Vagiel said:
So how does it fare as an RPG, it is hyped as such by many friends (thought i have yet to find an actual online rpg). Someone said something about interesting quests? i hope they are more interesting than the usual "bring me 100 goblin tits"
The singleplayer destiny quests have been pretty cool. They're extremely linear in terms of "Start at A, Pass through B, then end on C." However, depending on your class/archetype, the path goes differently. For example, a Rogue-type might be asked to free a prisoner from his cage, while a Warrior-type would have to slaughter the guards, and the Priest-type would have to heal the prisoner. They all still follow the same storyline, though, so while the differences might keep it somewhat interesting, it's still somewhat repetitive.
The multiplayer quests have been mostly the standard fare. Collect 10 bottles off the beach. Kill 50 enemy warriors. Find the 20 crocodile skins. Those sorts of things. There
have been a good amount of more interesting ones, though, such as freeing a man from his curse or helping another investigate his family heirloom. A lot of these have instanced areas which make quests seem a bit more personalized -- a never-before-tread crypt actually seems never-before-tread when you're the only person in it and things react to your actions as though it hasn't been touched in years.
What's been exceptional about the entire thing is that most of the quests have a sense of importance to them. You're not killing rats and beetles to get a rusty sword from a guard, you're fighting off an evil cannibal death-cult, or you're stopping an evil sorceress' army, or you're overthrowing the oppressive government. Even the more lame quests have you working towards these goals, which (in my opinion) makes them more tolerable.
They also all have a KOTOR-style dialog system... it's hollow, in that what you say doesn't seem to matter, but you do get to approach quests in-character. Good people might purge a demon to clean the land, neutral people might do it for revenge, and evil people might do it for the thrill of spilling blood for cash. Pretty simplistic, sure, but certainly better than WoW's style of "Accept? Yes or no."
I really hope I don't come off sounding too fanboyish. I should repeat that the game's not perfect, and the quests aren't revolutionary or completely new concepts (even for an MMO). I also expect that after the initial awe of playing wears off, the fetch quests will seem a lot more repetitive to me. And since
all new characters have to go through the exact same area for levels 1-20, I can foresee it being incredibly dull to start up more than one or two alts.
I haven't yet experienced anything past the newbie island yet (I'm only level 18). But for reference, I'd probably say it's about equal to NWN2 or either of the KOTOR games. It's a lot of fun, but don't go into it expecting to have your mind blown by RPG awesomeness.