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Quest (video games)

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A quest in a gaming context, especially in MMORPGs, is generally a task or series of tasks, which a player or group of players may complete in order to gain a reward. Rewards may include experience points, loot, spells, in-game currency, faction hits, or any combination of the afore mentioned.

Types of quests

Typical quests involve killing a set number of creatures or collecting a list of specific items. Some quests may take only a few minutes or hours to complete, while others may take several days or weeks. Often, the larger the reward, the longer the quests takes to finish. Also, it is common for a quest to require a player's character to be a certain level before they are allowed to begin.

Some games, like EverQuest, have certain quests that can only be completed by player characters of a specific class or race. In turn, the rewards for those quests are often only useable by them. Other quests are doable by anyone and their rewards useable by anyone.

Furthermore, some quests may only be completed once per character for as long as they play the game. Other quests may be done several times, and still others can be completed as many times as a player likes. A common type of quest that is allowed to be done over and over is one that yields a reward of faction with a particular group of NPCs. In EverQuest and other games, "building up" or "raising" faction with certain NPCs opens up the door or, makes available, new quests and safe passage through the lands they inhabit.

Another type of quest found in MMORPGs such as EverQuest, EverQuest II or World of Warcraft involve the use of trade skills. Generally, in these types of quests the player is required to obtain raw materials (e.g. chopping or gathering wood for carpentry or fletching, mining ore for smithing, etc.) for their specific trade skill(s) and combine them together with other (sometimes "storebought") items to produce useable items to wear (clothes), equip (weapons) or to sell to other players or NPC merchants for game currency.

Questing to obtain rewards or loot is one of the main attractions to MMORPGs because it gives players a feeling or sense of accomplishment.

Fetch quest

The fetch quest is a somewhat derogatory name for a common sort of quest seen in many video game role-playing games (RPGs) and adventure games.

There are several highly recognizeable stages to the standard fetch quest:

  1. Your party is told to go find an item, usually rare, usually obtainable in only one place.
  2. You must travel to and through that place, which is more often than not a dungeon. You'll probably have to fight a boss to escape with the item.
  3. You must return the item to the person who assigned the quest, or take it where they told you.
  4. You are usually rewarded in some way: either a power-up, access to a new area in the game, or an item for another fetch quest.
    • Optionally, the party can choose not to fulfill the quest, but keep the item (eg. especially if it's a magical weapon). The player will lose the reward but will benefit from its powers.

Sometimes fetch quests nested within fetch quests describe the entire plot of a game.

Fetch quests are ubiquitous in RPGs because they are a plausible way to force the player to explore dungeons and advance the story.

It is notable that in relatively recent adventure games, when the fetch quests had already established themselves as cliches, the protagonist seemed too bored and tired of them, replying to characters he met like 'Yes, I know, you want something to trade this [object] don't you?' somehow self-satirizing the game itself.

See also

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