is pretty well delivered. Some areas are weak but for the most part it's a vast improvement of almost any MMORPG that preceded. The game doesn't really require hint sites in the way EQ did. But even as easy as it is, it's still not handed out on a silver-spoon to everyone. Even your purest narrative-based RPG has a support spoiler site or 12. Can't please everyone.

And thanks for clearing up the question about current WoW supporting flying griffons. Learn something new every day :)

[Telemediocrity]

I agree, I don't think the WoW quest system is a bad one.  I may have a few personal tweaks I prefer, but on the whole their quest system (as opposed to the quest content itself, which I think is abominable) is reasonably well done.

I don't think the existence of spoiler sites suggests that games should design themselves to eliminate the need for spoiler sites, and that that'll be wildly popular if they do.

[Rithrin]

They want to participate in a storyline, not attempt to be a (RL) supersleuth or play "find-the-NPC-needle-in-the-world-haystack".

Just because someone doesn't want giant exclamation marks over NPC heads doesn't necessarily mean they want what you suggested. Its possible, through NPC placement, dialogue, etc, that quests be made known in a less "silly" way than the giant floating symbols. Not to mention if you want it to feel more like a "storyline" than it should be more than just NPCs standing around acting like quest-vendors. Only reason you had to be supersleuths to find quests in games like EQ is because it seemed like they went out of their way to make them unaccessible, such as putting them on some random island in the middle of the ocean or hiding on the top floor or a house with no purpose other than to hide the quest giver. I'm pretty sure that you could put in barkeeps or some other NPC type to tell you about quest givers without it being particularly "niche" or requiring lore of any type. In fact, I think it would be a pretty good idea:

Each town/outpost/whatever would have one. You talk to this NPC, and he'll ask what kind of quest type your looking for. Raid, Group, Solo adventure, Instanced, etc would be different options. He'd tell you who to find (and where to find, of course) for the types of quest your looking for. If you're goal really is to make quests easy to get and simple to find, I'd think this would speed up even WoW's quest-gathering time.

[Merusk]

Yeah because that whole mechanic was GREAT in SWG, AO and CoH.  Wait, no, it sucked.

The quests are distributed among NPCs because it allows a narrative to be crafted around that NPC.  If you have a 'mission spitter' then one of two things is going to happen. 

1) The quests are going to be unmitigated suckdom like SWG, AO and CoH quests. You'll see the flavorless bland framework for what it is, and get bored quickly.  I know I sure as hell did, but it was the only way of getting missions so I kept at it.  I hated it all, though.  Even the storyline mission in COH felt too formulaic and contrived because of this mechanic.

2) That quest terminal is going to shoot people off to NPCs that have unique narratives. Thus you have added a step in the process that's just a hassle for both the dev team and the players.

We're coming up on the whole "Game" vs "world" brick wall again. Once again I'll take the "Game" one.

[edlavallee]

Only reason you had to be supersleuths to find quests in games like EQ is because it seemed like they went out of their way to make them unaccessible, such as putting them on some random island in the middle of the ocean or hiding on the top floor or a house with no purpose other than to hide the quest giver.

I don't think this is the way it was overtly developed. This was the outcome, but I think they honestly didn't know better. I would imagine that someone in the design sessions thought it would be an immersive activity to have a conversation with an NPC and get a quest from them. Good idea in theory, bad idea in practice because you get something like this:

You say, 'Hail Denny's waiter'
Denny's waiter says 'Hello, Tyranadin. You look like you could use
some [coffee]'
You say, 'Yes I'll have some coffee'
You say, 'what about coffee'
Denny's waiter says 'Ah, excellent! We have [regular] and [decaf].'
You say, 'I will have some decaf'
You say, 'what about decaf'
You say, 'what about decaffeinated coffee'
Denny's waiter says 'I expected nothing less of you. Here, take this.'
You gain experience!
Your faction standing with Juan Valdez got better
You drink your coffee.

Extremely frustrating and subsequent development focused on how to make the quest acquisition process easier and more straightforward. So, we have arrived at yellow exclamation points and hopefully we are on the way to something better. Didn't EQ2 try and have NPC's holler at you as you were walking by? Who knows where the next iteration will find us...

[Trippy]

Didn't EQ2 try and have NPC's holler at you as you were walking by? Who knows where the next iteration will find us...

Yes, except the "broadcast" radius didn't take line of sight into account so you would get people talking to you from inside buildings when you were outside and couldn't see them.

[Jayce]

Didn't EQ2 try and have NPC's holler at you as you were walking by? Who knows where the next iteration will find us...

Yes, except the "broadcast" radius didn't take line of sight into account so you would get people talking to you from inside buildings when you were outside and couldn't see them.

That's a beautiful thing.  In a comedy gold sort of way.

1) The quests are going to be unmitigated suckdom like SWG, AO and CoH quests. You'll see the flavorless bland framework for what it is, and get bored quickly.  I know I sure as hell did, but it was the only way of getting missions so I kept at it.  I hated it all, though.  Even the storyline mission in COH felt too formulaic and contrived because of this mechanic.

I don't know that this complaint is endemic to the quest delivery method.  The giant exclamation mark method would suck similarly if the quest text was uninspired or seemed to be generated from a template.

No one will be nominating the WoW writers for Pulitzers anytime soon, but Blizzard seems to at least have hired writers, as opposed to having developers or someone's 14-year-old son (who got an A in English!) write the stories.

[edlavallee]

Yes, except the "broadcast" radius didn't take line of sight into account so you would get people talking to you from inside buildings when you were outside and couldn't see them.

Not all that realistic, but works better than missing something just because you didnt go in some building. Hey, if you use your imagination, you could almost see them leaning out the window to summon you inside.

I just struggle with how you walk the line between trying to create an immersive game experience where things should be somewhat hard, and creating a game experience where everything is overt. My mental model at the moment is that the latter is about fun in the activity to complete the task and in the former, some of the fun is in the discovery of the task in the first place.


edit - added quote for reference

[Telemediocrity]

One thing you can do is casually lead players to certain quests even without an NPC for them.

Case in point:  Today I talked to an NPC who's been in AC for a long time.  Apparently, they recently added a new quest linked to him - so after the stuff he always says, he tells me what's been on his mind lately, and tells me that the bad guys are "North west of here" and I should go find them.

So I start running northwest of town, looking for something out of the ordinary.  About halfway to what is actually my quest destination, I come upon an odd group of baddies, and a note on the ground.

The note on the ground is the journal of A Different Bad Guy, talking about where they established their Secret Lair.  But rather than telling me where the lair is, it's a five-page 1st-person travelogue detailing a week of the Bad Guy's travels from start to finish - including doubling back, dead ends, etcetera.  If I follow the note and retrace his steps, I can eventually find my way to his fortress - a different quest entirely.  A quest that has no NPC - rather, they put the note in the path one would take to find the bad guys in the original quest I was on, and so you're likely to stumble upon it.

If I wanted to, I could flip to a spoiler site and find the source of the "treasure hunt" directions, and just run there.  Or, I could spend twenty minutes or so retracing the bad guy's steps.  I did the latter, and the devs left visual clues along the way; random NPCs, such as farmers who had been ingame for 5 years or so just sitting out in the wilderness tending their farm, doing nothing special but buying and selling cabbage, had been slaughtered by the Bad Guy as he came along.  I was literally able to follow the trail of destruction to its source, and thus find the bad guy's fortress.

That was a hell of a lot more fun for me than just clicking on a guy with an exclamation point above their head.  It also fed into a feeling that I'm playing in a constantly evolving world, where even the oldest content isn't 'static' forever.

Just because some players doing that quest took the easy way out and looked up the location on a spoiler site doesn't mean I want to.

[Merusk]

1) The quests are going to be unmitigated suckdom like SWG, AO and CoH quests. You'll see the flavorless bland framework for what it is, and get bored quickly.  I know I sure as hell did, but it was the only way of getting missions so I kept at it.  I hated it all, though.  Even the storyline mission in COH felt too formulaic and contrived because of this mechanic.

I don't know that this complaint is endemic to the quest delivery method.  The giant exclamation mark method would suck similarly if the quest text was uninspired or seemed to be generated from a template.

No one will be nominating the WoW writers for Pulitzers anytime soon, but Blizzard seems to at least have hired writers, as opposed to having developers or someone's 14-year-old son (who got an A in English!) write the stories.

You have a very good point about the writing.  Perhaps that's CoH's problem, I'm not sure and honestly not being a dev I don't care much.  "I didn't like it" is enough for me as a simple player in the world.

As a system; for now the little ! works in Guild Wars and WoW to provide both the ease of transaction that is "hey here's the quest" and the atmosphere that is the individual quest giver without the problem eval lists above.  No dobut someone will come up with something better in the future that removes the ! that I suppose y'all hate from an "immersion killer" factor.

Well; that and that it removes the exploration factor, as eval pointed out.   WoW has some exploration to find quests, but that's once again because the quest giver is off in some hole you wouldn't normally wander to.  (Or because the quest is a random drop in the zone.)

[Venkman]

The key is to get the player to the first Quest giver, which is even what EQ1 did after a while buy giving you a note in your backpack. WoW does this too. The reason I think WoW (and GW) works well is because of the quest-lines process. In EQ1, you hit the powerlevel cycle of Nro>Oasis>LoIO etc because you heard it from other people. In WoW you level up through Elwynn>Westfall>Redridge>Duskwood>STV etc because that's where the quests and NPC dialog lead you. If you want to be lead.

Exclamation points are not a requirement for this. They just make it easier for players to easily see who to talk to.

Didn't EQ2 try and have NPC's holler at you as you were walking by? Who knows where the next iteration will find us...

Yea, as Trippy said, no line of sight. Plus, while the voiceovers were cool and unique, and I appreciate the effort, they were annoying in their repetitiveness. So lots of people turned them off, thus minimizing their effectiveness as a Quest-origination tool. Plus, because they haven't enjoyed the incredible revenue and profits I think they expected, they haven't really kept up with VO recording for every NPC introduced. In a game with so many NPCs, that can get very costly.

[Rithrin]

That was a hell of a lot more fun for me than just clicking on a guy with an exclamation point above their head.  It also fed into a feeling that I'm playing in a constantly evolving world, where even the oldest content isn't 'static' forever.

Just because some players doing that quest took the easy way out and looked up the location on a spoiler site doesn't mean I want to.

See, I would have loads of fun doing a quest like that. The sad point here, however is that there are tons of players who probably wouldn't have even made it to the "talk to the NPC" step unless he had a giant exclamanation over his head or was glowing or something, nontheless read anything on a note they'd find on the ground. But see that kind of person is mostly found in the greatest common denominator group which is the target audience for most MMO's now it seems.

[bhodi]

I'm not sure why the handholding "!" quest givers and quest chaining is all bad. Like any good RPG, I think it's a plus that quests are interrelated and that each quest giver sends you to the next one; that most of them are in clearly labeled in areas that everyone passes through. If you ever played FFXI, you can understand my frustration. There was nothing to deliniate quest givers out of the several hundred NPCs in town, and if you didn't meet the prerequisites they just wouldn't give the quest to you. You ended up having to spend an hour on Allakazham doing searches to try and find them, or spend two hours in game talking to every single fucking taru in windhurst. Maybe that's fun for some braindead masochistic fuckers, but it wasn't fun for me.

It also pisses me off when I examine someone, notice a cool item, think "hrm, where did they get that?", hit thottbot, and find that it was some random fucker out in the middle of the mountains that I never stumbled across and would have never found. I'm looking at you, Mark of the Chosen.

I know there is a subset of the population, the explorers, who delight in finding that random valley that no one ever goes to. I, however, like to be led through the game. I like to have a purpose beyond "see what's over that next hill!", even if it is just to whack 15 foozles and bring back 15 quillboar kidney stones. Quests that interlock with each other or that send you to different zones increase the immersion of the game. Everything from Redridge's plea for help to the multi-chain quest lines with the king of Stormwind helps to flesh out the world. If these quests or quest givers were obscured I'd have never done them. If they were only limited to the region where they were given, I probably wouldn't have traveled to the other continent, discovering more of the world in the process. I wouldn't have needed to.

[Rithrin]

I'm not sure why the handholding "!" quest givers and quest chaining is all bad. Like any good RPG, I think it's a plus that quests are interrelated and that each quest giver sends you to the next one; that most of them are in clearly labeled in areas that everyone passes through. If you ever played FFXI, you can understand my frustration. There was nothing to deliniate quest givers out of the several hundred NPCs in town, and if you didn't meet the prerequisites they just wouldn't give the quest to you. You ended up having to spend an hour on Allakazham doing searches to try and find them, or spend two hours in game talking to every single fucking taru in windhurst. Maybe that's fun for some braindead masochistic fuckers, but it wasn't fun for me.

Well there's no reason it needs to be that difficult. Those are symptoms of bad quest design.

It also pisses me off when I examine someone, notice a cool item, think "hrm, where did they get that?", hit thottbot, and find that it was some random fucker out in the middle of the mountains that I never stumbled across and would have never found. I'm looking at you, Mark of the Chosen.

Well if he had gone to that random place in the middle of the mountains, and all that was there was gnoll #3,478 then that's boring. However that guy went out there and the developers thought it be cool to put Larry the Gnoll out there with his special weapon in case anyone found him. I don't see why its a problem to throw a few bones at the explorer types especially since its most likely that the best items aren't from the NPCs out in the random mountains/deep forests/caves, etc.

I, however, like to be led through the game. I like to have a purpose beyond "see what's over that next hill!"

If the only purpose a game has given you is that, then the game has failed to create compelling storyline.

Quests that interlock with each other or that send you to different zones increase the immersion of the game. Everything from Redridge's plea for help to the multi-chain quest lines with the king of Stormwind helps to flesh out the world. If these quests or quest givers were obscured I'd have never done them. If they were only limited to the region where they were given, I probably wouldn't have traveled to the other continent, discovering more of the world in the process. I wouldn't have needed to.

No one's saying that the quest givers shouldn't send you to other ones and that quests shouldn't be easily available. But since immersion seems important to you, isn't that being taken away by just a bunch of NPCs standing around with exclamations waiting for you (or whoever else) to get their vendored quests? Like I've said, there are better ways to hand out quests and get players to find them by placement of the NPCs, scripted stuff, maybe using the in-game mailbox like WoW recently has been doing, that keeps immersion. And believe me, I love chain quests and quests that send me off to the far reaches of the world to do stuff, but why make it feel like I'm playing connect-the-exclamations instead of really questing? It seems like no one is willing to put any effort into a game anymore.

But then again, I've never understood the desire to be lead around by the nose through something. Gives me flashbacks of going to Disneyland as a kid on that car ride where you can steer the car, but its always on tracks... its rather disappointing.

[bhodi]

I, however, like to be led through the game. I like to have a purpose beyond "see what's over that next hill!"

If the only purpose a game has given you is that, then the game has failed to create compelling storyline.

I was using that as an example of the common thought process of an explorer, which I am not. It may not be, in fact, what they think, but that's what it seems like to me.

No one's saying that the quest givers shouldn't send you to other ones and that quests shouldn't be easily available. But since immersion seems important to you, isn't that being taken away by just a bunch of NPCs standing around with exclamations waiting for you (or whoever else) to get their vendored quests? Like I've said, there are better ways to hand out quests and get players to find them by placement of the NPCs, scripted stuff, maybe using the in-game mailbox like WoW recently has been doing, that keeps immersion. And believe me, I love chain quests and quests that send me off to the far reaches of the world to do stuff, but why make it feel like I'm playing connect-the-exclamations instead of really questing? It seems like no one is willing to put any effort into a game anymore.

But then again, I've never understood the desire to be lead around by the nose through something. Gives me flashbacks of going to Disneyland as a kid on that car ride where you can steer the car, but its always on tracks... its rather disappointing.

Well, no, I don't expect epic storytelling from an MMOG. It's not *really* why I play the game. I do the quests because it not only gives me experience but also (hopefully) tells a mildly entertaining story. Sometimes they are 'Oh, my foot is sore, please bring me fresh bandages', and sometimes they are ones like the uldaman quests that tell backstory of the game, or the onyxia quest line, or any number of other well designed quests. I'm not looking for immersion so much as to be entertained; In WoWland, people with something to say have ! above their heads. That doesn't break any sort of immersion for me. I think "Great! It saves me time and I can get right on with the content." That is, to conquer new zones, kill my mobile bags of improvement, and to socalize with some friends while doing it. It's also nice to know *why* i'm going to kill onyxia, other than she's got a nice head item and an 18 slot bag.

[Telemediocrity]

I was using that as an example of the common thought process of an explorer, which I am not. It may not be, in fact, what they think, but that's what it seems like to me.

If you're not an explorer, use the spoiler sites.  Don't ruin everyone else's fun by having things toned down.  Having optional spoiler sites that you can use if you want is part of the fun.

Frankly, I think Blizzard already makes huge concessions to your playstyle by posting stats of the loot rewards for upcoming quests before they hit the live servers.  That would be absolutely unheard of in any MMO I've ever played.

[Jayce]

If you're not an explorer, use the spoiler sites.  Don't ruin everyone else's fun by having things toned down. 

I am an explorer primarily, but I still use the spoiler sites and think that WoW has a good balance in that area.  I haven't been able to explore most other MMOGs as deeply as I'd like because of lack of time.  So be careful how you swing that "everyone" word.