One thing that is really hard to get with pre-created content (as opposed to procedural, personal content of Spore or most roguelikes) is the feeling that you were given a personal experience. That the personal experience you just received was not ground to dust by the masses and posted about on every guidebook and wiki. It was yours.
Mythic Entertainment came awfully close the other night to giving me this experience in an MMO, and the happening definitely through me for a loop. I was running around Talabecland and grinding out quests for Chapter 11 Chaos, when I stumbled around the huge cathedral-building for the public quest Army of Faith. Off in the distance I saw what I thought was a chaos troll fall to the ground. I had seen no trolls of any kind in Talabecland, and was excited with the prospect of taking down a named mob by myself.
As I ran towards the body I saw an out of the way quest icon on my mini-map. It seemed that the NPC hiding behind one of the cathedral pillars knew about the troll… and a young marauder with “a new pair of boots” that was trying to take the chaos troll down. It all came together, and I ran towards the chaos troll to find another corpse underneath. Lord Tzeentch was full of pride when I took the ‘Liberated’ Boots.
The best part was that I saw the chaos troll die. It made no sense at the time, but I didn’t just come upon a corpse that every other player passing through the zone can see. It felt neat that the event happened for me, even if every other player has the ability to experience the same thing. I hope I come across more chunks of these near-personal experiences.
–Ravious