It’s a true arc, often playing out in surprising ways. Instead of merely getting the bare minimum of a beginning, an ESO quest has a definite beginning, middle, and end. Thought is clearly given to points that many MMOs jettison: How does the player first encounter this quest? What’s the hook that draws you into it? What developments and twists happen along the way? How are the inhabitants of the world changed by the end? What is the final result? It’s functional, but it’s not fun.Ĭontrast that with Elder Scrolls Online’s style, which is to bring quests back to the days of tabletop roleplaying. You accept the quest, go out and Do The Thing, and come back for a paltry “Thanks a lot, hero” and some rewards. One MMO design element that drives me batty is how most games will give you a couple of paragraphs of text to justify the tasks you’ll be undertaking, but that will be all of the “story” you’ll usually get. It takes some time to get through it, but it’s hopefully very memorable by the time the end credits arrive. It’s like… getting an episode of your favorite TV show. Sometimes they’re quick, one-and-one events, but more often than not the care that goes into the mission mean that you’re in for a good half-hour (more or less) of developments until the final denouement is pronounced.
While there are those larger quest arcs that cover the base game and each chapter, a large majority of ESO’s quests are self-contained stories. It allows the player to focus on the current journey, tracking the story from start to end. Instead of seeing our task list flooded with a dozen to-do items, we’re given one quest at a time, usually with only a single objective (although you do see quests branch out in options and objectives on occasion). I’ve become a loud proponent of such quest design because it ends up being an overall more engaging journey for the player. For MMORPGs that take this route - RuneScape, Secret World, and Star Trek Online come to mind - the end result are quests that actually feel like full and interesting experiences rather than a chore that got done along the way. The focus here isn’t on sheer quantity but rather on more involvement, storytelling, and quality in the quests it does have. One thing that any ESO neophyte notices is that, unlike your average WoW-clone, this game boasts a relatively smaller quest list overall. And to get at the truth of it, we’re going to slice it open and spread its organs on the table for a closer look. While I generally like quests and narrative in MMOs, there’s something about the way ESO does its style that works incredibly well. Play Elder Scrolls OnlineFor my debut topic, I wanted to analyze what I feel is the single best feature of Elder Scrolls Online: its quest system.
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