On the topic of players giving quests for resources... I don't know how many of you know Ultima Online... also not quite sure if that experience was because i played on a private server not on the official EA server but there was those players who earned money by mining minerals for blacksmiths .... blacksmiths needed a lot more than what could be bought from NPCs and also NPCs sold it at a high price. In order for the miners to be able to carry the heavy ore they had to have a pack animal they are able to ride. That was some blue beetle that was sold from tamers. There weren't any specific quests for that.. that's just the way the came clicked.
Also the best gear wasn't dropped by monsters... It was made by legendary blacksmiths. There were few artifacts dropped from bosses ... but they weren't all that good. What these bosses dropped was scrolls that allow you to extend your skill to legendary level. All the economy in the game was managed by players.. who were able to hire NPCs to sell your goods

More on the topic of the thread.. what i'd really want to see in an MMO ... and have been thinking of a way to implement it.... is quests that really change the world on a global scale... This i think would actually make you feel more like a part of this world.. So maybe a low level character wouldn't change much.. say complete a quest of cleaning a cave of some monsters so there are no monsters in this cave for some time ... and the other players have to do something else... and If you are a high level player... or even a guild you could make huge changes like burning a city to the ground... so this city doesn't exist any more...
The bad thing is that this brings many problems of balance.. and keeping the core of the game while still allowing the players to make these huge changes to the world.. and stuff like that .. but at least i'd like to see that in a game if not make the game that has it...

Thanks Xoyo for replying so much . It's nice to talk about these kinds of topics.

I do agree with a lot of what you have said. One thing though that I still have to argue with is the fact that yes, the player that choses to take a player posted quest might have a lot of fun going through the quest. It won't be fun at all for the person posting the quest though. The only way to get around that would be to give the players incentive to create quests, but in a way that is forcing them to do that in order to have the full game experience. It would be much better to find a way to create player quests that would coexist with many of the basic game mechanics in games today instead of removing a lot of game mechanics just to get one mechanic to work. I think thats why this type of system doesn't exist yet, because no one can find a way of placing it in the game without making it worthless, unless they get rid of some other game mechanic.

Be welcome, I like talking about these things... ^^ I think the quest-posting issue can be adressed in other ways. Asking people to do things to you may be not fun, and sometimes even when they do it may be not fun. But I believe the point is making the player so occupied he can't manage to do it by himself, or design the quests in a way the player asking it can't do it anyway. I think the whole point on RPG (pnp) is the ability to do whatever you want whenever you want, and the feel of coerence and truthfullness. MMOs, most of the times, can't deliver that just because when I go to the NPC giving the quest there are lots of people around him, asking for the same quest, and when I go to the field kill the monsters there are lots of people doing it and the monsters never end and it feels like "I am just one more player, not the hero". Once I played this game Wakfu, which is the sequel to Dofus. One nice implementation it had was the "ecological" one. When you kill too much beasts, or harvest too much, one area can end up having none of them. You can see monsters "copulating" all around and there are the "puppy" version of the monsters. I can be remembering things wrong since there is a while I played this game. But the point is it feels real. Item finding, looting or finding gold on monsters is not real never...

Allot of people seem to be stuck on the idea of “how can we make the story more interesting”, but that 1: Isn’t what this thread was about, and 2: Wont fundamentally change anything about the task at hand.

So…if your focus is mixing up the task at hand, then the simple answer would be to create new, more original tasks (gee, what a surprise). When I think about this, my mind immediately goes to mini-games. But, lets get into quests that have relevance to the game’s combat…I would recommend battles with alternate goals and stakes (some cliché examples of these type of missions might be; “protect the king from enemies”, “survive a huge wave of enemies”, “escape from the enemy”, “defeat the enemy within a narrow time limit” and other scenarios where the player’s offensive, defensive and terrene/mobile objectives stray from the norm...be creative).

I’m personally one of those players who couldn’t care less about the plot/story of a quest. I play games for gameplay, if I wanted to be invested more in lore, then I’d read a book.

Of course, the reason that quests in MMOs are so similar and repetitive is because MMOs are all about making as much content as possible; as quickly as possible (hence, fulfilling the word “massive“). Rehashing the same quest concepts then slapping a different story on them saves development time (precious, precious development time!)…If you want your game to see the light of day within the next 10 years, then you too should master the art of cutting corners. I know my rambling is becoming a bit off-topic , but in conclusion: you probably shouldn’t be making completely original concepts for each and every quest, but rather; rely on a handful of unique concepts.

Allot of people seem to be stuck on the idea of “how can we make the story more interesting”, but that 1: Isn’t what this thread was about, and 2: Wont fundamentally change anything about the task at hand.

So…if your focus is mixing up the task at hand, then the simple answer would be to create new, more original tasks (gee, what a surprise). When I think about this, my mind immediately goes to mini-games. But, lets get into quests that have relevance to the game’s combat…I would recommend battles with alternate goals and stakes (some cliché examples of these type of missions might be; “protect the king from enemies”, “survive a huge wave of enemies”, “escape from the enemy”, “defeat the enemy within a narrow time limit” and other scenarios where the player’s offensive, defensive and terrene/mobile objectives stray from the norm...be creative).

I’m personally one of those players who couldn’t care less about the plot/story of a quest. I play games for gameplay, if I wanted to be invested more in lore, then I’d read a book.

Of course, the reason that quests in MMOs are so similar and repetitive is because MMOs are all about making as much content as possible; as quickly as possible (hence, fulfilling the word “massive“). Rehashing the same quest concepts then slapping a different story on them saves development time (precious, precious development time!)…If you want your game to see the light of day within the next 10 years, then you too should master the art of cutting corners. I know my rambling is becoming a bit off-topic , but in conclusion: you probably shouldn’t be making completely original concepts for each and every quest, but rather; rely on a handful of unique concepts.

Thank you, thats what I was asking from the beginning. Seems people don't understand that quite a lot of players really don't care about the story for every single quest or even the main storyline for a lot of games. It does suck that developers need to rehash ideas and tasks in order to keep players busy, takes too much time and money to come up with all unique content.

Personally, I've always liked quests that feel like a huge accomplishment when you finish it. Something large in scope. If you're familiar with vanilla WoW (I'm sure most of us are), the way you had to go through multiple quests in order to just gain entrance to Onyxia originally. That quest line, while frustrating at times, really was fun to do. You needed assistance from friends, it was something that didn't simply take 2 minutes to accomplish, you have a tangible reward afterward. Those are qualities in quests that I find appealing.

It was something of a trophy. You could show other people your accomplishment. It doesn't matter that a lot of people had accomplished the feat. YOU accomplished it and it made YOU feel like you did something that mattered.

You can't have every single quest seem so epic obviously, as it would lose it's luster. However, if you can sprinkle in quests from time to time that have large scope, I think it could really help with the quest fatigue that a lot of games suffer from. I know that's nothing new or ground breaking, but I think it's important.

Also, this would have to be a major design implementation in a game, but I always liked the idea of having a political aspect to quests. Whether it is gaining favor with a specific group relative to other players, or by building your reputation as a politician yourself.

For example, if you were tasked to champion a cause like creating a militia for an area. You can speak with key political figures to convince them with words (or money, or sword/gun) of why a militia is needed to oversee the people of Whateverville. Depending on the success and method of the persuasion, you could be an outcast, enemy of the state, or appointed as an advisor or lawful figure. What would be important here though, is that your outcomes shape your character.

Allow design of in game items using basic items made through a handful of predefined recipes.

Implement a skill based element in crafting (minigame) that dictates quality.

Allow player the freedom that EVE allows.

The quests in game will be stimulated by:
the economy
the natural separation and opposition created between players in the game (confilct is inevitable)

the economy will be stimulated by the different skills that player excel in. Some are better at combat, some are better at crafting, designing, economics, etc.

Player made quests will tie it all together and be fueled by each player's or each groups desires.

I think of all the mmo's I've played, I would have to say that runescape has offered the best quests, (Ultima Online had the best player run events, but I would consider that a different category.)
Unlike world of warcraft quests, runescapes quests often times involve using multiple skills, including crafting and combat skills, solving various types of puzzles, and running around the map exploring things and talking to different npcs. The down side of runescapes quests was, just like the old fashioned puzzle games, getting stuck on them for a long time and having to look at the hint guide to finish some of the harder ones.
Another downside to them is they really are not replay able at all unless you start a new account. Most of them are single player, that sort of seems to go strange with the more mmo aspects of the game, but the few ones that are multi-player are somewhat of a pain in the to wait around for a quest partner( although not that bad, I got it done in a day)