Talk:The Enchanted Lands Timeline

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[edit] Rivervale quests

I'm not happy with this recent set of edits.

• The Rivervale timeline is a Heroic timeline. It should not contain the Leatherfoot Tales quests.
• The Enchanted Lands timeline is a solo timeline. It should not contain heroic quests. But it is appropriate to include the Leatherfoot Tales quests here, because they start with a quest reward from EL, and even have some steps in EL.
• A timeline is not intended to have every quest numbered continuously from 1 to n in a single list. Only those that have prerequisites should be numbered.

The intent of the timeline is not to include every quest in the zone. We have a category page for that purpose already. The purpose of the timeline is to gather related quests that are of similar difficulty, and present them in a suggested or required order.

I am going to roll back some of these recent edits. If you feel strongly that they belong, you can access them in the page history. -- Sassinak 04:12, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I understand some of your concerns and the rollbacks. However, wouldn't it at least be prudent to add back in the slew of dropped item and examined quests? They're not part of the timeline, which is why I included them at the bottom. But it is very handy to have that list, right there along with the timeline. Simply using the Category "All Quests in EL" is not as helpful IMO. It seems to me that it would make these timeline pages even more handy. I understand some of the changes I made do not fit at all with how these timelines have been set-up, but I also believe that they can be expanded beyond only those quests which are part of a strict solo progression. Having all (or nearly all) of the quests available in a given zone, organized by type and such, on one easy to read and access page seems to be to be a great thing.

Just my thoughts. I'm eager to hear back from you.

Elrood 04:43, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

What you suggest is a good idea - but it does not have to be on the same page as this timeline. I have no issue with making another page called "Enchanted Lands quests organized by type" or something like that. That would not be a timeline, and certainly not a solo timeline, but it would be useful.

Sassinak 23:06, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I think for a standard user, if i look up the XXX zone timeline i expect the quests being written there. I dont think that there is a defailt per zone that reduces them to being solo or heroic. The categorization into solo or heroic was done in a way what the majority of content belongs to. Also the page name (to take a simple look) just says Enchanted Lands Timeline. Not Enchanted lands Heroic or Solo timeline. From my approach and others i asked ingame people come to a zone (ore again) look into the timeline and try to complete things as smooth (and in many cases) as complete as possible. If you have only 70% of the quests in the timeline and for the rest you have to open both the timeline and the quest page and find manually the ones which are not listed in the timeline is a real pita. So i support having a zone timeline include all quests in a structured form. There are other examples where this happens and differentiation is easy by marking them solo or heroic or making different sections for the solo and heroic parts. Someone who doesnt need that part of the information wont suffer too much from the extra.  :--Xinturaia 08:19, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Kunzar Jungle Timeline for example

Quests are listed by NPC, location and faction.

Solo and heroic quests are both showing up there.

There is also the quest Snooping in Jarsath listed which leads you to JW.

I would list every solo or heroic that starts in EL and needs to get updates in Rivervale.

I would sort them first by Location 1. Docks then 2. near the East wall and so on and then by NPC

-- Chillispike 10:41, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

If that's how the majority want it to be, then that's fine. That wasn't the original intent of the timelines, but their purpose can evolve as the readership (and the game itself) evolves. The original goal for the timeline pages was to isolate the soloable quests from the rest of the quests in each zone, because solo progression was poorly known at the time. I would still divide out the solo quests from the heroic quests where possible.

As I mentioned before, these quests are already described by multiple categories, and I suggest that we avoid simply duplicating the category pages in a manually-created timeline. A timeline page has value if it reveals something about the quests that aren't obvious elsewhere. The division into solo vs. heroic and order of completion were two such ways that the timeline pages added value. Miscellaneous unsorted lists (e.g. item-triggered quests) are of lower value, and are just as easily shown through category pages which require less maintenance to keep accurate.

I wish there was a way to add metadata to the category views, so that we could (for example) display the level and difficulty of each quest on the category page automatically, and even group the category view by quest line. But Mediawiki doesn't provide this level of sophistication, as far as I know.

-- Sassinak 16:40, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

The quests in Kunzar Jungle Timeline have a personal note about level and if they are heroic.

With we got some with Dof and Kos but really a lot with Eof, Rok and now TSO.

I think it's more a evolution of the game, with mentoring and better gear at higher levels. Which are just insane if you mentor a level 30 char.

The differnce between heroic and solo quest can be big but it also can be only little too.

Timelines in the Rok zones and in Moors are really awsome mostly because the zones are that kind of huge too.

-- Chillispike 17:01, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Sassinak in that it's nice to have sort of 'soloing' timelines, but I also agree that more and more the timeline pages (at least in my view) are sort of walkthroughs for the zones (at least for some of the newer zones that have a semilinear progression, like in RoK). I think the 'newer style' timelines stem from the inability to have that important metadata. I agree unsorted lists are essentially a wasted duplication of the categories, but ones that clearly separate out heroic and solo content but do include the older sort of 'random drop' quests (just for easy reference, at the bottom) are valuable. What if we went with a standard timeline for pretty much all quests in the zone (heroic or solo), but then also made a solo version that excludes heroic quests? --lordebon 17:30, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

imho that just duplicate information that also has to be kept up to date twice. but i do agree that an agreed "setup" for all timeline pages that clearly differentiates between solo/heroic (and maybe as well dropped, collected, klickies, lore starters etc.) would be a very good idea. The actual tendency to make the timelines a walkthrough is a good thing imho. I think the Moors timeline, although huge is really a good example what i like, it even has the (few) klicky starters and the lore mentioned. I would add at least a link though under the NPCs that offer repeatable crafter quests /shard quests etc. to the respective pages/timelines. Maybe keep in mind that for users with localized clients (as me) it is sometimes really hard to find the stuff as you dont even know the (tranlated) English names for NPCs, quests, etc. So under/besides the tradeskillers questgivers a ---see here for more info--- link could be really helpful. and maybe we should move the discussion to the Timelines page ;) ? --Xinturaia 10:49, 11 March 2009 (UTC)