Warhammer Online used this as a huge selling point, and we ate it up. PQs were quite simply fun to do. Grouping in a way that didn't feel like you were forced to socialize. Yes, it sounds stupid in an online game, but there are in fact a lot of gamers who play MMOs as a single player experience with other people around as well. Think of it akin to Demon's Souls. Public Quests allowed someone like that to accomplish group content with no prior interaction with a single player. On top of that, it was a good way to level and maybe even meet other players and get some decent loot or at least cash. Brilliant concept, but implemented with some gaping holes in the design. Despite the number of players in that PQ or in that zone, the quests maintained difficulty meaning that a player could get past the first stage, but after that they were limited on options. As the level race progressed and as the population died, the mid tiers suffered heavily from this backlash as few players maintained the option to do PvE content.
Skip down the road and we come to the game that took the best PvE concepts and through them all into one game, RIFT. RIFT had, well, rifts. Whereas PQs in WAR were static events that repeated in the same spot with the same events over and over again, rifts were randomized in when and where they would appear. The concept of stages stayed the same, but rifts also had difficulty scaling, which was not seen in WAR either. While there were specific group rifts and raid rifts that were considerably hard in difficulty to even attempt, there was tons of content for a single player or several players who were solo in the same area to do and have fun doing. Unfortunately, rifts became repetitive to a fault early on in the game's life and I feel that the awesome encounters of different types of rifts happening at the same time was missed. The beta phases unfortunately scaled back the difficulty of the rifts and mobs overall so that a rift fucking the entire questing zone up was less of a pain in the ass. I may be alone on this thought, but I had more fun trying to free my quest hub from control of other-worldly creatures than questing itself.
That brings us to our current day and age with Guild Wars 2. Now, events certainly have gotten this feature to a point of distinction. Guild Wars features a wide variety of events and scale of events. All of them are very accessible to a single player and most, with the exception of the dragon and world events maybe, will scale to be doable based on the players participating. I truly believe that the temple events were the culmination of perfection, particularly Balthazaar and the shear scale that the event had to take. What made it good, though, is the fact that you and a small group could go and focus on one part of the map. It took mass coordination across the entire zone, but still allowed the single player a chance to be apart of something greater without forced grouping. The voice overs and flow always felt right and ArenaNet's ability to "instance" zones with players caps made sure that tons of players weren't doing the same exact thing and creating a lagfest in one zone. Events in Guild Wars 2 are so good, but only because it's how Guild Wars 2 was built. Say what you want about the game since its still relatively fresh, but because of the design and flow of Guild Wars 2, events are built into the game play so well, but I don't see it translating to other games the way it is here.
The genre is moving in two distinct paths, similar to how it moved at the beginning on the 2000s. On one hand, you had the sandbox world, and on the other you had the theme park world. Theme park ended up winning out. Sorry to say guys, but Everquest still exists, Star Wars Galaxies doesn't. But right now, we have the free-to-play market that is instanced to an extreme that is unprecedented and the pay-to-play market that is trying to hold on to the ideals that paying $15.00 a month justifies the updates and content their game offers. Companies are starting to shy away from not only the pay-to-play model, but MMOs themselves. The market is dwindling. Star Wars: The Old Republic I think really threw the genre into a shit hole. It has since gone to the free-to-play world, as has most pay-to-play games released. So how does this affect our public questing systems?
PQs will need to evolve to a different point, I think. I can't help but look at other online games (from different genres) and not feel like they would be ideal to bring into the MMO genre, if done right. Let's have a look at MOBA style games like DOTA and League of Legends and throw PvP into the mix. Yea, there was RvR PQs in WAR and PvP rifts, but they sucked. Straight up, no joke, no lie, FUCKING BLEW. But don't instance that shit, make it just apart of the world. If you make a game with factions, throw something different in the mix than doing the same crappy quests and siege warfare as your excuse for PvP. Figure out how to bring back sandbox, give the player options on approaching their game, and not make it so overwhelming that someone logs in and says "what do I do?" Being dropped on your head like it was a decade ago just doesn't cut it now. Kids don't have the attention span to figure that shit out on their own.
So what we can determine from all of this:
PQs are sweet, keep adding them.
They can get really repetitive, so switch it up.
Don't punish the kids without friends, they don't like it.
Give them a purpose and an awesome reward, people will eat them up.
Try different concepts other than 'stages' and shit.
and on another...
STOP ADDING FUCKING SIEGE WARFARE AND JUST SIEGE WARFARE AND SOME STUPID SHITTY 5V5 INSTANCE INTO YOUR DUMB ASS MMORPG AND THINK YOU'RE PVP IS FUCKING GOOD. IT'S NOT SO STOP DOING THAT. ADD IN SOMETHING ACTUALLY WORTH FUCKING DOING THAT DOESN'T FUCK YOU BECAUSE YOU DON'T PLAY WITH THE ENTIRE COUNTRY OF AUSTRALIA ON YOUR SERVER.
Sorry, but I feel that any time I talk about MMOs, I have to get that out there so hopefully some developer reads it and goes "oh, ok" and fucking grows an imagination.
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