THIS is just fuckin cool

[Vekruul Shuth]

Reason number 1024 why WoW will rock

[Cybsled]

Definately a good idea. Imagine if you killed Nagafen for the first time, and the book he dropped started the Fiery Avenger quest. Makes the game world seem more cohesive.

[Rythonn]

Hate to burst your bubble but UO has been doing T-maps for awhile now. They just expanded on it. Not really innovative.

[Cybsled]

It doesnt have to be innovative...but the question remains, why havent more mmorpgs done this?

[Tramddark Luxdeorum]

((Hate to burst your bubble but UO has been doing T-maps for awhile now. They just expanded on it. Not really innovative.
))

Forgive the questioning, since I haven't played UO since around.......early 2000, but didn't the UO Treasure Maps take master fishing skill, cartography, lockpicking, and some trap disarming skill? Not to mention the random monsters that popped to defend the chest for no reason? They weren't even drops on monsters, they were something extremely rare that people simply fished out of the ocean in a tradeskill so boring that people simply macroed it up.

UO's weren't exactly a quest everyone can do without building up a character to be entirely based on finding the treasure.

The thread also mentions that treasure maps are only one example of this sort of quest, and that there are many other examples of these dropped quests. Sounds innovative to me.

[Rythonn]

Of the games ive played UO and SWG did it.

There where two types in UO Message in a Bottle(you get from fishing) and T-maps that dropped off monsters. The T-maps range from level 1 - 5. Depends on level of monster it comes from. The loot in the chest was random and based on level of map. Pretty much anyone without much skill can do lvl 1 and 2's only skill you really needed was lockpicking after that and the ability to kill alot of creatures.

[Goladus]

Originally posted by Rythonn
Hate to burst your bubble but UO has been doing T-maps for awhile now. They just expanded on it. Not really innovative.

The innovation of Blizzard is not gimmicky ideas. What puts blizzard a cut above the rest is taking good ideas and focusing them into a game that is entirely fun to play. It is subtle and has less to do with individual ideas and features and more to do with the product as a whole.

[Felonius]

***Spoiler alert***
***Spoiler alert***
***Spoiler alert***

i have one of these dropped quests, it will give you guys a feel for it, i can't story write for shit so i'll give you the run down.

So, you start fighting defias (bandit orginzation), not knowing what its all about, they're just bandits in elwynn forest. You get high enough to make westfall, and you do more quests beating up defias. Then you do a quest that sends you to redridge and you find out more about the leader of the defias (edwin van cleff). so you have to use a defias traitor to find their hide out in a town in westfall thats been abandoned. So you travel into the deadmines (the hideout). This dungeon is long and hard, think 3 to 4 hours of straight fighting. In the dungeon the defias are building warships, but you don't know why yet. So you get to van cleff, and he's a bitch, about 7 defias ninja's unstealth and kick ass on you, but if you're lucky you win. So you get his head and that makes the people of westfall happy, but he also drops a letter (begins side quest, aka: Dropped quest part). This letter tells of how Van cleff is going to extract his revenge on Stormwind.

So you head on out to stormwind to the person the letter was addressed to (the current lead architect of stormwind, an old friend of van cleff's). So then he sends you to the stockade (prison) in stormwind to talk to a guy about why van cleff was building a warship and planning to destroy stormwind.

Theres a riot in the stockade, like woah. (its actually an instance for 23-29th lvl players) So instead you have to kill this defias prisioner that the architect sent you to talk to. You get his head, return it, and you find out that the Defias were a stonemasons guild who rebuilt stormwind after the 2nd war with the orcs, however the nobles refused to pay them, giving the leaders of the stonemasons goverment jobs and flicking off the rest (aka van cleff).

You also find out that a stormwind assassin under this one noble was visiting the prisoner in the stockade you just killed previously. So then you talk to stormwinds rogue guild leader because he knows all the shady dealings, and he tells you how that noble was using the defias to try to take over the throne, van cleff was being used by the same people he was fighting *tear*.

Right now i'm on the assassinate the corrupt noble guy but it's currently broken, but hopefully will be fixed next push. Now thats some fucking story!

Elfie
27th rogue
Guild leader of Defias Rejects

[Cybsled]

Quests that matter ;p

Sounds cool. EQ needed more cool quests like this. Probably one of my favorite quests was the Qeynos Investigator series.

They take more time to create, but they pay off alot more in the long run for keeping your players interested.

[Vekruul Shuth]

Hate to burst your bubble but UO has been doing T-maps for awhile now. They just expanded on it. Not really innovative.

Astin Martin didn't invent the car.I never played UO.Who gives a fuck..Its still pretty cool.

[Tuco]

Originally posted by Rythonn
Hate to burst your bubble but UO has been doing T-maps for awhile now. They just expanded on it. Not really innovative.

Pirates invented treasure maps.

Yarrr!!!

As for that quest involving the defias brotherhood, holy crap I like it. It seems like 5 people who played at set times with each other would have a lot of fun with this game, someone's journal would be a lot more interesting than in EQ, where someone could level in six spots all the way to 65 =D

Hopefully the end game single group quests involve a lot of the 3-4 hour clearing(or more, even multiple-day), rather than package boy stuffs.

Felonius, does that map drop for everyone in your group or only one person?

[tanjo]

I didn't get the letter from Van Cleef

[frott]

Originally posted by tanjo
I didn't get the letter from Van Cleef

...and this is why dropped quests might suck.

[Vaclav]

Soooooo..... all these "dropped quests" are is stuff like letters adressed to people that you return to them to spawn the quest - rather than being sent by the person first to find them?

That's not new or innovative - there's been "hidden" quests like this even in EQ if you look hard enough, not to mention probably other titles as well.

WoW seems more generic, just meshing other cool ideas into a collage (like Blizzard always does...) that will lose it's refreshing qualities a few months down the line - it's seeming like the DAoC fanboying all over again to me at least....

Don't get me wrong though, I'm planning to try it - but not gonna have my head in the clouds when I evaluate it.

[3D_BotS]

Not a bad idea but then again it's kinda the same thing as camping an item. Just here you will have people camping mobs to get the treasure map/quest. So I don't really see how this is that unique.