Questing and Fast Food
Jeff Kaplan's GDC talk is making the rounds. Tigole (Kaplan) roasts WoW from the inside, trying to explain lessons Blizzard has learned. Except some of the elements he disparages, were the best parts for me.
Lum the Mad deftly pulled out some notable quotes. I'm going to follow his lead.
On Quest text:
"I think it's great to limit people in how much pure text they can force on the player. Because honestly... if you ever want a case study, just watch kids play it, and they're just mashing the button. They don't want to read anything."
I don't know about you, but when I'm playing an MMORPG, I'm not seeking my inner-child. In some console games perhaps, but when it comes to an RPG I like to be treated like a literate adult.
It's not like I want to see a wall-of-text on quests, but there's a difference between rambling on and well-written (and concise) progression of story.
I'm all for putting the story into the action too, but I'm going to be bored and disappointed if I feel everything has been dumbed down. If it's going to be in the action, why bother with quest dialogues at all? In that style of game, action should just happen by entering into an area or encountering an NPC, etc..
You know what else children like? Fast Food. Ask most children where they want to eat and the answer is McDonalds. I asked my niece and she answered "Candy!". I'm not much for candy myself except in small doses and that's the same way I am with games that try to appeal to kids.
Showing a flow chart of Loch Modan's quests:
"The problem with Loch Modan is the player didn't have a lot of choice, and the quests were clustered up... you get a cluster of lets say four, five kill quests right away, and then you get into a cluster of collection quests. Has a very bad flow.
I loved Loch Modan. Yes it started with almost randomly clustered quests as he described, but those quests funnelled into a few distinct directions: Like the wonderful questline to prevent terrorist dwarves from blowing up the dam. Most importantly I felt like I was leading these quests, rather than the quests leading me.
On mystery:
"We should never say something's wrong in Elwin forest, go figure it out," he elaborated. "We can unveil a mystery story, but at the end of the day, in the quest log it needs to say, 'Go kill this dude, go get me this item.' The mystery can't be what to do [on the quest].
The Stalvan mystery quests are among my favourite, spanning Elwynn, Westwood and Duskwood. The quests that awaken Stitches in Duskwood are also great. Both of these started with the sort of mystery he describes here.
Oh, that quest:
"This is the worst quest in World of Warcraft," he said. "I made it. It's the Green Hills of Strangelthorn. Yeah, it teaches you to use the auction house. Or the cancellation page."
"So I'm the asshole that wrote this quest. My philosophy was, I'm going to drop all these things around Stranglethorn, and it's going to be a whole economy unto itself... It was horrible."
"It was utterly stupid of me. The worst part... one of the things that taxes a player in a game like WOW is inventory management. Your base backpack that the game shipped with only has 16 slots in it. But basically at all times, players are making decisions. For a single quest to consume 19 spaces in your bags is just ridiculous."
"So it's a horrible quest, and I'm the only who made it, and somehow I am talking to you guys today."
Worst... quest... ever.
Honestly I think Jeff Kaplan is / was a good quest designer. I believe he's responsible for some of the better quests, especially in Duskwood, which still stands in my mind as the best zone of the game (or any MMO for that matter). At least as it was on launch. Duskwood has been pretty much butchered since TBC sadly, it's been poorly maintained to keep up with changes in the game. Apparently it doesn't fit into what Blizzard considers good questing now.
Duskwood's downward trend pretty much sums up what I feel about WoW overall. Much of the great leveling content has been trivialized. Kaplan has transformed from starry-eyed quest designer into a sort of head honcho that's ripped apart many of the good things that were and replacing them with watered-down lowest-common-denominator content and gameplay.
Using another paradigm:
I loved U2's earlier music, it was full of passion and oomph. They've progressed further as musicians, but in the process they've become less impassioned and more of a machine.
WoW is now mass-market, for sure. It just doesn't appeal to me as much as it did.
Jeff Kaplan's opinions here and his effect with them on the game, are pretty much why I no longer play World of Warcraft.
Mar 27, 2009 1:26pm
How do you make an RPG mass-market? Take out the RP part.
Mar 28, 2009 4:03pm
I don't know about you, but when I'm playing an MMORPG, I'm not seeking my inner-child. In some console games perhaps, but when it comes to an RPG I like to be treated like a literate adult.
It's not like I want to see a wall-of-text on quests, but there's a difference between rambling on and well-written (and concise) progression of story.
The Stalvan mystery quests are among my favourite, spanning Elwynn, Westwood and Duskwood. The quests that awaken Stitches in Duskwood are also great. Both of these started with the sort of mystery he describes here.
You've made lots of good points Rog.
I have to agree that there were some great quests in WoW during those low to mid levels. In a zone like Duskwood everything came together with a heightened degree of harmony with the quests all flowing into the story arc of what happened to the people of that town. Stalvan, Morladim, Morbant Fel, Sven.
I think part of the reason why questing has earned a bad reputation is because many of the quests have little to do with the story and are boring and fail to capture the imagination of the player. Why should the player bother becoming emotionally invested in the quest if nothing will change about the world after they complete it?
Most quests in WoW are now just a series of silly, mundane tasks disguised as "quests". No wonder people grind through them now.
I'm all for putting the story into the action too, but I'm going to be bored and disappointed if I feel everything has been dumbed down. If it's going to be in the action, why bother with quest dialogues at all? In that style of game, action should just happen by entering into an area or encountering an NPC, etc..
At one point the idea of a quest was that it was *hard* and *difficult* and where the person doing the quest was facing insurmountable odds. Quests should tax the person on the quest both mentally and physically.
The sad thing is that all sense of challenge has been removed from questing -- most have become childishly pedestrian. Players now feel a sense of entitlement. They show up, get their quest automatically and proceed to kill 20 Foozles, return for their reward(s).
I agree that Jeff Kaplan has lost his way and the magic touch that he had when he crafted many of those vanilla WoW quests.
Mar 29, 2009 5:55am
I whole-heartedly agree about Duskwood -- a terrific zone with great quest lines and a solid storyline to it that I understood with no hand-holding at all.