Over forty years of development, online games have changed a lot: virtual worlds have grown ten times, game mechanics have changed and, most importantly, quests appeared. They help to get equipment, gain experience, tell the story of the game world. But so that you go through the epic tasks of fifty missions today, the quests have undergone many mutations-in the process of evolution they have acquired non-linearity, overgrown with instances, turned from short stories of-forms into long-forming epic novels. Today we will tell you about games that have determined the appearance of modern quests. To figure out the whole variety of game tasks will help us Cardell Kerr , Creative Director The Lord of the Rings Online.
The first online games lured players the opportunity to explore the enormous virtual world and communicate with other people. Quests in them played an extremely insignificant role. The authors generally avoided adding interesting tasks to the text mud, believing that the players will find something to do. Only occasionally in a virtual hotel or tavern on the board of ads did the note appear: they say, we are looking for heroes, we need to kill a terrible beast. But such things were rather a pleasant surprise than the rule.
The first "real" MMOG Ultima Online In terms of quest variety, she left MUD not far from Mud, but then it was little worried: the new world was stunning in themselves, the players only managed to study the dungeons, pump characteristics and spells, kill members of hostile clans, collect resources and furnish their virtual house.
The situation began to change with the arrival Everquest in 1999. At first, playing EQ was not easy: the newcomer was simply thrown into the game world, leaving himself to understand where he found himself and what to do next. Careful NPCs did not stand nearby, harmless monsters did not run, no one organized a tour of the initial locations and did not give starting parting words. To survive, the players had to hold together, because brutal fines were relied on for death. Near any dungeon you could find a group ready to accept in their ranks – to attack the monsters together was much safer and faster.
Finding quests in the game was the same task. This is now over the head of any quest NPC loot, visible per kilometer. In EQ I had to run up to each character and literally beg his task. There were very few quest NPCs at first, they were arranged randomly, so the freshly laid out the quest was studied from crust to crust, and any hint of NPCs from the category “You know, in my basement I appeared” was perceived as the beginning of a large adventure. But the real adventures were ahead.
December 5, 2000, the second addition was released Everquest: The Scars of Velious. A new snow -covered continent appeared in the game, several dungeons, the famous Kerafir Dragon and – here it is! – The most complex chain of quests for epic weapons. The study of the world, the solution of puzzles, the battles with the bosses – in the epic line there was everything that fans of the game could dream of. Each class had its own storyline, but Epica alone were impassable, and the players had to look for the allies even more carefully than before: to fulfill the quest, they had to spend the side on the side for more than one week.
Interesting facts about quests
And then the first raids appeared in EQ, and the guilds began to compete with each other for the right to kill the boss first. The guild acted especially successfully Legacy of Steel , whose leaders at different times were friends of Rob Pardo and Jeffrey Kaplan. Rob already worked in a game company, but Jeffrey did not know who and where. Imagine his surprise when Rob suggested Jeffrey to create a new Mmorpg – even cooler than EQ! Jeffrey, as you already understood, agreed.
Working on World of Warcraft , Friends, passionate lovers EQ, borrowed many ideas from Sony Online Entertainment , But they refused excessive hardcore. Exorbitant fines for death, endless running around to the place of death, long and monotonous pumping – all this scared away players, and Rob and Jeffrey made mmorpg for all. They greatly simplified EQ gameplay, and in order to captivate the player and give him to feel like a hero, the quests used. A lot of quests. Hundreds of exciting tasks that would introduce the player to the world, his key characters, taught to play the chosen class.
First it was planned to release WOW with 600 quests. But during internal tests it turned out that 600 was a funny figure. The game designers decided that the task magazine should never be empty. Blizzard connected more scriptwriters to work, and there were almost 2600 missions to the release in the game – at that time an absolute record.
As soon as the beginner appeared in the game world, he was immediately surrounded by NPC, offering a car of different quests. It was worth the hero to complete all the tasks in one location, he was immediately sent to the neighboring one, then to the next, next … And so – until he gets to the maximum level. Questions "what should I do?"Or" Where to go now?»No longer arose. Wow practically eradicated the grind (dull hunting for monsters for the sake of pumping) in its original sense: quests brought much more experience than simple destruction of living creatures. From the simulator of a tireless Mmorpg hunter, they began to turn into a parking park.
Calculation for the non -charred audience turned out to be true: the formula “Nun more quests – player borrowed” was adopted by the developers of almost all Western Mmorpg. But the quests in the spirit of “Bring-Sow”, “Kill them all” and “Collect 10 skulls” began to quickly come. The developers began to look for ways to improve the attraction.
Classic RPG came to the rescue, tasks in which are connected by one plot line. This was back in the early 2000s, the Japanese from Square Enix : in 2002 they released Final Fantasy XI – The first large MMORPG, which ceased to resemble a collection of stories and acquired a full -fledged plot line. A series that has always been famous for a brilliant plot received a worthy continuation – the three kingdoms were drawn into the war against the resurrected dark lord. Exciting plot, interesting presentation through cinematic scenes, memorable characters … The gameplay was built so that the players were forced to look for allies – for this they even built a primitive phrasebook from the most popular phrases.
And in 2005 the first part was released Guild Wars – Guild Wars Prophecies. This is the first Western Mmorpg with a prescribed plot: players save from aliens Charr Tiria Tiria torn by the war. With the release of additions to Tyria, new continents are added – this is how the unified game territory gathers in pieces.
But neither GW nor FFXI in detail of the plot go into any comparison with The Lord of the Rings Online from Turbine – In this game, the longest epic quest grid for today. The plot, of course, is taken directly from the book: players travel from Shir to Bree, stop in the Tavern "Parking Pony", get to Rivendel and from there go straight to Moria. But the plot is served on the principle of single-user role-playing games-the story is divided into chapters of 10-12 tasks. Chapters form books, and already a long quest chain is formed from the books. Thanks to this, Lotro players have a visible goal – to pump not just to put on the chain mail is more heavier, but to find out what will happen there, how Turbine interpreted the events of the book. This approach was perfectly accepted by the players, and the authors of the new MMOGs one by one began to prescribe plots stretching through the entire game: for example, in Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures It is told about the hard share of the slave who lost memory.
Here's how Cardell Kerr Kerr: “Gameplay's quests answered our question about the general development of quests. We still use the basic mechanics of single RPG: Kill X, Gather Y.
But the quest shell and context are constantly developing. For example, a system for indicating the goal appeared, which directs players to the right place and does not allow them to get lost. Previously, she would only harm, since in the first -generation MMOG a significant part of the content was hidden, and all the salt was to find it. Now there are much more tasks in games and developers simplify the players with the task.
Another important change was the demonstration of the award before the end of the quest – before no one knew whether it makes sense to complete the task at all, and now the players even allow you to choose what they want to get for a particular service.
When there are many quests and the very fact of their presence does not surprise anyone, it is very difficult to integrate them into the game. We have excellent writers in our team, but only high -quality text does not guarantee that it turns out cool MMOG ”.
The story of one pacifist
Milling monsters is the main way to pump in any mmorpg. But in Wow there was a player who got to the maximum level without a single murder. The fifty -year -old programmer, who has never called his real name, began to play for the Horde priest Reinisch (received a name in honor of the Catholic priest Franz Rhinish, who refused to swear allegiance to Hitler, for which he was executed).
Reinisch took any tasks not related to the murders: he ran a messenger, craft and collected consumables, did anything … But soon the quests ended. Then the programmer started a new hero – the robber Noor, and this time things went better. He performed quests where it was necessary to get a guarded object without killing monsters, but using distracting dolls (Target dummies), caste invisibility, etc.D.
When the patch 2 came out.3, Noor got the opportunity to make repeated quests on the battlefields. Festive tasks also helped a lot, and when there were not enough before the new level, the hero went to the next location and received a little experience for research. More recently, noor still managed to get to the 80th level, it took him … a little less than two years!
If you want to repeat this feat, read the pacifist blog instructions – http: // Pacifistundeadpriest.Blogspot.Com.
Another problem of quests, one of the oldest: cyclicity. Imagine that the king gives you a task – to save the princess from the paws of the troll. You kill the monster, return the king to the king, and on the way back you meet a dozen more knights leading the girl to the inconsolable dad. This happens all the time – so that other players can also fulfill the quest, the monsters are reborn, and quest items miraculously return to the place.
The developers puzzled for a long time, trying to solve this problem. In Lotro and Guild Wars, it was partially circumvented using instances. You don't have to go far for an example. For example, in Lotro the first instance is already found in the starting area. According to the plot, you help the residents of the small city of Arche to cope with the bandits. During the brawl, a fire begins and, although hooligans manage to disperse, the city changes strikingly: the houses are destroyed, instead of trees – burned stumps, wounded farmers groan around. Moreover, for other players – those who have not yet passed the quest – Archet seems to be a prosperous town. The trick is that before the fire and after it you are in different locations (instances) and only those who managed to participate in a key battle fall into the zone with destroyed arches.
Blizzard in 2008 went even further, using the phase change technology: in Wrath of the Lich King there is a long chain of tasks, which ends with the gates of anger – the main entrance to the arts of Artas. After performing the final quest, the player is shown a video: the assault on the fortress with the united armies of the Alliance and the Horde, the appearance of the king, the death of the great warrior, the treacherous intervention of the renounced. After watching the video, the player sees that the place where the soldiers were preparing for the battle, everything was flooded with blood, here and there the corpses are lying around, and the queen of the dragons of Alektraza rises above them. At the same time, players at different stages of the quest can see each other, but the gates of anger for each will look in their own way.
Any active player knows that sooner or later there is a moment when all the tasks are completed, all the dungeons have been completed, all the bosses are killed (and some are not once) and you are increasingly asking the question: “And now what is now?»You can, of course, start pumping an alternative character, but when you play for several years and you know all the content by heart, it becomes uninteresting to grow another goner.
In 2003, fans Anarchy Online Forever forgot that quests can end or repeat: the system of randomly generated missions made it possible for everyone to create a task for their own. It was enough to approach the terminal, choose the complexity of the mission and the level of opponents, the type of assignment, a reward-and somewhere in the vastness of the game world a new instance immediately appeared. If the mission turned out to be too long, players could maintain achievements and return to it the next day. Of course, the tasks did not differ in a particular variety – the instances appeared in just a few places, there were no familiar quest descriptions at all. But with the introduction of terminals, the players have a great way to find a place of pumping and earnings.
The undertaking with “endless” quests took root, and a year after the release of Wow Blizzard offered players daily quests (Daily Quests, Daily) – an alternative to randomly generated missions. They, unlike standard tasks, do not disappear after completion, and they can be performed once a day.
The main goal of DQ is to give people a lesson for every day. Typically, the diagrams are not in complexity or depth and it takes no more than half an hour: NPC asks to assemble several roots for the manufacture of tinctures, drive into the nearest tavern for cheese or kill parasites that destroy the garden. WITH The Burning Crusade a whole island has appeared, designed exclusively for the principles.
For the implementation of daily quests, a generous reward is given, they have become the main way to earn money for most players. Reporting of armor after raids, buying sled animals, visiting the auction – for all this you need a tightly stuffed wallet. And if earlier, to get gold, I had to cut out the monsters, now everything has become much easier: you go into the game, gain a dozen diagrams and in an hour you become a rich man. In addition, daily quests are the best way to pump a reputation with the desired fraction and get rare recipes.
The problem of quest limbs in Guild Wars solved the problem of the limb of quests. Already in the first part of the game, in addition to ordinary quests, the so -called missions appeared – tasks that can be performed as much as you like, but the reward for them is given only two or three times. In Prophecies, the mission could be performed in any sequence, although they formed in a single linear plot. This confused players, so in other campaigns-films they began to give a new task only when the previous one was fulfilled.
Although “endless” quests allow you to fill your pocket without any problems, for many players they have turned into a second job. Arriving home after a hard day, players sit down for the monitor, gain generated standard quests and, without any pleasure, begin to fulfill them. Just out of habit.
Quests – a dead end path of development?
[Gambling] Some believe that the development system based on quests is a dead end path. MMOG became similar to single RPG (a standard question on the forums: “Why look for a group when you can pass 90% of the content to one?"), The studies have faded into the background (" quests lead you to all the necessary places!"), And because of the abundance of boring assignments for murder and delivery, players stopped delving into the history of the game world. Agree with this?
[Cardell] And yes, and no. The online worlds are very large, and our task is to satisfy the tastes of different people. Not everyone likes to delve into the background, many come simply to chat with other players. Some try to create an ideal character by choosing the best equipment and opening all the achievements. To force someone to play as we want, it means making the game less interesting. Therefore, we try to give everyone the choice of how to spend time in the game world. If someone does not like the system of indicating the goal-it can be turned off. We generally added it only because many sites have divorced that there are detailed information for each quest.
As for solo-replacement … Usually people go into the game world without waiting for their friends. Our goal was to give an opportunity to enjoy the game to everyone, regardless of whether they can find companions or not. Despite this, in Lotro a huge amount of group content.
[Gambling] Then tell me what quests in Lotro are especially proud? Which you advise you to pass?
[Cardell] Oh, I can give a whole selection of iconic tasks! Pie Delivery – nothing conveys the atmosphere of Shira like this series of quests. The scene is fascinated by me when the champion champled in heavy armor runs around the green meadows with a pie in their hands, trying to avoid meeting hungry semi -rings (at the same time, most Lotro subscribers hate these quests, since there is nothing more boring than aimless running around a huge location. – Approx. "Gambling" ).
Refording Narsil – which could be better than an epic battle from a giant turtle?
Assault on Trestlebridge – this task was one of the first to use instance.
Gates of Moria (Entering Moria): A fight with a caretaker is just a class!
Although the ditches are customary to be allocated into a separate category of quests, they themselves are not distinguished by anything-these are all the same tasks in the spirit of “kill-bring”. The developers tried to come up with something new.
In November 2007, it was born Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa. And although the new game from the father of the legendary Ultima Online Richard Garriot did not live up to expectations, the quests and the plot line in it were incomparable. All the time of the game we had to look for the symbols of the ancient language Logos. This language was invented specifically for Tabula Rasa, and if the player managed to collect all the hieroglyphs, then he could then translate new quest tasks, the messages of the developers, decipher the characters imprinted in the textures of the game. Moreover, the Logos has become something like Esperanto for fans of Tabula Rasa: the need for phrasebooks has disappeared like those that were built into Final Fantasy XI. The most ardent Tabula Rasa fans sometimes even talked on a logos in real life.
Another feature of Tabula Rasa quests was that they changed in the course of execution. It often turned out that the NPC commander ordered you to defend Fort from the aliens with important artifacts. But while you made your way to this fort through the jungle, the aliens managed to capture him, and you had to either recapture the base, or unite with other players, rush in pursuit and deal with saboteurs. Almost a third of the quests were written, as Richard Garriot said, in the form of “ethical parables”: the player had to choose what to do. Very often he was ordered to destroy the aliens' base or block their way, blowing up the dam, arranging a collapse and t.p. But on the way, the demolitions necessarily appeared a small village of local residents – and you could either blindly follow the order, or, at the risk of failing the task, to prevent innocent natives in anything.
Not only the success of a single mission, but also the development of the plot depended on your choice. I had to calculate that by filling up the bypass road, you will never get into the cave with new signs of the logo, and having flooded the village – kill a dozen settlers. And subsequently, some NPC instead of giving you a new quest, with anger, he will remember that he lost his father and mother in the village, washed off with water on your order.
But if in Tabula Rasa it was still possible to survive alone or settled down in a group of computer allies, then in many Mmorpg without a company other players can not do. But it’s so insulting to stand in the middle of the dungeon, when someone in real life needs to walk the dog, the head of the raid “without jokes, fire!", And the doctors for the second hour went to the kitchen.
The searches of the group take a lot of time, and no one will guarantee that it will not fall apart after the first defeat. Mythic Entertainment We solved the problem very elegantly – they came up with public quests (Public Quets). They do not need to take them from NPC, for them you do not need to look for companions, just go into the radius of PQ – and you automatically become its participant.
Each public quest consists of several parts, the further – the more complicated: first you need to deal with a large crowd of frail monsters, then with the enemies stronger, and then with the boss, on which everyone who was nearby falls on. Players can join PQ at any stage, but the more contribution to the common cause, the higher the chances of getting a valuable trophy – this stimulates the players not to stand aside, but take an active part in the battle. Each public quest has its own mini-jet and gives a bunch of experience, so there are always plenty of those who want to fulfill it. The most interesting PQ appears on the advanced PVP zone, where the enemy sides have to fight each other for the right to post a quest monster.
Three quests that you must pass
Not all quests cause delight among the players: each original task accounts for at least fifty banal “kill-bout”. We chose the three best, in our opinion, quest in the entire history of MMORPG.
Game: Everquest 2
Description : This is not even a single quest, but a long chain of tasks united by a single scenario. It starts in Keynos or Frida, depending on the selected side. The quest reveals a piece of the backstory of Norrata: many centuries ago, the greatest traveler Vallius Bale gave the leaders of the human clans Clemimor, covered with mystical runes. A few years later, a grandiose tournament took place, in which all the greatest warriors took part. Kleimor became the main award to the winner and went to the knight Antonius Bale, who soon built the magnificent city of Keynos, who became the pride of the human race.
Testing : players go to Overrealm – a place where waterfalls are pouring from heaven, and residents move on flying clouds. As they pass the quest, they will have to fight with a silent guard, an ominous jailer, elementals from other dimensions, the leader of the poultry of plane, four winds, iron golems, fallen knights, a non-coat-dwarf and a bone dragon.
Reward : legendary Keynos blade.
Game: Eve Online
Description : PVE and quests are not the strongest side Eve Online. But with the release of additions ApocryPha The first epic line of tasks appeared in the game, which even burned pirates rushed to complete. There are reasons for this: about fifty missions, branched dialogs, the possibility of choosing a particular path of passage and unique awards. Moreover, Epic is available to everyone, even pilots of frigates with a minimum of combat skills.
Trial: Everything begins with a flight to the Arnon IX system, where the headquarters of the religious organization Sisters of Eve is located. Alitura sister asks to respond to the distress signal. But when the player flies to the indicated place, he only discovers there the fragments of the ship. A simple, as it seemed, the investigation turns into a series of exciting and dangerous adventures. The pilot will have to fight the pirates, save the ingenious scientist, get secret documents, take the base of half -intelligent drones storms, visit the most distant corners of the empire, find a valuable artifact in deep space, protect transport ships and prove yourself with a magnificent spy.
Reward : valuable modules for ships equipment.
Game: World of Warcraft
Where to get it : The quest was available when new content was added to Wow, including the Ahn’qiraj dungeon. There lived in it – guarded by hordes of rational insects – the ancient god Katun (c’s). Preparing for the war, the army of the Horde and the Alliance gathered a breakthrough of resources: bandages, provisions, ore, fabric. The strongest guilds bought them from ordinary players, spending whole states. To open the gate into the monastery of Katun, someone had to find the ancient artifact of the scepter of moving sands and hit them in the gong next to the entrance to Angirai. Only one person on each server could be honored with such an honor.
Trial: The search for parts of the scepter and their combination in a whole item requires coordinated efforts of the whole guild – for a long time the scepter of moving sands was the most difficult quest of Wow. The chosen one had to defeat several bosses in the raid instance of the Black Wing Lair (Blackwing Lair), while one of them – for a certain time, raise a reputation with the guardians of the times, destroying the miriades of beetles, taking away the fragments of the artifact from three giant dragons, to visit the Atal'hakkara temple , decipher a book written in an ancient language, and overcome many other tests.
Reward : unique weapon, sled beetle, Scarab Lord title.
In modern online games, two ways of quest development are clearly traced. The MMORPG superhero emphasizes PVP: the standard tasks in the spirit of “Kill-Believer” are much more interesting if not controlled AI opponents are sitting on the other side of the barricades, but real people. This summer comes out Champions Online , And next year it will appear DC Universe Online And probably, Marvel University , Where developers will not miss the chance to steal Batman and Superman or Lizard and Spider-Man.
In the popular science fiction mmorpg, the emphasis is on long chains of quests. For example, c Star Wars: The Old Republic They are going to introduce truly nonlinear tasks, where each choice affects the fate of the hero, determining who he will become-Lucian Skywalker or Darth Vader.
Cardell Kerr sees the future of quests in Mmorpg as follows: “I am sure that the next stage in the development of quests is nonlinearity. Now the developers have resources for creating large-scale content, and most subscribers barely open a small part of the game world we created.
The new generation’s quest systems will give players the opportunity to choose which way the game history will develop, but at the same time will retain the globalness of what is happening inherent in MMOG. I think the instances will intertwine even more with each other ".