Having played several MMO's now which have had rich and detailed back stories, I can say that most people I know, or have just watched playing, spacebar through the story as quickly as they can to get to the game.
I remember when AoC came out, there were several quests near the mid game that had a lot of back story. You'd walk up to the quest giver and he'd have at least a minute or two of dialogue to read to understand exactly why you were going to kill so-and-so. I remember reading the entire quest and thinking to myself "Am I the only one even bothering to read this?".
So I backed up and just watched people running up to the quest giver. Even a speed reader would need thirty seconds to read the entire quest, so anything under that I decided they were just spacebaring through the text to pick up the quest.
Less than one person in every twenty players, in the course of sitting there for about 30 minutes, spent more than ten seconds standing in front of that quest giver before running off... and that quest was full of world lore and back story. So, honestly, I think the game only needs the bare minimum of story for todays kiddie gamers who are only interested in reaching max level as soon as possible.
Originally posted by Vorthanion It should be important if you like RPG's, otherwise, you're in the wrong genre and should be playing FPS, RTS, Platformers or action adventures / hack and slashers.
Thank you for informing me of what should be important to me, and if not, where I belong. Really opened my eyes. Now if only they could get us our own drinking fountains.
You betcha, you look like a lost puppy in need of some serious help.
Originally posted by Vorthanion It should be important if you like RPG's, otherwise, you're in the wrong genre and should be playing FPS, RTS, Platformers or action adventures / hack and slashers.
Thank you for informing me of what should be important to me, and if not, where I belong. Really opened my eyes. Now if only they could get us our own drinking fountains.
You betcha, you look like a lost puppy in need of some serious help.
Just where would we be without people beneath us to condescend to?
Pass the grey poupon.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Like World of Warcraft brought me in because I was already a fan of their lore from Warcraft 2 & 3. But then the hand holding, waiting, staticness of it all kind of smothered me out.
Then there was Shadowbane where there was lore, the racial lore was actually really nice, and it guided the open ended game play rather well. Then it really became background noise as each session was it's own story.
Then there was EQ1 where it was all there, and you got bits and pieces, and were left to put a lot together.
It's important, but ultimately it can be too much or too little.
Of course it is, I mean, isn't an RPG just a story that you can be a part of?...would you not want to be part of a good story as opposed to a bad/boring one?..
Lore has and always will be an extremely important part, I love it when developers release additional story content like books to further engross the player.
I was just curious how important the average MMO player feels the lore/storyline of the MMO they are playing is. I see a lot of people saying that they usually open the quest text, click accept and then go do what they need to do and then click complete with no idea who they were doing it for, or why.
Practically speaking, does it matter the reason an NPC gives when he wants to you kill 10 grasshoppers? Has anyone ever turned down a quest on principle because they don't agree with the NPC's rationale or morality?
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
But it has to be interesting, unique and deep. I really liked Lineage's lore and it gave me another reason to be interested in the game and keep playing to find out more. I felt more immersed too.
I voted yes. I really like to know/feel my setting.
If I see a field I want to know that there was a battle there, if I come across a half buried statue I want to know who that was and why that statue was made and why it's not maintained.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I was just curious how important the average MMO player feels the lore/storyline of the MMO they are playing is. I see a lot of people saying that they usually open the quest text, click accept and then go do what they need to do and then click complete with no idea who they were doing it for, or why.
Practically speaking, does it matter the reason an NPC gives when he wants to you kill 10 grasshoppers? Has anyone ever turned down a quest on principle because they don't agree with the NPC's rationale or morality?
lol, raises hand. I have.
I'm not a role player but I do consider myself an "internal roleplayer". made up term just for my use. When I'm not in a group I like to imagine my character,their personality and their motivations.
If I quest is beneath my character or against some "reason" I won't accept it. Especially because I don't like quests that much anyway, so if I take one it better be of interest.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I was just curious how important the average MMO player feels the lore/storyline of the MMO they are playing is. I see a lot of people saying that they usually open the quest text, click accept and then go do what they need to do and then click complete with no idea who they were doing it for, or why.
Practically speaking, does it matter the reason an NPC gives when he wants to you kill 10 grasshoppers? Has anyone ever turned down a quest on principle because they don't agree with the NPC's rationale or morality?
lol, raises hand. I have.
I'm not a role player but I do consider myself an "internal roleplayer". made up term just for my use. When I'm not in a group I like to imagine my character,their personality and their motivations.
If I quest is beneath my character or against some "reason" I won't accept it. Especially because I don't like quests that much anyway, so if I take one it better be of interest.
Haha! That's awesome.
I'm not big on quests either. I'll do them if they are there but I wouldn't miss them if they weren't. I certainly am not going to read the quest text though.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
If the lore/story is good I follow along and become interested. If it's just a " we couldn't pay good writers so here's a blah blah the bad guy is bad " story....I ignore it and kill stuff.
SWTOR the sith warrior story is the last time I remember actually being very interested in what was going on. I couldn't wait to get to the next part to see what happened. As much as I didn't like large parts of that game. The story in it was a 10/10 for me.
To me it's hugely important to have good lore and story to provide a baseline, but seeing it's an MMORPG as opposed to a CRPG, it has to give you space to build your own unique adventure into it as well (even some CRPGs let you do this).
If it's just about following a story without any freedom to do anything meaningful outside it, then that's just not doing what the genre does brilliantly. It can be a fun experience on its own, but it's a waste of MMOs' potential.
On the other hand, just "what players do" as lore & story doesn't cut it for me (it's like listening to people's dreams instead of reading books; surely exciting to them while they're having it, but listening to them it's just not).
So I need to have at least some written lore and story along with player impact.
Since I always put lore and story in the first place in every game, it was an obvious choice to vote yes, it's THE key point for me. If they're good, I don't mind bugs or weaker gameplay elements, and if they're bad / nonexistant, then I just leave even if it's a perfectly made game.
Maybe it's the love of books, or the many years of p'n'p rpg (with good GM's) I don't know, but I do play rpg's (both single and mmo) for the lore and the story. And to be honest, while I know "accept and follow the quest tracker"-kinda players too, this whole "quests are just excuses to kill stuff" attitude is beyond me...
Originally posted by h0urg1ass
I remember when AoC came out, there were several quests near the mid game that had a lot of back story. You'd walk up to the quest giver and he'd have at least a minute or two of dialogue to read to understand exactly why you were going to kill so-and-so. I remember reading the entire quest and thinking to myself "Am I the only one even bothering to read this?".
Same with me, even my buddies just quickly take the quests, I was the only one to digging deeper. Npc's in AoC have great backstories, funny and sometimes witty, connections to the books, etc. They're very well written, not just cardboard cut-outs. (c)
Maybe it's the love of books, or the many years of p'n'p rpg (with good GM's) I don't know, but I do play rpg's (both single and mmo) for the lore and the story. And to be honest, while I know "accept and follow the quest tracker"-kinda players too, this whole "quests are just excuses to kill stuff" attitude is beyond me...
In a good pencil and paper campaign, there is an objective state to the world. When you kill a dragon, the dragon is dead.
In a pencil and paper module, every GM is running a parallel version of adventure. What happens in one GM's game doesn't affect what happens in another GM's game.
When you try to take these two different notions of a pencil and paper game and scale them up to thousands of players continuously playing with an automated GM, something wierd happens: you end up with a world that seems to have the scale of a campaign world and the polish of a module, but to make it practical the dragon has to return to life every few minutes. The world has no objective state and it doesn't change over time. So monsters became a resource that could be farmed endlessly and story became an excuse to nudge a player across the map rather than to stand in place. That's why people talk about story being an excuse to kill stuff.
But as for the story ...
I can be entertained by a book, but at the end of the day I have to admit they also annoy me. Books and scripts are dead words, frozen in time. There's nothing I can do as a reader to change the outcome of a book. A role-playing game gives me the chance to put words in my character's mouth, allows me to choose which road to travel, to plan how I want to fight the dragon ... the best pencil and paper games are the ones where the story takes a left turn because of a player choice or roll of the dice that neither players nor the GM anticipated and the consequences spread out across the campaign. An MMO questline takes that control away from me again - it's telling me what my character has to do, it's fixing the outcome of the events and not allowing the unexpected to happen.
I hope that helps to understand attitudes that seem beyond you ... I realize that not everyone (perhaps not anyone) shares my preferences and sensitivities and that the sort of living worlds I would like to see created are much, much harder to do than a static story (even if I believe they scale better in the long run). In the end, I can't help but wish for what I want
Well, I never really care for lore or story that much (hardcore pvper). But there have been many exceptions. There have been times when I'm like wow im going to halt everything to see where this quest is taking me because its that interesting. But i suppose its has its importance, because after your done doing whatever it could be reallt interesting to pickl up a quest but only if it has a good storyline behind it, but they rarely do until endgame.
Poor poll as it mixes lore and storyline together where as, in an mmorpg specially, they are very different. Lore is the context for which all the players are in, where as story lines are, almost always, a single player which has been shoehorned into mmorpgs to cater to single player gamers.
Great post, mostly agree (books never annoyed me, ok, maybe the bad ones )
We've never played modules, our GM had lots of stories in his head all the time and we could roam free, if we chose a different path or method he just simply adapted and dropped an another story beginning in, but kept the first one on hold too. (once we got attacked by bounty hunters sent by an npc we crossed months ago - he gave us a mission but we chose to help his opponent and it took him some time to find us.) Our GM wrote a living world and we played in it as we liked. Sadly, you can't do that on pc.
Respawning dragon - that's why I don't play much "endgame grind", with one character I usually play things only once, and with alts I love to try exploring different ways and playthroughs. I can accept though the controlled story in crpg's - it'd be too tough to implement total freedom (even in Elder Scrolls games you have limits, and in mmo's there are multiple players as well to complicate things)
"In a good pencil and paper campaign, there is an objective state to the world. When you kill a dragon, the dragon is dead."
I think this sums up the difference between story and lore in an mmorpg. Lore is stuff that has already happened or is fixed in some other way so it can provide motivation for multiple actors whereas story has to try and pretend you're the chosen hero who stopped the orcs blowing up the dam when you can see another twelve players doing the same thing. Even if the story is good it's still silly unless it's logically repeatable.
Originally posted by Magiknight If I want a virtual world to play in then it has to be built with a story. If there is no story there is no world. Most MMOs do terrible stories.
Comments
only back story is important for me(reason whay I playing some mmo)
but about personal story I don't care ,
brw. personal story is an ilusion,there is not personal storyes,there are milions same storyes in any story based mmo's
Having played several MMO's now which have had rich and detailed back stories, I can say that most people I know, or have just watched playing, spacebar through the story as quickly as they can to get to the game.
I remember when AoC came out, there were several quests near the mid game that had a lot of back story. You'd walk up to the quest giver and he'd have at least a minute or two of dialogue to read to understand exactly why you were going to kill so-and-so. I remember reading the entire quest and thinking to myself "Am I the only one even bothering to read this?".
So I backed up and just watched people running up to the quest giver. Even a speed reader would need thirty seconds to read the entire quest, so anything under that I decided they were just spacebaring through the text to pick up the quest.
Less than one person in every twenty players, in the course of sitting there for about 30 minutes, spent more than ten seconds standing in front of that quest giver before running off... and that quest was full of world lore and back story. So, honestly, I think the game only needs the bare minimum of story for todays kiddie gamers who are only interested in reaching max level as soon as possible.
You betcha, you look like a lost puppy in need of some serious help.
Just where would we be without people beneath us to condescend to?
Pass the grey poupon.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I've gone somewhat.
Like World of Warcraft brought me in because I was already a fan of their lore from Warcraft 2 & 3. But then the hand holding, waiting, staticness of it all kind of smothered me out.
Then there was Shadowbane where there was lore, the racial lore was actually really nice, and it guided the open ended game play rather well. Then it really became background noise as each session was it's own story.
Then there was EQ1 where it was all there, and you got bits and pieces, and were left to put a lot together.
It's important, but ultimately it can be too much or too little.
a yo ho ho
Of course it is, I mean, isn't an RPG just a story that you can be a part of?...would you not want to be part of a good story as opposed to a bad/boring one?..
Lore has and always will be an extremely important part, I love it when developers release additional story content like books to further engross the player.
Redwall: The Warrior Reborn
Practically speaking, does it matter the reason an NPC gives when he wants to you kill 10 grasshoppers? Has anyone ever turned down a quest on principle because they don't agree with the NPC's rationale or morality?
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
I think the story/lore is very important.
But it has to be interesting, unique and deep. I really liked Lineage's lore and it gave me another reason to be interested in the game and keep playing to find out more. I felt more immersed too.
Web & Graphic Design - www.xdrac.com
I voted yes. I really like to know/feel my setting.
If I see a field I want to know that there was a battle there, if I come across a half buried statue I want to know who that was and why that statue was made and why it's not maintained.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
lol, raises hand. I have.
I'm not a role player but I do consider myself an "internal roleplayer". made up term just for my use. When I'm not in a group I like to imagine my character,their personality and their motivations.
If I quest is beneath my character or against some "reason" I won't accept it. Especially because I don't like quests that much anyway, so if I take one it better be of interest.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Haha! That's awesome.
I'm not big on quests either. I'll do them if they are there but I wouldn't miss them if they weren't. I certainly am not going to read the quest text though.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
If the lore/story is good I follow along and become interested. If it's just a " we couldn't pay good writers so here's a blah blah the bad guy is bad " story....I ignore it and kill stuff.
SWTOR the sith warrior story is the last time I remember actually being very interested in what was going on. I couldn't wait to get to the next part to see what happened. As much as I didn't like large parts of that game. The story in it was a 10/10 for me.
To me it's hugely important to have good lore and story to provide a baseline, but seeing it's an MMORPG as opposed to a CRPG, it has to give you space to build your own unique adventure into it as well (even some CRPGs let you do this).
If it's just about following a story without any freedom to do anything meaningful outside it, then that's just not doing what the genre does brilliantly. It can be a fun experience on its own, but it's a waste of MMOs' potential.
On the other hand, just "what players do" as lore & story doesn't cut it for me (it's like listening to people's dreams instead of reading books; surely exciting to them while they're having it, but listening to them it's just not).
So I need to have at least some written lore and story along with player impact.
Stories and quests are just excuses to kill lots of stuff.
However, good stories and lore adds to the fun factor ... gives the illusion that whatever you are doing mean something.
If the gameplay mechanics is not fun (i.e. mostly combat), no amount of story will save it. However, if gameplay is fun, stories add to it.
Since I always put lore and story in the first place in every game, it was an obvious choice to vote yes, it's THE key point for me. If they're good, I don't mind bugs or weaker gameplay elements, and if they're bad / nonexistant, then I just leave even if it's a perfectly made game.
Maybe it's the love of books, or the many years of p'n'p rpg (with good GM's) I don't know, but I do play rpg's (both single and mmo) for the lore and the story. And to be honest, while I know "accept and follow the quest tracker"-kinda players too, this whole "quests are just excuses to kill stuff" attitude is beyond me...
Same with me, even my buddies just quickly take the quests, I was the only one to digging deeper. Npc's in AoC have great backstories, funny and sometimes witty, connections to the books, etc. They're very well written, not just cardboard cut-outs. (c)
In a good pencil and paper campaign, there is an objective state to the world. When you kill a dragon, the dragon is dead.
In a pencil and paper module, every GM is running a parallel version of adventure. What happens in one GM's game doesn't affect what happens in another GM's game.
When you try to take these two different notions of a pencil and paper game and scale them up to thousands of players continuously playing with an automated GM, something wierd happens: you end up with a world that seems to have the scale of a campaign world and the polish of a module, but to make it practical the dragon has to return to life every few minutes. The world has no objective state and it doesn't change over time. So monsters became a resource that could be farmed endlessly and story became an excuse to nudge a player across the map rather than to stand in place. That's why people talk about story being an excuse to kill stuff.
But as for the story ...
I can be entertained by a book, but at the end of the day I have to admit they also annoy me. Books and scripts are dead words, frozen in time. There's nothing I can do as a reader to change the outcome of a book. A role-playing game gives me the chance to put words in my character's mouth, allows me to choose which road to travel, to plan how I want to fight the dragon ... the best pencil and paper games are the ones where the story takes a left turn because of a player choice or roll of the dice that neither players nor the GM anticipated and the consequences spread out across the campaign. An MMO questline takes that control away from me again - it's telling me what my character has to do, it's fixing the outcome of the events and not allowing the unexpected to happen.
I hope that helps to understand attitudes that seem beyond you ... I realize that not everyone (perhaps not anyone) shares my preferences and sensitivities and that the sort of living worlds I would like to see created are much, much harder to do than a static story (even if I believe they scale better in the long run). In the end, I can't help but wish for what I want
My gaming blog
Great post, mostly agree (books never annoyed me, ok, maybe the bad ones
)
We've never played modules, our GM had lots of stories in his head all the time and we could roam free, if we chose a different path or method he just simply adapted and dropped an another story beginning in, but kept the first one on hold too. (once we got attacked by bounty hunters sent by an npc we crossed months ago - he gave us a mission but we chose to help his opponent
and it took him some time to find us.) Our GM wrote a living world and we played in it as we liked. Sadly, you can't do that on pc.
Respawning dragon - that's why I don't play much "endgame grind", with one character I usually play things only once, and with alts I love to try exploring different ways and playthroughs. I can accept though the controlled story in crpg's - it'd be too tough to implement total freedom (even in Elder Scrolls games you have limits, and in mmo's there are multiple players as well to complicate things)
"In a good pencil and paper campaign, there is an objective state to the world. When you kill a dragon, the dragon is dead."
I think this sums up the difference between story and lore in an mmorpg. Lore is stuff that has already happened or is fixed in some other way so it can provide motivation for multiple actors whereas story has to try and pretend you're the chosen hero who stopped the orcs blowing up the dam when you can see another twelve players doing the same thing. Even if the story is good it's still silly unless it's logically repeatable.
World and story are not the same thing.
Website: http://www.emrendil.com
TwitchTV: http://www.twitch.tv/emrendil
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Emrendil
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.