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

[the_logos at www.achaea.com]

> At 21:47 12/11/2000 -0800, Madrona Tree wrote:
> 
> > - 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.

I am shocked I didn't comment on this when it was posted back in
December. This attitude strikes me as one of the worst examples of
trying to tell players how to play that I can think of. Not to mention
that I find your idea, Madrona Tree, to be awful roleplay (whether you
care about such things, I have no idea. I'm not a "roleplay is God"
type of person.) and contrary to common sense.

Listen, if I need to go on a quest because I'm craving some lemon pie
(and I mean, who doesn't often find himself in such a situation? Lemon
pie is good.), how would I go about it?

Apparently what you'd have me do is wander about stupidly until I find
some guy who happens to know where I can get lemon pies. You seem to
want to ban me from just calling up my friend Bob the Lemon Devotee
and asking him where I can get some lovely lemon pie, or, better yet,
just hopping on the web and doing a search for lemon pie shops in the
Bay Area.

Why? What I want is the lemon pie. I don't care about the "fun" of
finding it, because it's not fun. I just want the lemon pie. If I
thought that finding the lemon pie would be sufficient fun to justify
delaying my acquisition of some tasty sour citrus pie, then I would do
the treasure hunt thing and run about trying to "solve" the quest by
"normal" means. But, I just want the lemon pie.

Likwise in a game. It seems batty to me to pretend that a player is
the first one to do a quest when it's been done a thousand times
before and every other person in the land knows how to do it. It seems
even crazier to tell me that I DON'T know how to do the quest, when my
best friend Bob the Orc Slayer just told me how to do it.

--matt

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