Cherek wrote:
I think we all agree that it would be great if there were no align or race-dependent quests. But I also stand by what I said before, I think players sometimes exaggerate the amount of QXP that is "locked" for some races/align. It's not that many quests, and many of them (not all) are tiny. Also, since most players don't finish all quests anyway (even those open for them), or tend to switch align and/or race several times, for other reasons, I don't think it's a _huge_ deal. Especially since there IS a workaround available, even is it's far from perfect. I am not saying it's not a big deal though, it is important, but I am just trying to explain it's not the end of the world to miss out on some quests either.
Genesis could benefit from fixing all sorts of things, making quests align/race-independent is one of them. I personally think it's important to do it in a good way though, so it makes sense story-wise. If that is by disguise, mirror quests, or simply lifting the alignment restriction probably depends on the quest and will have to be judged on case by case basis. For Minas Tirith it's up to the liege and AoB/AoD to make a decision, and if Arman is against disguises due to the risk of abuse then I am sure there are other ways to do it. For example a similar quest in Minas Morgul, or another storyline for evil players, or even _moving_ a quest, could all work too.
Here's a list of race/alignment restricted quests:
Quests that good aligned people can't do:
Gondor:
32. Beacon Signal Sabotage
33. Corsair Captain
39. Trust of the Haradrim War Chief
Khalakhor:
21: Potion Quest
22: Paint Dragon
(These Khalhalhor quests can both be done on the sour side of neutral, neutral alignment but evil grin)
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Quests that evil aligned people and/or goblins can't do:
Gondor:
1: Smuggle the Herb
2: Minas Tirith (Tour 1)
3: Minas Tirith (Tour 2)
4: Minas Tirith (Tour 3)
5: Minas Tirith (Tour 4)
6: Aid Gilraen
7: The Harad Banner
8: The Arraw Horn
13: The Minas Tirith Murder!
19: Pelargrir (Tour 3)
20: The Ranger Trap
21: The Enchanged Seed
22: The Lost Ranger
24: Elfhelms Job
34: Porter Quest
35: Oat Quest
36: Denethor Quest
Krynn:
6: Tour - Vingaard Keep Courtyard
36: Knight Museum Tour
37: Knights Spur Wood
38: Question Draconian
39: Free Draconian
Avenir:
13: Rescue Faerie
Shire:
7: Lost Brooch
8: Writing Quest
9: Imladris Forest
Khalakhor:
7: Eil-Galaith Entrance
Telling people it's not a HUGE deal that they are being gimped by the developers of the realm due to perfectly legitimate decisions during character creation or roleplaying their character is dismissive and condescending.
So you say there's a workaround, let's take a look at that.
Imagine you are a myth sized goblin character who is in an evil guild like Angmar. You want to maximize your quest experience because you believe it's important for growth. In order to complete the 27 quests that are unavailable to evil Angmar goblins you will have to do the following:
1. Spend hours killing evil aligned creatures until your alignment changes and you get booted from your occupational guild, losing skills and combat experience in the process.
2. Kill yourself and change race, losing a third of your combat xp and half your remaining skills.
3. Oops, your alignment is not good enough still! Now you have to temporarily join a neutral guild in order to get some skills and combat abilities to kill more undeads to raise your alignment. This costs more plats for skills that you're going to lose again later and more hours of killing.
4. Finally you get to do quests if you are lucky. OR if you were a good roleplaying Angmar who maybe smooshed a few of your ranger enemies along the way, this is the part where you find out you still can't do the Middle Earth quests because the rangers have declared you an enemy of Gondor. The end. Sorry but all of the hours of killing and dying and losing your guild and skills were for all nothing.
5. Assuming you were able to do Middle Earth quests you must wait until the hour in that realm is just right to do the three holy quests, this could be a few real life weeks, hope you don't mind hanging out in a guild and body that you don't really want until then!
6. Done questing! Time to kill yourself again, lose more combat experience and half your skills when you come back as a goblin.
7. Get evil and reapply to your occupational guild. Hopefully they will let you back in! If not, oops... now what?
8. Rejoin your guild or join a new guild and spend thousands more plats getting your skills back up and start back at the bottom of the totem pole.
9. If you are not a robot, you now are looking at several months, maybe half a year, of recovery and people now think you're a guild hopper/race changer and have lower opinions of you just because you wanted to have the opportunity to grow.
Total cost: 2.5 deaths, loss of ~6 months of real life time, 6000+ plats, reputation loss and potentially permanent guild or rank loss.
Is that seriously your idea of a workaround? This problem has been ongoing in Genesis for over 20 years. At this point it just looks like it's intentional since it's so one sided and has been going on for so long. If this is intentional, please explain to us why? Now if I know this conversation, and I do, this is the part where you'll say that there aren't enough wizards to fix it but I really don't want to hear that excuse because this quest experience disparity has been perpetuated for decades and it still never got fixed despite many more wizards being available in the past.
I propose that all alignment and race restrictions be lifted on quests and quest areas until mirror quests are created to even the playing field. Or maybe allow players who hate questing to put their thousands of plats to use and purchase quest slots. 1000 plats gets you the scabbard quest slot done along with the reward, 100 plats to complete a small quest like Eil Galaith entrance, etc. If you guys don't think quest experience is that important then I don't see why opting out of the quests by purchasing quest experience would be a problem.
Arman, using language to try to end the conversation without acknowledging the problem or trying to think of ways of making it work only amplifies the problem in people's minds. "Not on my watch" reads as the Arch of Balance openly and completely dismissing another wizard who is actively trying to solve problems that are important to the community. Furthermore, it is the Arch of Balance shutting down a conversation about a lack of balance in the realm. What sort of message do you think that conveys?