Im always on the look out for new MMO's that might have something social about them, something epic, something old school, but alas they are few and far between. I enjoyed Aion, it has a epic quest line for your weapon at max level that was impossible if you didnt complete the whole story from level 1 to max, and involved having to group, loved it. Any one who says modern mmo's are easy needs to look at that game. (ftp soon as well). I crave open world mmo's with epic quests that could be done in different ways, I think Archeage has great potential in this respect.
Have the days of the Epic Questline disappeared from MMO's?
- Thread starter Newbie007
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Aion, being Korean, was automatically frowned upon for being different in every aspect to that other game. I acknowledge on release it was buggy and certainly not western friendly if you didnt like a grind. If Aion had been released as per update 2.5 it would have been massive as they removed all grind, added solo instances new area's and tons more to do, but for me it didn't have that epic quest feel.
The last MMo that really impressed me was The Lord of the Rings online, the Epic quest's required group play and the community is/was second to none. Shame they ripped out the guts of the game and made all the content soloable as it really brought everyone together to complete content.
Have a look at ArcheAge although coming out of Korea I don't see a stupid grind and I like pretty much everything I see. Not saying it has Epic Quests but it does seem to have some really neat stuff.
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chains of promathia on ffxi before they nerfed it - now that was epic.
This whole hardcore/casual debate has little to do with making quests epic. After a year or two even the casual players in EQ had their epics. They may not have been first, but they were never excluded. EQ doesn't care if you complete your epic in two days or over three years. It will give you your reward just the same.
The truth is rather more simple...
1. Many people today want to play alone. They consider working with others to be "hassle" and resent having to spend time with social aspects of MMOs, such as networking and helping others.
2. People want rewards more often. People would rather kill 10 mobs and get a bit of XP and a minor item, than quest for two weeks for one reward. As much as us old-timers hate "kill 10 frogs" quests, others love them for their simplicity and as a way of being distracted from the grind.
3. The "we don't read" or "ADHD and proud" brigade. How many times have you watched a player click through text because reading is boring? How many times have you listened to player ask how to complete a quests because they skipped reading the quest text? In WoW this was the norm it seemed. Forget reading the instructions, grab the quests and ask in general chat for someone to tell you what to do.
4. Spoiler sites. When EQ epic quests were put in, spoiler sites were just beginning to pop up. Now every detail of every quest in any MMO is online within days. How do you make a quest feel epic when your playerbase are all following walkthroughs?
Sadly, I agree that the days of MMOs being graphical MUDs are long-gone, and unlikely to ever return.
The quest for the dreadsteed was indeed epic, It was a true achievement when I got it back in vanilla WoW, It actually meant something back then,
Now there's nothing on the same page, The closest you get now is paying £18 for an exclusive mount
Now there's nothing on the same page, The closest you get now is paying £18 for an exclusive mount