Post by Morreion on Feb 6, 2010 8:25:40 GMT -5
The List: Most Overused MMO Conventions (MMORPG.com)
The MMORPG genre certainly has ruts in its well-traveled road
#7 Kill Ten Rats
This trapping is nearly as old as the MMORPG itself. How many times must we be ordered to go out and kill ten of anything while being told it's a heroic deed? True enough I've come to expect this form of quest from any new game on the market, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Not to pick on Champions Online, but it was a drag logging into the game for the first time and being asked to go kill some alien pods right from the word go. Sure it was part of the game's tutorial, but it certainly set the tone for the rest of the things I'd be doing as a superhero in Millennium City.
I'd love to offer a way to avoid this particular trend, but I can't think of anything that doesn't mean fundamentally redesigning ninety percent of all MMO quests. There are plenty of examples already in most of our existing games that diverge from this common rodent-clubbing exercise, but one gets the feeling that the "KTR" quest type is used so often because it's so easy to implement. Still, I wouldn't mind one day going through the entirety of a game's content and not finding one NPC asking me to clear a forest of boars or foozles or whateveryoucallems. Especially considering the necessary respawn of said foozles makes my efforts seem pointless at best.
This trapping is nearly as old as the MMORPG itself. How many times must we be ordered to go out and kill ten of anything while being told it's a heroic deed? True enough I've come to expect this form of quest from any new game on the market, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Not to pick on Champions Online, but it was a drag logging into the game for the first time and being asked to go kill some alien pods right from the word go. Sure it was part of the game's tutorial, but it certainly set the tone for the rest of the things I'd be doing as a superhero in Millennium City.
I'd love to offer a way to avoid this particular trend, but I can't think of anything that doesn't mean fundamentally redesigning ninety percent of all MMO quests. There are plenty of examples already in most of our existing games that diverge from this common rodent-clubbing exercise, but one gets the feeling that the "KTR" quest type is used so often because it's so easy to implement. Still, I wouldn't mind one day going through the entirety of a game's content and not finding one NPC asking me to clear a forest of boars or foozles or whateveryoucallems. Especially considering the necessary respawn of said foozles makes my efforts seem pointless at best.
The MMORPG genre certainly has ruts in its well-traveled road
