Comments on: Thought of the Day: The pitfall of MMO storytelling

By: nyhm

nyhm — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:20:19 +0000

Island Forge is an indie MMORPG that’s all about player-created content (stories and islands). The storytelling engine allows players to create dynamic, branching plots across their NPCs.

The result is a world of ever-expanding content, where there is always potentially somewhere new to explore. The design lends itself to smaller, creative stories/quests/plots to follow.

By: Professor Beej

Professor Beej — Mon, 23 May 2011 15:06:26 +0000

I agree with you, Spinks. Especially about 4.2. It turns out that Hyjal and the elemental lords are one of my favorite aspects of WoW lore, so I got back into the game and raiding so I could hit Firelands and do the Molten Front dailies. If it had been something else (like Trial of the Crusader, for instance), I’d have ignored it completely because I just can’t care about it. On top of that, I hate dailies, so it had to be something that I cared about.

That’s what I’m hoping SW:TOR does well. I love pretty much everything about Star Wars, but I care considerably less about the Bounty Hunters and stuff like that, the military angle. If they can make sure to emphasize the Jedi/Sith and spiritual side of the universe enough instead of falling into The Force just being there and taken for granted, I’ll fall hard for that game for the particular storytelling aspect.

By: Aracos

Aracos — Mon, 23 May 2011 14:50:54 +0000

This is actually why I am hopeful SWTOR will be the kind of MMO I can enjoy again. When I started playing WoW six years ago, my lifestyle afforded me the spare time to play a LOT, raid a LOT, and meet the kind of schedule that let me see almost all the content a progression based game has to offer. Fast forward six years and I have a one-year old son and am heading back to graduate school. I don’t have that kind of time anymore. So a more story driven game will (in theory) allow a player like me to still experience most of what the game has to offer without requiring the kind of time commitment that many progression based games end up demanding.

By: spinks

spinks — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:42:34 +0000

I’m calling it now, Lorna Crowley for next Forsaken leader after Sylvanas

By: spinks

spinks — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:40:36 +0000

I guess what I’m talking about here is that even film-style MMOs are likely to have multiple open ended plot threads (to allow for future developments), so what happens when you as the player are really really interested in one thread but not the others. In that sense it’s quite different from a film where you’ll get some kind of forward momentum and eventual closure (unless it’s a weird arty kind of film, I guess).

By: Hyperian

Hyperian — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:34:23 +0000

The Forsaken story line was deliberatly left open, and they are pushing the Sylvannus/Garrosh hatred hard core. They have spent many quest hours setting up for a titanic battle royale between the two, its not a matter of if they will, but when they will. The writting as they say… is on the wall, its gonna come to war and this time…. im not gonna just invade UnderCity, im gonna wipe it off the face of Azeroth.

By: Stabs

Stabs — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:27:59 +0000

Link added: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/GregMcClanahan/20110508/7579/Logic_vs_Psychology_in_World_of_Warcrafts_New_Gear_Advancement_System.php

By: Stabs

Stabs — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:25:46 +0000

Oh and another thing.

I’ve thought all along that viewing SWTOR as a game to be played will be a less enjoyable approach than viewing it as a film you can interact with.

By: Stabs

Stabs — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:17:42 +0000

Richard Bartle broke down story telling in MMOs in a talk 2 years ago:
http://mud.co.uk/richard/IMGDC2009.pdf

His perspective was that a game like SWTOR is simply a different style of game to a game like Eve. In SWTOR you sit back and are told a story. In Eve players go out there and make a story.

He is somewhat biased towards what actually happened (“I fell off Weathertop”) over narrative arranged by designers (“quests to help the fellowship of the Ring”) but nonetheless the saliant point is that they’re simply different styles. Acting is not intrinisically better than watching a film. We could all choose to go do amateur dramatics this week if we wanted to, I suspect most of us won’t and will watch a film.

What is interesting about WoW is that it started out split between the two: “I fell into the lava at BRM” and “we saved the world from Ragnaros” are both memorable but now WoW has become much less memorable. The outstanding events are gear upgrades but are those genuinely memorable?

At Gamasutra Greg McLanahan has argued recently that the psychological weight of gear upgrades has decreased in WoW as they’ve become more frequent.

I think we’ve seen memorable moments sacrificed for sensation delivery. It’s nice to play WoW because there are lots of “cool! a new shiny!” moments without there being as much distinctive and memorable content.

By: spinks

spinks — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:16:04 +0000

Totally agree about LOTRO, I think the epic books are going to be remembered (at least by me) as one of the high points of MMO gaming. I particularly enjoyed how they worked the skimishes into the Mirkwood book, that was a nice piece of design imo.

I quite like the story quests in Rift too, they’ve been pretty cool.