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I attended two EQ2 sessions at Fan Faire so far today.  The first was on quest mechanics, the second on more-general game mechanics.   What was interesting in the first was watching the process of rewriting a quest — in this case, that really annoying open-the-gate quest in Thundering Steppes is being rewritten!  No longer must you know Halasian, nor come only during the day, to earn the right to come and go as you please.  Further, the story line makes more sense, AND does not require you to lower your faction with the centaurs!   Instead you’ll collect guard tower reports, find a box of coins (look under the sofa!) and kill a highwayman causing problems, all to make the road safer.     For how the quests themselves are built, I’m afraid you had to be there, or talk to someone better at conveying it then me.   suffice it to say that while flexible, the tool IS still by its nature limiting in what can be done.   There was one point of interest though — there is a desire within the dev team to add other ways of advancing/completing quests that is not so dependent upon kill-10-rat mechanics.  This will require rework of the tool, as well as some gameplay mechanics, but they seem to be keen to do something there.

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