Originally posted by Suraknar

 

World of Tanks too (provided you consider that an MMO) and there are many others of similar nature.

 

World of Tanks is lame.  You've got to Grind2Win and Pay2Win, the maps are claustrophobic, damage model and aiming is goofy, and tactics aren't even close to being as diverse as wwiionline/planetside.

An interesting PVP has an infinite variety of tactics.  World of Tanks is very limited.

Bad tactics in WWIIONLINE, dropping paratroops on top of anti-aircraft guns, in front of enemy tanks, you'd be surprised at how stupid the playerbase can be.  IN fact they do dumb things 90% of the time:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Pw9oFwjygU&feature=related

"Why use paratroopers?"

"Cus dey look kool."

"Well dropping on top of the enemy isn't the greatest use of paratroopers."

"Thut Up, Ith having fun."

Originally posted by GrayGhost79

Originally posted by lizardbones

MMORPG started without quests. Companies added quests and they made more money.

Yeah UO was 14 years ago. They are still up and running and still able to charge a monthly fee but the facts show the money is clearly in themeparks. 

AoC - oh wait...... they went free to play. 

DDO - oh wait...... they went free to play.

LotRO - oh wait..... they went free to play. 

STO - Oh wait......... they went free to play. 

DCUO - Oh wait....... they went free to play. 

CO - Oh wai........ they went free to play. 

Surely EQ2 - oh wait they went free to play. 

You know...... come to think of it. How many themeparks that have come along since EQ1 are still able to charge a monthly fee? How many flops have there been? People are clinging to games like DFO and MO because there really isn't any other option. EvE is doing well still though. 

So sure....... some have made more money by adding quests. Aion, WoW, Rift, EQ1.....

But most seem forced to either go free to play or shut down. 

 

The hilarious thing here is that you don't think free to play makes money.

I agree, i hate quests. When Daoc came out, there were some quests, but mostly they didnt give exp, or if they did it wasn't much. You might get an item, and a lot of times it wasnt even something you could use.

In order to level in Daoc, you had to group with people. You could solo on certain characters, like pet classes, but even that was really slow. MMO's should be about grouping. Back in the day, i knew pretty much everyone else who played on my server. There was a huge community, because it took months to level and we had to work together.

I think that is what made Daoc so successful and fun for me. The gameplay was fun, but i came back for the PEOPLE, and thats what an mmo should be about. If you want to do quests, and solo all the time, you should play a single player RPG.

Lets not point to the great success of WoW and start saying that it was the game mechanics and the addition of questing that made it so huge. What made WoW so huge, was mainly marketing, and accessability, i.e. low system requirements.

Originally posted by shawn01

I agree, i hate quests. When Daoc came out, there were some quests, but mostly they didnt give exp, or if they did it wasn't much. You might get an item, and a lot of times it wasnt even something you could use.

 

In order to level in Daoc, you had to group with people. You could solo on certain characters, like pet classes, but even that was really slow. MMO's should be about grouping. Back in the day, i knew pretty much everyone else who played on my server. There was a huge community, because it took months to level and we had to work together.

 

I think that is what made Daoc so successful and fun for me. The gameplay was fun, but i came back for the PEOPLE, and thats what an mmo should be about. If you want to do quests, and solo all the time, you should play a single player RPG.

 

Lets not point to the great success of WoW and start saying that it was the game mechanics and the addition of questing that made it so huge. What made WoW so huge, was mainly marketing, and accessability, i.e. low system requirements.

Um hello....it was the fact that the game did work with little bugs is why many games lost subs to WOW. WoW allowed folks to solo, and constantly collect the next carrot in their progression. They used the formula that EQ showed to be a winner.

Lets re-write history though, and say it was due to an ad campaign shall we?

Originally posted by tupodawg999

Hybrid themebox model.

 

- Quests but not in a single linear path. Intro quests at starter city and then others in clumps at various settlements or singly out in the wilds that you have to look for.

- Quests grey out and become unavailable to that character when you level past them.

- Alternate and incompatible routes e.g a town has two sets of three quests at level 6-10, one set for the merchants faction and one set for the thieves faction, completing the first quest for either side greys out the other set of quests for that character.

- quests could be more about faction than gear and faction can be about earning things which are currently automatic e.g getting friendly with a settlement allows the use of their bindstone, getting friendly with the river traders faction or the mages guild allows fast travel options, merchants at a settlement always initially give bad prices but fair prices when friendly etc friendly factions maybe give the location of a named mob with nice gear

(named mobs should be individually lootable by all the members of a group imo and also drop an item suited to each class e.g the same named minotaur drops an axe when looted by a warrior, a horn for a bard, a belt for a priest, a necklace for a mage etc, named mobs should drop special loot only once.)

- make it so there are gaps in the treadmill

- gaps in the levelling e.g the example set above, first quest at level 6, second at 8, third at 10, maybe a daily also for faction and exp, quests don't give enough to level, top up with mobs, make mobs give faction also e.g a rival thieves guild has mobs which give faction for both thieves and merchants depending on which side the character is allied too. Make it so the player isn't *just* mob grinding, although they can if they want, mobs are also either faction of crafting supplies as well as just exp.

- quest deserts. some gaps are multiple levels wide plugged with open dungeons e.g whole game has no quests between 16 and 20 but there are 2-4 open dungeons with mobs in that range (and maybe some quests internal to the dungeon). Then maybe the same again at levels 32-36.

- path quests e.g you can pick one path from a list like hunter, hero, explorer, loremaster etc and they have perks based on completing regular quests that are marked as part of that path e.g named beast mobs or quests to kill them could be marked as being part of the hunter path, the hero path would be similar but with named enemy mobs marked as part of the path (there could be different versions of these e.g a dark elf hero path and a dwarf hero path), the lore path could be to visit and study at libraries and ruins and wizard towers in the wilderness, explorer quests to complete exploration quests and visit locations etc. most of these quests would be the regular ones just marked as being part of a path although each path could also have their own signature quests that are unlocked as a player gains ranks in the path. Players could only pick one path and as quests would grey out as they leveled an elf ranger character on the hero path could have a very different gamefrom the same character on the hunter path.

- keywords, variety, replayability, worldiness

 I liek this set up of ideas, though i would say for chin quests as well as things like investaging an item you bring to the quest giver you should have it that it takes time actual time not lvls to make it availible. If you also made it that quest chains and imortant areas quests (ie epic ones) scaled in lvl to be playable more with your character you would have it that you could still do them without it feeling like you are steam rolling things. I also love the idea of quests poping up in lower lvl areas after you hit acetain lvls or max, and they would help to explain more of the history as wel as story of places thru them. Trully i think ever zone should have some kind of instance or content that would be opened after you complete certain questlines/quests explaining or changing the area after you finsih it.

Originally posted by shawn01

I agree, i hate quests. When Daoc came out, there were some quests, but mostly they didnt give exp, or if they did it wasn't much. You might get an item, and a lot of times it wasnt even something you could use.

 

In order to level in Daoc, you had to group with people. You could solo on certain characters, like pet classes, but even that was really slow. MMO's should be about grouping. Back in the day, i knew pretty much everyone else who played on my server. There was a huge community, because it took months to level and we had to work together.

 

I think that is what made Daoc so successful and fun for me. The gameplay was fun, but i came back for the PEOPLE, and thats what an mmo should be about. If you want to do quests, and solo all the time, you should play a single player RPG.

 

Lets not point to the great success of WoW and start saying that it was the game mechanics and the addition of questing that made it so huge. What made WoW so huge, was mainly marketing, and accessability, i.e. low system requirements.

 Forced grouping is well a deterient for most gamers it makes you have to be socail at point which you may not desire to be in groups or with other players. Makking it better or faster to level in a game thru grouping is well a good idea, but eliminating the ability to solo and game alone is terrible. Having low stystem req may have been why most people went to the game as well as the marketing, it was not/will not be the reason they stayed at all, the game is fun to play as well as addicting in the fashion it is done. In wow origanally you could lvl solo with relative ease, but they had many quests that if you did not outgear or out lvl you needed a group to finsih them, this type of game play caters to a mind set of come play how you feel not hwo you are forced to. I will say that i hate the rate of lvling you have now, but it is part of the idea that the game starts at the end game, which was the destination back in the origanal mmo gaming setting.  I would not say that mmos are about grouping and socializing per say, but about feeling apart of a large community. and even in real life you do not need to be always apart of or interacting with a community to be apart of it, you can feel it by just being around it. SO in the fact that we are playing near huge numbrrs of other players we are apart of a mmo, if it was called a mmso (massive multiplayer social online game) then i would agree that we should have to interact as well as group constantly.

Originally posted by Diovidius

I'll just leave these here:

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1013691/Designing-Guild-Wars-2-Dynamic

http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/dynamic-events/dynamic-events-overview/

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dynamic_event

I really think everybody needs to watch that video in the first link.  It's long, but it takes a look at the evolution of content in MMOs and why DEs are the next step past quests and PQs.

Dynamic events are just simply better than traditional MMO leveling quests in just about every single way.  They encourage community instead of isolating people, they're more immediate, they're immersive, scalable, repeatable, failable, and will impact the world until something else comes along and changes it.

The one area where DEs aren't as good as quests is in providing that solo, epic adventure feel.  This is because they happen to the world and not to the player.  That's why I would add one thing to this list of links, and that's GW2's personal storyline.  Every character in GW2 has one great quest from start to level cap, which is affected by choices at character creation and during the story.  Not only do they impact the branches you take, but they also have permanent consequences inside your character's home instance. 

http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/personal-stories/personal-story-overview/

This original post reminds me of  the movieJerry Maguire where he writes that big Memo about how we need to go back to the old ways and have less clients more one on one, this is however right before he gets fired.