Sunday, March 7, 2010

Did the Internet Kill Real Quests?

My navigation skills are flawless in games these days. It's not my superb sense or direction, but rather the map system every game seems to come with. If only in real life I could push my internal M key and see the map of my surrounding areas.

Back to my original post title, does the ability to find a quick solution to an answer completely kill what quests used to be? I'd like to see more wandering NPC's, real searching, and the OPTION to have some roleplaying in my RPG. As my brother and I were talking earlier, we both agreed that before the internet, quests were harder. You actually had a riddle to solve or a puzzle to crack.



My brother played a game that was before my time, Arena. This game was notorious for tough riddles and actually had an automated support line that charged for riddle answers. We both played the sequel, Daggerfall, in the mid 90's but my memories are vague on that. Many of you actually know this series of games by Bethesda, The Elder Scrolls. The 2 that hit the market recently were Morrowind which might have only been on PC and Oblivion that hit the console market and made a big name for Bethesda. I think they need to step up into the MMO market, they don't have any IP rights to worry about.

3 comments:

  1. That's a good point and they were harder. I played EverQuest 1 way back in the day and I had to keep a note pad next to my Comp for quests. I had to write down what items went to what quest and if you deleted them you were screwed.

    I agree though.

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  2. 100% agreed, even though as your nemesis, I disagree with agreeing with you!
    Questing used to be a challenge. For the older WoW players just think "Mankrik's wife" and long before that it was even more challenging, with puzzles and mazes like Zork, keys and sequences in Zelda, etc.
    Nowadays its Questhelper, thottbot, google or built-in maps and quest guides. It's less of a challenge and more of a grind/race to the finish line.

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  3. Both of you, well said. Do people really want them though? Honestly I can get a little grindy and catch myself racing to the finish line too.

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