17 Jun 2005 at 13:02 - 6
My issue with the new quests (love the skills they give and the fact that there -are- new quests) is that they don't appear to have been tested very carefully. Warning, the following could possibly *SPOIL* the quests if you've not done them yet.
The Ascalon Settlement has a fun introduction, after which the heroic foursome (Mhenlo, Cynn, Aidan and Devona) start following you in the most creepy way possible: at one inch distance. They don't fight, only Mhenlo heals, and basically you're being used as a 'taxi' to the Ascalon Settlement. Once they reach Greywind, they announce it was a pleasure fighting by your side (fighting?), and heroically run off to get stuck against the cliff one yard further.
A second issue with the quest is that it largely overlaps with a Merchant's Plea, which already served as the connecting quest to get people to explore from Lion's Arch to Captain Greywind. Starting this quest from the Gates of Kryta, with NPCs actually doing something, might be an easy way to give this quest some meaning - you could have Ascalon Settlers following along, similar to the Ascalon Refugees in the Shiverpeak mountains.
The Temple of Ages quest was indeed disappointing. It spawned a few White Mantle and a boss in an easily accessible place, not even bothering to link the boss Abbot with his footsoldiers (leaving the boss' assassination an afterthought with some decent pulling). Thankfully the boss at least dropped as many copies of the quest item as there were players - easy to get the quest over with. A simple improvement for this quest would be several stages of fighting, taking the fight into the Talmark Wilderness (no other reason to go here yet, it seems) which is right along the road you're currently taking anyway.
Finally, the Price of Steel quest. Connects nicely with the Hollow Log quest, a little tricky to find for players who already completed that quest but that shouldn't be an issue. Getting to Quarrel Falls is easy enough, but then a scout spawns outside that puts even Prince Rurik to shame: the moment the party spawns, she rushes off across the quest trajectory, aggro'ing everything along the way and only stopping when bodyblocked, where she'll be taking hits from the angry mob she attracted while occasionally using Troll Unguent. Fortunately her survival is not critical to the success of the quest, but trying to keep up/keeping her alive is pointless.
The Lost White Mantle soldiers put up a decent fight, then drop the amount of quest items required for -one- player to finish the quest. Questing with four people? You'll need to do the quest four times. The premise of the quest, obtaining steel from the White Mantle armour drops, gave me the impression it was intended to teach you something about expert salvaging armour drops - but none of that all, the quest items were simple quest items.
Most of these issues should be directly addressable - use Rurik's AI for the scout (the new AI is much better and will prevent her here from running off on her own), tell the scout to wait when the Lost White Mantle are spotted (instead of running right in to get herself killed) and reducing the amount of 'armours' needed to finish the quest so every party member can complete the quest with one outting, or to place the receiving NPC in the exploreable area itself so that the entire party gets the quest update when turning in the five armours.
Actually allowing the party to salvage some steel, or perhaps handing out one steel ingot for completing the quest, would give some meaning to the actual concept of the quest.