Players will make a lot of actions in the virtual world. They will walk around the world, talk with NPC, kill monsters, and interact with other players, or play some mini games. Quests are some tasks that require players to do these actions within a meaningful story. Instead of killing monsters for fun, players will be told to kill monsters to save the village. Instead of walking around the world without any purpose, players complete achievements while logging in the world. These pieces of purpose and reasons compose the main storyline of the virtual world.
We are going to discuss the flow from accepting a quest to completing it. We will also discuss different ways of presenting quests.
We will discuss the following topics in this chapter:
- The database and server set up for quests
- Listing available quests in the quests panel
- Methods of getting new quests
- Logic structure to maintain the in-progress quests
- Some tricks to make quests interesting
Quests are some tasks that players can accept and complete in the virtual world. The content of the tasks is often related to the places or people nearby. For instance, a farming quest will most likely appear from a farmer in countryside.
Most probably there is a theme for every virtual world. The world can be set in modern age, middle age, or ancient. The theme can be around pirate, elf, or villages. The tasks and quests will be based on the theme of the virtual world. Players may need to kill sea monsters in a pirate theme virtual world. They may need to make friends to earn points in a social-based virtual world. In our theme, the players may need to contribute to build the town and quest around the town.
One feature of the quest is to tell stories. There is a reason for every quest that makes it meaningful. Pieces of the story will focus one at a time when players are working on the quests. Completing the quests is like putting missing puzzles at the correct place. As the player plays longer in the world, these pieces will gradually shape the storyline of the virtual world.