Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
First of all, a mission or content in the game can become unforgettable in a good and bad way. In this case, what you are looking for is to impact the players in a good way, so that they will connect and attract much more for the game.
To achieve this, the environment and the story must awaken feelings in the players, these feelings can be of different types, joy, emotion, sadness, anger, betrayal, love, attraction, among others. That is what will make them unforgettable. However, what can cause a feeling in one person may not cause it in another, and that is why you must follow certain points.
1.- Know your target audience and create profiles, in turn to design content and successful stories.
2 .- Use situations that culturally, or by the human nature can cause emotions, to give an example: that you find an orphanage where care for abandoned and sick childrens, you help them get food etc., have a small dinner where you can enjoy with them and they will show you their appreciation, the next day someone arrives and kill everyone.
In that little story you can find:
a.- Characters with whom you can easily relate (children).
b.- Situation of abandonment, and illness in them, which makes players easily identify with them, especially as children, and want to help them.
c.- Help mission, to make players feel a sense of satisfaction and solidarity towards those in need.
d.- A dinner to make the player feel that his efforts were worth it, with some beautiful or emotional scenes.
e.- Tragic loss of everything at the hands of a third party.
All this will generate a feeling of hatred and annoyance towards that third person.
In the same way, stories can be created to generate different types of emotions. It must be a step by step, a plot that will be slowly created where, at each step, the players are identified in one way or another with the mission, so that little by little, they feel within it.
Another thing that can greatly help create an unforgettable story is music, which in many cases is forgotten. Reducing it only to a generic background music. When the situation merits, music or songs unique to that scene, in order to make the feelings of the players flow even more.
Finally and changing the subject a bit, I read a comment in this discussion, which talked about unique titles. I want to tell you an idea that I never developed 14 years ago, when I was creating a private online ragnarok server. "Unique Events", these are events that are only held once in the server's history, a type of event that has its own introduction history and which may even temporarily or permanently affect the topography of an area. They are long events in missions, and of short temporal duration. For example, it lasts 2 weeks, but you need at least 20 hours of continuous play to finish it. The event will take you through different and very varied missions, which you will have to do some individually and others in groups, manufacture certain materials, etc. etc. Some of these could lead you to collect certain event material from certain dungeons, or even temporarily modify 1 dungeons, which will now have an extra extension of much greater difficulty.
To give an example, if it is an event such as "attack of a powerful monster" that must be passed in a group of 6 or 12 people. It could be carried out in a modified dungeon of an existing one or specially designed for this purpose. Where they must pass different tests or riddles, and not only strength of the characters (to make it more fair). When you defeat the final boss or finish the mission, you will be rewarded in 2 ways. 1.- the first party to finish it. 2.- all other pt that finish it. The first pt to finish it will take a unique title, and unique equipment or clothing. That can be only visual, or slightly higher than existing ones. While the rest of the parties, they will get another title, which by having everyone who passed it, will be not so unique, but it will be your achievement for having managed to finish it, in addition to some clothes or equipment, which can be only visual, or of normal strength.
That's it, thank you very much for reading.
Basically.. something FUN... enjoyable.. and you can do a bit here and there, and not feel it is a grind to do just that one quest. Also, if it's too mundane... folks probably won't do it much, or talk about it so other folks, even NEW folks will want to do said questline.
I'm hoping this is the case, there will be many different kind of quest lines that will intrigue just about everyone possible.. I know not everything will please everyone.. but i'm sure it can come close with the right folks developing said quests.
A memorable quest to me is one involving a more personal connected story. To learn ones personality through the vocabulary used and actions of a character, then in turn, also learning ones story through their eyes, or perspective. A NPC can come off as boring and fake (as they are), but with a bit of in depth feeling and passion (of which comes out through an authors passion to write the story) makes it real. After all, its the writer behind the character that makes it great, not the meaningless words that give you a task.
An event I will never forget was one created within a roleplay guild I was once apart of. We had went on an adventure towards an old castle, one of which Greystone (the guild leader) had birth rights, but had been over run by ghouls and poor outcasts for many years. We we're only just departing from the main city towards a lesser known dock in the neighboring land. The people in that land we're very poor, and bandits typically took refuge in the area, but it was the closest place to the main city the mercenary ship was willing to land, that of which would take us across the seas. It was a quite jaunt for so time until finally reaching a small run down town just a couple more miles from the ship. The villagers all looked either sick or angry and sad, but along side the villagers there seemed to be thugs at nearly every corner just hating it up with other thugs. As a group we decided, as a wealthy target being among our ranks, we'd better take another route, rather than strutting straight through town. Even having taken a more back road like trek, it didn't keep us from running into trouble. We stumbled, quite suddenly, across a camp of bandits. It took all of us (rolling every move) to fight them off. Our group suffered minor injuries, where as the most of the bandits fell to mortal wounds, with the last two fleeing at the last moment. (although this was all DM improv, the imagination and team work we had together while chatting constantly was so much fun.) As we reached the dock it was starting to turn to dusk. Making camp we waited until the ship was meant to arrive the next morning. ((This event alone incited so much joy of creating stories with others so much, that I drew pictures of what I imagined in my notebook while in class the next day. We ended up taking an In-game screenshot together on the dock and used it on our guilds web page. Sadly however, soon there after the GM ran into IRL issues and the guild fell into activity before finally disbanding. The one and only event that guild ever achieved still brings a smile to my face.))
What I believe made it so unforgettable was the people. Being able to enjoy something we all liked together allowed us to get to learn about each other, our created characters, and invest in each other. Although, the unfinished story and mystery as to the GM's disappearance may also factor into why this event, above all others, has become so unforgettable.
Difficulty. The most challenging quests are the only ones that stay in my memory over years. Its what I had really apply some effort to that makes it memorable.
All raids have been memorable to me purely because of much I had to practice and work at each one.
My most memorable NPC encounter was running through the Southern Plains of Karana and coming face to Toe with a Cyclops. The sheer size and scale of the cyclops was amazing to see when I was such a low level character.
For early level questing one of my favorite zones for the because of the chaos that always seemed present was Near the woodelf city in the zone of Crushbone. The constant orc NPC dominance in this area for the low levels trying to farm it caused constant NPC trains and group/player wipes. It was probably the first disdain I developed for an NPC that caused me to return at a high level and envoke some revenge on Emperor Crush and his Ambassador DVinn.
I'll say this for EQ the balance in the game between danger and safety was well done. While you could kite and or escape a lot of danger by zoning, just the constant fear of random high level NPCs roaming zones and the open world PvP aspects of the game created such great exploration memories.
Frankly I think that the path to reach high level content was so rewarding that once max level the mystic of questing, raiding etc wore off and I truly believe the game was done correctly because of this. It created such an immersive feeling.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
Also had the effect of really making my abilities feel earned.
The way you gather your Allies and attack with a combined force to slowly aproche the enemy citadel and defete the main boss was just Epic.
And no quest reward were better then The Music of the final Cutscene.
Another thing Guild Wars 2 did well were the Open World chain Quest events.
A group of raiders is attacking a Farm.
You kill them and drive them off.
Now you look for clues to find their hideout.
You find then and go in to kill the remaining bandits.
At the end a the Bandit Boss comes out and a Boss fight ensures.
After you win a couple NPC guards of the same level come up.
After some time they will be attacked by new bandits.
If no Players help then the Bandits win and take the hideout.
A bit later they start attacking nearby farms and villiges.
A circle of activitys
Now you could use this in many different ways to make interesting Chain Quests.
The Witcher 3 also has some aswome quests.
The way the Character Talk and jab at each other. The Way that sometimes all the choises you have are bad and you can only minimize the dmg.
Sometimes Evil wins and good People die. Thats just the way the world works.
Both However come down to 2 things.
Good Writing and Good Voice Acting.
Also the best antagonists are those who do evil for good reason. Those you can relate to.
I know AoC will not have Many voices NPCs as its really Expensive.
But i hope that as Money flows in during launch more Quests will be voiced
Ah good memories.
On the Negativ site
Escord quests have allready been mentioned but reading the quest really isnt a thing for me anymore.
For me Quest NPCs have to talk or i cant get immersed into them anymore.
Bad Voice acting is a quick way to drive of your player base.
Gold coins and Gear from Beasts.
Like how the hell did this Wolf boss drop a full plate Amor?
At least have Bosses Guard loot piles for immersion.
Silkroad players unite!!!! We know the caravan game inside and out. Hunters, thieves, traders. Guild trade runs and guild heists!
Also the quests i remember most were cool puzzles. Like the first treasure maps in eso.
how characters, who are sound of mind, completely snap when they are pushed to their extremes. It makes for memorable content.
In WoW it was the Sunfire Peninsula daily quests. I remember doing those monotonous quests then one day the area changed or upgraded if you will. Vendors showed up and had new items to offer. I thought it was great that my doing these meaningless quests helped improve the area for everyone.
The other type of quest that was most memorable was the public quest in Warhammer Online. They were timed events where players could run up and join in the fun. Rewards were given based on your participation. They were quick quests and a great way to get players all in the same area all trying to accomplish the same goal through teamwork.
This is something Star Wars The Old Republic MMO did well and WOW Classic didnt.
SWTOR Quest chains were always interesting because every part had a story that kept building on is itself mainly because of key interact able NPC's that you meet along a quest chain that were voice acted and you also had options to converse with different outcomes. You flirt with them and romance them or be cheeky and enrage them. Now this was memorable as the cheeky banter and romancing was comical, but also you choice of outcome mattered in some instances if you got rewards or not.
Even though AOC will not have voice acting, it doesn't mean you cant have optional outcomes and cheeky banter to make quest more than just go here collect this or kill them or switch that type quests.
WOW CLASSIC Just about every quest was a constant chore of running backwards and forwards over places you were just at to collect 10 skins or kill x amount of monsters. And that was it. Making quests a chore to make levelling take a long time is not a great way to go about it.
Are there any raids or events that you'll never forget? What made them unforgettable?
Raids are memorable because of bosses having mechanics and room mechanics that have to be worked out as a group in order to beat it with a degree of trial and error. If you just have a boss that has 2 or 3 attacks and pretty much stands there with no additional room mechanics other than a pack mob of npcs to fight, the fight is tedious and each boss is nothing more than a reskin of the previous boss.
I literally don't have a single memorable quest experience that is positive in any MMO outside of DDO. I only say that DDOs questing was positive because 100% of the content is technically a part of a quest outside of crafting. I just flat hate quests. I have been hating quests my whole life, and I don't think AoC will change that.
Raids:
First got into raiding in WOTLK. I have such fond memories. I got into it right before ulduar. I remember got the Armageddon from 25man naxx. It was my first ever big boy piece of loot in a game. Then ulduar came out, and I fell in love with raids. They were cool to me before, but in ulduar you could trigger the hard modes. I loved it. I remember my guild was just a 10 man crew and we could only down the first 3 bosses. I would wait for everyone to go offline, and pug the 25-man or the 4th-7th boss in secret. I was hooked. Then trial of the crusader came out and was a let down. I have not had my heart in WOW since. I currently do Savage raids in FFXIV when I have a raiding mood. I like FFXIV for raiding over WOW just because I have the right friends in FFXIV. Savage raids are a blast. Very mechanically dense, and take a good deal of time to learn. I look forward to the new fights every patch.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
1. It is personal to my class ( class quests )or there is a choice in the outcome and or reward.
Raid that I wont forger:
1.Hard mode encounters Ulduar during progression. Also the epic scale of the raid itself was pretty cool. The mechanics of the fights and the way some of them were triggered was great. The epic size of the raid itself was awesome too.
Hard to solve quests and quests with great rewards are memorable for me. The most memorable quests for me were hatchling and wolf quests in Lineage 2.
Are there any raids or events that you'll never forget? What made them unforgettable?
Castle sieges. Situations need a lot of teamwork makes it unforgettable for me.
As for event/raid(if I may add, arena): For me, finding a game within a game often leads to hours, months, and most likely lost years of my life playing the side games. One of my favorite, which makes want to reinstall SWtOR for Huttball just thinking about the good times. Rules were: there are no rules. Static poison pits, incinerator plates on catwalks were obstacles that you could use offensively or defensively. Trying to stay on the catwalk with the ball was a very difficult with all the knockbacks from abilities. SWtOR had lots of push or pull type abilities combined with stuns you could REALLY make someone have a bad day. If you used the static features in someone's death the announcer would comment on your kill most likely. Respawn points were behind the goal lines. So killing the other team often sent them right back into your path if you were trying to score. You could throw the ball in two ways much like AoC action/tab system, you could target aoe and hope for your target to run to location(predict where he was going) or tab target to his standing location(which he might move away from the ball and be intercepted). I really miss that game, my beef at the time was the inability to specifically queue for that arena. One could queue all evening and never get the particular arena you were after. =(
I wouldn't want yall to delay for an arena or event like this but maybe in the Tulnar expansion something like this could happen as the Tulnar passtime sport.
Thank you Intrepid Studios~
Lineage 2 noblesse quest:
Why?
Because to get the title of "Noblesse" you had to get the guild together to kill raid bosses/monsters etc etc for your quest chain.
Why they should help you?
The Noblesse title provided the ability to buff other members with Noblesse.
+ special abilities (example : teleport to locations that others can't) good for checking enemy position and raid bosses availability etc.
Lineage 2 second and third professions
During that chain quest I've learned the lore of your race.
And after the long chain of quests you actually felt why you deserve the title and the new skills and abilities.
Apart from that, I really enjoyed group-based objectives. Doing quests with others is always more fun, and I think a system where you could share quests, like in WoW, would complement the mentor system and make cooperative play even better.
Unique Content makes said Content very memorable. Sometimes cool. Sometimes spooky. Sometimes wholesome. And i am usually a Sucker for doing Quests that lead to "good Endings" for the NPC's i am doing them for.
Find someone missing.
Prevent a Plague to break out or a Bomb to go off in a beloved City or so.
Making tiny Ingame-Children smile by making them think i am an Adventurer out to save the World and not just some greedy Murderhobo out for Loot that might drop. (lol)
I have many Nostalgia-Memories from Quests of good old Worst of Warcraft. Vanilla WoW. When WoW was still good and maybe some Quests admittedly from the Times of BfA or even cringier into the Present. (hahaah)
One Questchain that stuck with me a long Time was from the WoW Expansion "Legion".
We were in a Landscape with a Mana-addicted NPC called "Runas" or so. He succumbed to his Addiction in the End and became a Hollow Shell of his former Self. But i could feel for the poor, doomed Bro all the time.
Sometimes it's sad Quests. Sometimes it's wholesome Quests. Sometimes we get our good End - and sometime we struggle just to get a Tied/Undecided Ending against total Defeat and Destruction.
The more Love and Passion Developers put into their Quests - the better they usually end up being.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
-Sudden events.
a) Quest popping out even if you didn't trigger it. Guild Wars 2 does that perfectly.
b) Quest kills appearing suddenly. Landing near you or popping out of ground to shock you
c) Environment destruction. Imagine walking to quest location and ground suddenly collapses leading you into subterranean quest area.
-Long class specific quest. Shaman totem chain quests in WoW for example.
-Quests inspired by different genre of games.
Experiment with different genres within your mmo. For example, why not add horror elements into one of your quest? Maybe quest starts in haunted mansion and you are chased by ghosts.
-Sense of mystery in chain quests or at least something that triggers emotional reaction. Humor is welcome too.
In WoW, I had some memorable moments. One time, while questing with my gnome frost mage, a group of ten Horde players came to attack me. I jumped off a cliff and used the Slow Fall spell, and a few of them followed. Four of them ended up dying.
Another memorable WoW moment was when I was questing and a Horde orc warrior and I ended up helping each other with our quests. We even took breaks to eat and drink together so we could continue. In the end, we waved goodbye and went our separate ways.
In Ultima Online, had many memorable moments and they often involved planning attacks on players from rival cities. People would come along with me, and once we killed all the miners in Minoc and escaped with their ore and ingots, literally many dozens of full bags. I can't remember how many people I killed in the first two minutes.
EVE Online is special because any day can bring something memorable. I still remember fights from over ten years ago. This is likely because the game is player-driven, and unscripted interactions make everything feel more significant because every content is player drive, you are tagging along with people against people. Our brains tend to register these experiences more intensely, especially when survival is at stake.
Some big brain researchers and doctors studied why EVE has this and they finally found out why after many years of research. There is a presentation in youtube and the researcher gave a TED talk about it in the last Fanfest, I will summarize:
This is what they call as friendship machine, friendship is the best ship
It starts off with a few relatively simple walk and talk quests that both reinforce the importance of the two Zones (Stormwind and Elwynn) that you have already explored and also introduces the NEXT Zone (Redridge) to the player.
Then it sends the player to the elite area of the current zone (Westfall) and introduces them to the dungeon. It then introduces an escort quest which strongly encourages players to group up with other people in the zone to complete. It finally culminates with a journey into the dungeon (possibly with the players you just met) for a final confrontation with the main antagonist of the story up to this point and rewards the player with an iconic reward item that they will likely use will into their 30's.
The quest chain helps tell the story of FOUR zones. Introduces a major antagonist, reinforces the work that the player has already done in the prior zones AND introduces them to a completely new zone. It introduces them to a core gameplay element (grouping up) and then gradually eases the player into a group and encourages them to try and tackle a massive dungeon and confront the antagonist at the very end. Finally it provides the player with a powerful and iconic reward that they will use for a huge portion of their journey to max level.
That's how you make a great quest chain.
The first is "impressions". Walking into a Zone and being awed by it. For example first time in Hellfire Peninsula in Outland of the Burning Crusade WoW expansion. At the beginning of the first visit the player felt like they were on surface Mars, with lots of monsters to fight.
The second is various personal goals in leveling and questing.
The third being team work achievements such as being part of a raid that downs a powerful boss. With the fight being epic.
The quest revolved around slaying Baium, one of the most notorious and formidable raid bosses in the game. What made this quest so significant was the many layers of challenge tied to it. Baium was a low-frequency spawn, appearing only once every several days, which added to the already fierce competition among players. The raid was highly contested, as only the strongest guilds could hope to gain access to him during the small window of opportunity. (although it may have just been entry, I do not recall now)
Adding to the difficulty, Baium was located at the top of the Tower of Insolence, an almost unreachable place for solo players due to its remoteness and the powerful enemies along the way up multiple floor. Mobs that hit hard, chased you and chain stunned you.. Only the most organized and dedicated groups could ascend to his domain.
For guilds that were not at the very top of the server's power structure, it often took months of preparation, alliance-building, and strategizing to even attempt this quest. The long journey made the moment of completing the Baium quest even sweeter, marking it as a crowning achievement in a player's progression, and earning them a respected place within the game's world.
Took me 3-4 months from when I was leveled sufficently to try, to finally get the chance!
(which also raises the issue of re-spawn duaration and daily spawn time range)
Grrrrr.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)