Have the days of the Epic Questline disappeared from MMO's?

Newbie007

Newbie007

Newbie007

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Just been thinking recently (possibly as a consequence of the class story lines in ToR), but are the days of huge, continent spanning, time consuming epic quests disappearing from the MMORPG genre? Back when I first started online gaming, MMO's were a very different beast, essentially created by gamers for gamers (or nerds for nerds if you will ;D). A natural progression from the text based MUDs of the early 90's, they were harsh & unforgiving, but at the same time things were more relaxed, the social aspect was more ingrained into the gaming. You would find a corner of the world & kill mobs, or crawl through a Dungeon, but at the same time there was plenty of downtime to talk to people, to forge friendships and guilds.

Along with the element of grinding though, there were quests and Epic quest lines. 3 quests that I remember fondly off the top of my head, that would fit into this would be

EQ Cleric Epic - Water Sprinkler of Nem Ankh: My own personal highlight, the quest line took me months to complete (I am 'casual' in my play style), and once I completed I had a grin on my face for weeks to come.
Coldain Ring War: I never actually started the questline personally (never had the patience for the Tradeskills ;p), but was there every step of the way for my old EQ Guild leader who completed it & this would probably be the best quest chain ever created for me, the pinnacle of quest design. If you don't know what it is, google it and then compare modern 'epic' quests.
Onyxia Key Quest Chain: WoW may have become everything I hate about the genre now but vanilla/TBC WoW had some good quest chains and this one is the pick for me, whilst not on a par with my other 2 picks, was still a good feeling walking through SW on my way to unmask the evil dragon.

Where are the modern day equivalents? Will we ever see the likes of the epic quest chain again or are we doomed to have the continual decline of the quest as we know it? Just like the old school dungeon crawl has disappeared (hi to you WoW design of Corridor - Boss - Corridor - Boss). Has this element gone because the modern gamer just doesn't want anything time consuming? Just wants to log on, get their epics and log off? Am I alone in wanting a better quality of quest in my game?

Regardless, what are other folks favourite quest lines?
 
Tailoring to larger markets = appealing to casual players with less time to invest = 'dumbing down'

Remember spending weeks doing my Priest Benediction questline in WoW.

There are still some hardcore elements of modern MMOs but it is, imo, a dying breed. Hardcore gameplay is a fraction of the overall playerbase and not where the money is.
 
i liked the lore quests in eq2 or whatever they were called.
i think there was around 24 of them when the game first came out and you got titles depending on how many of thre quests you had done.

some involved camping mobs that might take over 12 hours to finally spawn

eq2 had the prismatic weapon chain aswell, i didnt do it but a bunch of people in the guild i was with managed to, i cant say i really felt jealous or left out
 
Rift has a questline called Saga of the Endless which I would classify as epic :D It's at least 50 quests or so long (if not more), and literally starts at about level 20 and carries on through to endgame. You get some very nice items throughout, and some title awards at certain points iirc (might be wrong but I recall there being some epic item rewards too, been a while since I played).
 
Nimdok said:
Rift has a questline called Saga of the Endless which I would classify as epic :D It's at least 50 quests or so long (if not more), and literally starts at about level 20 and carries on through to endgame. You get some very nice items throughout, and some title awards at certain points iirc (might be wrong but I recall there being some epic item rewards too, been a while since I played).
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but is it epicly difficult or just a series that lasts to endgame?
 
I completed the Sceptre of the Shifting Sands questline in WoW (AKA the Ahn'Qiraj opening) just before it was removed in Cataclysm. Great fun and hard work, needing several friends to get it done even at 80. Such things are always good for a game.
 
arknor said:
but is it epicly difficult or just a series that lasts to endgame?
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It isn't soloable, and was pretty challenging around release at least. Though whether that was down to the quest itself being difficult, or people not fully understanding their roles at that point I'm not sure. A lot of time and effort went into those quests though, and it did give me a feeling of accomplishment that I hadn't found in MMOs for quite some time. It wasn't just one of those "Go here kill ______", "Go there and bring me ________" questlines, while it did have some of those elements, I was pleased to see that you actually had stages where you had to get items crafted by other players in order to advance - that may have its disadvantages (such as not being able to find a player able to craft X item), but it was nice to see that MMO devs haven't completely abandoned that concept, which imo gives a good feeling of involvement with players in the quest rather than just your standard "Group with these players to kill this elite" kinda thing.
 
They are gone :(

Used to love them back in vanilla wow, there were loads but I always remember the pala epic mount quest at level 60. You were all over the place needing a full group and it was great fun!

Everything is solo play and easy now which is a great shame. They are a reflection of modern society and gaming (instant gratification) rather than niche which is a shame. Loving Eve which is a anomaly compared to other mmo's. Dominos should prove interesting as well.
 
No1newts said:
They are gone :(

Used to love them back in vanilla wow, there were loads but I always remember the pala epic mount quest at level 60. You were all over the place needing a full group and it was great fun!

Everything is solo play and easy now which is a great shame. They are a reflection of modern society and gaming (instant gratification) rather than niche which is a shame. Loving Eve which is a anomaly compared to other mmo's. Dominos should prove interesting as well.
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I was gutted when they announced in the patch notes that people would be able to just train the Epic Paladin and Warlock mounts for next to nothing. But ah well, got some sweet Feats of Strength for it at least :)
 
I remember playing one of my first MMOs that had about 3 quests in it.... One of which was disabled for exploiting... The good old days when quests didn't exist to much degree :(
 
Yeah, I remember the Prismatic line from EQ2. The bloody Dragon Runes required to speak with Nagafen were a time consuming pain the 'arris to get. Same for the Peacock line in Desert of Flames. The last proper, epic quest was the Claymore line in EQ2; all the successors were just unimaginative time sinks for the sake of being time sinks. I mean, harvest X amount of rares in various class Epic weapon lines?

RIS certification from SWG wasn't really epic (gathering the rare resources was though!) but as it was my and most loved MMO, I have to include it.
 
Newbie007 said:
EQ Cleric Epic - Water Sprinkler of Nem Ankh: My own personal highlight, the quest line took me months to complete (I am 'casual' in my play style), and once I completed I had a grin on my face for weeks to come.
Coldain Ring War: I never actually started the questline personally (never had the patience for the Tradeskills ;p), but was there every step of the way for my old EQ Guild leader who completed it & this would probably be the best quest chain ever created for me, the pinnacle of quest design. If you don't know what it is, google it and then compare modern 'epic' quests.
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Lord Bergurgle, that was an aweful camp, did it for 24 hours on a 30 min respawn and when I killed him he spawned again 30 minutes later, I loved camps like that though but I am a sick mmorpg player. :D

Epic Weapon quests in EverQuest were awesome, some needed 24+ players when they were first introduced to kill various mobs, everyone used to rally round to help get them done.

When EverQuest Next is released, I would hope their is two types of servers one that has more danger, risk and more reward for hardcore players - say 20% EXP penalty on death as well as 3 times as hard to level, and then servers that cater for the more casual players for less gain reward - I bet even casual players would still play on the hardcore servers.
Sin_Chase said:
Wrong.

I was a fully active hardcore player in a World Top 10 guild while holding down a full time job.

Casual players are casuals whether employed or not.
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Yeah I agree with you there, I was never in a hardcore guild but worked 8:30am till 5pm, go on EverQuest from 6pm till around 2am mininum every night and weekends maybe 12 hour saturday/sunday sessions.
 
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It depends how you define epic. There are a few good rogue quests in WoW, specifically the quest that gives you the first tier of the legendary daggers in current content.

People want quick fixes in gaming now or fast paced games usually. Having a long, hard quest chain isn't top priority. There are those of us that love them but sadly I think we're in the minority. There are games that are more catered for that kind of thing but not so much in MMOs.
 
I loved quest-lines like the Onyxia chain but vanilla WoW had far too many like that. I think in general questing around the zones they should keep it tight and local but then also have those where you do have to work hard.

Otherwise you end up flying everywhere to talk to someone, and back again.
 
The problem I think is that firstly there aren't really that many top tier MMOs... WoW is still the be all and end all of MMOs and it sets the bar. WoW has matured and in a way it has had to, you can wish all you like for old school vanilla features but it's not going to happen, nobody, me included wants to spend months grinding to level 85 anymore, we've done it over and over.

Similarly people since vanilla have always wanted a way to casually play and still gain rewards in the game. In Vanilla I was a PvP druid and due to the guild (I enjoyed playing with) and the fact I didn't have as much free time on my hands as 13 year old boys I could not get PvP epics and not many PvE epics... Extremely annoying as the game was tailored to hardcore warcrack addicted children.

Now, two things happened here. Firstly blizzard has slowly got wise to the fact that the casual players are the players with more money AND simultaneously the addicted children are now much older due to the fact WoW has been out for so long, bringing them into the older target audience.

I don't deny that vanilla wow had that feeling of undiscovered eipc adventure and wow these days has more a feeling of familliar grind but I'm afraid there is no going back.

Taking that into account what we do need is a new MMO, a good MMO but so far they just seem to miss the bar, WoW is a very good product in the way it rewards players and gives them the things they want: LOTS OF STUFF TO SHOW OFF and lots of places to do it.

Roll on the next killer MMO.
 
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