I want…The Epic Quest (ala EQ1 class epic weapon quests)
wait! put down the torches and pitchforks and let me explain!
The quests were hard, I wont deny it. Most players didnt have the dedication to complete them due to their extremely hardcore (at the time) nature. The legendary weapons are cool but imagine something like this….
You happen to be wandering through some area…we’ll say Caledon Forest… with you BA level 80 self. Suddenly an event pops up. “huh, thats funny…dont remember seeing that one before.” Event says to protect “Lord Dudendude” from the scary stuff (paraphrasing, I’m just letting my brain run free here…) for 5 minutes. So, your fighting off all kinds of random enemies that are just suddenly appearing…demons, ghosts, jungle worms, your neighbors angry yorkie, etc. Slowly, his health is going down, but its gonna be allright…he’s gonna live, and you’ll get yer xp/karma and move on. “Cool event. Lots of crazy stuff going on here, I havent actually had to sweat over an event in a while.” You happen to look down, and notice in this little patch of area, your at your full might, not downleveled to 5. Double weird…
So, FINALLY, those five minutes are up. you get your xp, your karma…the guy is all thanking you and stuff…and then big giant scary demon/dragon/boogie man comes up and shanks him. He drops, boogie man laughs and disappears. Bam, dude turns into a renown heart. But all the heart says is speak with Lord Dudendude to learn more. So you talk to him, and a minor cinematic plays. Lord Dudendude was wounded most gravely, and will be dying soon. Even though you do the (cliched) obvious and tell him to save his strength, he needs you to do something of vital importance.
The cinematic ends, and a timer starts. Lord Dudendude needs you to gather the life forces from as much of the local fauna as possible. Dont worry about it too much….you just kill things, he’ll use his remaining strength to collect the energy and crystalize it for you. So you run around frantically killing anything that moves, and fill up the heart meter 15 seconds before the timer ends. whew I did it! now lets see what he sells…
“Bag of Crystallized Life forces: XX (where thats the exact amount of karma you got for saving him + doing the heart in time)” it doesnt do anything…in fact all it says is “event item” what the heck, I’ll buy one anyways. Some dude walking buy happens to see him, and talks to him. You hear Lord DudenDude’s VO say “what do you want? cant you see I’m dying here?” so 30 seconds or so after buying the thing (now referred to officially as the Mcguffin!) it starts another little cinematic with his appropriately epic and overly dramatic dying words, where he sends you to his brother, Dude mcdudenstein. You get a symbol like the living story instance and personal story locator, except this one is red (according to my wife, red is the best color).
To make an allready long story short, you get sent all around the world, carrying varying upgraded versions of the mcguffin, meeting new people, interacting with old favorites (and trahearne too!), hitting up different dungeons which causes special events to spawn at key times due to the presence of the mcguffin, and causing certain bosses/types of mobs/etc to have a chance to drop mcguffinates that are required for upgrading your mcguffin further. Basically, combine all the current questing types together, plus have timed events/hearts, and then make it where the important npcs cant just magically magic the long drawn out important rituals into a single scenematic. Based on how effective/efficient/lucky you were with collecting various mcguffin pieces, dude mcdudenstein might only need 15 minutes to ritualize the mcguffin, or he might need 7 days of intense ritual therapy.
And finally…when your done, when the mcguffin is in its ulitmate form, you do SOMETHING and the mcguffin turns into insanely awesome weapon/armor/dohickey that gives unique particle effects, as well as potent (but not neccessarily MUST HAVE) effects. Then you use the mcguffin to beat some kind of (not elder dragon) nasty bad guy, getting to keep the mcguffin afterwards (screw you Trahearn! My Elementalist went and took Caladbolg back, its MINE!) That, and it gives some kind of announcement (either server wide, or fanfare in the cities, or SOMETHING!) that strokes the players kitten and makes players from all over send him congratulatory tells, as well as the occaisonal “I hate you so much.” hate mail.
Anyways..thats what I want. Multi part multi design element that incorporates every part of the game into cohesive long running Epic Level quests that cant be completed in one sitting, and while rewarding, are not required to be “competitive” at end game and in various forms of pvp.
