Posted By ColonelTEE3 on 25 Feb 2012 03:14
I can see the core of that quest being very cool and very pragmatic, but you would have to adapt it to be simpler such that umpteen variables don't need to be accounted for and prepared for, lest the quest become bugged and or exploited; for example,
-if there are no other players around when player A first acquires the quest-beginning item, what happens? - Then Player A still has the choice to either run or stand ground.
-if player A dies to immediately spawned beasty before anyone sees, what happens? - Then the item returns to its original place and the quest restarts. Player A will know next time not to begin this quest without the assistance of another player (Just like many standard MMO quests).
-if the beast never dies, what happens? - Well, like you said, it either continues rampaging or simply returns home.
However, the example was only meant to serve its purpose, and that it did. I didn't bother to think of all the minor variables... Yours was another good example of what can be done with this model.
I also took into consideration that the quest might stop at any specific point and simply restart, or disappear to make its place for a different quest. I'm imagining dozens of these quests being randomly spawned across the game world, and the server simply checking how many of these quests exist per domain or any area of the map, and if a specific area has room for more, then it spawns more quests to fill the area's capacity.