Feldon I have a confession to make…
I did few quests in The Shadow Odyssey, and fewer still in Sentinel’s Fate (Odus). Beyond grouping, raiding, and the quests associated with such, my heart just has not been “in it”. After dragging three characters each through Kunark‘s 400 mostly runaround timesink errand quests, few of which had much impact on the overall storylines of Norrath, I vowed to level and earn AAs in future expansions by grouping — even if it had the rush of excitement and expedience of watching paint dry.
So after basically taking Sentinel’s Fate off, I vowed to jump into Destiny of Velious headfirst and do as much content as I could.
I’d have to double check, but I believe I have completed every one of the non-repeatable Othmir questlines including both Fina’s Retreat in the Great Divide and Nipik’s Haven in the Eastern Wastes. I’ve also done all of the Snowfang Gnoll quests, most of the Thurgadin, and about 1/3 of the Ry’Gorr quests.
I have to say I found the Othmir questlines in particular to be engaging, and well-written. Believe it or not, I actually read the quest dialogue and choices. It captured my interest as only story-based adventure games have in the past. One of my favorite parts of the Othmir storylines has been that completing quests actually CHANGED the zone or changed NPCs to reflect what was going on. We saw a change in leadership, we saw a new pathway. We got to see something that didn’t follow the old zero sum game rule of MMO design. Another memorable part of the Othmir quests was that a messenger NPC actually ran around looking for you to give you the next quest.
The Snowfang quests were pretty good as well, although I was hoping for more of an Icepaw gnolls thing going on rather than just starvation vs. cannibalism, but bringing the Othmir into it was cool.
Thurgadin, that’s a big existing storyline and so there are some parameters they had to stick to, but I thought it was pretty good. To change things up, a quest line of Gnomish Pirates provides a bit of hilarity and an interesting reward, although Monkey Island it ain’t.
The Ry’Gorr, I have to admit I am just click-click-click. Sorry, but they’re Orcs. Why am I helping them? Gnolls, ok, you can maybe have a splinter group of them that look cool and interesting. I have so far found little to redeem the orcs. But since they are holding the best adornments, and they are one of only two factions selling “shard armor” this expansion, we’ll be helping them alot.
Quest Hairballs
Every expansion, the EQ2 designers try to push the boundaries by adding new quest types. One that led to issues requiring several fixes in Game Updates were the Thunderbeard twins. Having two NPCs cooperatively tell a story can be used to great effect in certain situations. Hopefully the kinks can be fully worked out so these can be used for bigger stories.
Quests certainly fall into categories, and there is one category that really kicked in through the Gorowyn level 1-20 areas and which is just out-of-control in Velious, and that’s quests requiring you to cast an item on a mob at 30% health. It’s one thing to have a quest of this nature when mob health and ability to kill you are low, and only a few mobs are needed. However a particularly egregious example is the Eastern Wastes quest Terwoo’s Explosive Idea. You are asked to bring 12 unstable flamewatchers down to 30% health before casting an item on them.
First, unstable flamewatchers hit hard. Second, they have a Damage Over Time (DoT) that ticks for a few thousand health. And third, they have a Stifle which they just love to cast right when you’re about to cast the item at 30%. Perhaps if the award were exceptional, the frustration factor of 12 would be justified, but it’s a standard faction quest. We realize there are a certain number of off-the-shelf quest types and adding new quest types requires substantial programming effort. But retiring these Kill-But-Don’t-Kill pee-pee dance type quests might be a good idea with the current rate of DPS growth from both players and enemies.
Glad your enjoying it, once i got to thurgadin i lost interested in questing, and i quested to max AA in Kunark, Tso, and SF. Finally lost interest.
Nice write up.
I have to agree with you I didn’t care too much for the quests in the last two exp. although I didn’t mind SF I really couldn’t get into them as much as I did in RoK and TsO I just rly didn’t care for it but I loved Kunark so much and I thought that type of questing wouldn’t ever return to the game.
Now with Velious I was thinking I was going to try it for a few days then give it up but I really like the stories. Believe me when I say it I am all for just like you mentioned “I am just Click Click Click” get me my update! But the Expansion is proving to be totally awesome in the story department and quest-lines I really am enjoying all these quests!
Although very soon I’ll have my faction up at what I need for all my DoV factions and then I’ll be stuck back where I was b4 the exp was released, back to wanting more quests… It’s called EverQuest right? so why does the game run out of none repeatable quests if it’s called EverQuest? lol
Players asked for more challenge and that’s what they got. Complaining/being surprised about mobs not going down on first glance, hitting to strong or not easy to kill due to 20% rule is something I do not get.
The Ry’Gorr is not the only faction selling shard armor. I’m not done questing in Eastern Wastes to see if there is a 3rd but Thurgadin has a shard armor merchant down on the docks outside.
Mr_Skyfish i wonder how many quests did you finish atm 6000 ? if not then your certainly not out of quests .. dont expect an expansion to keep you questing for a year… but all the expansions so far will.
I really dislike the quests where you have to use an item on a mob at a percentage. And it gets even worse if you box/have a toon simply on follow or quest with a friend and the quests don’t update for the group.
The amount of group update for quests in SF was really low, but Velious probably had even fewer.
It takes months to add the ~200 quests we get per expansion. Or we could have another Kunark with 3 dungeons and ~400 runaround errand quests.
Quality > Quantity
If you ONLY want to solo quest, then EQ2 (and indeed any MMO) is a one-month-a-year proposition. The only way we’re going to see more content than that is if they start taking player submissions for quests. They’d have to be non-canonical, and use existing zones and mobs. Also, I think the tools (and scripting) necessary to write the average quest would melt most people’s brains. I get the impression it’s exceptionally kludgy.
Personally I have enjoyed questing in DoV, I think its a return to form for SOE since SF which seemed to contain a lot of quests that lacked emotion or purpose.
I do like it too when our actions in the quest remain permanent changes to the world, although its not a new thing for EQ2 since I remember it happening in TSO and even back with the level 50 tradeskill quest. I still smile now as I hop past the tent that I created to “help” the tradeskill representative.
For me the quest is a good one whether its a fedex, kill 10 rats, or a unique minigame etc only if the storyline is good. George Lucas once said about special effects without a storyline is a dull movie (thanks Feldon for pointing me in the direction of the Plinkett reviews by the way on the beta forums – they are excellent!). In the same way I think that for an MMO even the most spectacular quest with a fancy minigame that changes the world is dull without a good storyline.
For me I did really like many of the TSO quests, especially the Froglok ones that told the player what was going on, and gave depth to the NPC’s in the storyline.
Where I was disappointed was with SF, the sundered frontier quests both were heavily fedex only, but also lacked any real storyline, description of characters or anything else of interest. The Stonebrunt highlands were to me better, but not great and the early quests had largely spoiled the experience already.
I’m still thirsting for one feature from questing though, the ability to choose how events unfold and our path through the world. Sometimes we do if rarely get a choice (I remember one in TSO), but its largely lacking from the game, at least with EQ2 we do get a choice of whether to do a quest or not (other MMO’s now are so linear they deny a player even this choice, since not doing a quest blocks out much of the game).
But I do still dream of more choice, perhaps it will happen when EQNext releases?
While I do not actually expect it at all in EQNext since its the mainstream and more likely to appeal to the WoW/Farmville levels of RPG, its release might push EQ2 into a (even more) niche direction (one thing I attribute to EVE’s success) rather then trying to cater to the more mainstream market as well, I can only hope at least 🙂
It just seem that for a game entitled EVERquest . . . (as in forever and always); being able to finish all the quests in a month is very disheartening. For example, unless I’m missing something, except for the daily repeatables, I can find no more quests in the Eastern Wastes . . . I’ve completed 47 . . . FORTY-SEVEN!?! Really? An entire overland zone and all you got is 47 quests? That makes it seem like they just phoned that one in . . .
Now, I love raiding and end up spending the majority of my game time, especially after the first few months, doing mostly raiding, but I DO love questing (well, I must. I tell myself I don’t, but the fact that it’s 3 am, and I have to wake at 6 am, and I’m saying to myself, “Just one more quest.” has to say SOMEthing about me and questing (well, other than I may be OCD . . . )).
I just wish there was more to do solo than the 10 or so daily quests for faction. It’s not so bad now while I need AA, but it’s getting boring already, and it’s just gonna seem inane when I max out AAs (and, without the use of any potion or other “trick” I’m already at 295 as of this writing).
But, I DO have to say that (and even though I HATE crafting and did it on my main only out of sheer boredom one day) I DID love the othmir/gnoll crafting quests. I thought it very clever having to teach the gnolls about skinning, how to make the knives to do so, and actually how to do it, so they can trade pelts with the othmir for food. I thought that was well thought out.
I also have to agree, it was nice to see that the events and actions you took while questing permanently changed the world for that character. It would be nice to see more of that in the future: that we actually have an impact on the world we play in.