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

[Chris Lloyd]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu [mailto:mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu]On Behalf Of
> msew
> Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2001 05:36
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu; mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

> You don't really need to know that information is the problem.  It
> is just some content maker's generated minutia.  It is utterly and
> completely pointless in the game environment.  Knowing that little
> timmy once had a long lost grandfather who was in fact a great
> magician who first created the item blah blah blah blah, doesn't
> matter one bit.

No, no, no, no. This was the entire point that people have attempted
to make. Some people DO want to know this. It goes hand in hand with
the background story, the map of your world, and the rest. Some people
really would like to know why Jane is standing in that dungeon, why
Boffo wants his magic axe back and how he lost it. These are the
roleplayers who care about the game world.

At some later time, a group of players might want to set up a scenario
where they really need a magic sword. One of them comes up with the
idea "Hey, I know that Timmy used to have a grandfather who was a
wizard, maybe he might know something...." and the quest/roleplay
exercise begins. Good fun is had by all with much drunken celebrations
later on, etc.

For example, there are two quests in your game world:

  Quest A

    Speak to Boffo, discover that Buffy is trapped in the tower,
    travel to the tower, get in by slaying the guards/sneaking in the
    back way, get to her chamber, talk to her, get her out of the
    tower and back to the town, then receive the magic gizmo of
    Thingie as a reward.

  Quest B

    Speak to Boffo, discover that Buffy is trapped in the tower,
    travel to the tower, get in by slaying the guards/sneaking in the
    back way, get to her chamber, kill her and take the magic gizmo of
    Thingie.

Let us assume that both of these quests take exactly the same amount
of time, and have the same risk associated with them. You also get the
same experience from sneaking in as you do from killing the guards,
and the same for killing Buffy or getting her back to the town.

I can do either of these two quests equally easily, and it takes the
same amount of time and effort. If I want to be a 'bad guy', I'll do
quest B. If I want to be a 'good guy', I'll do quest A. As far as the
loot is concerned, it doesn't matter, but it matters to _me_.

> Even hardcore RPers and people that "really want to get into the
> game story" are, in time just, going to say: "this is the thousandth
> quest I have gone on and I have never ever ever used any of the
> story behind the quest for anything else in the game."  Quests ==
> reward and that is it.

Explain to me how anyone can become part of a game world, play for
more than a few months, and not know, say, who the ruler of the
country is, or how the wizard's tower came to be there. Even in some
of the more hardcore PK worlds I've been to, most of the players seem
to know the background story to a degree, and know the origins of
their clan/their enemy clan.

> If there are not an infinite amount of "quest content lines", then
> the quest websites will pop up and EVEN if the the story line of the
> quest matters in the world scope, players will just read the
> parts/data they need to know about.

If you want a world with resetting quests that never run out, you can
still take steps to stop people publicising your world secrets. One
way, that I think was already suggested on this boars some time ago,
was to make the experience you get from a quest inversely proportional
to the number of people who do it each day. So if a quest gives you
1000xp if you are the only person who does it each day, 500xp if two
people do it, 250xp if 4 people do it, etc. This way the big quests
are very sought after and guarded, whereas the smaller ones are more
frequently given out due to their already low value.

Or something like that.

C.

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