Questing
June 21, 2011 Leave a comment
It has been a long time since I have posted any thing here but I feel the time has come for me to write this.
I have been playing MMOs for a long time. I started with UO and have played almost every major MMO since then.
Questing in MMOs has a strange history. UO did not have any questing to mention, it was a sandbox game and you did what you wanted to.
Everquest dispite what the name implies also did not have much questing and the questing that it did have was fairly difficult. You had to actually read the quest text and figure out what you needed to do next. Most of the time you would have your browser open and you would alt tab to get hints. Unless you really wanted the reward you pretty much ignored questing.
There were a few other games that came out that tried to improve on the everquest model but all of them were still pretty much like EQ.
The major breakthrough in questing was made when WoW came out. They decided to stop being so hard and put a big fat yellow exclamation point above the heads of quest givers. They also decided to make questing the primary way of advancement. This pretty much eliminated the old grind of camping and made a new grind of running around and completing quests.
This was the greatest advancement in MMOs made in years. This was the creation of the theme park. You were now led by the hand from quest hub to quest hub. It took all of the imagination out of it. I loved it.
Now years latter every game I play follows the same exact theme, quest hub to quest hub, level to level. There is no imagination in it. I long for a game that lets me grind again, like the old days. I want to sit in one spot for a hours and massacre innocent orcs. This gave me time to chat and get to know my fellow gamer. Now I don’t have time to chat because I am always RUNNING to complete another quest. I dont have time to explore, I have no reason to go off the beaten path.
I want a game that lets you quest or farm and gives you equal reward for each. I want an incentive to explore and not just some stupid badge, reward, or achievement.
I am not sure that the two types of games can coexist. I am not sure what I even want. I just know that I am very sick and tired of the WoW way of questing. There has to be something better.
Every sandbox game that has come out since UO has been about PVP. Open world PVP sucks no one likes to be ganked and all of their stuff taken. I want a sandbox game that is primarily a pve game with some very structured PVP built in. Like WAR and UO all mixed up into one great a glorious game.