Be honest. When you play an MMORPG, how often do you actually read the quest text? If you’re an insipid little fanfic-writing manchild like myself, that would be “fairly often”. But let’s pretend for a moment that you’re an average person with a life to lead and limited time for repetitive virtual-life activities. You don’t really care why you have to go slaughter 10 imaginary people with no relevance to you or your character. You just want the cash and experience points. Hurry up and click that “accept” button. There’s killing to do!
So what of the quest-giver? The person who stands there in the same place every day, enticing adventurers to engage in possibly questionable acts with the promise of money and a fleeting sense of accomplishment, presumably for no better reason than that they’re too lazy to do it themselves. What’s their deal? Do these NPCs seem to have believable motivations for doing so?
Amazingly, in some cases, they do. And that can make for a great quest. Sometimes there’s a story there that is actually interesting enough for players to give a hoot about the NPC and what they hope to accomplish. But what if on top of that, the player could get involved with that NPC’s life, influence them, befriend them, recruit them as an employee, even betray and ruin them? More…
“Be like an oak - root firm and give no ground. Let the enemy tire themselves with movement! Be like an oak and weather your enemy’s blows until they spend their last strength. Only strike when they can no longer raise their hand against you, for then they are yours.”