MSQ

[snarkomatic]

I find it hilarious how your retort is to link an article from 2013, and a wikipedia description. It's only been very recently that both Bungie's Creative Director and the General Manager have embraced the fact that Destiny 2 is an action MMO. Specifically mentioned during the reveal stream of the upcoming Shadowkeep expansion.



While other MMOs are obviously story driven, you also claimed that "they're all equally as focused on story as the next one." That claim would mean that you find WoW and FFXIV to be equally focused on the story. I'd like to see you say that with a straight face.

I will argue with you!

Real talk tho, respectfully, I point to ESO. It is an Elder Scrolls game, so you can't for a second tell me it's not based in a very heavily story-driven IP; it is designed to appeal to both MMO fans and TES single-player fans, so it does not flinch away from giving you heavy narrative to play with; and the entire basis for your character's beginning and continued existence is framed around the larger story. Every chapter begins with an intro quest to set up the plot for the expansion. Choices you make define the game world (read: will instance you away from people who made other decisions), and every raid is a specific fight in a specific climax for that chapter's plot.

Never once do they make us do the story quests. Never once have any of us complained about doing the story quests anyway. In fact, we love them. Why? Because the ones who do them are the ones who want to do them (or achievement hunters, which is basically the same thing lol).

TL;DR: you can be hella story-focused and still not strongarm your player base into running your content while also still achieving a large completion ratio for that content. It doesn't hurt that their quests are all voice acted by some serious talent, but that's a subjective opinion probably.

[Krotoan]

Destiny 2 is still not considered a mmorpg, Bungie still hasn't classified that one and if you wanted to put any tag on it, it would be a "MMOFPS" Rpgs are generally more story heavy than FPS.

I'm still not sure you have it cleared up or you would've never tried to argue that fact.

OK.

Can I not reply in memes? You do realize people have been putting periods at the ends of words to stress meanings since before memes right? It's kind of annoying that you didn't know that and you're just trying to argue stuff without having a clue what's going on.

Not really. Periods denote ends of sentences. Generally the internet used capital letters to emphasize words, or denote shouting. ... and I guess you're gonna ignore the spongebob part?

Again...I don't know how many times I have to type this, maybe reading isn't your strong point?

I'm very good at reading thank you, however your insistence to make things mean what you think they mean and not what they actually mean is confusing.

EVERY. MMORPG. IS. STORY. DRIVEN.

Someone politely asks you not to do something... oh well..

There's a reason you're in that dungeon.
There's a reason you're in that raid.
There's a reason you're killing that piglet creature.
Thee's a reason you're fighting the other faction.

All of that is story that's DRIVING you to do x, y, and z. Just because someone skipped the quest, doesn't mean that reason isn't there.

The story isn't DRIVING you to do anything in a lot of MMO's. If you want to be specific about words and their meaning, which you seem to be:

driv·en
/ˈdrivən/
Learn to pronounce

1.
past participle of drive.

adjective
suffix: -driven; adjective: driven

1.
operated, moved, or controlled by a specified person or source of power.
"a chauffeur-driven limousine"
motivated or determined by a specified factor or feeling.
"a market-driven response to customer needs"

What motivates you to complete that dungeon, that raid, kill that creature, to fight that other faction? In FFXIV it's designed to be the desire to experience more story. Story is a reward, a motivation and a measure of how much of the game you've "completed".
It is intended to be the primary reason you are playing the game. It sounds like you are arguing that one of the major selling points of every single game out there is it's story.

[Catwho]

I'm gonna toss a third term in here: premise. A lot of MMOs have a great premise, but fail to execute too much on telling a story. Wildstar comes to mind. It had (some) lore, but had very little story to match the game. Why you were there and what you were doing was limited to the tutorial on the spaceship, and then you were unleashed into the wilds to go exploring. Great premise of planetary settlers with opposing factions. Mediocre lore limited entirely to in-game quest assets and a basic website at launch and not much else. Very, very, very little story.

Hence, Wildstar was not a story driven MMO. It was a sandbox MMO that had a cool premise and some basic background lore. "Here's your lego set, here's the rules, now go play!"

[MistakeNot]

Claim: FFXIV is a story based mmorpg
My point: EVERY MMORPG IS STORY BASED. Quests being optional in other mmos doesn’t mean there’s no lore. The quests just aren’t mandatory.

Having a story and having lore is NOT the same thing as being story based or story driven. Oh, and having lore is not the same as having story.

So, it is not true that every MMORPG is story based. There is usually some kind of story behind the setting, but in many of them the story does not really matter once you are in the game.

[TheMightyMollusk]

WoW has a story?

WoW has many stories. The problem is that they work together about as well as peanut butter and battery acid.

[Selova]

Doesn't. Mean. They. Aren't. Story. Driven.

Your entire hilariously flawed argument is that every MMO is story driven because story exists in every MMO. It's kind of amazing how you don't understand the difference between a game that is story driven and a game where story just exists. Every game has story elements in it, if they didn't it would literally just be a combat/dungeon/instance simulator. In this game your progression is literally gated by the story, no other game bar other single player RPG's halt your progression through it's story. Everything in the game is revolved around making you care about the story. In WoW you can literally skip the entire story and level exclusively in dungeons not even knowing the game even has a story. This is the difference. Why this is so hard to comprehend is beyond me.

[Arthrun]

So I am seeing so much back and forth between story focused mmo's vs all mmo's have lore and story.

Here is my perception of it all and I have played a lot of different MMO's

Warcraft probably has the most richest lore and story content than any other MMORPG out there. However it's not its main selling point. Fast combat and catch up mechanics, and its robust raiding and reapeatable M+'s are is its main selling points. How many players truly know why Graymane wants Sylvanas dead? Why is Saurfang so hung up about the old honorable horde? Why did the burning legion want to destroy azeroth in the first place? Why Kil'jaden hated Valen so much? Do you know why we had to open AQ40? It is all there in questing and out in the open, but ask the average wow player they will tell you they know the lore is there but its really feels unimportant to enjoy the game. Most players will reminisce about crazy boss fights, How hard mythic Argus was. Lich king fight was a awesome fight. how challenge modes in MOP were the foundation of M+ today.

Here we have Final Fantasy XIV: Has some of the best storytelling any other game has to offer to make the players feel like that truly epic moments. Square is pushing as a hard selling point. why? we do have our 4 boss 8 man raids. 2 extreme trials with a lot more in the works. Combat is as good as it ever has been in my honest opinion. But ask the players to point out some of their most epic moments they have experenced with the game....and I will place my bets that It would be the opposite reflection of what wow is now a days. .

[DragonFlyy]

Minor correction. Other final fantasy games have pretty good CGI cutscenes (for the time period), which enhances the story and makes you want to sit and watch it. FFXIV only provides that in the Opening movies and trailers.

It wasn't until FF7 that they introduced video cutscenes. FF1-6 used in game pixel graphics and text box dialog for all cutscenes/story and it was just as engaging.

[Kaethra]

Warcraft probably has the most richest lore and story content than any other MMORPG out there. However it's not its main selling point.

I'm going to argue that FFXIV's selling point was not its story. I've got the original box and there's nothing about the story on there outside of the world's name. Everquest did this too. But here's where the games differ:

EQ like WoW has a much much more indepth set of lore and power players than FFXIV. Sorry to say but FFXIV took the singleplayer route with story telling and went for a quick thrill. They have a broken history listed in eras. While EQ literally has history that goes back decades, you pick a year and get some lore about what happened nearly on that specific year give or take 10 years.

Lets compare a bit further.. In both games you pick a deity. Religion in EQ and Guardian in FFXIV. So.. Halone the Fury, what do we know about her? Patron goddess of Ishgard and aspect of Ice and Glaciers. A goddess of war, a few places named for her and there's a flower she likes. Now compare that to Mithaniel Marr the Truthbringer, the ultimate paladin. The son of Tarew Marr the liquid aspect of water in the Triumvirate. Brother to Erolisi Mar the goddess of love. The god of Valor commands the Plane of Valor as his realm where those who fall in battle for justice and righteousness go before his Halls of Valor (think Valhala, but more Paladiny). With the help of his sister he created the race of northmen called the Barbarians. And through Valor and Love him and his sister caused a spark of intellect to go through them and they became the modern day Human race of Norrath. Further along he enlightened a group of Frogloks who quickly evolve and take over their swamp in a war with the Trolls. Mithaniel is the enemy of Innoruuk, Cazic-Thule, Bertoxxulous, and Rallos Zek. He is allies with Rodcet Nife, Erolisi, and has a friendly rivalry with Solesuk Ro. Needless to say he's pretty well fleshed out (I've only touched on the basics and the tip of the iceberg) and you can even interact with him directly several times throughout the different expansions.

And of course the lore doesn't stop there. Pretty much every city, every major character has some in-depth history behind them and lore you can read on. None of which is required to experience as you work your way through the game in question. Its either little bits when you talk to random NPCs, read books or journals, or the old school tried and true method of reading the physical game manual. Because it desiminates the lore over a broader area of the game it causes two things. First one is it allows for greater lore to be told. In FFXIV we only get what is pressing to the MSQ at the given time. But they've neglected to insert more lore into random conversation with even quest NPCs, but EQ also did it through non-quest NPCs. And the second thing this causes is you need player to player interaction. You see we all experience the MSQ the same way. But in EQ we experience the lore at different rates, at different times, and different pieces. Then we cobble together what we learn and discuss it. Write it down, interpret it almost like real life historians. And this causes people to gravitate towards factions they enjoy.

I mentioned before that the god Mithaniel Marr is the enemy of Innoruuk and others. There are many players who take an interest in some of those enemies over the god of Valor. So they tend to have lore that is a bit.. biased. As sometimes lore will contradict depending on its source. And it allows players to have rivalries in that sense. Imagine Horde versus Alliance in WoW, except there's a dozen different facets instead of just two.

To put this all shortly, you can experience all of the story in one go with the MSQ from 2.0 to 5.0, a MSQ that with some effort can be cleaned through in about a week. Whereas in WoW or EQ. It could take months or years to get much of the story, and even then you'd still have stuff to learn. We don't have that in FFXIV. The story, the hooks, and the twists are all given to us in one questline.

[PeppermintBrown]

I'd divide up 'story' and 'lore.' WoW has more 'lore' than FFXIV, but not a better story, at least not in recent expansions compared to SHB.

That said, there is more to FFXIV lore than what you see in the msq. Job/class quests, side quests, the lore books etc, some fates, often have more lore to flesh things out. I'm not saying FFXIV has 'more lore' than other MMOs only that saying the msq gives all of it isn't exactly fair.