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Best Lore mmorpg and more
-Zeno-
Member CommonPosts: 1,298
I think Shadowbanes lore is the best for a fantasy mmorpg. Sam "Meridian" Johnson is a top notch writer.
Hundreds of pages to read HERE.
I dont think I have come across another game that has such indepth lore, where the writer continues on by answering players questions, like this collection of musings here (slow loading).
and, the lore is about how everyone hates each other, creating player conflict, pvp.
Shadowbane is not closed down, its still owned by Ubisoft, and a new development company Stray Bullet Games is contracted to keep it running, and improve it. They are in the transition phase and still ironing out how they are going to work with Ubisoft with SB.
Its not the best looking game, and its technology is older and can cause problems (for some people, not all), but its one of the only games out with full fledged player freedom, where action or inaction can cost alot. Ohh, and its free to play, for now (fileplanet has the game for download, the "15 day trial" is the full client).
Hundreds of pages to read HERE.
I dont think I have come across another game that has such indepth lore, where the writer continues on by answering players questions, like this collection of musings here (slow loading).
and, the lore is about how everyone hates each other, creating player conflict, pvp.
Shadowbane is not closed down, its still owned by Ubisoft, and a new development company Stray Bullet Games is contracted to keep it running, and improve it. They are in the transition phase and still ironing out how they are going to work with Ubisoft with SB.
Its not the best looking game, and its technology is older and can cause problems (for some people, not all), but its one of the only games out with full fledged player freedom, where action or inaction can cost alot. Ohh, and its free to play, for now (fileplanet has the game for download, the "15 day trial" is the full client).
The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
Comments
Shadowbane, does in fact have a great lore backstory. Unfortunately, the devs squandered that lore. Zero meaningful PvE means you can't involve the players in the lore. The lore server was broken, because the developers couldn't properly introduce the lore into the game. Dwarves? Aracoix? Amazons? Elves? All largely abandoned, because the lore restrictions gimped them.
Yes, the lore writer for Shadowbane was good, too bad the developers were not.
No matter how rich the lore in WoW is, it will not be as good as any lore that corresponds with gameplay. You can have the lore fed to you in various ways throughout WoW, but you don't interact with in on an interesting level. Good lore is more than just a backdrop - it is a part of the game design.
This is all - in case anybody had doubts - opinion.
The future: Adellion
Common flaw in MMORPGs: The ability to die casually
Advantages of Adellion: Dynamic world (affected by its inhabitants)
Player-driven world (beasts won't be an endless supply of mighty swords, gold will come from mines, not dragonly dens)
Player-driven world (Leadership is the privilege of a player, not an npc)
I agree with the previous poster. Very many MMORPG's have detailed histories behind their virtual worlds, but almost none of them meaningfully use it in their gameplay. At best, they throw you into a faction versus faction pvp setting such as the one in World of Warcraft, but this typically only serves to further detach you from the lore because most battles happen at random, not because of any thematic reason.
Guild Wars probably does the best job of involving you in the story. Whatever you might say about the quality or gameplay of the game, you can't argue the fact that you essentially are the hero as you go through the Prophecies campaign, and the world (supposedly) drastically changes because of your actions. Unfortunately, though you're involved in the story, it doesn't feel like the lore is very well thought-out. The story is somewhat formulaic, in my opinion. WoW does a good job if dropping you into story arcs with a lot of detail behind them, but you don't see much of the detail. In execution, this involvement ultimately boils down to doing a series of menial quests where you happening to be killing goons of a specific faction, and it invariably culminates in you being sent into an instanced dungeon to take out a villain such as Defias. In other words, it's window dressing on an instanced dungeon.
I also think the Lore in the game Shadowbane was the best I've played. I could easily roleplay my confessor or templar. Others even stepped ahead of the story so to speak, because it was so rich.
Indeed. A guy called Banegrivn went out and collated it all, well, up to a point anyway. Went into some depth behind the symbols and sigils found around Norrath, the inactive druid gates, the Combine Empire etc.
Quite exhaustive stuff. I don't have the URL off-hand.
Shame SoE's contribution to real time "lore" was for a GM to log in as a giant-sized mob and own the zone with death touches. 9/10 in the lame stakes, that one.
D&D Online could have made the list if they had set the game in Krynn, Greyhawk, or Forgotten Realms.