Design Diary: Storytelling In MMORPGs | MMORPG.com

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• waveslayer Member UncommonPosts: 607

  December 27 edited December 27

  Love a good story in a game, to me RPGs and MMoRPGs are part interactive graphic novel, part interactive movie, part table top RPG or the natural progression of gathering around a table and playing AD&D like I used to back in 1983.
  
  I grew up got married, had kids and jobs became more demanding, no longer had the time to spend hours designing a campaign to entertain our group of players, muchless by this time we had all went different directions, we had morphed from a burgeoning speed/thrash punk metal band with a handfull of hangeroners with one mind to a group of people whoes prioritys changed with age and finding another group that could accomplish what we did was not going to happen.
  
  Enter the 1990s and the apple computer and the first D&D computer games, thought I was in heaven, it almost felt like back in 1983 again except it was just me and the computer, then I discovered MUDS I beleive it was called Dragon Quest, I really was in heaven then, fast forward to christmas of 99, wife hands me my present after our 3 kids where done, I open it and its Everquest, she had no idea what she had just gotten me into, nor did I....
  
  Which leads me to today, story is great in games, but for MMoRPGS I am getting knda tired of games where I am the ONE, the chosen one, then I log out get on an alt and he is the ONE, the chosen one, I look around and there are thousands of the ONE...being the one in a single player RPG is fine but devs gotta stop making you the ONE in MMoRPGs...
  
  Thats all I gotta say on the subject

  

  Godz of War I call Thee
• Scot Member LegendaryPosts: 24,427

  December 27 edited December 27

  I can't think of a topic more overdue than this, maybe one on the importance of lore? We used to have a writer who did the odd article on here but that was so many years ago I could not tell you exactly when it was maybe 15 years ago?
  
  I wonder if this series will cover "the one" as mentioned above or the poison chalice that a successful long term MMO makes story drink from? After many years the story of a MMO can become a pile of gobbledegook with characterisation changing on the whim of the latest dlc.
  
  How about the decline of story in MMOs with some now not even needing you to talk to quest givers, you just see a bit of blurb then head off?
  
  Or how about looking at what stories we might have that are not there? Like a guild story which I have only ever seen done very marginally. You could use that to the same effect of the character stories mentioned.