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The Nexus Telegraph: Let's hear it for the tweet-quest
There are many parts of WildStar that are treading familiar ground in unusual ways, and quests are no exception to that. We know that the game will have quests, but those quests are compressed into 140-character, Twitter-style soundbites. They're quick nuggets of information sending you to a place to do a thing, and that's it. Needless to say, this has sparked some outrage from people absolutely certain that this is catering to ADD-afflicted jumpy maniacs concerned only with getting the most loot the fastest rather than people who actually care about playing a game. For starters, I'm not sure these people actually know how ADD works, but that's not the point. The point is that there's a lot to like about the concept of the game's tweet-quests. Obviously we don't know how well the idea will work out in practice, but from what we do know, there's plenty of reason to look forward to the different format. I should note that those of you who caught my appearance on Nexus Weekly got a preview of some parts of this column, so congratulations for reading ahead. Listening ahead. Whichever. If you didn't catch it, you can listen before or after. It's up to you.
WildStar Wednesday examines redundancies in quest text
Can you really produce a meaningful set of quests while keeping each snippet of text down to 140 characters? The team developing WildStar certainly thinks so. In a previous installment of the regular WildStar Wednesday feature, fans were introduced to the concept, but this week's developer diary is all about explaining how you keep all of the flavor of a quest while trimming it down to the bare minimum necessary. It's not about stripping out flavor -- it's about exactly the opposite. Senior narrative designer Cory Herndon explains by example that a lot of quest text winds up repeating unnecessary facts or stating something that should be immediately clear. Herndon starts with a longer example of quest text and steadily pares it down to the most important bits of information, keeping all of the flavor while posting each bit of communication in quick and comprehensible bursts. Combined with the discussion of adding further bits of quest dialogue after important objectives are completed, the diary shows just how you can get a lot of flavor into the quests without quite as many fancy words.
WildStar unveils questing with a Twitter budget
Nobody likes reading quest text. Having to sift through five paragraphs of text just to figure out what you're doing isn't anyone's idea of a good time. The latest entry in the WildStar Wednesday series of developer blogs is all about how the team has tried to do away with mind-numbing and ponderous quest text. And the narrative design team does so by paring down quest text to a quick snippet no longer than a Twitter post. While there are ways to construct smaller entries, of course, the entry discusses how the 140-character limit makes for a good building block to keep players engaged -- it's short enough that you can read it quickly but not so short that it omits important information. In addition to showing a quest get brought down to a quick bite-sized snippet, the entry also talks about keeping control in the hands of the player and letting the story unfold organically, both things that should be of interest to WildStar fans eager for more information.
Global Chat: November 27-December 3
Welcome to this week's Global Chat! We love hearing what you have to say at Massively, and we love it even more when we can share the best comments with all of our readers. Massively staffers will be contributing some of their favorite comments every week, so keep an eye out every Sunday for more Global Chat! We're all about communication in this week's Global Chat, and whether that's communication to and from developers or communication with NPCs, it's important to gaming fans who love to know what's happening and why. Our readers had plenty to say on the subject last week, so follow along after the jump to see some of the best of what was said!
Breakfast Topic: How often do you read quest text?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. If you have played WoW for more than five minutes, you have done a quest. It is nearly impossible to avoid doing them altogether. Since the option has been implemented to have instant quest text and the options tracked on the map by Blizzard's default UI now, most players see the exclamation mark, click on the NPC, accept the quest, and go get the items -- whether it be someone's head, 10 rocks, or going to kill a certain number of creatures -- without paying attention to the why. We want the gold, experience, achievement, or perhaps a quest reward, but we cannot be bothered with why we need to commit genocide on a population of wild animals. We would rather crit the mobs required for the quest than be crit by a wall of text. I am as guilty of this as the next person: Oh, bring you murloc eyes ... Sure, why not? Kill a bunch of boars? Whatever. However, when I recently went back and finished off Loremaster, I found myself actually paying attention to some of the quests, and I realized there can be some great stories there. The Burning Crusade, Wrath, and soon Cataclysm have come a long way in terms of making the quests feel like they are leading somewhere, as opposed to killing these random mobs for no apparent reason. While working on Loremaster, I was like, "Wow, that was a neat little storyline in that quest chain!" It made me both impressed and a little sad, wondering about all the possible nuggets of story I had simply ignored just so I could level a couple of minutes sooner. Do you actually read the quest text? Do you ever want to know why we have to kill the creatures we kill and why the NPCs want these seemingly inane items? Or do you just do it for the XP and money and could not care less?
Guild Wars 2 Lead Designer reveals new information about questing and content
Today brings us more Guild Wars 2 news, this time from Lead Content Designer Colin Johanson who has a few things to say about content and traditional quest systems. In Guild Wars, we're all familiar with the quest system and the giant green exclamation point. In such an immersive and beautiful world, it's admittedly a bit jarring when an NPC has that strange floaty thing that sticks out like a sore thumb -- or like a giant lime-green exclamation point. Filling your field of vision with a big black rectangle with a few paragraphs of text and a "check yes or no" acceptance option didn't exactly alleviate the problem. Once you accepted the quest and completed it, the overall world was still unchanged. You were the hero of Tyria but overall, you didn't seem to be making a difference in the world around you. As Johanson points out, if a villager is asking you to kill 10 ogres who are about to ravage his village, they shouldn't be standing around picking daisies. They should actually ravage his village if you don't help. The Guild Wars 2 team is working to remedy the questing problems of the past, offering some exciting ideas for a "living, breathing world" that changes as its citizens interact with one another and their surroundings. Take a look at what Johanson had to say about how the world of Tyria is going to change, and check out the gallery for the latest Guild Wars 2 screenshots. %Gallery-92890%
The Daily Grind: Do you read the quest text?
Serious question time. You guys ready? We hope you are, because we're about to do this. Do you read the quest text? We're not kidding. That's today's morning question. No better way to start your day than by having your favorite MMO news site ask you if you read the quest text. Now don't lie to us -- we know when you're lying thanks to that lie detector we installed in your keyboard. If you've found it and disabled it, don't worry, we put lie detector software in our comment box just for you. So, tell us, do you skip right over it? Do you read it enough to get the gist? Or are you a writing fiend, taking the time to savor each and every word? Drop us a line and remember, we know.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Target marking, the end of lowbie raids, and other UI tweaks
There are quite a few interesting UI tweaks in the latest build on the patch 3.3 PTR. First up, Blizzard seems to be making quite a few changes that aim at streamlining current frustrations: the Ignore list is set to 50 different entries (to match the Friends list), XP earned in a quest will show up in the rewards section on the quest log, and not only can any member of the raid now mark targets, but instant quest text is now turned on by default for all players. The last two changes are somewhat questionable -- cynics that we are here at WoW.com, we can see raiders in PuGs messing around with raid marks "for the lulz," which could be frustrating for raid leaders. Then again, it'll be much easier than the current situation of having to set up a marker as raid leader or assistant. Instant quest text, too, seems like a choice by Blizzard to step away from the immersiveness of having quest text write itself across the window, but then again, who doesn't have it set on instant already, and Blizzard has already admitted quests aren't that immersive anyway.There is another issue, though, that may be worth Blizzard's reconsideration before bringing all of these changes live.Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Telling a story without quest text
Tyllendel's friend had an interesting reaction to the game when he first played it: he felt that all of the quest text was unbearable, and that he wanted to play the game rather than reading what NPCs told him. We've talked a little bit about this before -- obviously, when Blizzard kicked off WoW nearly five years ago, quest text was just the way quests were done, and while Blizzard has expanded the concept a bit since, it's still mostly the way MMOs work: you go to a character, talk to them, and they tell you where to go and what to do.But I can see Tyl's friend's point: games are much less about telling these days and more about showing. You might understand how, if you've never played an MMO before, reading the quest text can take you right out of the game, rather than running off with an NPC or having the game show you rather than just tell you what to do. And Blizzard is getting there: later in the thread Slorkuz points out the recent Afrasiabi interview, and talks about how Alex mentions new ways of doing quests. For example, the quest team is trying to do a quest with no text, or direct players' attention without actually telling them, "look here." Text is the easiest and most basic way to help players accomplish goals, but as the game moves on, even the developers realize it's not the most elegant or immersive way to do it.
The Daily Grind: The importance of lore
Having a good back-story is very important for some. For other people, being forced to read scrolling quest text, or listen to an NPC go on and on about who was where in what battle is boring and a waste of time. The very presence and seeming popularity of leveling guides seems to indicate that many people are trying to get through games as quickly as possible these days. Yet, games like LotRO and its growing subscriber base are indicative that a good back-story is important to some. For today's question we'd like to ask -- is the lore important to you in a game? Or alternately, do you think too much importance is placed on lore and instead just want new and enjoyable game play mechanics, monsters, and locations?
