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→Adventures
Adventures are mini-quests that don't tie into the overall plot. They're semi-random, and may have valuable rewards, but don't need to be completed to advance through an act. The D3 Team described them in the [[WWI_2008:_D3_Design_Fundamentals_Panel|WWI 2008 Design Fundamentals Panel]].
::Adventures are an expansion on a lot of the randomness from D1 and D2. They allow us to place a scripted event almost anywhere in game world. You 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 cavavan 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. The idea is that every time you go through the game we want you to see something different. We want to provide randomization everywhere, to make things so replayable. To make it fun to keep coming back to.
Since that early panel discussion the team has backed off of strictly defining Quests vs. Adventures. vs. Events. They seem to be using the names a bit more elastically now, as evidenced by Jay Wilson's reply to a question in a December 2008 [http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?pager.offset=2&cId=3172030&p=1 interview with 1up.com].
::'''1UP: Can you cite some specific scripted events that might pop up during a typical playthrough? '''
::'''Jay Wilson:''' We had a lot of them 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. So there are a lot of different kinds of scenarios; you'd run into people who would need to be escorted or a caravan that's been stranded. And if you stick around and protect [the caravan] for a few minutes from [an attack] that would occur, you'd get a reward. Most of these are fairly optional, where the player can decide whether he wants to do them or not, but we try to reward them well and make them pretty fun. 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.
Jay also disclosed that the adventures (or events) are pre-scripted and written just for that area of the dungeon. Basically, the D3 Team writes, say, 15 possible mini-quests/adventures/events for a dungeon area, of which maybe 6 or 8 will appear in any given game. This makes the content semi-random; players will see different events in an area each time they play it, and will need to play a given area many times to see every possible event in it. And since the team can add in more such events during patches, the content can be perpetually refreshed. It's also possible that rare events might be incorporated; ones that would only spawn ever few hundred games, making it possible for players to get surprises months or even years after the game's release.
==Class-Specific Quests==