Gamerant lists MMORPG's with best stories, FFXIV #6, WoW #1, uhh

Are they serious?

https://gamerant.com/mmorpgs-best-storytelling-ranked/

They also credit Illidan as "among the greatest video game villains of all time" despite part of Legion being devoted to how Illidan wasn't actually a villain at all, so that article's credibility is near zero.

I don't think a single person could have time to fully invest themselves in the story of every MMO out there, so this is probably guesswork on their part. Maybe WoW wins because that's the game the writer has actually played a fair amount of.

In terms of story, warcraft can bring a lot more on the table regarding lore.
The downside is that this is less of a 'you' story in WoW than more of a tale of certain characters doing certain things.

FFXIV does it the other way around: Each part of the series is a different story, but the main focus of 14 will always be you, the Warrior of Light.

People have opinions.

Swtor should be #1.

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Originally Posted by Arrius

In terms of story, warcraft can bring a lot more on the table regarding lore.
The downside is that this is less of a 'you' story in WoW than more of a tale of certain characters doing certain things.

FFXIV does it the other way around: Each part of the series is a different story, but the main focus of 14 will always be you, the Warrior of Light.

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I've thought about this and I can't say I entirely agree.

WoW's 'lore' has been squandered by years of retconning, bastardized writing and has undergone utter ruination. I will concede that the original Warcraft series of games has a very strong, expansive and interesting lore to go by, but the majority of things added in WoW are entirely shallow (imo) in newer iterations of the lore. Up until roughly WoTLK, the lore, IMO, is still pretty solid because it utilizes the original games quite well. A huge part of it for me too is inconsistency in the writing for every character. Without or with little in-game justification or elaboration whatsoever, the major 'lore' characters of WoW change drastically every expansion to the point they sometimes do not feel like the same character, imo. There is a difference between character development and altering a character for the sake of plot convenience, which I think is something Blizzard's writing team do a lot. The game no longer exists to prolong and expand the lore. The lore merely exists as a means of explaining why you're doing specific raid of the week.

FFXIV doesn't escape all of that criticism either, ofc, but I think a lot of people would genuinely be surprised if they took the time to look at FFXIV's lore in-depth. There's quite a lot of it. It's just not blatantly fed to the player via the story.

That being said - while I do like a fair bit of FFXIVs linear story, it's by no means perfect, and I can't say if it would be a contender for the #1 spot. Regardless of style or approach though - I don't think modern WoW belongs in #1. Some of the zone stories, imo, for BfA were quite good but the overarching story and focus on wishy washy big lore characters is sinking the game for me, personally. Especially when you have DBZ-style story telling. Peacecraft Can do No Wrong Anduin Wrynn, Edgy Conqueror Lich King Beating Super Sylvy Windrunner, suddenly relevant Saurfang, 'vengeful' Tyrande, etc etc. All pale imitations of far better characters.

Call it elitist of me but I don't think the writer of that article has a nose for what I believe makes a good story or for that matter, what makes for good world building.

Lore and actual storytelling are two different things.

WoW's lore is several times larger than XIV's (coming from Warcraft and all) and arguably deeper but the way the actual game presents it is, most of the time, bad. XIV may not have the biggest lore yet, but you can follow everything from start to finish while playing the game without the need of books or other media alongside what's presented to you during your playtime.
They use two different ways of presenting the story, different point of views, different use of cut-scenes, different level of interaction with other characters and story elements.

And the same goes for other titles as well, so in the end it's a matter of personal preference.

I don't mind collecting lore books and I like fantasy stuff, so I really enjoy the lore of WoW including the Chronicle books I'm collecting. I also like XIV's story, even if at a slightly lesser degree because of the latest developments, and I'm outraged at the absence of XI's story (which, to me, is far superior to XIV).

Can't say much about other MMOs, but lore really is a matter of personal preference so lists like this are kind of 'whatever'.

WoW story is an utter mess now, even the majority of their playerbase agreed on that from Legion onwards. Their devs even admitted they can bring whoever they like back from the dead and they're making a lot of it up as they go along and it shows. It used to be quite decent but that was a long time ago.

You have to look at the whole picture as well I guess. But most reviewers disagree with this article if you look around.

From what I seen in the last 2 yrs FFXIV: Shadowbringers has what most reviewers say is the best or 2nd best mmo story ever made. So I would put this as an major outlier. Honestly most consider WoW to be down near the bottom in terms of story line. Lore is another thing. WoW probably best ffxiv in the lore department with ease.

If you look at the whole picture though.

ARR's story telling was ok at best, leaning on the bad side. It was mainly a ton of fetch quest with a mediocre story. FFXIV did not really pick up until heavensward. So if this reviewer was like many players they absolutely despised the game's story progression in the beginning it could of been an issue of leaving a bad taste in their mouth. If they did a story skip to review the new expansion you miss all the tie ins to the game and honestly without backstory I think Shadowbringer's story would lose alot of its impact. Also possible they just did not like the ffxiv story line. Don't know how many movies I went to see that had stellar ratings and I was like meh would of rather seen anything else. Alot is subjective.

Adding to everything else, it's an article, not a poll with huge amount of people participating in it, so it's just subjective personal opinion. All listed games are good in their own way (I played most of them), so it really comes down to personal preferences.

I have never even heard of gamerant. I will now never read anything they write either. FFXIV lore/story is MUCH better than WoW. WoW bored me to tears not only with the terrible story but in its presentation as well.

Hey. WoW has a great story, by the way!

It's just too bad that only like 5% of it is actually in the game.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

They also credit Illidan as "among the greatest video game villains of all time" despite part of Legion being devoted to how Illidan wasn't actually a villain at all, so that article's credibility is near zero.

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Or Illidan as practically Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Expansion in The Burning Crusade.

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Originally Posted by Jennah

Hey. WoW has a great story, by the way!

It's just too bad that only like 5% of it is actually in the game.

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Do you mean every major character ends up Villian due to the corruption?
I mean every single one of them?

Except for maybe the Void Lords, but they were the source of most of the corruption, so it's a fine line.

WoW has books, movies, several games, dozens of recognizable characters (many of which have been killed already) epic plot twists, generations of family characters, in-depth racial origin stories, character development towards good AND evil, betrayal, fleshed out characters with plenty of personality, and more. 14 has a lot of that, too. Just not nearly so much. Now, if they were talking about FF as a series it'd be different. But just 14? How could one game compete? It simply hasn't had enough time.

WoW do have rich lores but nevertheless it means nothing if they can’t present that in game.
Remember the game Destiny?
It too also have a rich lores, but it means nothing if I need to read it somewhere else

Chad orc story vs virgin anime story /s

Realistically, WoW probably won simply because a lot of the characters and story arcs are kind of an iconic part of MMO history. FFXIV isn't exactly a household name outside of it's community bubble, so a hastily scrawled clickbait article likely isn't going to give it too much consideration.

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Originally Posted by Drkdays

WoW has books, movies, several games, dozens of recognizable characters (many of which have been killed already) epic plot twists, generations of family characters, in-depth racial origin stories, character development towards good AND evil, betrayal, fleshed out characters with plenty of personality, and more. 14 has a lot of that, too. Just not nearly so much. Now, if they were talking about FF as a series it'd be different. But just 14? How could one game compete? It simply hasn't had enough time.

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How about simply as World of Warcraft versus FF14 as a more direct comparison to how the storytelling is handled? As if you are going to bring up all of WoW's extra material and games, then its only fair that we bring up all of FF series extra material and games. As a lot of what makes FF14, FF, is that it takes existing things from what came before to establish its game.

wow bad
ffxiv good

Imagine taking some clickbait top 10 list seriously.

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Originally Posted by Anienai

Swtor should be #1.

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SWTOR has been lacking in that department since base game. I liked the Eternal Throne stuff, but it was clearly written to be agnostic with respect to your force alignment and class, so it lacked that personal touch the original 1-50 stuff had.

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Originally Posted by Chasingstars

How about simply as World of Warcraft versus FF14 as a more direct comparison to how the storytelling is handled? As if you are going to bring up all of WoW's extra material and games, then its only fair that we bring up all of FF series extra material and games. As a lot of what makes FF14, FF, is that it takes existing things from what came before to establish its game.

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Not that I ever want to come across as defending Blizzard in any way, shape, or form, but that's not a fair comparison. WoW is the same world as all of its supplementary materials, while other FF games are not one world. It's like comparing Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit to Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons.

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

Imagine taking some clickbait top 10 list seriously.



SWTOR has been lacking in that department since base game. I liked the Eternal Throne stuff, but it was clearly written to be agnostic with respect to your force alignment and class, so it lacked that personal touch the original 1-50 stuff had.

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Very true and I quit a little after the ET xpac.

When playing WC3 Illidan was my favorite, part of it was custom game creators always mistook how broke the balance was for agility and if they added anyway to overlevel or buy tomes it was GG for the dude who had ranged splash attack and dodge attacks meanwhile had like 98% armor resistance for the few attacks that went through and of course you bought a life steal item. . . so... .. lol. But I quite like anti-heroes (Illidan not a villain) and very very much like the whole metamorphosis stuff (hence why I'd love to see that as a job in FF, and like Vincent, Yuri, and Dante).

As for the article, FFXIV at #6? oof Lol . . . .

I can get if people said some of the earlier expansions, especially ARR, was slow and a bit dense to get into, but I think ShB was the first time in the history of playing MMOs that I felt "well that would have been 'good' as a single player game too". I think FFXIV does good in terms of an MMO but .. you know single player games, the really good ones, tend to have stellar stories and have less things to focus on than an MMO.

WoW does have a lot of fun side lore, and like A LOT of it- not just a little (I know some people treat WoW like it has no lore/story), but it does actually 'have' lore if you hunt for it, but it's not nearly as front and center and I feel they've not anywhere as close to handled retcons as well as FFXIV and seems like the devs just do whatever because they can (so the story telling part I've doubts to, in game at least). The warcraft universe is quite large though and there are many many books for it.

But I still have difficulty seeing how FFXIV is at #6 for story telling, especially post ShB and the trimming of the 2.0 MSQ lol. It kind of sounds like they've not really played a few of the items in the list though, like how "x y z" expansions added content to the game, of course they did! That's what expansions do xD. I've heard decent things about #2 and #3, played some of the beta of #2 (ESO) but didn't really get into it- would be interesting to see what people who play FFXIV and this game have to think about that (both of them to the end, not partially).

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Originally Posted by Anienai

Very true and I quit a little after the ET xpac.

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I haven't uninstalled it yet, but last time I logged on, I couldn't keep myself motivated long enough to figure out if the new content was even the sort of stuff I play, so I might be done with it. I only ever played it like it was KOTOR III anyway.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

Not that I ever want to come across as defending Blizzard in any way, shape, or form, but that's not a fair comparison. WoW is the same world as all of its supplementary materials, while other FF games are not one world. It's like comparing Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit to Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons.

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And yet to understand the Warcraft world and its storytelling, you need to read various novels, comic books, story articles, art books, even playing older games to have a more complete picture of its world. The WoW playerbase has bemoaned the extra material after WoW's release multiple times as you would have key plot points that are central to it but are not included in the game itself.

This is what largely separates FF14 from WoW. 14 is always a story first, mmo second. Meanwhile WoW has always been an mmo first, story second.

You want caught up with whatever events are leading to a new expansion with WoW? Go buy a novel or pdf.
You want caught up with whatever events are leading to a new expansion with FF14? You play the game.

I tend to ignore these as they are usually either paid or/and extremely biased while being click bait trash. Don't see any reason to stop now.

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Originally Posted by Chasingstars

And yet to understand the Warcraft world and its storytelling, you need to read various novels, comic books, story articles, art books, even playing older games to have a more complete picture of its world. The WoW playerbase has bemoaned the extra material after WoW's release multiple times as you would have key plot points that are central to it but are not included in the game itself.

This is what largely separates FF14 from WoW. 14 is always a story first, mmo second. Meanwhile WoW has always been an mmo first, story second.

You want caught up with whatever events are leading to a new expansion with WoW? Go buy a novel or pdf.
You want caught up with whatever events are leading to a new expansion with FF14? You play the game.

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Ya, cause 14 is so free with its knowledge. You start the game and all you get is that something happened some few years ago and there was a catastrophe, or something. Sure, the expacs flow into each other fairly well, but that's kind of the problem. FF14 expacs feel more like patches than riveting new content, and the patches often contain so much they're like little expacs. WoW expacs FEEL like expacs with all new arcs, not just a continuation of the same story in a new location.

The thing is, I can follow XIV's story and lore just fine without going into any supplementary material. If you want to know, say, how Vol'jin survived Garrosh's assassination attempt, or where Aggra came from, or literally anything about the actual Cataclysm, you'd better go find those novels. The game itself tells next to nothing about any of it.

I mean, WotLK was very good, as well as Legion.

FFXIV struggles with it's story during post patches. Heavensward was good all through out, but I can't say the same for Stormblood, or even Shadowbringers up to this recent patch.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

The thing is, I can follow XIV's story and lore just fine without going into any supplementary material. If you want to know, say, how Vol'jin survived Garrosh's assassination attempt, or where Aggra came from, or literally anything about the actual Cataclysm, you'd better go find those novels. The game itself tells next to nothing about any of it.

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WoW is also prone to retconning those same novels through spur of the moment decision making. Warlords of Draenor takes a big steaming dump on Rise of the Horde, a novel written to expand on the Orcs' history on their homeworld before the Burning Legion corrupted their society. And Warcraft fans won't soon forget that Sylvanas lies to herself in her own thoughts in Before the Storm about what her plans going forward are, which is seemingly the result of a mid-expansion rewrite to setup Shadowlands.

Speaking of which, mid-expansion rewrites is something they do quite a bit of lately. Warlords of Draenor and Legion are both victims of it, with both seeing large portions of their content cut away or reduced in scope to make way for whatever new and cool idea the devs came up with. Legion kinda benefited from this: Going to Argus was definitely more interesting than spending the rest of the expansion on yet another ruined Night Elf island. Warlords of Draenor, meanwhile, suffered big time for it, losing multiple zones, faction capitals, and at least one raid to the cutting room floor with nothing to show for it. And that's to say nothing of Battle for Azeroth, which has arguably the most schizophrenic storyline I've seen... well, ever.

Well they at least got right how low GW2's awful story should be ranked (most low count hatchet job ever) GW2 has easily the worst expansions and story, especially if you play them alone or just trying to explore they punish you. The PVE is some of the worst in any game as they usually patch it so that PVE and the "new map" dies in months while your choice is a terrible PVP system and a broken WvW system.
The story well good luck because since they lock everyone out of the first season they still expect to care about a story and characters that were only done in a now unplayable season.

Though while I like ESO and it's story I think it should run at 3-4.
WoW is terrible choice for #1 at this point it's held together by string and duct tape, but I could also see how FF14 is ranked if they only count ARR as I was only so/so interested until the very end of the story and that interested faded until i hit the end of postgame for base ARR and after the ending is a painful boring trudge through mud but I felt the same for for WoW and imo though something kept me in FF14 but staying in Wow after awhile is just painful.
For base ARR FF14 has too few great moments that are far inbetween but knowing the story behind ARR makes me forgive it.

But you can't trust gamerant they put runescape and Gw2 in the top 3 MMOs to have fun with in 2020 and if I can say anything GW2 is pure unfun crap unless your playing with close friends in 2020 and playing with close friends make even terrible games fun.

Again though the end of the FF14 with the bosses you fought I found fun, and i thought the end to postgame was great.
This is all my opion of course but this is from someone who played GW2 on day 1 of release and played every mmo on that list except Lord of The Rings.

Sure WoW story is good..... if you buy the books and other media outside of the game. In game is another matter compared to FFXIV.

Gamerant makes some laughable list.

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Originally Posted by Payotz

wow bad
ffxiv good

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I mean, that's basically how the majority of the forum posters think. Even the best thing that WoW does is garbage, and the worst thing that XIV does is pristine art.

As for the actual content of the thread.. there's nothing wrong with WoW's story and it tells it well enough but the game knows what it is and plays to those strengths; is it great storytelling? No, but keeps pace well enough and doesn't really have you languish in limbo because it doesn't want to move the stories along.
XIV is usually fine too, but i'd never say that it has good storytelling; more than anything it has very predictable story telling and the story is usually saved by a stand-out character we end up interacting with (And people rally behind that character when they end up explaining why the story was good). Frankly, without Emet livening up shadowbringers every little bit, i would have been bored to tears of the story because i know how SQEX tells their stories and it hit all the story beats i knew it would.

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Originally Posted by Anienai

Swtor should be #1.

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Yeah but it also has the Jedi Consular storyline, which knocks off 25 points simply by existing.

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Originally Posted by Dagget

Are they serious?

https://gamerant.com/mmorpgs-best-storytelling-ranked/

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Well reviewing their list, I can tell they are full of **** because they clearly haven't played any of these games. I've played most, and I can assure you they are wrong.


10: Archeage - Generic story, good gameplay, by generic I mean you can ignore it for the most part.
9: Guild Wars 2 - the first game had a great story, the MMO spin-off was boring at best, gameplay and class design was what made GW2 great back in the day, not the story.
8: Skyforge - skipped this one, looked generic so I never played it.
7: Star Trek Online - I'm a Lifetime subscriber, the story is meh at times good at times, but it's all very TNG and kind of ruined by New Trek. I do think the Romulan content was great though.
6: FFXIV - the best story in an MMO because it's a Great RPG story in an MMORPG.
5: Neverwinter - Seriously Dude?!? it's a D&D game with a D&D story ripped from the tabletop game set in a modified 4th ed game. They literally have no original content. /lesigh fun game though, but it wasn't worth the lifetime sum the way ST:O and Champions did.
4: LotRO - once again a game based on someone else's writing, not an original bit of story or lore, and mediocre gameplay at best.
3: SWTOR- yes a good story, and before EA f2p'd the game to hell, a once-great MMO, now lost in the mire of EA. It's worth playing for 5 months as a single player RPG, just to do the story on each class. Then you forget it, because of EA.
2: ESO- or how to ruin 26 years of Elder scrolls storytelling with a generic story on an OK MMO. Don't get me wrong, I like the game, but they set it as a prequel, and then basically try and squeeze the story to fit already established lore, so it became a generic boring story so as not the rock the boat lorewise, Elder Scrolls as a Franchise has great storytelling, ESO as a stand-alone game has terrible storytelling because it's boring, the gameplay is good though, I just find FFXIV to be better.
1: WOW?!?! Are you serious? The game is based on an RTS which basically copy-pasted the lore of Warhammer Fantasy with a few tweaks to avoid being sued. The RTS was a solid game, and the MMO was solid for a lot of years, but the story has always been kind of bad with a few fun highlights. Sure they have epic moments, all of which are skippable or forgotten, and the current storyline was so bad I finally canceled my 15year account.

Now my 1 through 10 MMO stories.

10: WOW - lots of lore and story, most of which are ignored by the developer these days, and is completely skippable or removed entirely in favor of poorly written pop-fiction.
9: Defiance, ESO, LOTRO, D&D -Neverwinter, and all your Korean MMOs. -Interesting ideas, ok but a forgettable story.
8: The Secret World (original game) - clever ideas, crazy story, lots of fun, sadly too esoteric for most players.
7: Phantasy Star Online - Like Monster Hunter? Try the Sci-Fi in space MMO version.
6: DCU - Good storytelling, loads of fun. The gameplay was fairly solid, sadly it failed to earn money so f2p overload instead.
5: FFXI - ok storytelling, weakest Final Fantasy story, but still a numbered Final Fantasy game.
4: City of Heroes - still the best Superhero RPG video game ever, F*** NCSoft for killing it.
3: Star Trek Online - Solid story, fun game, too bad it's in f2p hell.
2: SWTOR - Great Star Wars RPG story, died at the hands of EA and free to play.
1: FFXIV - we all know the truth of this.

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Originally Posted by Gothicshark

Well reviewing their list, I can tell they are full of **** because they clearly haven't played any of these games. I've played most, and I can assure you they are wrong.
4: LotRO - once again a game based on someone else's writing, not an original bit of story or lore, and mediocre gameplay at best.

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Actually to LoTRO's credit their original story content is absolutely stellar. I frequently cite the Grey Company portions of that story as some of the best writing I've seen in any MMO, and that entire section was something that happened off screen in the original novels and appendixes. LoTRO might use someone else's frame work but they did pretty stellar things with it. Not enough to put it over FF14, but I'd comfortably put it in the Top 5 Stories based on their non-book accurate writing alone. It's gameplay is what hurts it more than anything. It feels VERY dated in 2020.

Depth of lore isn't the same as good storytelling or even good story. But everyone has their own opinion about what makes a good story so you can't fault the article writer for expressing theirs.

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Originally Posted by frostmagemari

As for the actual content of the thread.. there's nothing wrong with WoW's story

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There's plenty wrong with WoW's story, as evidenced by the frequent retcons and need to expand on the story outside of the game through other media. If Blizzard felt WoW's story was good, the retcons wouldn't have been needed nor would all the lore content in the other media.

WoW is not the sum of the Warcraft universe. It's only a small part of it. It you're going to rate a game's story, it needs to be rated based on what's in the game and not what's outside of it.