Sep 10
WoW Already Has Public Quests
One of the things I’ve been really interested to note at 70 in World of Warcraft is the sheer variety of quests there are to do. My understanding is that this depth of experience is continued out into the leveling curve for Lich King, which is great to hear. What really raised my eyebrows is the realization that World of Warcraft already has one or two quests that are functionally very similar to Warhammer’s Public Quest concept.
I’m stretching a premise to make a point, but bear with me. There are two daily quests in particular associated with the Shattered Sun Offensive that surprised me. The first is The Battle Must Go On, a quest on the Isle proper. Essentially it’s just another ‘kill 6 demons’ quest, but it also requires players to stab a battle standard into a particular demon call the Emissary of Hate. Once he’s slain, you just use the item on him and your quest goal is ticked off. The public bit is that you don’t have to have killed the Emissary yourself – you can impale any old Emissary corpse lying around. I’ve seen numerous instances of cooperation with this part of the quest; more powerful 70s even going out of their way to slay an Emissary as an obvious public service.
Even more powerfully PQ-like is the quest Blast the Gateway, in the Throne of Kil’jaeden area of Hellfire Peninsula. It’s only accessible via flying mount (just behind Thrallmar), and is just crawling with critters for the two daily quests offered by the Shattered Sun rep in the area. One of the mobs thickest on the ground are the luminescent Incandescent Fel Sparks – bright green fire elementals, essentially. You’re given an item for the quest called a Living Flare, which when used creates a little flame pet that follows you around. Killing a Fel Spark causes a bright flash of light, and increases the size of your little Flare. Once it hits critical mass (indicated by a color change) you lead the Flare back to a magical gateway to blow it up.
The fun part is that anyone killing a Fel Spark in an area around you ‘ticks’ your Flare up a notch. You don’t have to be grouped or working together at all; two players fighting two Sparks nearby each other will add two ticks to both players’ Flares. It’s a fantastic mechanic, and leads to instant collaboration between players in the area. It reminded me instantly of WAR PQs, and actually made me pine for the ability to collaborate with others like that generally. Maybe specific areas of the game where all the quests are collaborative like that? Or some option the player has control of, to have their quest updates affect everyone in the area? An altruism option, essentially?
Regardless of the here and now, with these simple elements already in place … jeez, I wouldn’t have hedged my bets as much as I have when talking about Blizzard adding PQ-like elements to WoW. We’ll see PQ-like quests, and soon. Maybe as soon as early next summer?
As an aside, I can’t express how much I want a Dragonhawk flying mount. I can only assume they’ll be coming in the expansion, and I’ll be all over that like crazy.
4 comments4 Comments so far
The one problem with Blast the Gateway is that you’ll see a few exceptionally lazy people who will hover a few feet of the ground with their sparks out and literally run to and from each player so as to get the ‘tick’ without participation at all. When I see that happen I often priest shield up and wait for them to make the killing blow (one guyed over 5 minutes before doing so).
While it is a step in the right direction, without requiring participation you will see more lazy players leeching of others. I’ve not played WAR yet, but from what I read you must at least take part in the public quest instead of just being present.
Equally good examples of PQs in WoW are the taking of Halaa and the capture of spirit towers in Terrokar (Auchindoun).
In both cases the ‘quest objective’ is available to all in the zone regardless of level, does not require being in a party, and rewards the (albeit temporary) victors (access to a special vendor and zone-wide spirit shard buff respectively).
Remember EA is the house that Bing built where: ‘1/3 familiar, 1/3 improved, 1/3 new’ is the mantra.
Something you may not have noticed while you did your Ogrila unlocking quests as well is that the drops you needed to get off the 3 gronns are actually lootable by anyone – alliance or horde – off their corpses provided the player was ‘in range’ of the kill. I finished mine by camping the last one, and looted the item after a horde party did the deed (gnomes ftw!).
Only Blizz knows for sure, but at the time I attributed this to Blizz’ knowing there would be hundreds of players unlocking the quests immediately at release then tapering off to a trickle in the weeks that followed – this quest completion paradigm, for these kinds of quests, penalizes no-one.
As for your Simon-mastery, check out the mod Ogri’lazy.
Eh, I am not really agreeing with your examples. The PQ idea requires in part more then just one person, which any of those examples can done be solo. Also, the PQ system rewards based on participation with more then average loot as well as influence points for everyone where they can go buy more then average loot. The WoW system is just a single player quest that is slightly more friendly then they normally do…
The main idea behind the PQ is you wander into an area and you are immediately in the quest. You don’t have to grab the quest or anything. You are just in it and you get rewarded for being in it. Halaa and Auchindoun are better examples but they are PvP. I have doubts in seeing a system like PQ’s in WoW short of coming with an expansion.
There is one HUGE difference in my opinion, I did a Public Quest at level 5… All the cool stuff in WOW is for max level characters, Warhammer is fun from the get go. Just my 2 cents.