MMO quests: what's next?

[Rywill]

A question for all you armchair game designers (or even better, you real-life game designers). One complaint I've seen about MMO quests in general (particularly the WoW quests) is that they're too simple. They all essentially come down to either "Kill X number of these monsters" (whether it's telling you to do that directly, or indirectly in a collect-the-ears type quest), "Go find this NPC," or "Go find this place on the map" (whether it means just go stand there, as in an exploration quest, or go get something from there, as in a find-the-chest quest). The complaint, as best I understand it, is that you're just doing these same three types of tasks over and over again.

And I agree with that--with few exceptions, all the quests seem to fall into one of those three archetypes. Blizzard has obviously tried to dress it up by adding a lot of backstory, etc., to the quests, and by linking long quest chains into a sort of epic story arc. But when you get down to it, they're all just a bunch of either Kill X, Find NPC X, or Find Map Loc X. Even the ones that seem more complex--like the Alliance Rogue poison quest, which requires you to case a building, break in, steal something from a high-level NPC, and get out alive--are just gussied-up versions of the three archetypes (it's essentially two Find Map Loc quests--find the building, then find the item in the NPC's chest). A lot of them are like that--there's a fair amount of variety in OBSTACLES between you and your goal, but not a lot of variety in the goals themselves. I personally don't find the WoW quests dull (I like the backstory and stuff), but I don't find them hugely compelling, either, with some exceptions. They're a way to give direction to a game that is mostly about tactical combat.

My question: what types of things would you rather see? When people talk about how the quests are all dull because they're either kill, NPC, or Map, what alternatives is Blizzard overlooking? Remember that it has to be something that would fit into an MMO design.

A related question: are quests in single-player RPGs really much better? I think about some of the SP RPGs I loved the most--Fallout and Fallout 2, for example--or ones that were popular, like Baldur's Gate. In those games, the quests still fall into the same general three categories, don't they? There are occasional quests that require you to navigate a conversation tree, I guess, but mostly they come down to assignments to kill particular monsters, seek out particular NPCs, or explore/bring back something from particular areas of the map. Maybe people just like those games better because a SP game allows the designer to tell a better narrative story? If so, though, I would think people would praise WoW, because of all the MMOs I played (EQ, AC, DAOC, SB, Planetside, WW2OL) WoW is the one that is the most story-oriented with its quests, hands-down. Maybe people like the SP quests better because there can be multiple ways to complete them? If so, I agree with that. The Fallout games, in particular, usually allowed you to complete a quest by combat, stealth, diplomacy, or some combination thereof, which I liked a lot. WoW doesn't really have that--as a Rogue, I can sometimes complete a quest by stealth where others would have to fight, but the game in general seems to be set up so that there's one way to complete each quest, and it usually involves combat.

But then again, that's because WoW (and all MMORPGs, in my experience) is more a game about tactical combat than it is about story. Theoretically, is it possible to design an MMO along the Fallout model, where players could excel in diplomacy and use that to talk their way through many of the quests? I would think so, theoretically, although I'm sure as a practical matter it would be hugely intensive in terms of manpower--if WoW took X years to develop as it is, adding in the ability to get through quests via stealth or diplomacy would presumably increase dev time to 2X or 2.5X or whatever, and I'm not sure people want that (or that anyone would fund that).

[zabuni]

One interesting quest I've seen was in EQOA. It was a king of the hill type quest. You had to defend an NPC against hordes of MOBS. Granted, it was an escort mission of sorts. Granted also, it required 20 or so people to make sure all the mobs were put down. But it had a different objective than "kill x foozles".

It's also really difficult to make quests accessible by non combat methods without making them trivial. Stealth is alright, but most of the non-stealth missions in fallout turned into "If you have Int > 25, pick options 3, 2, 1, and 4 to complete the quest."

[Matthew Gallant]

(it's essentially two Find Map Loc quests--find the building, then find the item in the NPC's chest)

You know, when you think about it, all quests are quests. How about a quest that isn't a quest? That would be something.

[Soapyfrog]

The king of the hill type quest would be cool.

E.g. Get to abandoned outpost X and then hold it against waves of attackers until relief arrives.

It'd be fun, and easy to scale (you could easily scale the spawning waves to match the strength of the group undertaking the quest, for example...)

[mouselock]

How about some examples of quests, in any medium, that don't require: Killing X/a specific monster, taking item X to person Y, finding and talking to person Y, or finding object Z?

I tend to believe the problem is more the amount of times you have to do the activity making it apparent that all quests break down into the same constituent parts than an inherent failing of the quests themselves. In general, I can't remember any Pen and Paper sessions where quests didn't break down into the above components either. There was just a feeling of more leeway because of the interaction with more depth than following scripted text.

[Mattc0m]

I think setting up a system that allows PLAYERS to create quests would be great. Some sort of special "leader" rank or something.

[Matthew Gallant]

There are king of the hill and escort quests in WoW.

There's a line of quests that require you to read a couple of books and then answer questions about the books.

There's a quest that requires you to jump off a very tall ledge.

There's a quest that requires you to wear a hat.

There's a quest that requires you to release a tiny animal that will dig up the things you have to collect for you.

[Brian Koontz]

Its not a problem of quests, its a problem of the fundamental game mechanics that enforce the quest-types.

For example, mobs in WoW do not eat. They do not sleep. They don't go to a job. They don't talk. They don't move to a different zone. They just stand around, walk around a bit for exercise, they attack a PC if he gets too close, die, and respawn a few minutes later.

WHOA... its shocking that complex quests can't be built around the pathetic limitations of mob behavior!

The only (current) solution given the mundane and static world of todays VSOGs is quests that are about WoW players. But the problem, again, is gameplay limitation. What do WoW players want? Items, gold, experience, socialization. WoW players actually want much more, but WoW only gives them so much.

WoW quests could be more varied and more creative and could bring players into it much more, but the quests are actually good as is, given the generic world.

The longer-term solution is to increase the abilities and intelligence of mobs and increase the gameplay options and depth of players. THEN you'll have some great quests.

[zabuni]

One of the more amusing things that happened with some of the more exotic quests in EQOA (King of the hill, Escort) is that people complained bitterly when their original tactics didn't work. Granted, crowd control in EQOA isn't exactly high art, but they howled if it isn't anything but the usual mass group against a large mob.

[Rob O'Boston]

How about randomizing 'choose your own adventure' style quests with a right answer for a good reward and a better answer for a great reward. It would be fun to watch the forum boors go apeshit about not getting the better answer the first time through. And for the highest level, make the answer between a great reward and timed perma death (no log in for a week). Hahaha, would love to see the hardcores turn purple at getting the quest wrong.

I think any young reader of fantasy novels can tell you that the real quests every player wants is the quest that makes you feel unique. One possible solution would be having high level players attaining a political class, and they would be able to assign quests to other players in an attempt to fulfill political class objectives (alliance vs horde stuff). You would have to make the player choice random to prevent cronyism. And the quests could go far beyond straight assassination quests. How about escorting a designated player to some hostile land in order to propose an alliance (political marriage) to some npc dignatary.

[Timemaster Tim]

The quest archetypes exist because, well... they're archetypes. Lord of the Rings was just on extended Fedex style quest. Take this item to location X. The real exapnsion in quests will come with deeper richer interaction with NPCs as part of an overall story. WoW has started down this path.

[unbongwah]

For me, I think the main issue is how static an MMORPG world is. In a good SP RPG, there's a sense of progression - not just your characters levelling up, but of narrative progression, of the world evolving and changing in response to your actions. There's an in-game payoff beyond the next stat boost and sharp shiny object. Sure, it's no "King Lear," but a good RPG offers a satisfying sense of resolution in response to your actions.

But in an MMORPG like WoW, there's no sense of permanent changes or evolution in the game-world, no sense that your actions have consequences beyond your own immediate concerns. You can clear out a den of monsters and slay the local boss monster, but he and his minions will respawn soon enough for the next batch of heroes to dispatch. There are instanced quests and large-scale raids and the like, but your victories are about as transient as a round of Counter-strike.

Clearly, for a lot of players, "teh grind" is sufficiently compelling to keep them coming back to WoW. But when I finally grow disenchanted with WoW, as I know I will, it will largely be because I know the world of Azeroth hasn't changed a bit since the day I first trod on its lands.

[Mark Asher]

I think the way you liven up quests is to build in scripted actions. For example, there's a Horde kill quest in Ashenvale that's more entertaining than most because you join a group of orc NPCs as they assault an NPC elf base.

You're still required to kill a foozle, so in a sense it's no different from other quests, but being part of an attack force makes it more fun.

Scripting takes more time, I'd guess, and creates more variables and hence more things that can go wrong, so it's probably harder to make those kinds of quests. WoW has quite a few, but the majority of WoW quests are of the simpler variety.

I think the simple quests are fine. I think players get frustrated with them when the quests take longer than expected. I don't think any player has a quarrel with a simple kill quest that can be completed in 10 minutes. Players enjoy getting the quest done and getting the reward.

[Silverlight]

IMHO, the central problem with MMO quests (and MMO areas for that matter) is that they're designed to be stamped out by machine in the thousands. The homogenity produced by this is fatal to any sense of immersion even before you get to the really repetitive part.

How about some examples of quests, in any medium, that don't require: Killing X/a specific monster, taking item X to person Y, finding and talking to person Y, or finding object Z?

I tend to believe the problem is more the amount of times you have to do the activity making it apparent that all quests break down into the same constituent parts than an inherent failing of the quests themselves. In general, I can't remember any Pen and Paper sessions where quests didn't break down into the above components either. There was just a feeling of more leeway because of the interaction with more depth than following scripted text.

Yes, exactly. While formulating an abandoned reply to the thread I was reminded of Nalia's castle in Baldur's Gate 2. You spent a lot of time killing, but you had trolls in the main quarters, umber hulks in the basement, a mage in the library and a crazed traitorous warrior in a hidden back room. And all of this was interspersed with finding secret doors and treasures, having bitch sessions with Nalia's relatives and other nobility, exploring the place, and finding little hidden things like the special anvil that let you make the three-headed flail.

I think setting up a system that allows PLAYERS to create quests would be great. Some sort of special "leader" rank or something.

The players would need to have much better tools than the developers do, or else they'd still produce sucky quests.

[Silverlight]

I think the simple quests are fine. I think players get frustrated with them when the quests take longer than expected. I don't think any player has a quarrel with a simple kill quest that can be completed in 10 minutes. Players enjoy getting the quest done and getting the reward.

I've actually gotten very bored of that sort of quest in WoW, even when they're simple mobs that I can kill quickly. By the time I usually get to such a quest I've already completed it six times over, and in the end it's just busywork. Travelling around to prove myself against Murlok Kills #285-304 isn't going to be much more fun just because a sentient tree asked me to do it.

[Brian Rucker]

I think there's less of a sense of competition, how good or effective you are compared to other characters, in single player games so the motivation to be uber efficient isn't quite as pressing as it can be in MMOs. That means, I suspect, players are much more willing to sit back and allow themselves to be entertained by story-related content or to enjoy more challenging situations.

You get the sense that just about any player on an MMO's first response to new content is hitting some website for cheats, macros and walkthroughs so they can knock it out as quickly and efficiently as possible. Sure, there walkthroughs and the like for singleplayer games but there it's much more obvious to a player that using these things as a first response is cheating yourself of content. The gameplay itself is the reward not showing off the loot'n'levels you got to impress other players.

I think there are several possible solutions to the boring quest problem in MMOs. Obviously, make situations that can't be walkthroughed.

I'd create engines instead of scripts: juggle a bunch of variables together that would blend different settings, objectives, opposition and complications together (there are like 36 basic plots that have ever been made and only a few of those are good action fodder. And there are some good websites out there that look at all the predictable storylines and complications you might find in RPG scenarios. Just have some fun mixing and matching elements via a randomizing engine).

Layer on a dynamic strategic AI for different NPC groups that would direct things like migrations and other activities. This would create emergent situations as dynamic patterns interact and conflict with each other as well as the elements of the randomized quest generation.

Lastly, allow for player placed content like mobs, locations and NPCs. Put limitations like timers and allowable locations on it. Let players create adventures but limit rewards. If they want good participation it's up to them to get the loot, through conventional gameplay, to stock in the adventure. And don't allow player placed mobs to interact with unaffiliated players and content or to give experience or other rewards (to limit abuse).

Some combination of these factors would make for a much more dynamic and unpredictable experience. Sure, it wouldn't get rid of Fed Ex quests and kill the foozles but it would mix things up enough so that each outing didn't just feel like another rerun.

[MarchHare]

The king of the hill type quest would be cool.

E.g. Get to abandoned outpost X and then hold it against waves of attackers until relief arrives.

In the Zul'Farrak instance (in Tanaris), in order to complete the "Divino-matic Rod" quest, you have to defend the top of an ancient troll temple against three waves of very large numbers of attackers. My first time seeing all the mobs at the base of the temple, I said out loud, "Holy shit! We have to fight all of them?!" Thankfully we had a level 60 guildmate with us, otherwise there's no way we would have survived. Definetely one of my favourite moments in WoW so far.

[beecubed]

there's a very fun king-of-the-hill quest in zul'furrak. i was totally taken by surprise the first time we did it.

[Ephraim]

I have a quest in my WoW quest log where I need to snap a photo of a monster.

I suppose it's a variation of sorts on the Go To Loc X quest, but with a twist (taking the pic and getting out alive with it).

Personally, I think that throwing in fun mini-games is an interesting way to get avoid some of the dullness of the quest archetypes. When you think about it, Grand Theft Auto's missions are pretty archetypal, but they're fun and people en masse worship the GTA games. That's because of the open ended world and the relatively fun play mechanics. Introduce similar stuff into the standard quest system and I think you've got a partial solution.

WoW's fishing profession 'game' and the related fishing quests are an early attempt at this, I guess. Eventually we'll be playing MMORPGs where there are goals where the player has to win a race (and the graphics will be as good as any modern race sim), play a round of golf (and the gameplay will be as fun as any modern golf game), etc... In fact, when I finally arrived at the racetrack in the Shimmering Flats in WoW, I was hoping to be able to pilot one of those gnome mechs around the track. I'd kill for a 'race' type quest where you got to race Horde people in their goblin pod-racer vehicles.

/Eph

[sluggo]

I'm not a fan of the "collect X randomly dropped items from this mob" quest type in WoW, because stuff never feels like it drops as often as you'd like it to. I'd rather have a quest to kill 30 enemies outright, rather than kill 25 in search of 1 random drop.

But I really like a lot of the quests in WoW. I just did one quest where you escort a robotic chicken to the ocean. There's one quest in Uldaman that's essentially ripped right from Raiders of the Lost Ark, where you loot a staff from a named NPC, place it down in a "map room," and it opens the door to a secret chamber (with a L500 giant - yow). We did one in Stranglethorn where you fight waves of apes. There's plenty of standard killing and FedEx stuff, but it seems Blizzard tried really hard to bring some fun quests to the table.

[Silverlight]

I'm not a fan of the "collect X randomly dropped items from this mob" quest type in WoW, because stuff never feels like it drops as often as you'd like it to. I'd rather have a quest to kill 30 enemies outright, rather than kill 25 in search of 1 random drop.

There is one thing to be said for the X-random-drops quests. The normal kill quest system doesn't have enough flexibility to give kill credit for more than one kind of monster. You can't fulfill a "Kill 10 zombies" quest by killing 4 Zombies and 6 Zombie Warriors in the same area, but you can get a "Collect 5 Zombie Heads" quest with a 50% drop rate and get about the same effect.

Of course, that's really a cheap dodge to get around the inflexibility of the kill quests, but it does have some positive effects.

Yes, there are some nice quest types in WoW, i.e. most of the escort quests, the unusual-goal quests, the quest that requires you to be dead, etc. It's just that this stuff is too little to cover any significant fraction of playtime. Quests like that shouldn't be the reward, they should be the majority of the experience.

[mouselock]

I have a quest in my WoW quest log where I need to snap a photo of a monster.

I suppose it's a variation of sorts on the Go To Loc X quest, but with a twist (taking the pic and getting out alive with it).

I agree, I was really amused when I got that quest. I'm looking forward to doing it. But it's still a "Kill the Foozle" quest when you deconstruct it. (Albeit the foozle is, conceivably, much easier to "kill".)

Personally, I think that throwing in fun mini-games is an interesting way to get avoid some of the dullness of the quest archetypes. When you think about it, Grand Theft Auto's missions are pretty archetypal, but they're fun and people en masse worship the GTA games. That's because of the open ended world and the relatively fun play mechanics. Introduce similar stuff into the standard quest system and I think you've got a partial solution.

I like the idea of mini games in MMOs. I was always depressed when I'd walk into the Highpass casino in EQ and find no games to play. I was even more depressed when I walked into the cantinas in SWG and found utterly uninspired, crappy games to play.

But I think much of the joy in GTA still comes from the fact that the game revolves around the player. The quests in other games aren't substantially different in terms of how they operate. They are substantially different in terms of how they're scripted, and how much of a sense of accomplishment they can impart upon a player. I think that's a difficult problem to overcome in MMOs, and will effectively take a very good algorithmic generation of quests approach to overcome. Last time I mentioned such a system, though, I was met with the reaction of "That's a fun toy for you, but nobody really wants it." *shrug* Seemed to do okay for Diablo, and in the more stringent single player space, but perhaps people would be turned off if they couldn't just look up the answers online to zoom through the quests.

And even if you had some sort of super algorithm for quest generation, they're still going to be pieced together in small, you guessed it, archetypal portions.

[mouselock]

Yes, there are some nice quest types in WoW, i.e. most of the escort quests, the unusual-goal quests, the quest that requires you to be dead, etc. It's just that this stuff is too little to cover any significant fraction of playtime. Quests like that shouldn't be the reward, they should be the majority of the experience.

If they were, then you'd be complaining that this was the only type of quest there was there. (I'm not trying to be snarky here, I promise.)
It seems like the fundamental complaint is still "I have to do these mechanical things to progress through the game to the 'good stuff'." I don't think more quests of any type are going to fix that. I think the way to deal with that is to give totally unrelated in game activities, a la Brian's point about mini games. Most of these MMOs desperately need some mechanism for the average player to have fun without it relating directly to 'character advancement'. And we're still not seeing games like this (SWG with its space-fighter expansion is as close as it gets.)

[Mark Asher]

But in an MMORPG like WoW, there's no sense of permanent changes or evolution in the game-world, no sense that your actions have consequences beyond your own immediate concerns. You can clear out a den of monsters and slay the local boss monster, but he and his minions will respawn soon enough for the next batch of heroes to dispatch. There are instanced quests and large-scale raids and the like, but your victories are about as transient as a round of Counter-strike.

Players think they want this, but I'm convinced that what they really want is a sense that they're working towards completion, which you can have in single player RPGs but not in MMOs. I think that's what lacking more than any sense of being able to change the gameworld.

I do agree that having an impact on the gameworld is a nifty feature. Shadowbane had it, but in the end after players got used to building and destroying cities a "so what?" attitude settled in.

In the end I think it's just a matter of these games not being able to bear the massive amount of time players play them -- the content, static or dynamic, will be chewed up by players faster than the developers can add it, and then all that's left this is player-generated content -- PvP, the quest for uber loot, etc. For some players, that's enough.

[Silverlight]

Yes, there are some nice quest types in WoW, i.e. most of the escort quests, the unusual-goal quests, the quest that requires you to be dead, etc. It's just that this stuff is too little to cover any significant fraction of playtime. Quests like that shouldn't be the reward, they should be the majority of the experience.

If they were, then you'd be complaining that this was the only type of quest there was there. (I'm not trying to be snarky here, I promise.)
It seems like the fundamental complaint is still "I have to do these mechanical things to progress through the game to the 'good stuff'." I don't think more quests of any type are going to fix that.

I'll take your word that you're not being snarky. :) Yes, I understand what you're trying to say, but I disagree with it. Quests of the "Kill X Mob" type are filler. All they do is occupy time and give you an objective to your grinding. Personally, I think the genre would be better off if you never had a Kill X Mob quest again. You could, practically speaking, take every Kill X Mob quest out of WoW and it would still be the same game. These are the reasons why single-player games simply don't use the things.

I think the way to deal with that is to give totally unrelated in game activities, a la Brian's point about mini games. Most of these MMOs desperately need some mechanism for the average player to have fun without it relating directly to 'character advancement'. And we're still not seeing games like this (SWG with its space-fighter expansion is as close as it gets.)

Oh, I definitely agree with you, if you replace "character advancement" with "grind levelling". I don't mind having character advancement by minigame for, say, crafting - particularly if crafting advancement is decoupled from the fact that I've killed 500k XP of mobs. And I think that would help too. You don't need to set up the game so that all the carrots rely on /played just to get your players to stick around after a month.

In the end I think it's just a matter of these games not being able to bear the massive amount of time players play them -- the content, static or dynamic, will be chewed up by players faster than the developers can add it, and then all that's left this is player-generated content -- PvP, the quest for uber loot, etc. For some players, that's enough.

I especially agree with this in particular.

From a business standpoint, MMOs first use /played as a stand-in for billed months, and then try to drag out /played as long as possible. It's a testament to the obsessive-compulsive in all of us that this actually works on a commercial basis, but that doesn't make it good design.

At this point, I'd personally rather have an MMO that pushes a lot of the advancement to offline time - crafting, training, whatever - so as to provide a guaranteed pacing. I get to feel fully accomplished after two hours of play, and they get to know that, mechanically, nobody's going to make level 30 without having 30 days of actual billing time. As mercenary as that sounds in terms of a business ripoff, it sounds like a potentially better model than having to burn myself out on mob after mob after mob.

[mouselock]

I'll take your word that you're not being snarky. :) Yes, I understand what you're trying to say, but I disagree with it. Quests of the "Kill X Mob" type are filler. All they do is occupy time and give you an objective to your grinding. Personally, I think the genre would be better off if you never had a Kill X Mob quest again. You could, practically speaking, take every Kill X Mob quest out of WoW and it would still be the same game. These are the reasons why single-player games simply don't use the things.

But single player games do use them. They just don't have to refer to them as quests, because they're built in such a way that they know exactly where you'll be going, how you'll get there, and that everyone will do so in the same way. Now, in instances in WoW this is the same thing. And I've never seen an "Enter instance X and kill Y critters quests." But if you say in an MMO "Go to the very farthest points of the zone and talk to the evil wizard there." that experience can vary widely depending on a number of things, including how many other people are on the way there, how many people are sitting around killing things in between you and the wizard, etc. In a single player game, if they want to make sure you gain 1/3 of a level before you get to the wizard, they can say exactly how many critters will be waiting, and there's nobody else there to do anything about it.

Having "Kill X" quests is as good as MMO designers can do when it comes to making sure you go through X amount of challenge before accomplishing goal Y, unless they completely segregate you from other people, at which point why have an MMO anyway?

I
Oh, I definitely agree with you, if you replace "character advancement" with "grind levelling". I don't mind having character advancement by minigame for, say, crafting - particularly if crafting advancement is decoupled from the fact that I've killed 500k XP of mobs. And I think that would help too. You don't need to set up the game so that all the carrots rely on /played just to get your players to stick around after a month.

Well, yeah, that was an imprecise usage. I meant direct character advancement (i.e. primary skill/level advancement). Crafting mini-games, casinos to try to increase one's money, etc.. all are "character advancement" but they're not the primary paradigm of advancement as it tends to manifest itself in MMOs these days. Then again, I favor the idea of making crafting equally as complex and time consuming as levelling, so that if you want to be a master craftsmen it means as much as levelling, but I get the feeling that most people feel this would penalize them because they can't craft *and* level as easily in this case. Orthogonal game design vs. linear with flavor, I guess. I prefer the former.

In the end I think it's just a matter of these games not being able to bear the massive amount of time players play them -- the content, static or dynamic, will be chewed up by players faster than the developers can add it, and then all that's left this is player-generated content -- PvP, the quest for uber loot, etc. For some players, that's enough.

I especially agree with this in particular.

I think this isn't necessarily true, but depends on the viewpoints of the players. I think WoW actually tends to attempt to build up play (and hence revenue) time by shortening the levelling curve and broadening the content. That's why you can easily outlevel even one culture's set of quests at low levels - to encourage you to make other characters, play them through, and enjoy them.

However, I don't think the mass psychology of current MMO players is a good fit for this approach. I love hearing people bitch about having "exhausted" the game because they're 60 and there's not a whole lot left to challenge them at 60. It never even occurrs to them that they can start over and get a largely different play experience by changing: race, player class, and even talent build. It seems pretty clear to me that this is what Blizzard intended; after all, this is exactly how Diablo II achieved longevity. But it just seems not to work for a good number of vocal MMO players, which is an odd thing. Frankly, it's not taking a whole lot longer to build up a WoW character than it is a Diablo II character (especially with the desired dropped items in DII), so why are people so much more reticent to play laterally in WoW than in DII?

As mercenary as that sounds in terms of a business ripoff, it sounds like a potentially better model than having to burn myself out on mob after mob after mob.

You don't "have" to burn yourself out. If you're tired of doing stuff on one character, try another. It's reasonably fresh as you switch around races/classes, frankly. This is what I did when I got tired of solo questing with my druid because the group I'd been running through instances with got busy. Sure, I'm not getting my druid any closer to 60, which kind of sucks, but it sucks far less than not enjoying myself while making progress and making a game into a chore for myself. Plus which, I'm enjoying my warlock on a PvP server, although now that I'm 20 the ganking may change that. We'll see. At any rate, I've gotten to where I can appreciate my druid more than I was.

[Union Carbide]

From a business standpoint, MMOs first use /played as a stand-in for billed months, and then try to drag out /played as long as possible.

I call bullshit.

The perfect customer is one that never plays the game, but is too timid to cancel their account. The catasser is the enemy of profit, as they burn more bandwidth and result in more CS time than an "average" player.

Constructing the majority of your quests so that they can be completed in one sitting or are interruptable is good business sense. It doesn't force your players to spend 8h a day on the server waiting for Epic_Mob_006 to spawn. Instead, they can log on, spend 30 minutes collecting gnome scalps or whatever, and log off feeling as if they have accomplished something.

I would think this would actually improve profitability, because these players take longer to get to 60 which leads to more billed months than the 00ber that gets to 60 before the end of the first month, and is bored of the game and cancels their account at the end of the 2nd.

[Silverlight]

In a single player game, if they want to make sure you gain 1/3 of a level before you get to the wizard, they can say exactly how many critters will be waiting, and there's nobody else there to do anything about it.

Do you actually believe that MMO kill quests are there to make sure you get a fraction of a level before proceeding on to higher challenges? I'm amazed that you'd make the claim. Even a 25-mob kill quest at any mid-high level is going to get you a very small fraction of a level.

If you want to revise that to "Kill quests are there to make sure you take some time before you actually get to the higher challenge" then I'd agree with you, because that's what I said in the first place - that kill quests are timewasters with no practical purpose.

Also, note that most SP-RPGs these days aspire to giving you non-kill methods of solving quests - intentionally, because they're trying to be flexible. Which is why I feel justified in claiming that SP-RPGs do not, as a rule, have Kill X Of Y quests. They might have a Kill-every-goddamn-X-you-can-find-in-the-building quest, but that isn't the same thing by any stretch, because the X's don't come back.

Having "Kill X" quests is as good as MMO designers can do when it comes to making sure you go through X amount of challenge before accomplishing goal Y, unless they completely segregate you from other people, at which point why have an MMO anyway?

Kill X quests do not represent X amount of challenge. They represent some challenge, until you learn how to kill the creature efficiently, then they mostly represent wasted time. As above, if I've killed a hundred Merlocs already, then killing twenty more is a grind and a timewaster, not a test.

And my own experience suggests that (A) the kills, themselves, don't generally get you a good fraction of a level and therefore (B) by the time you reach the boss you'll generally still be the same level you were already, particularly in the late-game.

You don't "have" to burn yourself out. <snip out bit about making alts>

Well, I was speaking very generically. As it is, I am, in fact, burned out of WoW, even with mage, rogue, priest, and warrior alts. The problem here isn't that there isn't enough variety, it's that the mechanics can't stand two hundred hours of scrutiny. That, fundamentally, is the reason why I want a game that doesn't found itself on /played. I don't care if it takes three months to see endgame, but I do care if it takes 20 days /played.

From a business standpoint, MMOs first use /played as a stand-in for billed months, and then try to drag out /played as long as possible.

I call bullshit. <Snip bit about perfect customers being those that play the game as little as humanly possible>

That's true, but has no relation to what I'm talking about.

Take player X, who will play 12 hours a day; player Y who will play 3 hours a day; player Z who will play 0.5. Yes, player Z is the best possible customer, at least until he loses interest and quits. But how many Zs are there out there? Not many. So the game's level curve isn't calculated for Zs, it's calculated for Xs and Ys. Everquest clearly calculated the curve for Xs so that they'd subscribe for years, while WoW aimed for the Ys and Zs more. In each of those cases, /played time is being used as a standin for how many months you expect those players to subscribe for. It doesn't represent the same thing for all players, but for a given player the factor is basically constant.

Contrast this with a radical system, D&D style, where you (A) have to train each level, say for 12 hours of logout time, and (B) you can't get enough experience to train two levels at once (you'll stop one short). In this case, /played is no longer the dominant factor in how long you expect someone to subscribe. Player X will end up being rich, player Z will end up being average to poor, but both of them will require two months minimum to reach max-level.

Alternately, imagine a WoW-type rest system, except you earn a bar an hour (logged in or not), you earn 1x experience while rested, and 0x experience while unrested. In this case, real-world time is the dominant factor in level; you could make XP gains infinite and the players would still get a little over a level per day. To see endgame content under this system virtually any player would simply have to play every once in a while and wait the rest of the time.

They're rather extreme examples, but I think you can see why I say that /played is directly correlated to "/billed".

[DeepT]

As pointed out WoW has more then the basic 3 quest types listed.

What I think is really missing are alternitive ways to complete quests instead of the ONE WAY designed. I have a 42 rogue and I think its pretty silly I have one rogue quest to steal 20 syndicate badges by pickpocketing, but then a general quest to get 30 stormguard badges which can only be done by killing elite syndicates there.

Pretty much any quest that requires you to get an item from an NPC that is not physically attached to them, should be pickpocketable.

Designers, and proabbly managers need to be insisent on make quests as solvable in as many was as possible. Of course in a world where really dynamics do not come into play such as instead of using the key on the door the mage fireballs the door open, this is really difficult.

I loved DeusEx just because of this fact. I could solve missions MY way. I do relaise in a MMOG context though, most people would find the optimum way to solve a mission and do it that way. I think its a risk that should be taken with MMOG developers.

Finally there is one quest type that I think would be awsome, and that is a trap based quest. Imagine having to get through the pharohs pyramid and your enemy is a series of traps, not a bunch of monsters. This could easily suffer from web site walkthroughs too, however this can be minimized by making dynamic dungeons with dynamic rooms.

The challenges to players would be:Is there a trap in the room? If there is, what kind of trap? and finally, how to disarm or bypass it? As a developer you would also need to provide reasonable hints, players should not have to randomly stumble around to find them.

[Qenan]

I'm not sure you'd classify these as quests, but I'd like to see more puzzles... not of the adventure game variety, but of the "here's a page from a manuscript, but how would I find the rest, what is it about?" I think there are lots of potential varients on that. The hard part is to have enough of them, have a good enough reward (since they are harder) yet not have them be easily exploitable.

I'm mostly OK with the WoW quests -- they're OK for what they are -- but it does break immersion to see zillions of folks doing the same quest over and over with no real change to the environment. If I'm going to plant trees in the Charred Vale but nothing ever changes, it just reminds me that this is a static world. In that sense, the kill or gather quests are better; it's easy to imagine I'm just part of a vast war, and that my part in it isn't going to have a global effect.

It always comes down to wanting more content. I'd love to see a way for players to add content to the game, but there are a lot of technical and gameplay issues I'd imagine.