I’ve explained it before that when I do daily quests in MMORPGs I throw up a little in my mouth. The problem with that is that they are so darn appetizing (minus that retch flavor) because they usually offer just enough reward to keep you interested. That is, until they drive you to quitting. I log in every day to do The Never Ending Mending of a Broken Land, a perfectly titled quest. I’m not picking on EQ2 specifically here. WoW is far worse, I just happen to be doing this particular quest. At least it there is only one. Thank god for that!
Ode to the Daily Quest
Oh daily quest, daily quest
I loathe you to the core
You abuse me regularly
But I always come back for more
Oh daily quest, daily quest
The thought of you makes me ill
For worthless factions and coin
I shall continue to kill
Oh daily quest, daily quest
Your plot is awful weak
But for the precious AA
Your bland, soul crushing experience I shall seek
(I’ll see you tomorrow daily quest. Miss me <3 <3 <3)
All characters are © 2007 - 2012
Agreed completely. I wasn’t fond of daily quests when I first encountered them in WoW. They haven’t gotten any better as I’ve found them in new games.
I actually just did the level 80 Daily Shard quest in the Lavastorm for the first time last night. I never bothered, because I didn’t really need the gear for anything anyway. I’m glad I did it, because it was a relatively interesting questline, and I’m equally glad that there was never a point where I did it every day. Perhaps I’ll repeat it once each for every alt I get to 80 and someday have enough shards to buy my last alt something.
Also, interestingly enough, the Lavastorm revamp was worth almost an entirely level’s worth of exp. Maybe I should save the level 90 version for next expansion, in case there aren’t enough quests in half of Velious to get to level 95. :-/
I really hope the “half of Velious” deal everyone is hearing is misinformation. I just don’t know if my heart could stand another micro-expansion that costs the same as a real one. This “two and a half zone” junk is… well… junk. It might be unfair or unrealistic for me to say this, but I want EQ1 sized expansions. If they could do it back then on a smaller budget I don’t know why games seem incapable of doing it now.
Philosophical questions: If the full-sized expansion is dead and buried – i.e. the delayed and still partially unfinished Sentinel’s Fate is the limit of what SOE is willing to pay to produce per year – then which of the following would you prefer:
1. Never do Velious, because it can only be done justice in a larger package, and instead do random one-offs like Odus each year until it’s no longer cost-effective to do those either.
2. No expansions, or even significant GU content, for the two years it would hypothetically take to do Velious properly.
3. Break Velious into two expansions.
I won’t claim to know the “correct” answer since I never experienced the original. My gut says that it would be suicide for EQ2 to go two years without an expansion, and that there’s no point in a 5+ year old game saving its best material for some hypothetical and probably non-existent future in which they have more budget than they do today. If you can honestly say that “never” is better than the installment plan, I’ll certainly respect that, but I suspect that those are indeed the two options.
I’m thinking option 4. Give the product one full year instead of trying to get something out to release against Cataclysm AND don’t loan EQ2 developers to other games during that time.
I just cant do dailies. They are rarely enjoyable. Probably one of the reasons my toons are usually far more poor than anyone else’s.
As far as your last comment Ferrel, well, its all in the money. Expansions RIP. Welcome to the world of micro additions.
I wouldn’t mind ‘half expansions’ if they were priced as such. Give me two zones and I’ll pay $10. Target them for different player groups and make a whole bunch and you’ll see some happy campers, maybe even making enough dough to pump out that real expansion which can drive new players to a game (or, simultaneously, put that game further out of reach for them if developers aren’t careful…).