Zen of Design on Questclamation Marks! - Make'em Real I Say!

[erikbethke]

Over and Zen of Design Damion has brought up the advancement of MMO gameplay by relaxing the UI hunt for quests and using the golden exclamation point.

I was tickled to see GoPets/me pop up in reason #3.

I am unabashed about copying the bits that I like from other games, but especially WoW.  So here is a screen shot from a client (Korean)  viewing a quest giver.  We went ahead and made the quest mark a bit more animated and with some sparkles and we are seeing a definite improvement in the first user question completions.




For a game that produces as much top-line revenue as Halo *each quarter* (and way better margins) I think the greater entertainment industry all the way out to TV & movies needs to study WoW in greater detail.

It fascinates me that a sub-theme of the 2.3 patch has been the much greater ease of finding stuff in the UI such as the effects over clickable game objects as well as the quest giving signs and quest givers on the mini-map.

Much discussion over at Zen with basic agreement and a few people saying they would like more dynamic NPCs with smarter quests.  Personally I am not a great big fan of smarter quests.  I and everyone I know strips the story bits out of the quests and just goes to Thottbot.  In fact, I am charmed that my 60-year old Taiwanese Mandarin-only speaking mother-in-law has slowly grinded up to a level 56 warlock with an English client on a Korean server by hunting for the key objectives in the quest text and dutifully pasting them into Thott as I showed her.

However, what I would like to are possible 'lore master' quest givers in the major cities give me a new go talk to that guy quest in some far off place that I might have missed as per level and requirements.  If I missed a whole quest hub or zone or something.

I used to take a perverse pride in find bruiseweeds especially in Duskwood and I would feel so proud when I found that really annoying pieces of almost fully transparent herb electronic trash.  Anyways I am a great fan of keeping me playing and not pissed off and searching.

I have to say, I always loved CYOA books, but then hated the Adventure genre of computers games, because I hated hunting for the magic word or the magic pixel that could get me forward in the game.

But I think it would rock if in the real world we got UI helpers... how about these:

Singles Bars:

• Symbols for available and open, vs. wastes of time
• Sanity rating

At Parties:

• People who are known to have said good stuff from my friends circle get a thumbs up
• and again people who are known to have said dumb stuff get a thumbs down
• serious idiot indicators

Walking / Driving:

• bad drivers get a reckless symbol -
• perhaps even their current number of 'points'
• or DUIs?

Business Meetings:

• has power to make a decision or not
• has already gave notice and is a waste of time

Special Boss Monsters (devil icons):

• W Bush

Significant Others:

• finally a thought balloon to give you a clue about what they are thinking...

I think we are just getting started with this in WoW and soon they will spread everywhere!

Cheers,
-Erik