What I'd be most interested in is a custom-legit, dedicated server (I'm more than willing to donate a few dollars per month or so when I can afford it in order to help with operating expenses on a dedicated server), more heavily focused on quests than most... I've never been a fan of pure hack-and-slash. And not the typical "camp one slow-spawn mob for 8 hours to get one stupid item whose significance is lost to all memory and turn it in for no real reward, just some crappy exp and some lame item" quests like always existed on eqlive either, but good quests, where it's fun and exciting, and potentially dangerous to your character's health, and probably in some way level restricted to maintain that danger. Quests with worthwile rewards, so that people actually feel like doing them. Quests which have some sort of compelling plot and purpose behind them, not just because. Perhaps semi-randomized quests they way a lot of MUD's do it these days... if you aren't familiar with what I'm talking about, it basically works like this: Find quest giving NPC... ask for a quest... system evaluates your level and chooses a quest from among numerous possible quests for your level... NPC tells you about the chosen quest which some 25%-50% of the time you won't be capable of completeing without a good deal of help, and another 25% or so you will need at least a LITTLE help... you are given a specific time limit in which to complete the quest... successful completion of the quest results in rewards of exp (not a lot, but worthwile usually), money (usually quite a lot more than you could make on your own doing hack-and-slash for the length of time it took you to complete the quest), and quest points, which are redeemable for various things ranging from permanently increased stats or skills to high-end items. Now as far as the semi-randomized quest rewards go, I think that exp is more valuable than money, and I don't know how you would incorporate stat and/or skill increases into a system of rewards for quest points but I think you see where I'm going with all this (yes, ldon was a LITTLE like this, but it was still just meaningless hack-and-slash).
Now of course, that sort of server would require a HELL of a lot of time in development and would need a highly dedicated staff to maintain it, but it's certainly something I'd be interested in. If I had half a clue how to code quests for the emu I'd be tempted to spend my time doing so rather than doing my homework, but I don't, so someone else (several someone elses actually) would need to do so.
Last note... It's entirely possible (not very likely, but entirely possible) that such a server already exists. In which case, please let me know what server, and point in the direction of any forum threads, web sites, etc. which are related to it. I'm hoping to find a new server to play on soon as the one I currently play on has been ignoring my desperate pleas for a bug fix since October (the staff has made no comments on it whatsoever, and everyone else keeps telling me it's a problem on my end because only a few people complain about it... which I can't accept as true because I've tried more than a small few suggestions of how to fix it, with no success, and I never have any problems on other servers *shrugs*)
Kaiyousei
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