This is the type of thing that bothers me when people claim there's no lore in the dungeons. I read the quests and NPC dialogs and stuff. To me, pretty much all the dungeons have lore and are usually explicitly tied to several quests in the zone in which they are placed. If you're just skipping the quest text, or don't care enough to remember it, is it really valid to claim that there's no lore to a zone? If you really cared about the lore, you'd read the quests...
From the moment you step into Zangarmarsh, you've got Cenarion dudes telling you to investigate the naga presence, you get turned into a bird and do a flyby to see all the water pumps, you investigate what was formerly a lake that was drained completely with one of the giant pump machines sitting right in the middle of it. All the pumps have giant tubes leading down into Coilfang Reservoir... not to mention all the sporelock stuff... and yet people claim the zones have no lore? Someone earlier in the thread said that it doesn't make sense that you're down there until Lady Vashj says "Whoever controls the water controls Outland". Are you kidding me? How much hand holding and shoving of plot down someone's throat does it take? At what point is it no longer Blizzard's fault that a player can't figure out what the story is?
The same thing goes for Auchindoun, the bone wastes quests, and Murmur. I knew that the shadow council had summoned some ancient evil that destroyed Auchindoun and created the bone wastes before I was even level 68, not to mention zoning into slab at 70.
Maybe Blizzard will do more stuff similar to the Magister's Terrace scrying orb, so people can watch little in-game cut scenes since they're obviously never going to read quest text.
Well it is described that the Naga are draining the marsh but it is never explained why in a single quest or instance (the controlling water statement by her is a bit lacking). You end up killing Vashj in Serpentshrine and at the end are left wondering what they are doing other than control the water in 1 zone. All we have is player speculation that they were building a new Well of Eternity for Illidan.
A lot of the instances in TBC just are not as 'epic' when it comes to their storyline and what occurs or don't explain it at all. Probably the worst instance of them all is the Battle of Mount Hyjal which you can tell was rushed out the door while they out all their work into Black Temple. Instead Blizzard talks their way out of that one saying they just wanted to give players a chance to experience the Battle even though Soridormi outside the instance says the Infinite Dragonflight is going to great attempts to stop them. I also don't feel a good reason was ever given for Illidan to die and was disappointed when I first found that out.
At least with vanilla WoW there was more story as to WHY you were going to the instance to kill someone. Sure it was the normal lets go save the world stuff but it at least made sense. We went to MC to stop Rag from destroying the Eastern Kingdoms, BWL to stop Nefarian from unleashing his Chromatic Dragonflight, AQ to prevent C'Thun from leaving, and Naxx to prevent the next Scourge invasion. All those instances had good reasons behind going to them that actually had some thought put into it.
The best storyline with TBC that Blizzard did was with Kael'thas and Tempest Keep leading to where we are now with Quel'Danas.
In WoW 1.0, you are pulled pretty relentlessly towards Blackrock Mountain and Nefarian/Ragnaros. You learn about it (as Alliance) long before you can even survive in "that Mordor-like zone", take a flight from SW to IF, and quest lines lead players right up to the doorstep of both.
Alliance Onyxia is similar. Never done the Horde version. You meet "Lady" Onyxia very early.
Naxx of course has two whole zones of leadup. The Plaguelands have an enormous amount of content in them and you get two creepy instances as well.
AQ is the odd duck. Blizzard tried very hard to put you in the middle of an NPC war to explain why you are fighting these bugs, and you do see bugs from early on in the game, but it still just falls sorta flat, partly because the big "war" was so riddled by technical problems, a quest chain that almost no one saw or could do and the awful supply drive.
I feel they generally bit off more than the could chew with AQ and learned from it, applying the lessons to Hellfire and QD.
I thought AQ worked quite well actually, particularly considering that it was completely new in WoW, with no references to War3 or anything.
As a Horde at least, you're introduced to the Silithid at around level 20, in the barrens. They appear spotted around through thousand needles, Feralas, Tanaris, Un'goro. Then you've got Silithus, completely devoted to them, with the Cenarion expedition, the massive hives, and the sceptre chain. The Scarab Wall in itself is particularly awe inspiring, and you really get the idea of this entire civilization that has been magically entombed for thousands of years, and is only now breaking out.
My main complaint about AQ is the actual bosses themselves. The creature design was cool, the Anubisaths, Sphynxes and stuff were immensely cool, but I didn't get who the bosses were most of the time. Who exactly was Ossirian? Or Fankriss? Why is Vicscidus down there?
Apart from C'thun and the Twin Emps, I didn't really have an idea about any of them.
Ossirian actually had decent lore published on their website - AQ20 got all the interesting stuff, AQ40 was just "random bugs, random boss, random bugs".
They really messed up the entire AQ storyline to be honest. The art book that comes with the collectors edition shows pictures of the "Quraj", as the masterminds behind the Silithid hives were suppossed to be known, but in the actual instance all we see of the entire race are the Twin Emps - there isn't a single other non-silithid in there. And the Twin emps look NOTHING like the Nerubians who they are suppossed to be related to, or the artwork in the guide. Rather than a hidden city with a race that's been trapped behind a wall for 10,000 years plotting revenge, we got a random bug collection intermixed with neat looking Anubis statues that made no real sense.
It 's a shame really, as a Horde player you are especially aware of the rising Silithid threat, and the ending to it all was such a damp squib in lore and background. C'Thun himself was fantaastic, but his instance wasn't.
My main complaint about AQ is the actual bosses themselves. The creature design was cool, the Anubisaths, Sphynxes and stuff were immensely cool, but I didn't get who the bosses were most of the time. Who exactly was Ossirian? Or Fankriss? Why is Vicscidus down there?
Apart from C'thun and the Twin Emps, I didn't really have an idea about any of them.
Ossirian and Moam got write-ups on the official site (WoW -> Game Guide -> Monsters of Ahn'Qiraj -> Ossirian), but most of the others didn't. MC and Naxx didn't really do any better; the bosses fit the theme, but there wasn't any detailed background about them. Simple kill-quests with a few sentences would fill in the details a bit ("The Naga are using a Sea-Giant to excavate their cavern: go forth and slay Morogrim!").
Ossirian and Moam got write-ups on the official site (WoW -> Game Guide -> Monsters of Ahn'Qiraj -> Ossirian), but most of the others didn't. MC and Naxx didn't really do any better; the bosses fit the theme, but there wasn't any detailed background about them. Simple kill-quests with a few sentences would fill in the details a bit ("The Naga are using a Sea-Giant to excavate their cavern: go forth and slay Morogrim!").
I know about the website write-ups, and read them as soon as they were published, but as someone said earlier - this stuff should be in game, in quest descriptions and NPC dialogue. I also agree with Maledict that the Qiraji were totally under-used, we should have seen them in AQ40 as the controllers of the Silithid, breeding their huge unstoppable army in the same way Nefarian was making Chromatics. I also wish more of 'The Temple of Ahn'Qiraj' had actually been the man-made (or Qiraji-made) black stone, rather than bug tunnels - it could have been an awesome underground city.
My point remains though - the build up to AQ was awesome, it's just that theres a disconnect at the end.
I think DWLM's (sorry for the acroynm) point about kill quests is a good one, and something I've thought of before. In general, raid instances need more quests, and simple kill quests would make good sense. Imagine if after you finished the Varedis quest line, you get a follow-up to find out more about the 'crazed demon hunter', and eventually it leads to a kill quest for Leotheras. Once you dispose of Pathaleon the calculator, you should get a follow up telling you how one of Kael'thas' lackies has used the mana cells to power an incredibly powerful Legion Fel Reaver. Cue kill quest for Solarian and Void Reaver. Doing the whole water-pump-zangarmarsh chain should end in a quest to kill Vashj.
Blizzard seem fairly good (though not perfect, as this thread has pointed out) at linking 5-man dungeons to zones, but raids need more linking. Why doesn't the Onyxia chain end in a 'kill Onyxia quest'? Even if it had no reward, it would serve to tie the story together, and could then lead to a 'kill Nefarian' quest.
Black Temple came fairly close to this, but there's the little disconnect between the Ata'mal Terrace and talking to Karathress' captive - that really should have had a linking quest.
I really feel that WoW has an immense amount of story and lore, but that much of it is disconnected. Put it all together, and it would feel so much greater than it is now.
I was curious how phase switching was actually done, so i waited at 99% before the next phase, and watched how they implemented it. And was seriously disappointed. After the new phase was reached, the newly conquered building just spawned the new NPCs, and that was it. No advancing SSO Forces in a little in-game cutscene, no small fight with the former inhabitants (they just vanished), no yells from the conquering forces, no futile tries from the Sunwell Elves to take the building back, nothing.
This is a very unreasonable expectation. That kind of scripting takes a rather large amount of development and test time for virtually no payoff; even if it happens during primetime, probably still only 0.001% of the server population will be at that exact point to witness it. Even for the population of people on the rather tiny Isle of Quel'danas at any given time, only a small fraction of them would be standing around that building to see it. This will always be the case for battles that progress in only one direction.
However, if they had areas in the game that were in a constant state of back-and-forth, the argument becomes a lot more compelling to spend developer resources on it. If the Army of the Light and the Legion of the Dark are fighting each other on the Plains of Anger forever, and players have some reason to be in the Plains of Anger, and one side "captures" an area from the other side on a fairly regular basis, then it becomes content that players will actually see, and suddenly Blizzard can afford to spend some time on it to make it worthwhile.
It could definitely make for a conflict that feels more tangible.
That's really a paradigm inherent to the MMORPG genre (I'm not necessarily considering it a flaw). They can't deliberately obsolete content that you yourself have completed because there's 9 million other people waiting in line to do it after you.
One of the solutions to this that I really like is to have zones be a combination of geographical and temporal, not just geographical. When you finish a world-changing quest, you get "promoted" to the newer version of the zone where the impact of finishing that quest can be seen. All the other people who've done it are there with you. All the people who haven't done it are technically in a different zone, so they see the old version of the world and they don't see you.
Another advantage of this is, well, remember leveling on a new sever? As you overcame VanCleef and so forth, you felt pretty powerful, because there wasn't an army of people doing it before you did? Well, having different zones have "grades" can bring some of that back -- when you're in the pre-VC's-downfall version of Westfall, there aren't any 70s around! The place isn't brimming with people at a power level that puts everything you face to shame.
Some disadvantages are obvious -- fewer people can interact, so the "massively multiplayer" aspect of the world can be lost when you're not in one of the more-widely-shared hub-like areas. And there are people who like to have a 70 run a bunch of 12s through quests (though I doubt that's something Blizzard wants to encourage). But there are definitely neat aspects to this approach.
It's probably impossible with current WoW engine (maps are absolutely static and stored client side), but would be very cool if it was implemented.
Could be done if the maps were generated randomly without re-seeding the RNG once the creation process started, and the seed for the RNG was metadata for that copy of the instance that each client got when the character was "glued" to that copy of the instance. Though there would be new avenues of hackery opened up.
I think the real problem is, you can have either static maps with very interesting level design, or random maps with essentially boring level design. The Diablo maps that were randomly generated never really gave you moments of wonder. They're better for the 73rd run through a dungeon, but much worse for your first run through.
I'd kinda like to see soloable, or PUGable 5-man, (or heck, dynamic-scaling from 1 to 5 similarly to how Diablo does it) randomly generated dungeons at the level caps only, for this reason. It's pretty much completely unnecessary for leveling dungeons. But it's something for people who want an activity at or a little higher than the difficulty level of a bunch of daily quests, but more interesting, but not so interesting that it moves up into the next tier of challenge level.
I think the real problem is, you can have either static maps with very interesting level design, or random maps with essentially boring level design. The Diablo maps that were randomly generated never really gave you moments of wonder. They're better for the 73rd run through a dungeon, but much worse for your first run through.
Well frankly, a lot of randomized Diablo 2 maps still seemed as interesting as a few of the TBC maps. Arcatraz, Shadow Lab, or really even any of the Hellfire Citadel or Auchindoun instances are probably less interesting than some randomly-generated content could be, even the first time.
Douglas, that is exactly how LotRO works (and also Guild Wars to a lesser extent). The problem with this is that it really does break the game up a bit too much. WoW is already critisced for being less "massive" than other games, and this style of instancing really does inhibit the feel of a world to be honest.
I thought AQ worked quite well actually, particularly considering that it was completely new in WoW, with no references to War3 or anything.
As a Horde at least, you're introduced to the Silithid at around level 20, in the barrens. They appear spotted around through thousand needles, Feralas, Tanaris, Un'goro. Then you've got Silithus, completely devoted to them, with the Cenarion expedition, the massive hives, and the sceptre chain. The Scarab Wall in itself is particularly awe inspiring, and you really get the idea of this entire civilization that has been magically entombed for thousands of years, and is only now breaking out.
QFT.
I personally thought AQ was a terrific dungeon. Aside from the technical problems from the opening of the scarab gate, AQ was a visually gorgeous, humongous instance. It was so big that Blizzard gave us mounts, and even then it took a long time to travel from the beginning to Sartura/Fankriss/Huhu.
As Alliance, I started encountering the Silithid in Feralas and Tanris, in the early/mid 40s or so, and that general theme continued in Un'goro.
You also get the idea that AQ was a giant testing ground. The turnin style of getting gear was pretty new, if you ignore ZG which started the trend. In addition, bosses dropped guaranteed tokens; you knew, for a fact, that you would get [Qiraji Bindings of Command] and [Qiraji Bindings of Dominance] tokens from Huhuran, not the random token chance we get in BC (We've all experienced the "OMG Gruul dropped 2x [Leggings of the Fallen Hero] for the 4th straight week" effect).
I too was one of the players who was there and wanted to see what happened from 99% to 100% from P1 to P2. And yes, I was disappointed a bit also. But it's something I'm sure they can improve on if/when they do this sort of content in the future. I think it was just and oversight and nothing more on Blizzards part. I think it would have been pretty easy to just have some guards from the back rush forward with the new (spawned) NPC quest-givers and take over the next building. They could have started from the boat area too.
On another note, I also have to give Blizzard credit for getting me to an area I never really bother to go. No one on our server does the event up in that Blade's Edge area so the daily for SSO is a very nice addition. I also like how they made the daily have a different "phase" where you quest; which removes you completely from the regular world by using that Bash'ir Phasing Device.
I'm interested to see how this might change future questing.
One of the solutions to this that I really like is to have zones be a combination of geographical and temporal, not just geographical. When you finish a world-changing quest, you get "promoted" to the newer version of the zone where the impact of finishing that quest can be seen. All the other people who've done it are there with you. All the people who haven't done it are technically in a different zone, so they see the old version of the world and they don't see you.
Another advantage of this is, well, remember leveling on a new sever? As you overcame VanCleef and so forth, you felt pretty powerful, because there wasn't an army of people doing it before you did? Well, having different zones have "grades" can bring some of that back -- when you're in the pre-VC's-downfall version of Westfall, there aren't any 70s around! The place isn't brimming with people at a power level that puts everything you face to shame.
Some disadvantages are obvious -- fewer people can interact, so the "massively multiplayer" aspect of the world can be lost when you're not in one of the more-widely-shared hub-like areas. And there are people who like to have a 70 run a bunch of 12s through quests (though I doubt that's something Blizzard wants to encourage). But there are definitely neat aspects to this approach.
I wonder if the mana cell daily is a test for this sort of concept... when you finish a questline, you get a "permanent attunement" that works like the displacer at Bashir's landing... you can interact only with players mobs and objects that are similarly attuned.
I wonder if the mana cell daily is a test for this sort of concept... when you finish a questline, you get a "permanent attunement" that works like the displacer at Bashir's landing... you can interact only with players mobs and objects that are similarly attuned.
They already did a minute version of this with the "seeing dead people" quest from Auchindoun. I see no reason why they couldn't do it again in the future, although without the vehicle of "they're dead" to say why non-attuned people couldn't see the new NPCs, etc, it might get weird.
They already did a minute version of this with the "seeing dead people" quest from Auchindoun. I see no reason why they couldn't do it again in the future, although without the vehicle of "they're dead" to say why non-attuned people couldn't see the new NPCs, etc, it might get weird.
They also did it with the various goggles quests in Shadowmoon Valley.
I really doubt they'll do anything extensive with phase-shifting or seeing invisible mobs. It would very quickly reach critical mass and just become a pain.
With regards to generic AQ bosses, I think part of the problem is a relatively late decision to split the instance into two parts. I believe it went something like
Start developing ZG
Start developing AQ as one very large zone
Deploy ZG, find that 20man raids are a big hit
Split AQ into AQ40 and AQ20
In particular, Huhu and Ayamiss were probably the same mob, as well as Fankriss the Unyielding and Kurinnaxx. If you figure the bug trio were probably a pretty late addition to give guilds who can't get Nef something new to do, and probably were not in the original plan (that's speculation), you take a lot of the generic out of it. You are down to one random scorpion like thing, and a queen of all the wasps all over Silithus.
As far as the lore not tying into the instances *well*, that's absolutely true and something that Blizzard's addressed. They've said that they tried in BC to keep people from ending up in situations where you'd run a long questline and then not finish it because the last bits were inside an instance.
To compensate for that, they decided to make most of the dungeon quests stand alone, and as a result they feel very disconnected. I agree that I felt like I'd largely wrapped up the Zangarmarsh and Auchidoun storylines by 62/65, and by the time I went into SV/SL I barely remembered how the places tied into those stories. Terrokar is particularly bad for this, since MT is just Ethereals taking advantage of chaos, Crypts is not run often, and Setthek Halls/SLab are done long after the Bone Wastes/Terrok quests have been done and forgotten.
I think they've realized by now that it was a mistake, as no matter how casual folks are they'll still at the very least do the occasional 5-man. The preview material for Uthgarde Keep certainly suggests that they've learned from their mistake.
(I'm sure development time was another issue -- it's no coincidence that all the quests that actually do send you into a 5-man involve looting or interacting with Object ID #12345, since those kinds of things are really easy to add even if the instances aren't done yet.)
Why is there a group of damn Skexxis sat in a hall opposite this suppossed nucleur disaster preening their feathers?
Tsk, they are there since their leader believed that the explosion from the summoning of Murmur meant that their hero, Terokk had returned and they had to go there to prepare for him.
The Sethekk departed Skettis with great fanfare when Auchindoun exploded. Surely it must've been an omen of our master's arrival.
My brother, Syth, was one of their leaders and told us we were obligated to go into the temple ruins and face our god.
After we took up residence in the ruins, calling them the Sethekk Halls, I began to doubt my brother and his ally, Ikiss.
for the quest text. They stayed there since Ikiss went Insane(tm) and started to believe that he was Terokk reborn.
Last edited by Tacitus : 04/10/08 at 3:49 PM.
Reason: failed quotes
While interesting, something like that is hard to implement and will actually prevent people from helping each other with the quests.
To once again refer back to LoTRO, how they cope with that is by having a "storyline" set of quests, and other quests in the outside world. The "storyline" quests are one-time things. Once you're past step N, your world has permanently changed. If you go back to that room in the Prancing Pony, Strider isn't there any more. Other people who are on an earlier step of the storyline get a different copy of the room that still has Strider in.
In LoTRO, there are also two different types of instances - storyline instances, that progress the main plot, and loot dungeons that do not. In storyline instances, there is no loot, you just advance the plot (and/or get a quest reward afterwards). They're one-time-only deals, once you've completed that part of the plot, you don't in general go back there. The other type of dungeon is your standard thing filled with respawning monsters and bosses that drop loot.
In WoW terms, you could perhaps finger the BRD/BRS/Onyxia/BWL/Nefarian thread as the "storyline". These dungeons would then exist only for the quests, and wouldn't drop loot. The other dungeons would be as we know them today. As long as the difference between the two types of quest, and the different types of instance is well enough signposted, it can work.
One problem to note is that the "storyline" quest chain can't really require anything above party size. Or at least, if it does require a raid to complete, there needs to be a way to allow latecomers to skip stages. After all, how many times is the Nefarian fight done these days? Now imagine that you *have* to do it in order to continue on to Outland questlines. Now imagine that people who've done Nefarian before can't actually help you do it. At some point you have to let people "take a mulligan" through outdated content so they can catch up on the story. I guess that could be done by a cutscene or other mechanism.
A second problem is that it also requires mass wastage of content - if the world moves on, by definition the content isn't repeatable. You'd end up spending thousands of man-hours to design an Illidan fight that everybody completes once and once only. Then again, if you compare that to the current situation (a fight that 1% of the player base completes 50+ times and a further few % complete a few times), it's not clear whether that's necessarily a net plus or minus.
It could be made to work, but it would require a drastic rethink of the overall structure of WoW.
Well, there's the thing. You get all that Arrakoa lore at 65, and then there's a standalone quest at 68 that briefly recaps it and sends you into the dungeon.
If Setthek Halls was set up like any of the level 60 5-man dungeons, you'd be completing it and accomplishing tasks in there on normal to finish the Rilak the Redeemed questline, and doing it on heroic to complete the Terrok portions of the Skettis questlines. You'd bring Elixir of Shadows to be able to see an optional Time-Lost encounter in the dungeon, etc.
All the pieces are there, they're just not connected in the ways that EPL/WPL connect to Strat/Scholo. And that part just boils down to the quest developers and instance developers not working in tandem.
Well, there's the thing. You get all that Arrakoa lore at 65, and then there's a standalone quest at 68 that briefly recaps it and sends you into the dungeon.
If Setthek Halls was set up like any of the level 60 5-man dungeons, you'd be completing it and accomplishing tasks in there on normal to finish the Rilak the Redeemed questline, and doing it on heroic to complete the Terrok portions of the Skettis questlines. You'd bring Elixir of Shadows to be able to see an optional Time-Lost encounter in the dungeon, etc.
All the pieces are there, they're just not connected in the ways that EPL/WPL connect to Strat/Scholo. And that part just boils down to the quest developers and instance developers not working in tandem.
Or worst, Quest Developers not working in tandem with other Quest Developers. Which is -really- what it feels like to me.
Part of the problem is that you can see how Blizzard broke this all down into teams as well.
There was a team working on the raid dungeons, possibly with a brief overview of what the outdoor quests were, but they dont make outdoor quests, they do boss encounters. Then you have the outdoor team with a vague idea of what is going on in the raid but no clear picture.
Then you have a team working on SCC, another team on Zag, and still another team working on Bone Wastes.
It agitates me that the zones dont really link...shouldn't people in tek forest care that the zone to the north of them is being drained of water? But they dont, they have big lakes that seem fine, my answer is two different blizzard teams. They are both working away in their little bubbles, so when I as a player do one "bubble" it feels complete, but when I try to move from one bubble to another its very very de-linked.
This comes down to time, they need teams working in tandum to get things done. I just think they need to focus on getting people to come in after things are "done" and make things work together.
A few mana draining tubes from Netherstorm scattered in Blades Edge, Zangermarsh, and Hellfire.
Naga at the edges of the 2 big lakes in Nagrand, and the lake NE of Shat in Terrokar, setting up the machines.
etc...
If you look at Outlands as a whole, the ONLY theme that is carried from zone to zone is the *gasp* Burning Crusade Invasion Points. Focused in Shadowmoon and scattered through the rest of the zones. (Zanger is a strange exception to this unless I am blind). At least they got that right. Each team tried to grab some of that in their zones... but forgot to tell the other teams what they were doing.
Some intern at Blizzard sketched out the overall map in a few minutes, another intern split it up into groups and tossed them into a barrel for the teams to pick out which they would work on.
At least the Sunwell isle was logically placed near the BE starting area... though I am not sure why the BE starting area was placed where it was...
04/10/08, 9:31 AM
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