Early mmos such as UO, EQ1, and so on were shells of what was to come. As good as these games were they needed structure and story.
You have utterly failed to understand the special sauce of early MMOs.
Story in MMORPGs is toxic. Lore of course is good, but 'structure' and personal story are a large part of what came to kill the genre.
A game like classic EQ thrived on saying here is the world, go make your mark. Get famous, or don't. Emergent gameplay was king.
This just isn't something people can be taught that didn't play MMOs prior to WoW. Its something they will have to experience for themselves with Pantheon.
Your both right, I apologize !
I have to admit, I came on board during the second generation.
You people really loved the first gen mmo's.......Good for you.
Early mmos such as UO, EQ1, and so on were shells of what was to come. As good as these games were they needed structure and story.
You have utterly failed to understand the special sauce of early MMOs.
Story in MMORPGs is toxic. Lore of course is good, but 'structure' and personal story are a large part of what came to kill the genre.
A game like classic EQ thrived on saying here is the world, go make your mark. Get famous, or don't. Emergent gameplay was king.
This just isn't something people can be taught that didn't play MMOs prior to WoW. Its something they will have to experience for themselves with Pantheon.
Your both right, I apologize !
I have to admit, I came on board during the second generation.
You people really loved the first gen mmo's.......Good for you.
Y'know, I did. But I also loved games that followed. I spent a long time in Aion, a game that is the opposite of classic EQ, for example. And I had a great time.
Buuuut... yeah. Unstructured themepark (as in what classic EQ was) + no personal story and manufactured direction + letting players make up their own social rules and respecting emergent play is my thing.
But I do respect and appreciate the good will and willingness to listen that you are showing Del
I think there needs to be a middle ground. As I remember those early days, people used to mock everquest (even while loving it) by calling it neverquest. There really was a yearning for goals besides just basic grouping and leveling. When the epic weapons quests came people really loved it.
IMO just like VG,he does not have the manpower or budget or time to make a really amazing Tripel A game. I expect a lot of the same old same old,just another typical VG build and likely far less than that.
I have not seen a single creative developer since Tanaka and FFXi.The aformentioned FFXIV was a rushed FFXi replacement with a design that is too much like Wow only of course far better with better graphics and more content mechanics.
I am sick to death of linear questing and this whole cheap lazy Item Level loot idea is godly terrible.
Everything that comes out lately has looked even cheaper and faster production than 1990's games,aside from FFFXIV which although imo not that good looks at least professionally done,unlike the recent advertising of Smedley's crap Hero's Song.
Want to know what is real funny and sad at the same time?Most serious mmorpg gamer's think Pantheon is likely the best possible game coming out,yet this site is panhandling complete garbage on us everyday whilst barely taking notice of Pantheon.Example we will see a constant push down our throats from Crowfall advertising.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
You have utterly failed to understand the special sauce of early MMOs.
Story in MMORPGs is toxic. Lore of course is good, but 'structure' and personal story are a large part of what came to kill the genre.
A game like classic EQ thrived on saying here is the world, go make your mark. Get famous, or don't. Emergent gameplay was king.
Story in itself isn't toxic, the real problem is the railroading: the game constantly telling you exact what to do and how. Another problem is the focus of the story: earlier the focus was on groups and guilds but now they only take about you as the savior of the world. MMOs have gotten the same messiah complex as the Matrix movies.
I think MMOs can keep the story but need to figure out better ways to tell that story. Having problems with just a single solution makes the games predictable. The real difference between pen and paper roleplaying and computer RPGs is that in PnP you always have a multiple solutions you can take and failure is always an option. That gives a very different feeling when you outsmart the game then when everyone just do exactly the same stuff because the game tells you to do it.
Having problems with multiple solution is harder then just making a railroaded questline but it actually isn't harder then dynamic event chains like GW2.
MMOs need to stop telling us exactly what to do, Pantheon is doing that one way but it isn't the only way and blaming the story just because MMOs are so lousy telling it is the same that saying that PvP always will suck in MMOs because most MMOs have PvE mechanics and frankly does a lousy job with it. That certainly don't mean you cant make an awesome PvP MMO, just that you can't re-use the exact same mechanics as all other games but having a very different type of gameplay for it.
We do need games like Pantheon, and not exactly just because it will use a lot of oldschool mechanics but more because it actually tries a lot of new ideas as well. The perception mechanics to mention one have huge potential. We need MMOs that tries different ideas and offer other difficulty and content then everyone else. At the moment are more or less all MMO competing with the same gameplay for the same group of players and while they might be the largest group I think it still makes the genre a lot smaller then it should be.
I think there needs to be a middle ground. As I remember those early days, people used to mock everquest (even while loving it) by calling it neverquest. There really was a yearning for goals besides just basic grouping and leveling. When the epic weapons quests came people really loved it.
I agree with you in general, there does need to be goals beyond levels and maybe EQ didn't have quite enough in the way of quests at first, but I'd say by Velious it was about right. You didn't just go up to every npc expecting a quest. You might get a greeting, maybe a story, and then occasionally a quest which may or may not have been very rewarding beyond the lore.
I think they achieved a pretty good balance and I really wouldn't want to have the expectation that every npc I run across is going to offer me a quest because that will inevitably lead to mundane tasks and make questing in general seem trite.
I think there needs to be a middle ground. As I remember those early days, people used to mock everquest (even while loving it) by calling it neverquest. There really was a yearning for goals besides just basic grouping and leveling. When the epic weapons quests came people really loved it.
I agree with you in general, there does need to be goals beyond levels and maybe EQ didn't have quite enough in the way of quests at first, but I'd say by Velious it was about right. You didn't just go up to every npc expecting a quest. You might get a greeting, maybe a story, and then occasionally a quest which may or may not have been very rewarding beyond the lore.
I think they achieved a pretty good balance and I really wouldn't want to have the expectation that every npc I run across is going to offer me a quest because that will inevitably lead to mundane tasks and make questing in general seem trite.
I think this shows a major conflict. You see, even in the early days, EQ was crammed full of quests. Most people simply didn't know about half of them because there were no exclamation points overhead and no quest logs. I mean, there were tons of quests in EQ. The problem, for most people, was that most of these quests didn't hand them some amazing item reward. So, most people didn't bother with them. The people who knew about them didn't bother to tell others since there was no amazing reward, and the less explorer types never knew they existed.
Which leads to the conflict... People don't seem to want quest hubs with markers and gear handed to them like candy from quest rewards. Yet, on the flip side, as EQ proves, people also don't bother with quests unless the aforementioned markers and rewards reach out to them.
People did seem to love the epic quest system. But, not every quest can be a globe-trotting, legendary epic. And, how many people would have bothered with those long, challenging quests at all if they hadn't awarded the most amazing item in the game for their class?
I personally think Everquest had an incredibly well-done quest system. It had everything from the trivial errand quests in the cities(some even as trivial as running mail or delivering notes from one NPC to another), to mysterious dropped-item quests, to large adventure quests(ex. the Wizard quest to get Ice Comet, class armor lines, etc.), and all the way up to the well-remembered epics.
Everywhere you went in EQ there were quests, but they weren't advertised and often went unnoticed/misunderstood. Yet, the people who hated WoW's over-the-top system, are often the same ones who mock EQ as having no quests, which means they were unwilling to discover/figure out the subtle ones.
It's one or the other. You either have to explore and discover quests or they are handed to you on a silver platter. The "middle ground" was attempted and ended up being things like dynamic quests, such as in GW2, WAR, FF14, Rift, etc., to answer that question. I personally find this to be more akin to the 'silver platter' system. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the dynamic, public event type stuff, but it is a fairly shallow system.
The only way I've seen, to date, that truly has the potential to be something "better" is staff-run events and quests handed out by GMs. In fact, the last time I played EQ2, a GM actually was handing out a quest in the middle of a random farm for a house-item reward. It was cool to see that they were still doing that in the EQ games. This was something EQ excelled at. I mean EQ had these GM events/world bosses/quest-givers. Literally, EQ had every kind of quest you could imagine, and yet people still bash it as "NeverQuest".
So, I guess the question is, what do people actually want? It doesn't seem they even know.
I think it was bashed as Neverquest at the time because there wasn't the terrible Quest Hub MMO in existence yet to compare how bad a themepark questing on rails game is to a more sandbox-like experience.
If there would have been, I don't think you would have seen the gripe nearly as much except as a play on words/in jest with the name "Everquest" for many of the reasons Lokero mentioned.
Early mmos such as UO, EQ1, and so on were shells of what was to come. As good as these games were they needed structure and story.
You have utterly failed to understand the special sauce of early MMOs.
Story in MMORPGs is toxic. Lore of course is good, but 'structure' and personal story are a large part of what came to kill the genre.
A game like classic EQ thrived on saying here is the world, go make your mark. Get famous, or don't. Emergent gameplay was king.
I don't think games like SWG or DAOC would have been worse off by having story elements, as it wasn't the lack of story that made them good games. If you listen to Raph as an example lack of story wasn't a design decision as much as it was a budgetary restraint ( as well as something he states as a major failing on their (sony's) part.)
In short I completely disagree with this assessment. The problem isn't story features it's a singular focus on them.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I don't think he was saying a backstory, or lore or "story features" are toxic, but that the linear story that dictates everything you do and everywhere you go that is the problem.
Gamers are not starving. They have more games to play than ever.
It is the oldschool MMORPG players who are starving. I count myself among them. However, there is not so many of us which is why there is a very little chance any "big game" will be made for us. There is not enough profit to be made on the relatively small crowd which is reluctant to touch cash shop with a stick.
MMORPGs are going back to niche where they belong. Pantheon will be a niche game, not a huge one.
While I think there is a possibility that one of the indie games becomes so great that it attracts large number of people outside of the traditional MMORPG crowd, I believe the possibility is rather low.
Gamers aren't technically starving, because they have so many flavors of bread and water, they don't even know or can't even remember what quality games are.
There is a renaissance in gaming headed our way, and when they get that steak their eyes will be opened.
That's assuming that Pantheon is a steak and not a chick nugget. It's also a large assumption that that chicken nugget will ever arrive.
Well, I wont complain if Pantheon will be a success.
As somebody
who played alone (not solo, ALONE ON THE SERVER) on the european
Vanguard server for months I'll already be happy if theres enough people
to play with, though.
When was this because I played from beta to day of close along with others.
Well, I wont complain if Pantheon will be a success.
As somebody
who played alone (not solo, ALONE ON THE SERVER) on the european
Vanguard server for months I'll already be happy if theres enough people
to play with, though.
When was this because I played from beta to day of close along with others.
You are exaggerating.
Or it might be that the european server was less populated than the american.
Well, I wont complain if Pantheon will be a success.
As somebody
who played alone (not solo, ALONE ON THE SERVER) on the european
Vanguard server for months I'll already be happy if theres enough people
to play with, though.
When was this because I played from beta to day of close along with others.
You are exaggerating.
Or it might be that the european server was less populated than the american.
That might be so but I played everyday or most days. Never once was I or anyone else I know the only player on the server at any given time.
I imagine this game with be very much like Vanguard. VG was a great game. It literally had everything that you could hope for in an mmo. However, it had very niche and had a very small player base.
I don't have a crystal ball. However, if I was a guessing man. I'd say Pantheon won't turn out much different.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
EQ was Neverquest not because it lacked quests - the majority of quests were 'not worth' doing. The xp rewards were minimal and the item rewards for the most part useless (it there was an item reward at all).
At one point I did one of the mail runs (to Feerot I think) and it took roughly half an hour (as a bard with speed song). I got a few silver and 100? exp. It was much more rewarding to get a group or even circle kite for that time and end up way ahead of the game reward wise. In later expansions they had some neat multi-stage quests that were worth doing (epics and coldain prayer shawl immediately leap to mind).
People will take the path of least resistance. If it is more efficient to get a group and camp mobs - guess what? People will group and camp mobs. If it is more efficient to solo - people will solo. That's just human nature.
EQ was Neverquest not because it lacked quests - the majority of quests were 'not worth' doing. The xp rewards were minimal and the item rewards for the most part useless (it there was an item reward at all).
At one point I did one of the mail runs (to Feerot I think) and it took roughly half an hour (as a bard with speed song). I got a few silver and 100? exp. It was much more rewarding to get a group or even circle kite for that time and end up way ahead of the game reward wise. In later expansions they had some neat multi-stage quests that were worth doing (epics and coldain prayer shawl immediately leap to mind).
People will take the path of least resistance. If it is more efficient to get a group and camp mobs - guess what? People will group and camp mobs. If it is more efficient to solo - people will solo. That's just human nature.
Your last point is particularly accurate. However I would just like to clarify, when EQ came out, it was not using the term "quest" in the way that we currently interpret quests in MMO's. When they said Quest, they meant in the literal sense of the word, as in "a journey made in search of something" or "a long and difficult effort to find or do something" (per Merriam-Webster).
Point being, getting your buddies together to go down deep into a dungeon and find some phat lewtz was a quest. Unfortunately we've been poisoned by WoW and "modern" mmo's that Quest = "Task to be completed given by an NPC".
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
EQ was Neverquest not because it lacked quests - the majority of quests were 'not worth' doing. The xp rewards were minimal and the item rewards for the most part useless (it there was an item reward at all).
At one point I did one of the mail runs (to Feerot I think) and it took roughly half an hour (as a bard with speed song). I got a few silver and 100? exp. It was much more rewarding to get a group or even circle kite for that time and end up way ahead of the game reward wise. In later expansions they had some neat multi-stage quests that were worth doing (epics and coldain prayer shawl immediately leap to mind).
People will take the path of least resistance. If it is more efficient to get a group and camp mobs - guess what? People will group and camp mobs. If it is more efficient to solo - people will solo. That's just human nature.
Your last point is particularly accurate. However I would just like to clarify, when EQ came out, it was not using the term "quest" in the way that we currently interpret quests in MMO's. When they said Quest, they meant in the literal sense of the word, as in "a journey made in search of something" or "a long and difficult effort to find or do something" (per Merriam-Webster).
Point being, getting your buddies together to go down deep into a dungeon and find some phat lewtz was a quest. Unfortunately we've been poisoned by WoW and "modern" mmo's that Quest = "Task to be completed given by an NPC".
Hrimnir is right,
Quests should be long and hard. NOT to be confused with chain quest where you can't add other players to help because their not up to part 4 of the chain !
The kill 5 rat quest should be limited to 1-5 level so you can figure out your dynamics.
The way Everquest did their very long quests were great and I still enjoyed doing those legendary was it Everquest 2 that required full groups and guild help to complete and it was really worth doing.
Other small tasks are not really quests not in the way you would normally associate the word to in books and older games. Questing to end game was not a thing you could do in these older games but I think WoW introduced this. Even FFXI did not have tasks that allowed you to level to max it had more weighty quests like getting your second job or opening a job.
EQ was Neverquest not because it lacked quests - the majority of quests were 'not worth' doing. The xp rewards were minimal and the item rewards for the most part useless (it there was an item reward at all).
At one point I did one of the mail runs (to Feerot I think) and it took roughly half an hour (as a bard with speed song). I got a few silver and 100? exp. It was much more rewarding to get a group or even circle kite for that time and end up way ahead of the game reward wise. In later expansions they had some neat multi-stage quests that were worth doing (epics and coldain prayer shawl immediately leap to mind).
People will take the path of least resistance. If it is more efficient to get a group and camp mobs - guess what? People will group and camp mobs. If it is more efficient to solo - people will solo. That's just human nature.
Your last point is particularly accurate. However I would just like to clarify, when EQ came out, it was not using the term "quest" in the way that we currently interpret quests in MMO's. When they said Quest, they meant in the literal sense of the word, as in "a journey made in search of something" or "a long and difficult effort to find or do something" (per Merriam-Webster).
Point being, getting your buddies together to go down deep into a dungeon and find some phat lewtz was a quest. Unfortunately we've been poisoned by WoW and "modern" mmo's that Quest = "Task to be completed given by an NPC".
It's wasn't WOW that bought us that 'quest by npc' it was EQ2 which came out before WOW. Some people like to blame everything on WOW but forget it was EQ2 that came first.
I would like to go back to the way EQ was by saying certain words to an NPC. An updated version of that system would be very interesting.
Everquest 2 came out a few days earlier . Right that made all the difference. How long was either game in development then? 4th and 23rd November 2004 . I doubt those few days made much difference as one went on to draw far more gamers and hence had a wider influence than EQ2. Naturally people associate the quest style to WoW.
Everquest 2 came out a few days earlier . Right that made all the difference. How long was either game in development then?
It was two weeks earlier but the fact remains it came out before WOW [mod edit] it was EQ2 that first bought us the npc character over head questing system.
No other way you can gloss it over, fact is EQ2 came out before WOW so do one numty.
Goodness you're rude there was no need to call me thick but I should return that compliment as a 2 week release between two games of such differing popularity is not at all significant as one game went on to gather millions by its side. It is natural anyone would associate the overhead quest indicator with WoW and not Everquest 2.
If you find that objectionable take that up with WoW's popularity .
Comments
Your both right, I apologize !
I have to admit, I came on board during the second generation.
You people really loved the first gen mmo's.......Good for you.
Y'know, I did. But I also loved games that followed. I spent a long time in Aion, a game that is the opposite of classic EQ, for example. And I had a great time.
Buuuut... yeah. Unstructured themepark (as in what classic EQ was) + no personal story and manufactured direction + letting players make up their own social rules and respecting emergent play is my thing.
But I do respect and appreciate the good will and willingness to listen that you are showing Del
I expect a lot of the same old same old,just another typical VG build and likely far less than that.
I have not seen a single creative developer since Tanaka and FFXi.The aformentioned FFXIV was a rushed FFXi replacement with a design that is too much like Wow only of course far better with better graphics and more content mechanics.
I am sick to death of linear questing and this whole cheap lazy Item Level loot idea is godly terrible.
Everything that comes out lately has looked even cheaper and faster production than 1990's games,aside from FFFXIV which although imo not that good looks at least professionally done,unlike the recent advertising of Smedley's crap Hero's Song.
Want to know what is real funny and sad at the same time?Most serious mmorpg gamer's think Pantheon is likely the best possible game coming out,yet this site is panhandling complete garbage on us everyday whilst barely taking notice of Pantheon.Example we will see a constant push down our throats from Crowfall advertising.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Another problem is the focus of the story: earlier the focus was on groups and guilds but now they only take about you as the savior of the world. MMOs have gotten the same messiah complex as the Matrix movies.
I think MMOs can keep the story but need to figure out better ways to tell that story. Having problems with just a single solution makes the games predictable. The real difference between pen and paper roleplaying and computer RPGs is that in PnP you always have a multiple solutions you can take and failure is always an option. That gives a very different feeling when you outsmart the game then when everyone just do exactly the same stuff because the game tells you to do it.
Having problems with multiple solution is harder then just making a railroaded questline but it actually isn't harder then dynamic event chains like GW2.
MMOs need to stop telling us exactly what to do, Pantheon is doing that one way but it isn't the only way and blaming the story just because MMOs are so lousy telling it is the same that saying that PvP always will suck in MMOs because most MMOs have PvE mechanics and frankly does a lousy job with it. That certainly don't mean you cant make an awesome PvP MMO, just that you can't re-use the exact same mechanics as all other games but having a very different type of gameplay for it.
We do need games like Pantheon, and not exactly just because it will use a lot of oldschool mechanics but more because it actually tries a lot of new ideas as well. The perception mechanics to mention one have huge potential. We need MMOs that tries different ideas and offer other difficulty and content then everyone else. At the moment are more or less all MMO competing with the same gameplay for the same group of players and while they might be the largest group I think it still makes the genre a lot smaller then it should be.
I think they achieved a pretty good balance and I really wouldn't want to have the expectation that every npc I run across is going to offer me a quest because that will inevitably lead to mundane tasks and make questing in general seem trite.
Which leads to the conflict... People don't seem to want quest hubs with markers and gear handed to them like candy from quest rewards. Yet, on the flip side, as EQ proves, people also don't bother with quests unless the aforementioned markers and rewards reach out to them.
People did seem to love the epic quest system. But, not every quest can be a globe-trotting, legendary epic. And, how many people would have bothered with those long, challenging quests at all if they hadn't awarded the most amazing item in the game for their class?
I personally think Everquest had an incredibly well-done quest system. It had everything from the trivial errand quests in the cities(some even as trivial as running mail or delivering notes from one NPC to another), to mysterious dropped-item quests, to large adventure quests(ex. the Wizard quest to get Ice Comet, class armor lines, etc.), and all the way up to the well-remembered epics.
Everywhere you went in EQ there were quests, but they weren't advertised and often went unnoticed/misunderstood.
Yet, the people who hated WoW's over-the-top system, are often the same ones who mock EQ as having no quests, which means they were unwilling to discover/figure out the subtle ones.
It's one or the other. You either have to explore and discover quests or they are handed to you on a silver platter.
The "middle ground" was attempted and ended up being things like dynamic quests, such as in GW2, WAR, FF14, Rift, etc., to answer that question. I personally find this to be more akin to the 'silver platter' system. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the dynamic, public event type stuff, but it is a fairly shallow system.
The only way I've seen, to date, that truly has the potential to be something "better" is staff-run events and quests handed out by GMs. In fact, the last time I played EQ2, a GM actually was handing out a quest in the middle of a random farm for a house-item reward. It was cool to see that they were still doing that in the EQ games.
This was something EQ excelled at. I mean EQ had these GM events/world bosses/quest-givers. Literally, EQ had every kind of quest you could imagine, and yet people still bash it as "NeverQuest".
So, I guess the question is, what do people actually want? It doesn't seem they even know.
If there would have been, I don't think you would have seen the gripe nearly as much except as a play on words/in jest with the name "Everquest" for many of the reasons Lokero mentioned.
In short I completely disagree with this assessment. The problem isn't story features it's a singular focus on them.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Don't think your opinions seem different at all.
When was this because I played from beta to day of close along with others.
You are exaggerating.
That might be so but I played everyday or most days. Never once was I or anyone else I know the only player on the server at any given time.
It's just funny to me how much, unlike some other games I have played, WoW promotes each player as Captain Awesomesauce.
I really preferred EQ, which allowed me to make up my own role as best I could.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I don't have a crystal ball. However, if I was a guessing man. I'd say Pantheon won't turn out much different.
Maybe the NPCs were giving you the Yelper Special!
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
At one point I did one of the mail runs (to Feerot I think) and it took roughly half an hour (as a bard with speed song). I got a few silver and 100? exp. It was much more rewarding to get a group or even circle kite for that time and end up way ahead of the game reward wise. In later expansions they had some neat multi-stage quests that were worth doing (epics and coldain prayer shawl immediately leap to mind).
People will take the path of least resistance. If it is more efficient to get a group and camp mobs - guess what? People will group and camp mobs. If it is more efficient to solo - people will solo. That's just human nature.
Your last point is particularly accurate. However I would just like to clarify, when EQ came out, it was not using the term "quest" in the way that we currently interpret quests in MMO's. When they said Quest, they meant in the literal sense of the word, as in "a journey made in search of something" or "a long and difficult effort to find or do something" (per Merriam-Webster).
Point being, getting your buddies together to go down deep into a dungeon and find some phat lewtz was a quest. Unfortunately we've been poisoned by WoW and "modern" mmo's that Quest = "Task to be completed given by an NPC".
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Hrimnir is right,
Quests should be long and hard. NOT to be confused with chain quest where you can't add other players to help because their not up to part 4 of the chain !
The kill 5 rat quest should be limited to 1-5 level so you can figure out your dynamics.
Other small tasks are not really quests not in the way you would normally associate the word to in books and older games. Questing to end game was not a thing you could do in these older games but I think WoW introduced this. Even FFXI did not have tasks that allowed you to level to max it had more weighty quests like getting your second job or opening a job.
It's wasn't WOW that bought us that 'quest by npc' it was EQ2 which came out before WOW. Some people like to blame everything on WOW but forget it was EQ2 that came first.
I would like to go back to the way EQ was by saying certain words to an NPC. An updated version of that system would be very interesting.
It was two weeks earlier but the fact remains it came out before WOW [mod edit] it was EQ2 that first bought us the npc character over head questing system.
No other way you can gloss it over, fact is EQ2 came out before WOW so do one numty.
If you find that objectionable take that up with WoW's popularity .