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

[Jeff Freeman]

From: <the_logos at www.achaea.com>

> That's not quite what I meant actually. I meant that there's nothing
> at all unreasonable or 'cheaty' about going to a spoiler site to
> learn how to do a quest. I just find it silly to bitch about players
> enlisting the aid of other players in a multiplayer game.

Ah, I think the perceived problem there is that they go to the spoiler
site to learn how *not* to do the quest (but to get the quest reward
anyway).  Maybe it has more to do with the manner in which the quest
is designed.

For example the quest might be:

  Talk to Bob and learn a secret password to tell Bill.

  Tell Bill the secret password and he'll let you into a room to see
  Jane.

  Talk to Jane and she'll tell you where to find the key to a special
  dungeon room.

  Visit the dungeon room and read the graffitii on the wall which
  tells you somesuch mob has a magic widget.

  Go camp the mob and kill it over and over until it finally drops the
  magic widget.

  Give the magic widget to Joe and he'll cough up a magic sword.

A spolier site completely derails that type of quest.  You look up the
sword, see where to get it, never learn why it's there or anything
about it, etc.  Your not "doing the quest" at all, which was the
previous point, too, I think: Why even bother to have quests?  Instead
of getting a magic widget by camping a mob (and never knowing why that
mob has the magic widget), then giving it Joe for a magic sword
(without ever knowing why Joe wanted the magic widget in the first
place), why not just stick the sword on the mob and save all the
fluff?

That doesn't mean the players won't help each other - they'll tell
each other where to find Bob, Bill, the dungeon room, the mob and Joe.
It would just mean that in order to get the magic sword, you'd
actually have to "do the quest" - not skip right to the end and get
the prize without ever realizing that there was any sort of story
there at all.

But ultimately this too, I think, goes back to "Well just don't design
quests like that."  There'll still be spoiler sites telling you how to
do quests, but they (the quests, that is) shouldn' be designed in such
a way that a spoiler site can tell you how NOT to do them.


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