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Mmorpgs were never about story telling, mmorpgs never had a story and if they did...
nomatics856
Member UncommonPosts: 219
it really was the back burner to game play, I dont know what this facination about mmorpgs and story is about, but mmorpgs were good when gameplay was good, not story, I did not play EQ for the story, I did not play UO for the story, I played them for the gameplay, I played them for the exploration, to overcome mighty creatures that in todays mmorpgs I can gather up 4-5 of them and solo them easily with any class. In UO, UO HAD NO STORY, it really didnt, what made UO great was the player base
the gameplay, the wars, players made their own stories not the devs. This whole facination with story is ruining todays mmorpgs, less focus on story, less focus on sparkly shiny things, and more focus on gameplay.
Comments
Truth be told I agree with you. The story of each and every mmorpg I played intrigued me and was in there, but not the complete focus likes todays games strive to go. I hate to do this and say this old cliche, but...ah nevermind. Story should be important, but yes, gameplay is the key to immersion and success from my point of view.
Reply to exciting, new, and original thread #344288:
A few MMOs have a story element. If you don't like them, don't play them. MMORPGs don't have to follow your sovereign vision of success - developers have the freedom to reach in other directions and try different things. Isn't 'innovation' one of the key elements you people rail on about? It doesn't happen overnight, so give the genre a few iterations worth of time and do something else.
Play the ones that don't focus on story. There's lots of them too.
I agree, story is for single player games, virtual worlds exist for you to do with as you will imho.
It can even be said about world of warcraft, Vaniella world of warcraft never had a story, it was about you choose alliance, you choose horde, and you live in an ever evolving world. THats when WoW was at its best, then expansion after expansion WOW tried to incorporate heavy lore and story while changing the gameplay of WoW and less focus on WoWs gameplay to where we are at today.
While the storyline isn't really that important of a part of a game, there's no advantage to having a bad storyline over a good one.
i agree with the op. i like my mmo's minimal story, more gameplay. I should shape the world, not the developers script.
I agree.... Lore, I'm all about it. But Get story's the F out of my MMORPGs.
I think we're seeing a developing trend where story is just becoming a cheap crutch, which is a damn shame.
but there is a disadvantage when there is a certain focus over gameplay.
I guess I've always considered a role playing game (mmoRPG) to be best when based heavily on stories and character development, and player interaction.
I'd rather play in an interesting vibrant living world than a generic void with "good gameplay."
I don't agree. Story is hugely important for games labled as "MMORPG". Otherwise it's just an "MMOG", so to label a game as an MMORPG and not really have much of an involved story element to the game is really misleading and to not have story in it is just lazy development. It's a long overdue feature in these games and I truly believe in order for the genre to move forward, story and player choice are going to become increasingly more important to these games, otherwise they'll continue to stagnate as they've been doing and then the genre will just die.
You're a fan of what is now "old school" MMOG gameplay, and that's fine but I don't think you'll be seeing anymore of that in the next 10+ years, if ever. Story is something I've seen players in EVERY MMO I've played wish for. Every single time it was a hot topic of the community, players wishing for a significant degree of storyline and putting the "RPG" into the term "MMORPG".
I think background lore is important to an MMO but personal story is not, that is the job of a single player RPG, the players make their own individual story as they pass through the game with how they play. In my opinion they remember the events that happened as a result of decisions made relating to gameplay and events in the game not Pre scripted story.If it comes at the expense of gameplay, then sure. But often, it's not an either/or proposition. If you're going to have a given quest with given game mechanics, then there's no advantage to making the quest text semi-coherent broken English rather than witty and amusing.
reply to exciting, new, and original reply #347872:
awesome story, bro. got pics to go with that?
The RP in the acronym is gibberish to the people who want FPS twitch skillzzz taktikool kombat with boring and uninspired theme, world, and lore.
When you say roleplaying, they think it means picking a class and then being that class.
I think people confuse lore with stories. Lore sets the stage and players make the stories in more sandboxy mmos. Developer created stories like in GW2, TOR, and TSW are cool. But I look at it as a nice bonus feature instead of a cornerstone.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
Ha, now that isn't fair. One can want FPS twitch skillzzz taktikool kombat and still want an immersive and persistant world. I know I do...
GW2 "built from the ground up with microtransactions in mind"
1) Cash->Gems->Gold->Influence->WvWvWBoosts = PAY2WIN
2) Mystic Chests = Crass in-game cash shop advertisements
Also that wasn't my reply number
Yet you must also note that stories are a major form of telling a game's lore. I believe every great RPG needs some form of context so that we, the players, can understand, care about, and consequentially immerse ourselves within the worlds crafted by the developers.
I don't know anyone who plays MMORPGs for story, instead they are always worried about achieving max level as quick as possible so they can get on to grinding for gear and grinding the same raids over and over which is quite lame in my opinion.
What makes an mmorpg GREAT is when both the story and gameplay are good. You seem to think if the story is good that the gameplay is not or cannot be; that's a fallacy.
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Real as Reality Television!!!
I have to say I agree with the OP pretty much. With one exception. EQ1 did have a story and some background lore. Its just it was given in small doses here and there. It wasnt thrown in your face as your guide rails thru the game world. Instead you made your own way.
In most MMOs today we have these things people call quests (BS they are chores) These Chores errm quests lead us thru the game world with very fascinating (boring) Stories of what is going on in the world. OK OK.. some of the quests can actually be interesting even entertaining to read. However lets face it most of them are not. I dont know many people whom I have gamed with thru the years that will take the time to read the majority of the chore dialogue that is written. 98% of the time everyone clicks the quests looks at the objective, finds the waypoint on the map and takes off for their xp.
As for the chart above. We all know that WOW was a phenomena, that brought millions into the MMORPG game genre. Alot of that had to do with the fact Warcraft already had a huge following of fans with a very well known IP. The casual feeling of the early game was enough to get people addicted to do the high end (vanilla) harder stuff such as raids. Us old schoolers, UOers and EQ1ers we had the same feeling back when we started. THe only difference is the online world was much smaller. The games IPs were not as well known. ETC ETC.. Mass advertising campaigns were not used.
Want to get technical Look at games like Farmville and how big that exploded for a time. As we move further into the digital information age. Your going to see more games like WOW come along, or farmville. Look at the hype around GW2 right now. Over a million Beta applications in 48 hours not even WOW had that.
One last note. I have not played TOR however I do have friends that have told me that the stories are actually very good there, some of them are still playing it and enjoying it greatly. I decided to stick with EQ2 myself, and hold off to try GW2
Also that wasn't my reply number
Do you have any graphs with the statistical anomaly that is WoW removed so we can see if thre is a correlation.EDIT: previous poster beat me to the punch
You must punch with a wet noodle, then
While the first MMOs like M59, The realm and UO never focused on the story and background that really doesn't mean all MMOs must be like that.
I personally think that Biowares story in TOR isn't great in a MMO but that does not mean you can't add a good background and tell a good story in a game, just that MMOs needs to do it in a different way than single player games.
Pen and paper RPGs can be about story or not, both works fine there and MMOs are basically the same thing on a computer so I believe the same is true for it. That noone yet really made a mechanic that works just right for the genre does not mean it can't be done.
As usual is the problem that most devs are too lazy to try something new and just steal all their mechanics from someone else.
In games like EQ there was story. Lore initiated and developed the initial story, but the overall story was only revealed through gameplay. Dungeons had to be explored fully to reveal their mysteries, same with raids. Each expansion had a story to tell, but only in actually playing through the expansion did the story come to life.