MMO Weekly 26/05/09

Aloha, fellow travelers of the various virtual worlds, and welcome to the latest edition of MMO Weekly.  In this week's write-up, we'll explore the quests that make up a large part of our virtual existence.  All that killing of rats, wolf pups, boars, bears, and other virtual beasties has been a staple of our existence since the invention of the genre, and many players have found themselves wondering, “WTF is all this mindless killing all about?  Why does every town-dwelling NPC freakin' HATE the nearby wildlife?  I mean, they're just baby wild animals!”

Of course, when one considers the downright murderous tendencies of the NPCs, things get far worse.  Frequently, NPCs task players not with the killing of some nearby lizards, but with the extermination of an entire population of local gnolls, goblins, gnomes, or other sentient beings.  It's positively genocidal.

These same NPCs throw in an escort quest or two, a couple of “find ten of object X on the nearby ground for me” quests, and a locate a lost person quest.  It's all very typical.  We, as players, have not only come to expect it, we see these quests as completely normal.  In fact, whenever you, the player, come across a new town in a new zone, you already have a pretty good idea of what kinds of quests you'll soon be completing.

Try changing MMOs.  In your new game, you'll find that the situation is precisely the same.  The towns are full of NPCs, each giving out a series of generic quests.  Once you've leveled a few times, you move on to the next town and, in a very basic way, complete very similar quests given out by very similar NPCs.

The question that comes to mind is, “Why is it this way?  How did this system come to be the norm?”

Sanya Weathers is an old hand in the MMO industry, and has been a writer, blogger, and commentator on MMORPGs for years.  She even pioneered the role of the “community relations manager” when no such job existed beforehand.  Before busting out on her own last year, she's spent years at Mythic Entertainment, helping to refine and tailor Dark Age of Camelot to improve the experience for players.  In this role, she was incredibly successful.

Well Sanya's taken it upon herself to explain why this pattern of quests exists, and her insights are...well, they're insightful.  We drew inspiration from Sanya's piece, added in a few things we've learned from developers over the years, did a bit of digging around elsewhere on this great internet of ours, and then decided it was time to break it all down for you, gentle reader.  And so without further ado, here's why the quests in every MMO ever made are exactly the same:

1. The most basic, fundamental reason is because of the way the games are designed.  The overall world is designed, then the zones are laid out, then those zones are populated with wildlife and monsters, the towns are put into the game, the NPCs are placed in the towns, and then, last of all, the quest designer gets to put in the quests.  By the time Quest Guy is working on writing and implementing the quests, all the higher level designers have moved on to filling the next zone with animals and monsters and towns and NPCs.
2. Quest Guy simply has to work with what's available.  If he sees some large spiders near the town, and those large spiders are coded to drop cracked carapaces (and the occasional pristine carapace), he knows what he's got to do.  He's got to design a quest that requires players to turn in cracked and pristine carapaces.
3. Quest Guy is, generally speaking, a low level designer.  He's not a bigwig, and has no power to make anyone do what he wants done. 
4. Quest guy is on a quota system.  In the town of Ashera, he's been told to input 35 quests, all of which are level 20 to 22.  He's got a limited amount of time to make this happen, before he's told to install 40 quests, level 23-25, in the nearby town of Riverbottom.
5. The art department is, itself, overworked at this point in the process.  They've got terrain to design, towns to render, monsters to draw and color, and a whole lot of NPCs, wildlife, objects, and other crap to design for the zone they're working on.  The other design departments are in the exact same position.  People are on a deadline.  No one is particularly interested when Quest Guy comes along and says, “Hey, remember the NPC in Riverbottom that gives the 'kill 12 bears' quest?  What if, at the end of the quest, you guys design a really cool ManBearPig for the players to fight?  Wouldn't that be funny and cool?”  They are way too busy to design a custom mob just for him. 

Are you getting the idea here?  Quest Guy has got to move fast, installing some reasonably fun quests in Ashera, before he has to move on and install some reasonably fun quests in Riverbottom.  Even if he somehow manages to get all that done, and wants a cool customized quest put into place, it's unlikely the other coders and programmers in other departments are going to have time to do that.   

There are, however, other factors.  Consider these:

1. If someone along the line does manage to get creative, and he/she injects a little bit of story development or role playing into a quest line, players will likely complain.  They don't want these kinds of quests, except at the very highest level of the game.  This is because they are rushing to get to the endgame, where most players feel the “real” content is lurking.  They want to complete the quests and get the experience so they can level up as quickly as possible.
2. Remember, Quest Guy is a low level employee.  Whenever he gets a creative quest idea, it's likely to be crushed or brushed aside by a middle manager.  He isn't paid to be creative.  He's paid to grind out properly installed quests.
3. “Wait a minute,” I can hear you saying.  “I remember a quest when I was level 33, and we had to follow a spirit wolf to a cave and channel some ghosts and fight an elemental!  That quest wasn't boring or typical!”  Well, you're absolutely correct.  However, it's really unlikely Quest Guy made that happen.  That quest is, very probably, the brainchild of a lead designer, or even the Creative Director himself.  These guys have the juice to 1) design the occasional highly customized quest, and 2) get it installed into the game despite the whining and crying by the overworked artists and coders.

 
Are you getting the overall idea here?  Quest Guy may want to get all creative and write up a really neat and imaginative quest, but he's constantly hamstrung by his workload, everyone else's workload, middle management, and upper management.  If he should get that quest completed, he'll find that it's largely unappreciated by the players themselves.  Faced with that kind of gratitude, he's unlikely to continue to try to get his “vision” into his next batch of quests.  He simply gives up, and becomes an assembly line worker, cranking out generic quest after generic quest. 

And that, my friends, is basically that.  Much to my surprise, while researching this article, I found that this state of affairs is actually bemoaned in the MMO industry itself.  The very people who design the games you play would love to change things but, due to the factors listed above, are finding that the status quo is likely to remain as it is for a long time to come.   If you'd like to read more of Sanya's insights into this process, you can check out her writings right here.   Other thoughts on this subject can be found here and here , and Jeff Kaplan shares his very experienced view of things here. 

And that, fellow gamers, is all we have for this week.  If you enjoyed this write up, and want to keep abreast of the very latest and greatest happenings in virtual space, come visit us over at WanderingGoblin.com, where we cover this kind of nonsense each and every day.  For now, ciao!