I would be extremely curious to see what sort of criteria you used to judge these games.
For me, the term "story driven MMO" is oxymoronic - in general, the more story driven a game, the less MMO it is. So, a game like SW:TOR which is almost 100% focused on the story, is one of the worst MMOs ever built. Its story might be good (though, i would dispute that, its story sucked) but the whole rest of the game sucks.
If you are just judging the games on their stories alone - which is what most of the commentators seem to think - then I want to know your criteria. Are you judging on the actual stories themselves (i.e. the plots)? Are you judging the quality of the writing? Are you judging the presentation / voice overs? Are you judging the actual player engagement / actions required to play through the story?
See, for me, a game like SW:TOR has an absolutely atrocious story. The class stories are predictable and short lived. The planetary storylines are a bit more engaging but buried. The side-quests are generic crap. The later, larger storylines suffer badly from over-escalation. So, on the story alone, SW:TOR would get a 2/10 from me. But, SW:TOR has the presentation nailed. The voice overs are well done, the animations and social choices really help. Then, there are plenty of small scale instances to personalise / differentiate the story gameplay and make it feel more epic. This goes some way to mitigate the shitty writing, so overall I'd give SW:TOR a 5/10 when including everything story related.
LotRO, on the other hand, would be at a 7/10 in comparison. The actual story itself shits all over SW:TOR. It flows better, it is much better written, it interacts cleverly with the main events from the books without becoming ridiculous and is far more realistic - yes, I'm a strong adventurer and a bit of a local hero, but I'm not the saviour of the world so it actually fits within an MMO. However, it is now dated, doesn't have voice overs and stuff and with less options, you can't streamline your story experience like you can in some games which brings its overall score down.
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"God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice.."
For me, the term "story driven MMO" is oxymoronic - in general, the more story driven a game, the less MMO it is. So, a game like SW:TOR which is almost 100% focused on the story, is one of the worst MMOs ever built. Its story might be good (though, i would dispute that, its story sucked) but the whole rest of the game sucks.
If you are just judging the games on their stories alone - which is what most of the commentators seem to think - then I want to know your criteria. Are you judging on the actual stories themselves (i.e. the plots)? Are you judging the quality of the writing? Are you judging the presentation / voice overs? Are you judging the actual player engagement / actions required to play through the story?
See, for me, a game like SW:TOR has an absolutely atrocious story. The class stories are predictable and short lived. The planetary storylines are a bit more engaging but buried. The side-quests are generic crap. The later, larger storylines suffer badly from over-escalation. So, on the story alone, SW:TOR would get a 2/10 from me. But, SW:TOR has the presentation nailed. The voice overs are well done, the animations and social choices really help. Then, there are plenty of small scale instances to personalise / differentiate the story gameplay and make it feel more epic. This goes some way to mitigate the shitty writing, so overall I'd give SW:TOR a 5/10 when including everything story related.
LotRO, on the other hand, would be at a 7/10 in comparison. The actual story itself shits all over SW:TOR. It flows better, it is much better written, it interacts cleverly with the main events from the books without becoming ridiculous and is far more realistic - yes, I'm a strong adventurer and a bit of a local hero, but I'm not the saviour of the world so it actually fits within an MMO. However, it is now dated, doesn't have voice overs and stuff and with less options, you can't streamline your story experience like you can in some games which brings its overall score down.