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

[splinter1545]

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.

[Rosenstrauch]

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.

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.

[Ashliet]

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.

[Dyvid]

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.

[frostmagemari]

wow bad
ffxiv good

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.

[Enla]

Swtor should be #1.

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

[Gothicshark]

Are they serious?

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

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.

[Gothicshark]

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.

[Enla]

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.

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.

[Jojoya]

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.

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

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.