[MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

[Madrona Tree]

[err, uhh - JC - will you please reject the other one and post this one
instead?  Bad link at the end, there]

<EdNote: Certainly!>

Oooh.  Quests.  :)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lee Sheldon" <linearno at gte.net>
To: <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Sent: Monday, December 11, 2000 12:45 PM
Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

> Alternative:
>
> 1.  Talk to Hasten.  Even though he appears to be moving at a good
> clip thanks to his ability to make the J Boots he's wearing, he
> actually could be much faster.  However, due to an ongoing feud with
> Ancient Cyclopses, one of them in South Ro (He also winters on an
> island in the Ocean of Tears) has cast a curse on him, slowing him
> down.  Some Ancient Cyclopses are so powerful they can't be killed by
> ordinary means, but an orc in South Ro supposedly has seen one downed.
> If you kill the cyclops and lift the curse, Hasten will sell you a
> pair of J boots at cost.

A couple of points:

- Players should not be able to find the Items that Hasten needs
without talking to him first and setting the flag.  Otherwise, folks
will do quests out of order, which contributes to the camping problem,
and which, btw, completely cheapens them.  I camped the Lens in [was
it Runnyeye?] for about 4 hours because somebody had told me that if I
did so, I could take the lens to some gnome and get a kewl staff.  I
only went to talk to the gnome *after* my party had gotten their fill
of lenses.

- Quests in EQ are static.  I don't have to know that the gnome needs
the lens now, all I have to know that at one time, some gnome needed a
lens.  I could read about it on a "spoiler site" or on the newsgroup
or hear some guy /shout it in all-caps red letters.  That gnome is
*always* there, wanting a lens.  My group brought him 6 lenses one
night, and he wanted *more* lenses.  How many lenses does this guy
need, anyway?  A year and a half later, that gnome still probably
needs a lens.  Since we knew he wanted a lens, and knew we could get a
staff fairly easily (and sell a couple of extras at the Saturday
Bazaar to make a bit of plat to buy something that somebody else had
camped for), we went down and camped.


Quests should not be static.  The gnome should want a lens once, and a
halfling in one of those cute little halfling-mounds could want the
lens another time, and somebody else could want a lens the next time
-- all for different reasons.  The prize for retrieving the lens would
be different every time.

My favorite quest in EQ was the guy in the foggy place outside the
halfling city who wants bug parts.  Man, I saved that bug-part box for
probably 20 levels, collecting parts for this guy.  I finally found
the last part - a fire beetle queen eye, half way across the world.
Once I had all the parts, I searched and searched for the little guy
with the dog.  When I finally found him, I got something kind of lame
(I think it was a potion?) ... but man, it felt soooo great.  It was
great because I wasn't competing with anybody else, I wasn't waiting
in line, and I didn't read about it on a spoiler site.  I was just
looking for bug parts.  It was awesome.  :)


Years and Years ago, before I played EQ, before I played UO, I wrote
an "Armchair Designer" document.  In this document, one of the things
I wrote about was how I thought quests should be.  Of course, at the
time I figured that my idea was completely original, and had decided I
was a genius.

Later, when Dundee made his UO Emulator shard, I told him my Dynamic
Quest idea.  He smarmily named it "RoboQuest 9000," but I thought that
was sort of funny so I kept the name.  I asked if he could add it to
Ackadia so we could show EQ and UO and AC and everybody else how
quests were *supposed* to be.  He said: "Write me a design document."
I gave him roboquest9000.html.  He said, "That's not a design
document.  Write me something I can script."  I told him if I could do
that, I could script the darn thing myself.  :P

We never did anything with it.

Found it on one of the zip disks I was cleaning out last night - and
posted it at http://kerryjane.homepage.com/roboquest.html if anybody
was interested.  Just a warning: It's pretty rough... and it's not a
design document.  :)


Madrona Tree.
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