Tuk... what is it
you want in a quest in a linear MMPORPG? You've obviously got some idea of exactly what you want, otherwise you wouldn't keep bringing it up. You cite finding immersion in farming faction in EQLive... I fail to see immersion in that. Maybe it's just me, but I find that to be boring repetitive drudgery... perhaps our definitions of "immersion" are different (and note that I never said EQ2 quests were "better" than EQLive... I do find them more immersive, however, due to the eye candy, as I will comment on shortly). You call EQ2 quests equivalent to "root canals"... just what is the fundamental difference
you see between an EQ2 quest and an EQLive quest? Instead of just slamming it like a typical boardtroll,
discuss it. Show me the error of my ways instead of giving me a baseless uninformed slur of a game you clearly have minimal exposure to. You want class balance or combat or even graphics issues threads? Go up to the top of the forum list here at Beastlords.org. EQLive is not immune from them any more than EQ2 or WoW is. No game will ever please 100% of the people 100% of the time.
For quests, every MMP game out there uses the same basic underlying quest model, with different styles of eye candy wrapped around it. The difference between quests in EQLive, EQ2, DAoC, SWG, AC, AC2, AO, WoW, and Eve is... negligible, at best -- it's all in the presentation and how that ties into the overlying gameworld. There's no real difference between collecting two Legionnaire Shoulderpads for a Dwarf in Kaladim... collecting four Fairy Wings for a vendor in Oakmyst... killing three Jawa for a trainer on Tatooine... stealing cargo pods from a pirate cruiser in the Andressi system... etc. They all use the exact same model: player kills *a_mob01*, collects item(s), gets reward. Bounty quests are the same, regardless of the mob or game -- player kills x number of *a_mob01*, gets reward.
Quests add a second level of immersion to an otherwise stock PvE game. Each game uses a different level of character involvement, from simple hailing and repeating of stock phrases to mission terminals to submitting premade dialogue responses from a selection. Some games use faction to determine the "tone" of the NPC response or to prohibit response until certain faction requirements are met. I've yet to see a game that has a truly open quest system in terms of dialogue... I'd love to just chat at an NPC, saying whatever I please to trigger different responses... but the game coders can't add that degree of interaction to a MMPORPG with current technology. Personally, I prefer the EQLive and EQ2 techniques over the blandness of mission terminals too, but that's just me.
Beyond that, it's all eye candy. Some games use interactive emotes -- the NPCs move and gesture. Some use vocalizations, where you actually hear the conversation. Some use elaborate texture maps to add realism or details to the character and their surroundings. Some offer terrain additions, such as grass or birds, or terrain SFX, such as crickets chirping. For the actual harvesting of the quest items, some games use a one-kill method... some use random drops of varying degrees of rarity... some use subquests (ie, get item x, take to NPC2, get item y; or even combine two item x to create item y). The rewards vary also -- sometimes items of great power, sometimes items of value only to a vendor, sometimes simple coin, sometimes experience, sometimes faction. A good game will have a mix of rewards to please a mix of playertypes -- some people like the phat lewtz, some people like the faction, some just want cold hard cash. All of these options will vary from one game to the next, as each has adopted it's own standard method of quest delivery and execution.
Now, personally, I like the eye candy in more current games like AC2, WoW, and EQ2. It's why I have a video card that cost me a week's pay -- if poor chocky graphics were fine, I'd still be playing Galaga or Pong.
Eye candy allows for more immersion in a game... imagine, sitting by a brook, hearing the water trickle over the stones behind you while shafts of sunlight filter through the tree above you, dancing across the water's surface. A cluster of butterflys flitter by, weaving around a leaf that's falling from the tree. The light crunch of a deer's footsteps betrays his appraoch as he nears, turns to look at you, then saunters away. Overhead, a hawk screeches as it hunts for prey. As the sun sets, stars begin to twinkle through the darkening sky, crickets chirp in the distance, and fireflies come out, dancing a random dance among the branches of the tree, reflecting eerily in the light ripples of the brook. THAT is immersion in my book, not waiting 7 minutes for a_giant07258 to spawn where a_giant07257 just died. I gladly pay for games that offer me that level of immersion, that level of detail. And if you want to see that very spot, go to the northern covered bridge between the Oracle Tower and Windstalker Village in EQ2.
When you get right down to the bottom line, the whole idea behind the quest system, regardless of the game platform it is based from or the eye candy around it, is to keep the player busy ingame and reward them for their time. The end result, regardless of the reward, is to keep as many of the players playing (and happily playing) as possible -- long-term players = long-term profits, and the more long-term players you have, the higher those profits go.
That, in a nutshell, is Quests 101. If you want to further illustrate how similar quests are from one game to the next, answer this question:
What quest is this? -- an NPC asks you to deliver an item to a second NPC some distance away. After delivering the item, the second NPC asks you to further help by killing a_mob01. I'm curious if anyone will guess which game and which quest this is -- I'm willing to bet the answers will be quite diverse
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