Does anyone else remember that developer podcast where Mythic said that NPCs wouldn’t ask you to go kill 10 bears after you’d just killed 15 of them, clearing your way to the NPC? I do. I remember it vividly because I said to myself, “Oh glorious day, someone has seen the light!” While soloing to level, I often farm mobs in lieu of chasing down quest objectives. How wonderful it would be to find that those 50 foozles I’d collected while out farming crafting materials, could be turned in for the appropriate quest whenever I happened to run across the associated Quest Giver. The mechanic Warhammer Online implemented isn’t versatile or diverse. Yes, there are Collection NPCs in the zones but they are only collecting very select items. If memory serves me correctly, you can only turn them in up until you got the three rewards and that’s it. Moreover, I regularly ran into NPCs asking me to go kill things I’d just finished killing to get to them in the first place. At the time I thought, “Oh well, better than nothing,” and moved on.
Runes of Magic (ROM) is a free-to-play (F2P) MMO that contains real-money transactions (RMT). As such, they’re going to have slimmer than usual pickins on some aspects to encourage RMT. One of those is the micro-management bane of all MMOs players, managing inventory and bag space. It’s always at a premium and in ROM you don’t get much of it for free. You’re not horribly short on pack space. For instance, it’s more than you got in Age of Conan and Warhammer. However, it’s much less than your options in World of Warcraft or EverQuest 2. Seeing no reason yet to fork over real cash for more bag slots, I was watching my pack space carefully, clearing it out every time I went into a town.
When clearing out my bags I kept finding items flagged “Daily Quest”. I hadn’t accepted any damn Daily Quest (DQ). Regular readers here will know that I abhor the concept of DQs. Given how strongly I feel about it, you know there’s no way in hell I explicitly accepted a DQ. I know where you get them thanks to the introductory quest tutorial and I’ve stayed clear of the town bulletin boards where they are initiated. So why the heck was my pack filling up with these items? And I mean I had a lot of them!
At first I tried to vendor them but that’s not allowed. Then I started destroying them to recover the pack space. When they kept accumulating I put them in the bank until I had time to figure out what the heck was going on. Was it a bug? Was there some game option I could toggle to say, “Stop fuking with me and stop putting this crap in my bags!” It started feeling like junk mail. Don’t you hate opening your mailbox to find it full of unsolicited crap? I do and that’s what this felt like to me.
I hit a new level last night and decided to go change into the armor I’d been hording before logging off for the evening. While reviewing all the loot shinies I’d stored in the bank, I noticed the dreaded DQ flagged items again. *Grrr!* I asked in chat, “What gives with all these DQs items hogging up my backpack? I don’t have any DQs.” The first person who responded said, “They’re for DQs.” I wanted to say, “No shit, Sherlock.” However, since they were actually trying to help, I took off my cranky hat and rephrased the question. “Yes, I know that much but I don’t have any DQs so what is putting these things in my bag?” Get ready for it…someone of you may have already guessed the answer…
If you kill a DQ associated mob or happen to loot a DQ associated item, you get credit for it even if you’re not on the quest. Voila! That leaves a whole mess of items because the DQ list at each town is long, and every – single – town has DQs. I was told to just go to the DQ Bulletin Board, accept the quests associated with the items I was holding (quest name tells you the item required), then immediately turn the items in for quest completion.
Uh, say what!?! Do you mean to say that if I was out killing mobs that dropped 10 foozles and there’s a quest associated with collecting 10 foozles, I can get the quest when I run across it and turn in the 10 foozles I already happen to have? *My mind panned back to Mythic video on the subject and laughed*
Now before WAR fans get all uppity. I’m not trying to be evil or hating on WAR. But the irony and contrast of the implementation immediately struck me as I turned in all my foozles, which were only coincidentally acquired while out doing other stuff. I have to tell you that I stood there laughing to myself for several minutes. I had 6 quests that I was able to initiate and immediately turn in on my Warrior. I almost dinged a whole level over them. Understanding now what the blue text meant on the items, I noticed that the same text could be found by hovering over a mob. I’m out in an area completing a quest and I notice a mob that has blue text on it, “blah…blah…daily quest (0/10)”.
Hmm, I’m standing here. Mr. Mob 0/10 is standing there looking clueless. Remaining inconspicuous, I saunter near him. “Yo, Mr. Mob, how’s it going?” BASH! SLASH! BASH! HEAL! STOMP! Mr. Mob is dead. Mr. Mob is now 1/10. I don’t have the quest for having 10 Mr. Mob hides. It could be from this town, the previous town or one I’ve yet to enter. It doesn’t matter. I got my XP. I looted his corpse. And one day, I’ll turn his hides in for a bigger reward and more XP. Yeah, I think I can get with this even if it is turning in a daily quest. Whatever, they don’t expire. I’ll see ya when I see ya.
Recently, I’m being made a liar on a few fronts; I guess I should stop trying to define myself as a gamer. I’m doing quests in the third consecutive game because they’re actually entertaining and less painful than what I’d encountered in my past MMO questing lives. Age of Conan, Warhammer Online and now Runes of Magic, all got me doing quests. I’ve spent real money for virtual goods thanks to Wizard101 – armor and lots of vanity items. And now I’ve done the unthinkable - I’ve done daily quests. Look! I think they sky is falling. Er, no, it was just my ego. *Smile*
I refused to do DQs in WOW and I stand by it in that game’s case. On principle alone, I’ve rejected the idea like some players admit to rejecting RMT on principle. I laughed and scoffed when I heard about them being implemented in WAR. I cringed when I found them in ROM, where I’ve now turned in several.
Maybe I don’t have to count ROM DQs because it wasn’t intentional? Yeah, that’s right. For all intensive purposes I didn’t actually “do” any DQs. Yeah, I think that’s what I’ll keep telling myself. *Walks away trying to maintain a shred of credibility*
Is it a chore if it just happens while you're out having fun doing something else?
Posted by: Tesh | February 01, 2009 at 06:13 PM
So Warhammer Online never implemented those quests where they already considered what you looted? I remember the interview with Paul B and I was thinking about that when I discovered by accident that I got some quests completed automatically in Runes of Magic. That goes both for the daily quests and the harvested material also, if you have quests for those.
Overall there seem to be a lot of different points and things to collect in the game and most things seems to be possible to be used somehow - the vendor trash rate is a bit lower than in some other games. If nothing else then one can dismantle an item to get some runes hopefully.
I did buy some diamonds to use, to see how long they will last and compare to my subscription games. One such occasion was when I was in the middle of a cave fighting and inventory got full - I did rent some more space on the spot then. Convenience wins...
Posted by: Sente | February 01, 2009 at 06:18 PM
@Sente - WAR implemented it just as I described. There are a limited number of collection items that you can turn into get rewards (3 things per NPC) and there is just that one NPC per chapter. Nothing else counts toward having already fulfilled a quest objective.
And you're right harvesting quests work that way too. I "thought" that's what was happening but wasn't sure so I didn't want to say that. However, you've just confirmed what it felt like was happening. I haven't harvested all that much yet.
And I bought some diamonds today to do do more decorating. Someone clued me into a Live Event that expires tomorrow to enter. The Tabora Living contest. If you sign-up you can get a free upgrade to your house. It will be extended to a two-story dwelling. Since I was already decorating might as well enter and I might win my Diamonds back. :-) Regardless, I love my house!!
@Tesh - No, it just happens as a core mechanic of the game.
Posted by: Alysianah aka Saylah | February 01, 2009 at 06:50 PM
It sounds fantastic as a mechanic, then. (And intelligent; I've been hoping for that sort of mechanic for a long time.) Are there still questgivers who send you to the same place more than once? (I'm looking at you, Blad Whatzisfritz on Triton Alley.)
I really need to fire up the ROM game. I've downloaded the file, I just haven't installed it yet.
Posted by: Tesh | February 01, 2009 at 09:37 PM
Not so far - there's not a lot of back and forth from same NPC. It's more like the quest hubs in WOW where the NPCs are nearby where you need to go. Of course there are the errand missions but I don't recall being sent somewhere and coming back, only to be told to go back again. Keep in mind that I'm still very low. Where I am now is liking having made it to Westfall in WOW.
Posted by: Alysianah aka Saylah | February 01, 2009 at 11:25 PM
You are confusing influence rewards with kill collectors in WAR. The kill collector gives you bonus xp per mob killed. The influence vendor has three levels of rewards from doing PQs (and now RvR)
During open beta of WAR, Mythic addressed why kill collectors are as limited as they are, and why questing remained more 'traditional'. Basically it was done because the players got too confused and the game was found to lack focus, so they scrapped most of the kill collector functionality.
Posted by: Syncaine | February 02, 2009 at 12:14 PM
Thanks for the initial write-up for this game, I had never heard of it before. After checking out the website, I decided to give it a try (done with WOW and LOTRO).
Unfortunately, I have been having problems downloading it. The download seems to stop after awhile and I end up canceling it. Anyone have any suggestions? I have tried a few different mirrors with no luck (trying again right now).
Posted by: RomaGoth | February 02, 2009 at 03:30 PM
I had the same problems with downloading you did. I finally went with the mirror that had the install divided into multiple zips. That worked out the best for me.
Posted by: Winged Nazgul | February 02, 2009 at 03:47 PM
@Syncaine - Interesting. I hadn't heard that before - the reason why it was scrapped. Too bad that put out that video saying the game wouldn't do that to you. :-)
@Roma - Try what Winged suggested. I tried several times on week then gave up. It eventually worked for me off a mirror when downloading during business hours. I set the download before I went to work.
The patching is also very confusing. It's like the original WOW where it's going thru multiple patches that download, install then just exit the installer without telling you there's more to patch. At first you think you're in a loop and something's not working. Then I remembered old WOW and just keep re-starting the game. It eventually patched all the way thru and launched.
Posted by: Alysianah aka Saylah | February 02, 2009 at 04:45 PM
P.S @Syncaine. Not sure why it would lack focus. You're out doing quests and you happen to kill mobs that are a turn in for another quest. When you run into that quest you turn it in. I think they should have left it in especially considering that it's a game where you can't harvest crafting materials. I'm out grinding mobs trying to get mats, wouldn't it be great if I can turn them in to the next NPC that asks for those mobs instead of sending me back to kill the same crap. That attempt at a no-grind crafting system IMHO turned out to be the most grind I've ever done in crafting because of the randomness of acquiring materials.
Posted by: Alysianah aka Saylah | February 02, 2009 at 04:48 PM
Thanks for the help. I tried a four-part download, and after nearly three hours the first file is done....:\
Oh well, only three more to go.
Posted by: RomaGoth | February 02, 2009 at 11:44 PM
That does seem like an awesome way to implement DQs.
The closest WoW comes to this are faction-reputation items that drop from random mobs.
It really is a shame daily quests in WoW are so "explicitly choose to do them" vs. the "implicitly do a quest while doing something else".
I don't think this would work for all DQs nor do I think all DQs should or could be modified to use this system - e.g. doing the Wyrmrest Temple DQ which involves flying on dragon-back and downing N npc dragons - there's no way to implicitly get that from some other activity.
But to have that option for at least some of the dailies? That would be great. Who knows, maybe some Blizzard dev reads your blog and will push to have this in patch 3.2... :)
Posted by: Solidstate | February 12, 2009 at 11:13 AM
One of the things about Blizzard is that they aren't hesitant about copying good ideas. Look at all the former Mod applets that eventually became core features of WOW. Somehow they exist in this special bubble where players don't slam them for copying like they do other developers/publishers/games.
I think the casual, as it happens DQs work very well. I do them on a daily basis by accident and it's refreshing. I don't bother with the explicit ones where I would have had to purposefully go off and do something. I think this is a fabulous idea and wouldn't be surprised if it made it's way into WOW some day.
Posted by: Alysianah aka Saylah | February 12, 2009 at 11:41 AM