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Make quests meaningful
Raise your hands if your tired of the grinding, killed 50 of those or 100 of them type quests. Ones that you do, and they don't give you a feeling of doing something important.
This is where I say make them meaningful.
Here is an example of what I mean, this of course is based of other games too.
Lets say you have a local mission in the town you call home, and they are asking for help. They need help feeding the homeless, and have a few more kids without families staying with them. You can do one of the following:
1. Just give money - small boost to your local standing and xp
2. Help in their kitchen and make food - medium boost to local standing and xp
3. Go out and hunt - and give them all you find - larger amount of local fame and xp
4. Find new homes for the homeless and the kids - huge amount of fame and xp
IMO this would make the quest you get from a place like a mission have more of a meaning.
In the top examples each one will give you something towards a bigger goal. Maybe if no one does these quest, you see a negative change in the area, and if you do said quests you see a positive change in the area. This would give the questing a lot more meaning, vs just running around doing them as fast as you can, just to gain more skill points and xp.
I could do more examples, but if you get what I mean, please add a few of your own.
lets talk about it.
Comments
IMO the best quests involve a narrative, either on their own or as part of an overarching narrative in the world. Again, these are time consuming to create, so the few that there are typically stand out. That being said, I don't think quests are particularly important for most MMO's; even the good quests. Simply because all they really do is add a bit of narrative sprinkling to make the world a little more lived in and minimal content for the players. But, if I wanted a more complex narrative, then an MMO isn't the place to get it as that isn't what they're designed for; if that is what I'm looking for, I would play an RPG or read a book.
I would prefer to see mostly simple quests in the world and allow the players to create the real stories in the meaningful conflict/cooperation the world should be providing, rather than some watered down attempt at storytelling in a format that typically doesn't do it well.
All quest in your node will benefit your node, even the "kill 50" quest, so in a way since it benefits you and the node it has meaning. I know, not the king you are referring to.
I also like chain quest, and think those could go a long ways to making a simple quest feel meaningful. Like "...now that you have returned with my stolen goods, several of my friends that have also been robbed know where the cache is. We would pay if you could bring it back,,." <super quick example.
I NEED ALL THE CHEESECAKES!!!
Gather 100 cheesecakes for the reward of 9001gold
My tavern will be caketastic!
Could also be part of crafting professions, like gathering and cooking food.
So, yes, I expect all of the examples in the OP to be available options for questing.
Although, I'm not sure that homes in adjacent/associated nodes would actually affect NPCs. Something similar should be available for homeless PCs.