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Which mmo has the best story?

AmatheAmathe Member LegendaryPosts: 7,630

Nowadays, with the focus on questing as a leveling mechanism, fewer and fewer people read the stories behind the quests. You can't really blame them. Whatever the NPC says, you know there is a 95% chance that when they finish talking you will either have to: (a) kill something; (b) find something; (c) deliver something; or (d) escort someone. All you need to know is what.

 

Player NPC interaction mostly reminds me of this:

 

 

But the games do have stories. Quite elaborate ones, in fact. Some are better than others.

 

Does any game stand out to you as having a particularly compelling backstory? Is there any game's lore that actually captured your imagination and held your interest?

EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests

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Comments

  • ThomasN7ThomasN7 87.18.7.148Member CommonPosts: 6,690

    From start to finish there is no better story than the one in Guild Wars which includes all 3 campaigns. Lotro would be a far distant second. 

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  • Lord.BachusLord.Bachus Member RarePosts: 9,686

    Lord of the rings online has a great story, its a Story paralel on the movies/books and its awesome. Its far ahead of anything else

    Guild wars is also very good at story telling, as does the 20 first levels in AoC, and many other worlds have deep lore... There is so much indepth story in vanguards diplomacy its not even funny.. but i have to say Lotro beats them all.

    Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)

  • WizardryWizardry Member LegendaryPosts: 19,332

    Originally posted by Amathe



    Nowadays, with the focus on questing as a leveling mechanism, fewer and fewer people read the stories behind the quests. You can't really blame them. Whatever the NPC says, you know there is a 95% chance that when they finish talking you will either have to: (a) kill something; (b) find something; (c) deliver something; or (d) escort someone. All you need to know is what.

     

    Player NPC interaction mostly reminds me of this:

     

     

    But the games do have stories. Quite elaborate ones, in fact. Some are better than others.

     

    Does any game stand out to you as having a particularly compelling backstory? Is there any game's lore that actually captured your imagination and held your interest?

    You sir are correct,that is exactly what most games are,and how people play them quest>quest,they run around blind wit hno real care about the game at all.They just join a game because they heard it has PVP or lots of players,or solo play ect ect,makes you wonder about their choices when they don't even know a story exists.

    Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.

  • EdliEdli Member Posts: 941

    A lot of peoples like the story in a game but many mmorpg fail to tell it properly. The story shouldn't be delivered only with long pages of words to read.  I'll rather go read a book.

    I like the lore of Aion. How the factions are not divided from that childish concept of evil and good but rather from different points of view on how to handle their common enemy. The god that created the planet and everything in it is not showed as a usually perfect god. He made mistakes which may risk to destroy what he created.

    Peoples say that GW have a great story, I might give it a try. For me lore is a great + in a mmorpg.

  • ButtermilchButtermilch Member Posts: 208

    Well... the story in Guild Wars was well told, but had a boring / unsurprising plot.

    I love the story Darkfall Online has to offer. *ironic*

  • NadiaNadia Member UncommonPosts: 11,798

    GW, for me, had the most memorable story even tho it was too dramatic

     

    for GW:Nightfall and Eye of the North, they brought a known story writer to their team

     

    Jeff Grubb

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Grubb

     

  • Rockgod99Rockgod99 Member Posts: 4,640

    Eve Online because it's my story.

    image

    Playing: Rift, LotRO
    Waiting on: GW2, BP

  • NeanderthalNeanderthal Member RarePosts: 1,861

    I can't think of any game, whether it's mmo, co-op, or single player, in which I got sucked into the story at all.  At best I'm aware of the story but indifferent to it.  I'll pay attention to the parts I have to pay attention to but I have never gotten caught up in the story for it's own sake.

    At worst the story pisses me off because it conflicts with the ideas I had in my mind about my character or because it's just plain stupid, inconsistant, or otherwise annoying.

    As far as I'm concerned "story" in games should mostly be a basic outline of the world and it's events before your character came on the scene and from there on it should be as open ended as possible so you can play out your own story.

    Some people have mentioned that Guild Wars had a great story and for them I'm sure that's true.  For me, not so much.  I played through the original campaign and most of the nightfall expansion and the story did nothing for me.  I don't even remember much about it.  In fact, I stopped about two thirds of the way through Nightfall because I couldn't take the extremely linear nature of the game anymore.  Go there do that, go there do that, follow this little closed in canyon to that place, listen to this guy jabbering about some crap I don't care about then go there and do that.  I couldn't stand it anymore.

    I'm hoping Guild Wars 2 will be more open and free.  If I hear that it is I might try it.

  • QuirhidQuirhid Member UncommonPosts: 6,230

    GW had a good story. So did AoC's Tortage bit.

    I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky

  • shaeshae Member Posts: 2,509

    I'm sure I'll get put over the rakes for this one but I've always loved the Lore behind WoW and Azeroth. It's got lots of depth, heroes on both sides, great bad guys, great good guys and a world you can really empathize with.

    Besides that, I was a big fan of the Lineage story lines (1 and 2) but I think that's mostly because of the fact I was a HUGE fan of both games.

    Ryzom had a spectacular, very interactive story line that caught my attention in a big way a few years ago. I loved that whole "the planet is alive and you are affecting it" thing it had. Great stuff and wonderful story writers back in the day.

    EQ and EQ2 had a passable story line with a few lore archs that were interesting; I have to admit I fell for the Dark Elves in a big way at the very start of EQ2.

    I'm sure we could the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings games in here to some degree but those are so fueled from other mediums that it's not really fair to compare those in my oppinion. But then again, I guess you could say the same for WoW and WAR.

  • EvasiaEvasia Member Posts: 2,827

    I want a mmo that have a great story witch i realy need to read to complete quest and when you doing a questline with a compelling storyline unfolding along the road i would love that, ive not realy found a mmo yet that realy have great lore with deep storyline and you wanne read it all becouse it realy involves your gameplay.

    With todays mmo gamers it prolly will never come people just dont have patience anymore for that kind of gameplay.

    Lotr lol thats so well known im still surpprised that players think its great story in that game while you already almost know everything about story before hand, who have not read those books see movies or whatever that involves tolkiens story.

    Was not realy hard for turbine to implement that story into game lol.

    Nah a original story in mmo thats what i wanne see involving great questlines that give you a real feeling of unfolding a story and having a great adventure with it.

    Asherons call 1 i thought was a great story but that was my first mmo at time everything was awesome nothing was wrong or could go wrong lol.

    Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
    In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.

  • neonakaneonaka Member UncommonPosts: 779

    Guild Wars gets my vote for story. From start to finish across 4 stand alone campaigns that all tie into each other, the story was very good.

    By the end of prophecies you really connected to your character if you read it all and played through without...

     

    "HEY PAYING 5k FOR RUN TO FORGE!"

     

    Sigh why do some people even play games?

  • JerYnkFanJerYnkFan Member UncommonPosts: 342

    It's LOTRO for me. 

  • vladakovvladakov Member Posts: 710

    World of Warcraft, the lore is not optimized in the game tho, which i find is a shame.

     

    but with Cataclysm it will change!,  and there are loads of lore quests in WoW, just gotta find em in the the right area's... not every part of Azeroth has heroic lore =)

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  • Hellscream07Hellscream07 Member Posts: 123

    Haven't played LOTRO yet, but I'll agree with the others that GW has a great story.

    Now, lore-wise, I'd say WoW (I'm kind of a warcraft junkie, loved the lore since WC1) and Ryzom, if you take the time to get into it.


    image


    image
  • BlueharpBlueharp Member Posts: 301

    Wait, there are things besides numbers in MMOs?

    Since when?

     

  • drbaltazardrbaltazar Member UncommonPosts: 7,856

    onne poster made me thing about your question!

    are you asking the once game that flash it at you or the game that as the best lore.

    best lore =wow

    best lore flashed at you =guild wars

  • jotulljotull Member Posts: 256

    There is nothing wrong with liking WoW's lore, it  draws form many different athrouritative bases, I also like the LOTRO story, but  without a doubt  the FFXI story lines are the best to me, I simply can not wait for FF14 to be released as no one tells a story like SE.

  • QSatuQSatu Member UncommonPosts: 1,795

    Wow No one said anything about FF XI. I never finished any of the storylines in XI but those parts I expirienced were better than any other storyline in mmo. It takes you forever to do all those missions so it's hard to expiriense the whole storyline.

  • shaeshae Member Posts: 2,509

    Very good point about established IP's.

    To be honest though, one of the problems I've always had with playing in games that had very broad and popular IP's is that I've always been held at arms length.

    Take SWG as example, during it's cluser @#$@%$ of a time scale you could affectively go about the various planets and find key, "iconic" characters in a constant state of perpetual none-involvement. Han and Chewie were somewhere essentially spewing the same NPC lines, over and over again, so was the princes (on yavin right?), the hutts in their little corner of the planet, etc. My part of the story was reduced to a meer voyeur of epic non-importance.

    They were POI's, points of interest... "Yay I have found Luke!", "Fricking great... now what" a friend would surely add.

    Now this isn't to say that the right thing to do with a huge IP like Star Wars, or Connan, or LOTR  is to have game devs say: "Yeah, you, little Alice, you go ahead and be Froddo and mess the whole story up until you're blue in the face" but that's where my issue with the big time IP story flux comes into play. If you're not one of these characters that you've either read about, or watched on the screen or whatever, you will for the better part always feel like you are a secondary part of the cast at best and at worst feel like you've provided absolutely zero to the universe in which you are participating. 

    And that's unappealing to me personally.

    The lore and the stories that I have found myself really pulled into are those where my characters purpose to the world is fairly clear, how I fit into that lore is fairly clear and how I can affect that world is fairly clear. Having great lore with fantastic characters, history that is never ending, great leading roles is one thing but making sure that I don't feel dwarfed (not a pun, I swear) is probably the most important to me now that I think of it.

     

  • shaeshae Member Posts: 2,509

    Sorry Tor - I tried to quote your reply to me in my reply post but apparently the reply gods would have none of that.

  • EdliEdli Member Posts: 941

    Originally posted by shae



    I'm sure I'll get put over the rakes for this one but I've always loved the Lore behind WoW and Azeroth. It's got lots of depth, heroes on both sides, great bad guys, great good guys and a world you can really empathize with.

    Besides that, I was a big fan of the Lineage story lines (1 and 2) but I think that's mostly because of the fact I was a HUGE fan of both games.

    Even those that hate wow accept the fact that wow's lore is great. One of the major plus of that game is exactly the lore. It does have a shallow way to present it in the game though.

    As for L2. I played that game for a while but never experienced the story. All I remember is killing mobs, players and sieges. Are you sure that L2 have a story?

  • drbaltazardrbaltazar Member UncommonPosts: 7,856

    Originally posted by Edli

    Originally posted by shae



    I'm sure I'll get put over the rakes for this one but I've always loved the Lore behind WoW and Azeroth. It's got lots of depth, heroes on both sides, great bad guys, great good guys and a world you can really empathize with.

    Besides that, I was a big fan of the Lineage story lines (1 and 2) but I think that's mostly because of the fact I was a HUGE fan of both games.

    Even those that hate wow accept the fact that wow's lore is great. One of the major plus of that game is exactly the lore. It does have a shallow way to present it in the game though.

    As for L2. I played that game for a while but never experienced the story. All I remember is killing mobs, players and sieges. Are you sure that L2 have a story?

     yep !if you want the lore in wow the full story not just snippet!be ready cause some part of the story are hidden in very long chain quest!

  • shaeshae Member Posts: 2,509

    Originally posted by Edli



    Originally posted by shae



    I'm sure I'll get put over the rakes for this one but I've always loved the Lore behind WoW and Azeroth. It's got lots of depth, heroes on both sides, great bad guys, great good guys and a world you can really empathize with.

    Besides that, I was a big fan of the Lineage story lines (1 and 2) but I think that's mostly because of the fact I was a HUGE fan of both games.

    Even those that hate wow accept the fact that wow's lore is great. One of the major plus of that game is exactly the lore. It does have a shallow way to present it in the game though.

    As for L2. I played that game for a while but never experienced the story. All I remember is killing mobs, players and sieges. Are you sure that L2 have a story?

    L2? Seriously? For shame Edli, FOR SHAME!!!

    Kidding, kidding!

    But yes, Lineage 1 and 2 had wonderful stories but granted it very often got buried in the general pillaging of all things red and killable (err, so totally not a word but whatever!).

    If memory serves well, and it really doesn't now days, there was a host of sites that back in L2's, and L1 to a lesser extent, hay day that focused on the overiding story arches found within Lineage world. I believe a wiki search will probably turn up a few.

  • MardyMardy Member Posts: 2,213

    I've always liked Warcraft lore in WoW, they've done a good job incorporating the lore into the game.

     

    One of the best make-up-as-they-go story in MMO's is Asheron's Call 1.  Turbine did an awesome job keeping an ongoing story arc going from month to month, and they've been doing it for 10 years now.

     

    Everquest 1 had some of the best Gods and Dragons lore, it always made you want to see a God and kill a dragon.  It's the very definition of a fantasy MMO*RPG*. 

    EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO

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