Citadel of Sorcery

Quests
 
  • No quest givers standing in the same spot. More importantly no NPCs ever stand in the same spot unless they have a reason to do so. Example: A vendor selling flowers might park their cart on the same corner each day, however, as night falls they will pack up the cart and go home.

    As to your question though, there are NPCs that give out quests, but they don't stand around in the same spot.

    Another example: you finished a big quest and head into the city to do some character maintenance (you know, sell some loot, buy some stuff, upgrade some equipment, meet some friends). A servant comes up to you and hails you. You could stop and talk to him, and he might give you an invitation to meet with his master. Or you could ignore him and go on. Later, you might stop by a bar and the bartender might say, "Hey, I heard that you are the one that destroyed that nest of vampires in Castle Black." (Which is true, it's something you did recently). Then he says, "I know a man who could use an adventurer with your talents, would you like me to set up a meeting?"

    Now, the important part here is that the servant would not have accosted you or any other player on another day or time. As for the barkeep, sure, he's in the bar most days working, but he does not offer this same quest to anyone who walks up. He offers it to you, because you need a quest at this moment, and because you were the one that destroyed the vampire nest. What you did in the past matters, what you need now matters, and what you are offered is unique unto your character.

  • We are a completely dynamic system. Failure will always lead to a new path. Some games have you pop back to the beginning and start again, in our case, you might try again, but think of it more like life.

    If you use a frontal attack on a castle, and fail, time does not reset, nor do your opponents. You might try a second frontal assault on that same gate, if you so choose, but your opponents won't reset. If some were wounded or killed, they may still be so. They may also have brought in reinforcements. Like all things, time moves on and your previous actions affect the future.

    In a different example, you might be making a choice, do you trust this guy and go with him into this cave? Or do you kill him? If you go into the cave, and are ambushed and killed, you cannot repeat the choice you made earlier. Time just moves on. You live with your choices and your story progresses.
  • There are many differences. First of all, Quests in CoS continue your personal story. A Quest is a have full story, with beginning, building episodes and a climax and they come in many varieties. Because our world is not a static moment in time, but changes every day, your character is living through their adventures, walking new paths, and never doing exactly what each and every other player has done before you.

    One of our biggest challenges in the eventual release of this ground breaking game is to get people to understand that they are not about to get more of the same thing they have seen in other MMORPG games.

    Perhaps we should create a new word to replace 'Quest', because that word is now synonymous with simple little boring tasks, each and every one duplicated by each player in the game. NOT IN CITADEL OF SORCERY.

    When you take a Quest in our game, be prepared for a wild ride through an amazing adventure. Your personal enemies are out there, and they are seeking the same things you are... or waiting to ambush you at the next cross road, or sending a spy to lead you the wrong way, or killing off those who might help you. Meanwhile, there is a war going on, and at times you are in the middle of changing events, yet you must still try to accomplish your goals. The world is alive, and filled with evil beings, each with their own ongoing agendas.

    The typical quest in another MMO is: "bring me five wolf tails", or "take this satchel to Henry the tanner". Because of these simplistic (and dead boring) types of 'quests' these other games try to make up for their lack of imagination by giving you a LOT of simple grocery list quests. In other words, you can fetch the apples first, or the popcorn, but each thing on the list is just a simple little job, not a true 'quest'.

    In CoS life is very different. You have a personal story that is progressing, and each quest is part of that story. Because of this, you are only ever really on one personal quest at a time. Think of our quests as chapters in an epic fantasy book. You would always read those chapters in order, not make a list of them and read parts of some chapters or read them out of order. However, each player's book is unique, so no one elses story is the same as yours.

    And yet, this is not a linear game. YOU make the decisions during a quest that influence where that quest will take you and what will happen.

    You should throw out your preconceived idea of quests from other games in order to grasp the difference. We really have nothing in common with other MMO games when it comes to quests.

    An example would likely help you understand:

    Let's say that you heard about a really cool sword, we'll call it the Sword of Light. You could seek information about this sword. Yes, you heard right, you can decide what you want to quest after, not be told.

    The information you gather might tell you that there was a sorcerer who created this sword, but it was stolen by a thief. If you go to the sorcerer, he will give you the details on who stole his sword, and tell you that if you can recover his sword he will make you another one like it.

    You must now infiltrate the local thieves guild. You can do this by stealth, frontal attack, or various other ways. Once you gain the sword, and return it to the sorcerer, he betrays you and takes his sword without giving you any reward. He then disappears and you can give up, or try to track him to his real lair.

    On the way there you learn that another man is also seeking the same sword. Now it is a race to see who can find and obtain the sword from the evil sorcerer first.

    You learn that your competitor is the same man that ruined your last adventure when he stole something from you and left you for dead in a maze full of undead.

    Now, not only do you want to beat him to the Sword of Light, but you owe this guy some serious pay back for what he did to you in the past. Revenge is a dish best served cold.

    This is just an example of one little quest chapter in your adventure, one that no other player will experience in the same way. It is your story, continued.

    Each player's story is different, and each player has free choice in how their story progresses. If the next chapter in your story is to rescue a damsel in distress from a group of fiendish doppelgangers, and that isn't what you want to do... then don't. Your story will go on, just down a different path, yet it will still be your personal story.

    Your choices create the path of your story, it isn't preordained.
  • The current MMO games offer what we call, 'meaningless' quests. What makes ours different? In Citadel of Sorcery, each Quest you go on furthers your story.

    Example: In other MMO games meaningless quests are something like 'fetch five fangs from a Giant Wolf'. This means you must go find and kill Giant Wolfs until you get enough 'Fang' drops to achieve your sad goal. Meaningless to any story or continuity of your character, or simply put... boring.

    In Citadel of Sorcery, every Quest is a full adventure with a plot that continues your personal story.

    In our world no one goes on the same exact quest as another player, nor is anyone following the same exact story. By creating the quest for you based on your player's past achievements, and then factoring in current events, we can weave a unique ongoing story.

    Think of a Quest as the next chapter in the book in which you are the lead character. You will have an over all goal in life, and your quests will be chapters along the way to that climax. As far as we know, this system of quest creation and personal story integration has not been attempted in any other MMO, and perhaps, any other game in history.

    This is not just the next generation of quests, it is the evolution of quests from simple tasks to integrated stories.
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