Here is guide how to build better quests when you are playing Tera. Stay tuned for ustera.com if you want to know more about the latest news and guides.

We have more than a thousand quests in Tera; some simple, some complex. We spend lots of time honing the writing, tuning the rewards, balancing the gameplay, and doing all the other things you expect from a full-fledged MMO.

That work can’t happen in a vacuum, though. The thing that keeps us awake at night as we craft all those quests is a simple question: what are the smart ways to connect this quest to the other quests in the game?

-MMOs can break a linear plot in some intriguing ways.
-What if you played the first part of quest 2118, but then it was spring break and now you don’t remember how the quest started?
-What if you did quest 3104 before you did quest 3103? How does that color the emotional response in quest 3105?
-Is it more interesting to see the hints in quest 4220 about the villain’s machinations before you fight that villain, or is quest 4220 more interesting when the villain is already dead and you perceive those hints as confirmation that you did the right thing?

TERA uses quests, among other things, to drive exploration throughout its vast world of dreams.
Getting to the heart of the matter with the last example: can you design quest 4220 so it’s interesting—but legitimately different—whether it happens before or after you fought the villain? That’s what we call a smart quest: a quest that’s designed with an awareness of its emotional, storytelling, and world-building surroundings. You can mandate some of that awareness with quest branching, elaborate prerequisites, and other tools of the trade. Those tools of the trade don’t make the quests smart, though. When you see a smart quest—a quest that knows its place in the world—it’s because someone thought through all the narrative, emotional, and gameplay implications beforehand.

In TERA, you’ll have the chance to earn the acclaim of an entire nation—not to mention your fellow players.

With TERA, we’re creating quests that are smart because they know how they fit among all the other building blocks of the game experience—even if the players ignore some of the blocks, use others twice, and pick some up in an unusual order. As long as the player builds a structure that’s emotionally satisfying, the smart quests have done their job.