Quest
Quest is a game term for most RPGs to describe how a character progresses through the story or accomplishes tasks. Quests are missions with varying levels of complicated objectives, normally giving the player experience, gold, items or other rewards when completed.
Quests in Diablo III will be made more in line with the story, and less obtrusive than traditional action RPGs.
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Diablo III Quests
The D3 Team wants to improve on how quests were handled in Diablo II. They want the major quests to be interesting, important, and plot-driven. Many of these quests will be character-specific; your character won't (always) just be an errand boy and the quest won't just be something minor; it will advance the story.
Each act has numerous major, plot-related quests, all of which have various related minor quests related to them. Blizzard has released very little information about the game's plot, so the only quests known thus far were the ones seen in the playable demos at Blizzcon 2008 and 2009.
In addition to the official quests, there are numerous smaller "Adventures" which play like mini-quests. See the section further down this page for more details on them.
Known Quests
All known quests were researched in the Blizzcon 2008 and 2009 playable demos. Details of these quests may change in the final game.
Click the quest names below to read full articles on each quest with many more details and screenshots.
Blizzcon 2008 Quests
All these quests were located in Tristram or the dungeons below the ruined town. The base camp at Tristram was quite small and inhabited by only two NPCs, neither of whom were merchants. It's expected that the full town of Tristram will be quite a bit larger. (Or this base camp might be where new characters begin the game, and they only reach the full Tristram after completing these introductory quests.)
Blizzcon 2009 Quests
All of these quests were located in the deserts of Act 2, somewhere in the mid-section of the act. Characters started out just beyond the walls of Caldeum, and could not return to the city. The designers revealed that this was a special fix just for the demo, since players would have seen a great deal of the game story in Caldeum, and the didn't want to reveal that much of it yet.
- Find Alcarnus
- Blood Money
- Stranded
- The Lost Girl
- Alesar’s Pendant
- The Collapsing Tomb
- The Lost Wagon
- The Necromancer's Book
- A Miner's Gold
- The Idol of Rygnar
Quest names are tentative, and may change in the final game.
Quest Interface
The quest interface remains under development, as evidenced by how much it changed between Blizzcon 2008 and 2009. The 2008 version was more ornate and stylized, and filled up much more of the visible screen. In 2009 the interface was far simpler, and looked like a scaled back version of Diablo 2's quest window. It's expected that the final game version will be fancier than the no-frills 2009 version, and it's possible that the very plain 2009 version was something put together just for the Blizzcon demo, since it didn't seem able to expand to hold more than just the few quests available in that demo build.
In the 2009 build, the main quest was to find Alcarnus, and that quest always showed on top of the pyramid of potential quests. Below the Alcarnus quest were two two other quests, which were different each game. There seemed to be 4 or 5 possible quests for those two slots. Below those two were four other quests, which were related to/contained within them. This third row of quests were generally the most simple, "Fed-Ex" style of quests. Players had to five stranded NPC soldiers and fight off the Lacuni that were attacking them, or locate an abandoned wagon and retrieve the treasure. These were simple, but at least there were none of the dreaded, "Go fetch me 8 skins of the desert monster" type quests that RPGs such as WoW have made so infamous.
When a character performed an action that changed the state of a quest, such as receiving a clue from an NPC, finding a quest item, or finishing a quest entirely, a little ! icon popped up over the belt interface. That let the plaeyr know to open the quest window, where new info about the quest would display. That image is seen below.
(All of these images were taken from cell phone camera recordings of the game screens, mostly from the PAX convention, hence their low quality.)
Quests as Story
The D3 Team is trying to make Diablo III much more story-driven. They want the characters to be individuals and to be important figures in the world; not just interchangeable errand boys, as they usually were in Diablo II. Leonard Boyarsky talked about this in an interview in September, 2008.[1]
- The areas of story and character development will now be in focus, and the team wants the players to feel like they are having an effect on the world, which can also affect the character. They don't want the game to be either action or RPG, the two can mix. The story elements just need to be more engaging "without interfering with the hack-and-slash gameplay". It's possible for players to opt out if they don't care about it, "but if you do care about it, the story will bring a whole extra level of involvement to the game experience," Boyarsky said. As few as possible quests will be mandatory, and instead having a lots of voluntary quests and random quests if you want to.
The team is also "doing a lot with scripted sequences and books that you can read in the game, but once again, you can completely avoid these things if they don't interest you."
Specifics about quests related to the lore/story of the game have not yet been revealed but it was discussed in the WWI 2008 Lore and Environmental Art Panel, when a fan asked if there would be quests to obtain special items, such as the Horadric Cube. The team at the panel said they "look into the story and lore and we want that to drive the gameplay and quests."
Scripted Events
Jay Wilson talked about some of the scripted events seen in the BlizzCon demo in an interview in December, 2008.[2]
- We had a lot of [scripted events] in our BlizzCon build. [In one of them, there was] a series of ghosts at an altar who were seeking an object that you'd get to prove your worth. If you did get it, then they would test you by having big powerful monsters attack you -- and if you passed, you got a nice reward. Another one was coming across some fellow adventurers stranded in a dungeon who'd need your help to get out.
Several of these scripted events will be used in Diablo III. Both as the mandatory quests as well as the optional, random and encounter/adventure type quests.
There were even more potential events, quests, and adventures in the 2009 demo build, as Julian Love revealed in an interview from the show. [3]
- I think in the demo that we have here, there’s just over 30 different things that can happen in all the spots. Whether that’s too high or too low will be partly based on what feedback we’re going to see from the people that actually got a chance to play it here, and based on what we feel like. We know how we feel about it right now but we want to compare that to what the players who have a chance to play feel, and then we’re going to try to look at that again. So this is one big area, what a smaller area or one that’s more linear has is also yet to be determined. But certainly way more things will happen in one playing area than happened in Diablo II.
Adventures
Adventures are mini-quests, scripted events or semi-random occurrences that aren't necessarily tied to the overall plot. Adventures tend to be small and self-contained, but they're well worth completing, since they are fun, and often pack valuable rewards. The D3 Team first described them in the WWI 2008 Design Fundamentals Panel.
- Jay Wilson: Yyou could come across a particular area in the outdoor world with a variety of possible elements in it. One game it could be a old abandoned house to explore. Maybe it's infested with crazy undead guys, and as you clean it out you learn the story of the family who lived there. Another game that same area might instead have a clearing where a cult is performing a summoning ritual. Another game might feature a caravan that needs protection from marauding monsters, or escort to the nearest town. Another game you might find a boss monster there. Or you might just get random monsters."
This concept was seen in action in the Act 2 desert at Blizzcon 2009, when some fans had a chance to play through the same area in multiple games. One time a desert region would be empty, the next it would have a ruined building with a horde of monsters inside of it, and another it would have a mini-quest to find a ruined wagon. The concept is to add randomization even within the randomized dungeons, and to change up the play style. [4]
- The biggest goal we have with these is that we want to change what the player is doing. Whenever you can basically take the core game and make the player play it in a slightly different way, it makes the game a lot more interesting and keeps it from being tedious. You go from "I'm killing monsters aimlessly" to "I'm now killing monsters to protect this thing." That's easily a more interesting scenario, because it's different than what you were doing, and that's our main goal with that.
Class-Specific Quests
During the game reveal in mid-2008, the D3 Team talked about class-specific quests at the Denizens of Diablo panel.
- We'll also have various class quests that will be very interesting. Each class will have different views of the story that will play out through conversations. Bottom line beyond all this is it gives us a way to put the hero at the center of the story. Your hero can drive the story as opposed to being errand boy. You can decide best thing to do. Villages can be cowardly, you can suggest we need to go do this, not just me. I can take control because no one else will. Puts you at centre of the action. Makes char have more of a hero feel.
This was taken to mean class-specific quests at the time, but in retrospect it seems like nothing more than some class-specific NPC dialogues. Those are known to be in the game; Captain Rumford showed them with his different remarks to the Barbarian, Wizard, and Witch Doctor at the start of the 2008 Blizzcon demo.
Like Rumford, all the important NPCs have different dialogues for and reactions to the different characters, and these are planned to be impactful; they're not just Gheed sounding worried when he first speaks to a Necromancer, before proceeding to treat that class exactly like anyone else.
How Many Quests?
The D3 Team has said that D3 will be about the same size as D2, but that it will have many more quests. This total presumably includes the smaller adventures, as well as main plot-driving quests. Jay Wilson commented on this in an August 2008 interview. [5]
- We believe Diablo 2 was a very good size, even with the number of quests. In any case, more than in Diablo 2, Diablo 3 will have more quests and many of them have a much stronger tie to the game. Compare this to Diablo 2, where quests generally came in 6 per Act, but in Diablo 3 we have no quest limit. So we can continue to insert as many quests as we like, until we feel that we've got a good amount and there aren't too many. We want to concentrate on quests that are really fun and contribute to the game. If I have to come up with a number, I'd say there's probably twice as many quests, but I wouldn't nail it down like that. It could still be more or less at this point.
Quest Conversations
NPC conversations in Diablo III are shown in the normal game screen. The camera merely zooms in a bit. The conversation is ended and the screen returns to normal if you click anywhere outside of the dialogue tree, or press the space bar or Esc key.
When the game debuted at the WWI event in June 2008, NPC conversations were portrayed in a special pop up window display which you can see below. This approach was abandoned between the June premiere and BlizzCon in October, since the D3 Team felt that it took players out of the flow of the game.
