Arcanes Quest Roundup

Two days ago was the deadline for submission of my Arcanes quest for January. I found the quest to be an overall successful endeavour and thought provoking exercise on how quests are ran in the Realms of Despair.

Before even starting the quest I took into consideration what my aims for the quest were. I wanted to focus on players developing the achiever side of the Bartle Test accomplishments. To do this my aims included:

• Getting less experienced players with only a few avatar characters out and killing mobs that are a challenge but not too difficult so that they can learn from it.
• Encouraging small teams to work together for the slightly harder mobs.
• Giving people something to do that they can attempt on their own.
• Making it challenging enough for more experienced players to keep them busy going after items they haven't bothered trying to get for a long time.
• Getting some publicity out in the game about Arcanes being an active and inclusive organisation.
• Having decent prizes that will help people equip their alts better.
• Getting people to have some fun and enjoy the game.

From this I chose a list of 30 items to send players after. The full list of items was: a set of icy leggings, blackened blade of the corruptor, bloodhunger, bracer of light, cloak of demons, cloak of light, crusade, crystal dragon bracers, crystalline teardrop, darkened gauntlets, demonscale boots, demonskin ankle bracer, doomgiver, godskull shinguards, golden torque, moccasins, a shadowy pair of dragonscale armguards, platinum band of the draco viridis, sash of the magi, scorched band of glass, sets ring of power, shield of the Valkyrie and shifting black flames. Each of these items I can get on my own from a variety of strategies and each of these items is useful for an avatar character to get a basic equipment set up.

In the end I was happy with the results I got from the quest. Activity within the order improved from a slow December and those who participated all responded positively. One of the unexpected bonuses was that to get some of the items in my quest it overlapped with a quest being run by the Immortal Quest Council over the month resulting in players making a little glory too. This experience also did lead to an increase in appreciation for the time and effort the Quest Council members do put it into the planning and building for some of the more elaborate quests they release every now and again.

With the positive results I'm already working on a couple of ideas for another quest in a couple of months time.