Filed under: Quests

Massively has been following the development of the sci-fi MMO Black Prophecy very closely, and was pleased that the title's developer Reakktor Media wanted to do a series of focused Q&As with us on several aspects of the game. Our last such Q&A started at the beginning with character creation, but in our second installment of the Black Prophecy interview series we discussed the game's mission design. To that end, we posed some questions to Lorenz Dames, the Lead Game Designer on Black Prophecy.

Lorenz explained a great deal about how Reakktor is approaching solo content vs. group-oriented gameplay. He also told us how Reakktor Media is merging the completion of mission objectives with dogfighting your fellow players through PvP missions, where other players will try to counter your efforts to complete goals. Our interview should provide Black Prophecy fans with a solid overview of the game's mission design, which will be an essential aspect of the sci-fi MMO's gameplay.

Back in October, City of Heroes players got a treat in the form of three arcs created by high-profile creative minds. The Guest Author program used the Mission Architect system and gave players the enjoyment of working through missions scripted by authors known outside of the realm of Paragon City. We haven't heard much about the program since then, and so it might have seemed as if the feature had been forgotten, but it turns out it was simply in brief hibernation, as the official site has announced the next group of writers.

Mercedes Lackey (known for her series of fantasy novels set in Valdemar), Troy Hickman (known for the meta-superhero series Common Grounds), and Austin Grossman (longtime writer of video games and author of Soon I Will Be Invincible) make up the next batch of guest writers crafting their own arcs in City of Heroes. Two of the arcs should be live today (assuming you're reading this on January 26th), according to a small supplementary piece which includes a few words from Sean McCann. It's good to see the game continuing to emphasize and enhance the experience of user-created content, and players should look forward to some high-profile names continuing to take their swing at it.

To some people, the term "role-playing" conjures up images of guys with tinfoil swords and shields shouting "Lighting bolt!". Role-playing in MMOs gets a similarly polarised reception, suggesting scenes of people playing pretend and speaking to each other in Shakespearean tone. To those of us that grew up with pen-and-paper role-playing games and single-player RPGs, it might mean the opportunity to play fantastic characters like wizards and rogues. At its core, however, role-playing is something far more subtle and fundamental than we sometimes give it credit for and it underpins the entire MMO genre. In playing an MMO, we are inherently playing roles that the game's developers have created for us. But do most MMO developers really know how to create engaging gameplay for us or are they failing to immerse us in their own chosen roles?

In this probative opinion piece, I delve into the roles we play in MMOs and the things developers often do wrong when designing an immersive game experience.

Believe it or not, grind is an essential part of an MMO and we might be pretty lost without it. Repetitive content is the cornerstone of the MMO genre but it's not all just smacking monsters over the head for hours on end or completing yet another "kill ten rats" quest. The repetitive elements in an MMO give us predictable gameplay in a form we can digest. We don't feel lost when we pick up a quest because it uses similar mechanics to previous quests we've done. From a development standpoint, the amount of time it takes to create new and unique gameplay for an MMO is quite large and it's just not feasible to churn out unique gameplay with every new piece of content. Instead, developers are forced to re-use the same gameplay mechanics over and over again. So if we genuinely appreciate predictable, repetitive gameplay and it's not feasible to do otherwise, why are we always so up-in-arms about the evils of grinding?

In this probative opinion piece, I look at why we need repetitive gameplay in MMOs and the various ways developers disguise grind to keep the game entertaining.
Update: Link to page 2 fixed. Thanks Brian!

The latest Earthrise Question of the Week is all about quests in the upcoming post-apocalyptic MMO. "Central to the PvE experience, quests in Earthrise are designed to help introduce the players to the tense cultural and political scene that shapes the two conflicting factions fighting for control over the island of Enterra," explains Moll, the game's Community Manager.

There are faction-specific quests unique to either Continoma or Noir, but Earthrise's game mechanics will let players defect to a rival faction to experience another walk of life on Enterra island. Switching allegiances will not be a trivial matter, however, and the consequences a player assumes for doing so will limit how often most characters defect.

We recently wrote a bit about the new PvE content coming to EVE Online in the Dominion expansion -- Epic Mission Arcs for the Angel Cartel and Guristas pirate factions where your speed will help you survive. Now CCP Games has dropped more info on these branching pirate missions; the Guristas arc is called "Smash and Grab" while the Angel Cartel arc is "Angel Sound". A dev blog written by CCP Jasonitas walks readers through the standings requirements -- if your Angel Cartel standings are horrible but you have decent standings with either the Minmatar or Amarr, you can still run the Angel arc. Likewise with the Guristas, your Caldari or Gallente faction standings will let you embark on the Guristas pirate arc.

In some respects, these arcs will open up pirate faction mission running for many players, given that completion of an arc will impart a 30% standings gain towards that faction. Players have long wanted a way to repair their negative standings towards New Eden's pirate factions and this seems to be the first step towards that. Still, that standings gain won't benefit players who are particularly loathed by a given pirate faction unless the arcs can be repeated some months down the line as with standard Epic Mission Arcs.

Demon Busters in Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online are now enjoying a fresh content update, which includes motorbikes courtesy of the Shinjuku Babel mechanics. This new mode of transportation in the game allows players to travel between zones quickly and in first person perspective. Atlus has also introduced alchemy, a crafting system where players can create new objects with unusual properties. Runes that boost abilities for your demons or potions that augment your own abilities are a few possibilities with the new item mixing system. They've also released more PvE content in the form of demon friend quests, provided your friendships with the infernal powers-that-be are at the appropriate levels.

Perhaps the biggest content addition to Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online is the Team Battle system. The title's publisher Aeria Games writes: "Gather your allies and friends to crush your enemies in fast-paced, high intenseity group versus group combat for glory and god-like gear. Choose to fight solo in sided matches against other solo players, or combine your strength with others to demolish the competition in team versus team battle."

Free-to-play MMOs have been staking out an impressive share of the gaming audience, and one of their poster children is Runes of Magic. Frogster Interactive, is understandably pleased with the success that the game has enjoyed, so they've taken the time to share some interesting figures of the game's popularity.

The most recent chapter of the game, The Elven Prophecy, was released only a couple of months ago. Since then, over fifteen million quests have been completed (even more staggering when one considers that the game has recently cleared the two million mark for registered players). A quarter of a million bosses have been brought down in that span of time, as well as over sixteen million items crafted. Even allowing that some of those were likely craft grind fodder, those are impressive numbers.

Of course, one of the wonderful parts about any sort of free-to-play game is that any curiosity about the game can be satisfied by playing right away, which has no doubt contributed to the success Runes of Magic has enjoyed thus far. While it's not the biggest name in the industry, it's experiencing a groundswell of popularity, good news both for fans of the game and the business model alike.

One of the new content additions coming to EVE Online this December are Epic Mission Arcs for two of New Eden's pirate factions -- the Guristas and the Angel Cartel. Scott Holden (aka CCP Molock) is the Lead Content Creator at CCP Games who has overseen the inclusion of the new pirate missions into EVE. Holden recently discussed some of the specifics of pirate mission running with Mondes Persistants.

The epic arcs for the Guristas and Angel Cartel will offer up roughly 10-12 branching missions, says Holden. The Guristas arc will largely be based in nullsec space in Venal, but players will be able to begin in Orvolle (high security) or low security starting points like Taisy. The Angel Cartel epic mission arcs will mostly be based in the Curse region, the stomping grounds of the Cartel. Would-be devotees to the Angel cause (of sabotage, extortion, and general mayhem) will be able to embark on the faction's mission arc from solar systems like Sendaya or Konora in low sec. Surprisingly, it seems that a player doesn't need high pirate faction standings to access either the Guristas or Angel Cartel epic mission arcs. Players with good standings with empire factions will be able to jump into the pirate mission arcs via mission agents found in low security space.

We recently mentioned that Star Trek Online fans would get a chance to play through a demo of the game at Eurogamer Expo last week. One of the first reports we've read about the Star Trek Online demo comes from Oli Welsh at Eurogamer who was uniquely positioned to check out the game (it was their Expo after all.) Welsh begins by writing, "Trekkies can put one fear to rest right now: Star Trek Online feels just like Star Trek." Although this might assuage a bit of the apprehension some gamers have about trying yet another Star Trek game, Welsh is up front about the fact that the demo he played through was a contained single player experience. It's too soon to say what gameplay will feel like when hundreds of other players are thrown into the mix.

He writes about the demo's transitions between locations via warp jumps, keyboard navigation of star ships (standard WASD, with additional throttle control), and the pacing of ship combat. Welsh also walks the reader from the bridge of a Federation vessel down to the surface of a planet where Klingon opponents await. Fans of the game should read Eurogamer's hands on with Star Trek Online and may also be interested in the video footage of STO gameplay from Limited Edition, shot at this year's Eurogamer Expo (starting at 02:40. They've also captured gameplay of Global Agenda as well.) We've got a video embed of that for you after the jump.

We all go into autopilot sometimes. So, you know, we're on a marathon session to level up, and we're mostly just sort of clicking by instinct. You belatedly realize, however, that you were in the middle of a quest chain. The reason you realize this, sadly, is because you're at the penultimate stage of said quest chain, and the questgiver is making references to all the work that you've been doing to reach this point... when you don't really remember most of what you've been doing up until now. There might have been something with fish men? Or the other fish men. It's all kind of a blur, really.

Lore is important, and few people would argue that, but when have you managed to completely miss every bit of what's supposed to be going on? Did you not read up the backstory in the manual and therefore not know that the person you're fighting unleashed horrors on his own people? Did you forget about an NPC that is actually kind of important in retrospect? Or did you just steamroll through things and only find out later that there was an overarching reason for all of this?

It started with Brian Green musing about something being missing in our MMOs, which was followed by Steve Danuser weighing in on the issue as well. The specifics are under debate, but there's been quite a bit of furor on the basis of that simple concept -- that something ought to be there that isn't. We've lost the sense of adventure, of the game and the story being epic. What is it? An interesting idea has been put forth on Fool's Age: perhaps what we're really missing is the opportunity to fail.

Leaving aside the inevitable string of comments about how it's possible to fail permanently in Champions Online by choosing the wrong build, there isn't a way in most games these days to undertake a quest and fail. For that matter, it's not even usually possible to alter the course of events -- you might recognize two steps in that the kindly old man is not who he says he is, but you still have to complete the quests as they're offered. The entry discusses some of the obvious problems with allowing players to permanently fail, but the question bears examination. Would our games be better if we had the very real threat of screwing up and failing permanently?

BioWare Producer Blaine Christine recently sat down for a Star Wars: The Old Republic interview with Steven Crews at The MMO Gamer. The interview hits on a number of facets of SWTOR's gameplay and the process of creating the title. They also discuss how BioWare is designing the game to dissuade everyone from (only) running around wielding lightsabers through the unique strengths of each class, but their talk really focuses on the game's story.

Blaine discusses how the story for SWTOR players, whether they choose to be good or evil, will always be more than kill ten rats or "collect ten boxes for some random vendor." That story you play through fits the role you've chosen for yourself. Blaine likens a player's story progression to Knights of the Old Republic. He tells The MMO Gamer, "If you look at KOTOR and how that worked out, if you played light side versus dark side, there were distinct differences in the story, and distinct differences in how your character developed. It's going to be very similar to that."

Trying to hit up every possible MMO Halloween celebration? Add yet another one to your list, as EverQuest II brings back its Nights of the Dead for this year. Between October 16th and November 9th, all sorts of spook-related activities will be covering the surface of Norrath. Like last year's event, there will be trick-or-treating and decorations in Freeport and Qeynos and goblins to cast costume illusions, not to mention candy drops from monsters and several "clandestine (and smashable!) decorations." If you're a seasoned verteran of EverQuest II and think you've seen all of this before, however, this year also boasts a number of new additions to the holiday.

Oh, sure, there are new costumes, but that's the least of the new material added for this year's celebration. A new haunted hedgemaze in Nektulos Forest should attract those looking to get lost for a while, assuming that the new headless horseman doesn't get you first. There's also a new holiday collection, a new holiday recipie book, and some new rewards for some old Nights of the Dead events -- so even if you've taken part in the celebration before this year, you might still be able to find some new items from the mix. Enjoy the celebration starting at the end of the week, and be careful about the headless horseman -- those guys are always trouble.

The term "corporation" in EVE Online is something of a misnomer. While a corp can be run as a full-on business entity, most are just like guilds or clans in other MMOs. It's a group of pilots that join together under one banner for mutual benefit, organised operations or even just to have some nice people to chat to while you mine. For those that can't find a good player-run corporation that's compatible with their aims and goals, there are a few options. One option is to stay in one of the many NPC-run corps but perhaps the most interesting choice is to start your own corp. With the upcoming 11% tax being applied to NPC corps, some of the people currently in those corps may even want to start their own one-man corps to evade the tax.

Running your own corporation provides you with additional tools like corporate hangers and the ability to set up starbases or declare war on other corps. It also opens the opportunity to recruit like-minded individuals and friends into your group so you can work together on anything from mining and mission-running to full-on PvP and piracy. EVE is one of those games that really starts to take off once you start working together with people. Starting your own corp can, however, be a daunting task that carries with it responsibilities and risks.

For all those that have ever wanted to run their own corporation, in this article I explain how to the process of starting a corp, recruiting and keeping the corp secure against threats. I also go into detail on some of the corp operations you can hope to enjoy with friends.