Multilevel Quests

[BSTRhino]

I just finished playing some Astonia III (My first ever MMORPG!!) It was quite a good game... I got a bit addicted. But it was quite obviously inferior to what World of WarCraft will be like. One of the things I felt was missing in Astonia III was it never encouraged the players to play in teams. So we were all walking around as individuals. I barely interacted with anyone else. There was no need.

One of the times I did help other people was when I walked into the wood, and I found all these newbies getting slaughtered by wolves and bears. So, I told them to stand back and I played hero and killed the crap out of the evil animals. That got me thinking.

Perhaps in World of WarCraft, there could be certain quests the require you to help newbies, in order to gain higher levels or rewards or whatever. Or just quests in general that require people at different levels, not only newbies and level 100s. I think it's a really good idea, because I don't like the thought of staying with the same group for two years in a row. Variety will make the game interesting, and this is just another way of getting it.

So, tell me what you think of that idea?

[Exedore]

It's not such a bad idea. Maybe you should suggest it on the Battle.net forums so you can be flamed for no reason, other than suggesting something...

Although such an idea may not be that useful in WoW. Blizzard always makes their games easy to learn and hard to master. Newbies will be able to get the hang of the game fairly quick and will most likely look for groups of other random players on the server. Also, the one problem with the idea is that a higher level character would be getting experience for killing lower level monsters, which would make such a system increasing prevelent. It would also create a "power-leveling" type effect that exists in Diablo2, where players would have level 10 characters follow level 70 characters and get experience for doing nothing.

I'm hoping that WoW will be organized in such a way that there will always be characters that will help newbies and possibly gain a reputaion for it on the server. But maybe I've watched a little too much .hack//SIGN...

[Graeme]

Haha Exe, I acquired the same .hack//SIGN syndrome that you have. I always end up going off on these tangents, somewhat along the lines of, "Yeah! Every game should have player-run policing like the Crimson Knights!" and "Wouldn't it be great if a MMO game chose one character, like Tsukasa (although he wasn't chosen, so to say :P), to embark on a giant quest that would affect the entire realm!?"

Bleh, I suppose watching the entire series a third time was a bit much . . .

I agree with Exe on the matter that we'd end up getting a bunch of leachers and power-levelling if it were plausible to help all the new characters gain experience that easily. Perhaps if the rewards on either side weren't based on experience, as Exe also mentioned. A reputation system would work great, but we'd still see low levelled people leaching off of higher levelled people for experience, and higher levelled people abusing it to gain a ridiculously large reputation. If everyone gets a great reputation, nobody really has a reputation at all :P.

I'm sure there's a way to sort this all out, but my imagination is fried for the moment, so I'll get back to you with a solution :P.

[BSTRhino]

Yeah, that's actually a good point. If I were a newbie, I'd prefer people who were good people helping me, rather than people who were just in for the rewards.

But, I like the idea of having some quests that needed different levels. Or at least would work with people of different levels. Today, I was playing Astonia III with ZeroDarkStar and Dark_Soul74. I'm level 10, ZDS is level 5, and Dark_Soul is level 2. There was nothing we were designed to do together, since we were all different levels, and each quest was designed to be completed by an individual person at a certain level.

[TranquilNightElf]

Of course Blizz could designate some quests that would require to have a little variety and anybody trying to power-level up on quests other than those would siomply not work...of course that would mean that the designated quests could become flodded with leachers....
How about giving lower level players some routine,mundane ablility that would be required in some multi-level quests...And like if a newbie does something extradinary duinrg the quests, he could get a reputation as a prodigy and would be rewarded with extra experience or whatever.
Also I believe that reputation should die down the longer you don't do whatever you are reputed to do.Higher the reputation, the faster should the fall be,eg If you are a level 100 prodigy(fictious reputation level) and you don't do rather well in quests then per day you would lose 5 to 10% of your level, but if you are a level 50 prodigy then only 2.5 to 5% of your level because you are less expected to do something glamourous.
this does seem like a pandora's box ..I wonder how blizz is going to solve it. I agree BSTRhino that if i were playing world of warcraft for a monthly fee i wouldn't want to be "stuck" with the same types of blokes for 2 years.