[Crono]

Originally Posted by ffcmike

Arrogance is not a persuasive argument.

I don't commit to an argument if my logic isn't solid, not anymore anyway.

Originally Posted by ffcmike

See, by inserting the phrase "I don't consider", that is distinguishing the belief as an individual opinion, as opposed to stating it as a matter of fact like with the original post. I can't argue against questing not being a positive point for yourself, nor do I hold it against you personally, I can however argue against that being the same for many of those who considered Classic as their home server in the past, as well as many of those who have played through the existing quests.

I didn't acknowledge that in the way you are insinuating though, you're twisting my words entirely out of context, and picking and choosing different parts to suit your argument. I acknowledged that in the context of an existing purely casual player, and alluded to the fact that questing is primarily targeted at legitimately new Graal players.

I think there's a misunderstanding here, we've both acknowledged that a forced storyline + quest narrows down the server's appeal. How is narrowing down your server's appeal a positive point? It's such a stupid thing (the actual point we're arguing over) to revolve this entire thing around but that's all it really is.

I didn't take what you said out of context, it was completely within context.

Originally Posted by ffcmike

These servers did not have a long chain of questing to the extent Tyhm's Classic did. In UN's case obtaining all the hearts and equipment, while still a chore, could be done in a much less relative amount of time compared to Classic. Babylon is a bad example, for whatever reasons it may have been it had problems which caused it to fade out within this time period.

Delteria actually did have a handful of quests and you were kind of screwed if you didn't take the time to do them as the server heavily revolved around pk/spar, especially when you had three "powerhouse" guilds (TNR, Veracity, MHX) all fighting eachother. I concede that Babylon is indeed a bad example, now that I remember it more clearly it was an early server that adopted events as a mainstream type of thing and might have had event coins.

Originally Posted by ffcmike

Not necessarily a strong presence, by referring to quest development as a lost art I was emphasising the higher frequency that occurred back then when compared to the very low frequency of it that occurs now.

Oh ok, fair enough. Back then it was pretty much a requirement though because real content on servers was rare. We didn't have things like hats, item trading, npc serv, etc on all servers until full p2p. To pass PWA inspection your content had to be "ok", aka: you had to have decent levels, NPC weapons, and a handful of quests. That was about it really.

Originally Posted by ffcmike

To have a set direction and objective pointed out to a first time player is more likely -in general- to keep them online and interested for longer, compared to leaving them to wander around aimlessly with no given direction or objective. At the same time however, once the sword is obtained at the very start players are not prevented from wandering around aimlessly according to their free will. So even if you refuse to believe it can have a positive effect on long term playercount, it's only to a very small extent it could possibly have a negative effect.

Only if there was a server filled to the brim with playable content almost everywhere that can be explored might it then be sufficient to leave the game entirely down to exploration, Graal just doesn't have servers which come close to offering this. If most of the levels are waste levels which offer no incentive, exploring them is less likely to be interesting. With what we have on Classic though, there's a stable foundation of linear questing that can branch out and gradually become more flexible.

The thing is, despite the vibe I seem to be giving off, I do respect the fact that you're going for early-game content with substance, but I feel like the average newbie will find it to be too drawn out. Storyline and lore on any game is always an awesome thing to have, but it's very difficult to find it appealing past the very short-term on a multiplayer game when the quest itself is not that fun or if the storyline isn't really intriguing.

Originally Posted by ffcmike

I'm not sure what time era you're referring to here, post NPC-Server Classic began as a complete wipe around January 2005. There were no quests other than a simplistic maze and a pushblock hell hole until the Castle quest around a third of the way through 2006. By the time the next quests were released playercount had already dropped much lower, a lot of the pre NPC-Server players had left, and v5 had been implemented.

I'm not sure either because other than exploring it in 2000 I didn't actively play Classic until 2006. I was always under the impression that the NPC-Serv was implemented around 2003/2004 because the playercount was relatively low then.