I saw this things were implemented in some muds.
The idea is each continent has quester ( scribe f.e. ) for random
autoquests. A player can come to a quester and ask him about random
autoquest.
Quester picks a random task from a long tasklist based on the player level
( 1x40, 2x40, etc ) and offer player to complete this task during a
defined period of time ( 10 minutes? ). Player may undertake or not, but
next time player will be able to ask about random autoquest only in NN
minutes ( 30 minutes? ).
The tasks may be various, for example, quester offers to kill a certain
mob on currect continent ( player might have solve a little puzzle to figure
out which mob required ). Also quester may ask player to bring him a
certain item, or number of items ( remember slices quests ? :).
Reward depends on the task level ( easy,medium, hard, impossible :) and
player may gains xp, gold, maybe 1-2 drachmas, + ( for fun ) random
items like kachina catches items for its owner.
The main idea of random autoquests is not to offer players another way
to gain lot of xps and gold ( with the rule one autoquest in 30 minutes it is
hard to get decent xp,gold ), but offer players some entertainment with
a chance to gain some drachmas and, may be, a decent item.
/falsra
Hope the clues from the quests are not as “EASY” as the yooper cook quests :p
I think it would be an interesting idea to make quests to kill special mobs, and these mobs would only be visible to the player who undertook the quest.
This would add a bit of spice to the tedium of killing mobs.
An example would be to kill:
“Slinky, the Feared Ferret”
“Grug, the Hairy Hobgoblin Guard”
“Yuri, Young Magician Extrodinare”
etc, etc.
The posabilities are endless with a big or randomization. These creatures would have the standard statistics of the base mob, but would have some bonus that the base class does not have, and these bonuses could even drive the the characters name.
For example Yuri would get a bonus to his spell damage, Slinky would have improved defense (or even the dodge skill) and Grug would get extra AC due to his hairy body.
I think that these quests could also be called something like “Hero Quests” where instead of an extra gold or experience reward the stats would be tracked by the server, and would be added to the weekly high scores. I feel that adding extra experience or gold (over the mob’s drop) would be overkill and hurt the game in terms of balance.