Sanya Weathers is an old hand in the MMO industry. She started out as a blogger and commentator, then became the first community relations manager at Mythic Entertainment. Over time, she’s become a respected and sought after critic and writer about MMORPGs.
Well, Sanya’s written a nice piece over at MMORPG.com about why so many quests are of the “kill ten rats for me, then return for your reward” variety. She makes some very insightful points, including the fact that most players are trying to level quickly, and don’t want complicated quests early on. In fact, if you try to inject some ’story’ or some role-playing elements into a low-level quest, players will complain. Further, these quests are written by low-level employees in the development company, these low-level writers have to crank out hundreds of quests constantly (just try to be creative under those circumstances!) and they’re subject to constant interference from higher-ups.
If you’ve ever wondered how MMOs get designed, this article is chock full of interesting nuggets, so check it out.
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[...] Wandering Goblin I found an interesting article @ MMORPG.com by Sanya Weathers about quest design in [...]
I find this a depressing state of affairs. Surely there can be some sort of bloody coordination to begin with, once a rough story has been outlined.
They all do appear to follow the same formula so this, I guess, is the reason why. It’s almost like they’re an afterthought “Bugger! Quests! Did someone remember to put some in?”