The dynamic content subject is very interesting. It’s almost impossible for MMORPGs to do it and still give every new player the same exprience as someone who started playing 4 years ago. IMO, I don’t think thats necessarily very important. I’d love to see a MMO in which actions actually effect the world, permenantly, and we see the face of it changing over the course of months and years.

Thanks for the info, Brian!

Incorrect. Sente points out Anarchy Online, but Dark Age of Camelot also had quests (very simple “go kill 10 of X” quests without any real flavor, mind you) to help level up through the early levels. WoW took the idea and added polish: variety, flavor text, sequences, a nifty tracking journal, etc. Before DAoC, there were text MUDs that had directed questing that rewarded experience or provided gates a player had to go through to advance.

Tesh wrote:
PUGs rightfully have a bad reputation[...].

Part of this bad reputation is because people in PUGs have no investment in solo-friendly games. If nobody will group with you in a PUG, soloing is a viable enough option to still advance. There were bad PUGs in earlier games, too, but if someone was really obnoxious their reputation got around. People had more interest in not being a screwup because it could directly impact their ability to get into groups (and eventually guilds and therefore raids) in the future.

I’m not saying forced grouping is all that and a bag of chips, but there is a reason why people are looking back at the EQ era fondly beyond simple nostalgia.

Gordon wrote:
The problem is that the technology to do hugely interactive and game changing quests just doesn’t exist yet.

Sorry, you’re wrong again. Ignoring text games and focusing only on graphical games, the technology exists (even before WoW’s phasing); the larger issue is generating enough content and being willing to wipe old content out of the game. This unwillingness to wipe out old content was the major explanation for why developers don’t do more dynamic content that allows the players to affect the world. Given that WoW seems to be sacrificing the old content on the altar of “getting people to the latest expansion ASAP”, this seems like a hollow reason. However, time spent changing old content is time not spent adding new shiny stuff at the higher levels; seems Blizzard knows which side the butter is on their bread.

Beyond that, I’ve written a few posts that address this issue. Instead of rewriting them here, I’ll just link them.

In this post, I dissect the the relationship between character advancement and “questing” in the traditional sense:
http://thatsaterribleidea.blogspot.com/2009/06/save-world-and-level-up.html

In this post, I take a look at the progression from camps to quests and what it all means, I even go so far as to take a stab at what will follow:
http://thatsaterribleidea.blogspot.com/2009/06/from-camps-to-quests-and-back-building.html

The first quest grinder would possibly be Anarchy Online with its mission generator. A large part of leveling in Earth & Beyond also included quite boring repetitve quests/missions – only 50 of 150 levels could be gained at a somewhat reasonable pace through killing mobs. For a large part of the other 100 levels repetitive missions were necessary.

The problem is really that a gameplay mechanic (questing or something else) is dragged out during a very long time, long after people have learned and mastered the basic idea behind it. There is simply not so much new to learn and master, since it is pretty much the same all the time.

The long progression time through a limited set of game mechanics is the culprit, MMO quests are just one example.

@Whatsmymain Definitely agree, of course TBC still has a huge amount of kill X mob quests. The problem is that the technology to do hugely interactive and game changing quests just doesn’t exist yet.

@Dblade Yep, groups can be very time consuming. I’d like to see a WAR style Open Group mechanic in WoW actually. Would be very curious to see how it went.

In other words, the more structured your “grouping” is, including group-gated content and raids, the more likely it is to be anything but delightfully unpredictable. More often, it will be an exercise in pointing fingers when the raid or PUG wipes, and that’s on top of an hour in LFG chat whilst twiddling fingers in a capital somewhere, enduring idiotic general chat.

…so yes, open dungeons are good times. The most fun I’ve had in a WoW minidungeon was schlepping around as a low teen Night Elf, helping random people with quests in some mine complex with ghosts… or something. One fellow asked me if I wasn’t a bit overleveled for the content in that area, to which I readily agreed, but explained that I liked helping people mucking around down there who looked like they needed a hand. (And I liked that because I saw how much of a pain it was to solo some of the combat when I soloed it earlier.)

Make big, interesting areas where working together is a benefit (in rewards, efficiency or both), but not required, and let people play however they like. Those who like to help others will do so, and those who just want to do their own thing can go ahead and play through.

Time is another, a lot of people simply can’t devote 3 hours + anymore in an MMO. Especially since grouping can be risky and have no results, or even no invites.

I think maybe the next step is to go from groups to large pve encounters in battlefields.

The quests in the original WoW contain a lot of kill x amount because I said so quests. WotLK quests, however, are fairly story driven. The issue is though that people turn instant quest text on and just accept before reading anything but the objectives… if that. Many people go out of their way to turn it into a grind rather then reading why you are being set to kill whatever.

My favorite leveling tool is dungeon crawling. When it comes to WoW I try to do what I enjoy… not necessarily whats fastest. The more people view leveling as something they have to do the more tedious it becomes.

The instances, while the same thing over and over, can have a much more dynamic feel thanks to the group one has or the spec one plays. Quests turn out the same every time with little variation. After I’ve done them a couple of times on alts, I never want to do them again.