Tortage, Rashomon, and Class Quests
Tobold wrote today about his thoughts on Tortage in Age of Conan and how it affected people's expectations for the rest of the game. I have never played Age of Conan so I cannot comment on that, but there was one part of his post that stood out to me.
"The same story was told from four different angles, depending on what archetype you played, with your part in the story being appropriate to your class. Thus the fighter would get the kill quest, and the rogue the sneak quest, while the mage feigned alegiance[sic] to the evil sorceress to get information."
I wonder why this is not utilized more in MMOs.
When questing in MMOs presently, your only means of accomplishing a goal is combat. If you need a book from the top of a sorcerer's tower, you kill everything in your path and take the book. If you need to get information from someone unwilling to give it, you fight them until they submit and give you that information. If you find out orcs have taken up residence on the local hill, you only choice is to usually to go kill 10 orcs. I wonder if there is a better way.
One initial thought would be that if every quest was tailored to your quest, then you would only ever be on the same quests as others that are your class. But instead, I wonder if giving options based on race, class and profession would be the best option.
In the situation that orcs had taken residence the local hill, you could have many options. Rogues could be given the option to sneak into their camp and assassination their leader. Warriors would have a frontal assault to take out as many as possible. Alchemists could have the option to concoct a poison to poison their food supply. Blacksmiths could have the option to craft some weapons for the local militia so the militia could deal with them.
In most MMOs right now, the class that you choose only affects what role you will end up playing in a group. Mayor Dave in Questingville will still give you the exact same quests as the rogue, priest, ranger, or necromancer standing beside you.
I think the best way of implementing this would be an epic questline based on your race/class and then having "contract system" I talked about previously in all the town hubs, but have it offering you contracts based on your race/class/profession with some general options.
The overall storyline that happens in the game and the world would be the same, but the way step along the way was approached would be different for different classes (though there would be occasional crossovers). I see it similar to the book quests for Lord of the Rings online from different viewpoints. If each chapter of the storyline was eight quests long, you could a couple class specific quests, a couple general quests and then end it with a large group quests that everyone had. Perhaps it would be delving into a dungeon.
You would not be the one singular hero of the world, you would just be one piece of the puzzle. In LotRO your character is one piece of the puzzle, but you are going through all of the same steps as every other character so in the end everyone is one piece, but the same piece. Under the system I would prefer, in leveling your character through the story, you would see the full storyline unfold but if you played a different class, you would see different things that were done to help it unfold.
Perhaps a warrior would be told by his NPC questgiver to go attack a traveling group of bandits that would be at a specific meeting place. That would be his piece of the story and he would move on.
If a rogue was at the same part in his quest line, the NPC questgiver would give the rogue a map and instruct him to sneak into the bandit camp and replace it with their current map so that they would go to a different meeting location. In the end this "different meeting location" would be the place that the warrior was instructed to go kill them.
Each character would play a role, but it would only be a piece in a larger puzzle. The ending would be the same for every class, but every class had a different part to play.
I hope something like this is what Bioware is doing with The Old Republic. I will just have to cross my fingers and hope.