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

[Vyrerus]

well like i said debatable. In order to find out what miasma does i had to read up what black rose does, as well as put 2 and 2 together that what thancred was doing with his aether was exactly that.
Bio was never called out (in ff14) as poison and didnt really fit as one either but by simply watching someone duel the flame guy in bosja , i had the chance to overhear him call bio 4 poison.
I learned the nature of bad breath by the blu mage spell book , that it isnt poison but instead earth and water aether based
Cure 1 2 and 3 naming convention was from a book in the library
We can make assumption that voidspawns are just humans that lost all their aetheric balance like sin eaters only theirs is dark aether, and it fits since they are attracted to black mages aetherial attunements
the palace of the dead i learned from a nearby historian searching for broken pots that it was actually an amdapoor city if i recall correctly
Due to seeing the ascians cast acn spells , we assumed from hw that they should be as well. Shb ofc confirmed that.


etc etc. So id say youre partially correct as in it is not using the darksoulian method for the most part but there are still some instances of it.

All of that is exposited in far earlier instances of the game. And Dark Souls didn't invent environmental storytelling. It just capitalizes on it, and is what has introduced many people to it.

Not saying what Nixxe is saying isn't debatable, but idk, this is the first time I've heard anything about WoW having environmental storytelling on a big scale. Of course, I don't usually come to the table to hear about WoW, but now I'm curious.

[Tridus]

About a deep lore, no game can beat WoW.
Lotr, and Swtor would be close to it.
But these 3 have so much lore just because of the age.

But about the storytelling itself in the game, WoW is more on the bottom end.
I played WoW for the first time a few month ago and tryed to follow the story but when I reached max level I knew nothing about it.

WoW's lore isn't even that deep, because they are constantly retconning and trashing the old lore to make room for whatever the current raid designer feels like doing. This isn't even a new problem, it goes all the way back to Burning Legion and the "lorelol" jokes of how they basically rewrote the Draenei on the fly and then had the Blood Elves stealing spaceships because "reasons".

At this point it's a soup of stuff that is barely held together by any kind of common narrative, as shown by how the game lets you just skip almost all of it to get to whatever is new and current.

[HeulGDarian]

All of that is exposited in far earlier instances of the game. And Dark Souls didn't invent environmental storytelling. It just capitalizes on it, and is what has introduced many people to it.

Not saying what Nixxe is saying isn't debatable, but idk, this is the first time I've heard anything about WoW having environmental storytelling on a big scale. Of course, I don't usually come to the table to hear about WoW, but now I'm curious.

its just the most known one.

[Vyrerus]

Since both you and Vyrerus brought it up in this context, I did go and find an article talking a bit about how Dark Souls does story and I do think it's at least somewhat similar to the sort of thing I liked in WoW. The example of the archer, at least as presented in the article, is exactly the sort of thing I like. The game assumes you're smart enough to put the pieces together and let's you do so. FFXIV would just have some throwaway messenger NPC show up to report that the legendary archer is dead, while Alphinaud is on hand to say anything that that needs to be said on the player's behalf and can't be expressed with a single emote.

Huh, what a weird blog post. I mean, he does describe Dark Souls correctly, but he says that 2009 him thought Demon's Souls had no story... when the intro directly sets up the story for you, and you have to talk to the Monumental, who does probably the biggest story dump of any Souls game. Like, compared to Dark Souls, Demon's Souls is practically FFXIV vs. this old WoW you're painting up for me. I wonder if the blog runner just wants brownie points for claiming to start with the first Souls game or if he's just got a poor memory.

[Kes13a]

I have played WoW since launch, and the article itself is high fantasy and obviously the opinion of someone who couldnt appreciate good story if it came over and spent the night.

WoW has a story that has been confusing and contradictory over the years and at no time have I felt invested in the characters or the story. Never have I felt a longing to see the next installment to see how it would all turn out.

I cannot say the same for FFxiv, I have always found the characters well written, typically evoking actual feelings for how they will fare or what happens to them. When I get to the end of a story point I count down the days until they release more of it.

Lore is an encyclopedia, and story is a novel. yes, WoW has a lot of lore, maybe more than FF XIV, but no one read encyclopedias for fun, no encyclopedia invokes feelings. (in most people anyway)

For this reason alone, I feel that article is full of it.

[Nixxe]

Not saying what Nixxe is saying isn't debatable, but idk, this is the first time I've heard anything about WoW having environmental storytelling on a big scale. Of course, I don't usually come to the table to hear about WoW, but now I'm curious.

It's probably worth knowing and keeping in mind that I started playing WoW in 2007 and generally made a point of doing everything there was to do and seeing everything there was to see in it. Like I did both versions of Loremaster just because it was there to do, and the pre-Cataclysm version of it basically required downloading an addon and tracking down every single last quest in vanilla content to accomplish, some of which I had never encountered, despite leveling 8 characters to cap in that time and prioritizing new experiences. In 2010, Cataclysm happened and detonated virtually all of vanilla WoW, replacing it with a more streamlined and modern questing experience that was much more hand-holdy than what I had started with. Now it's 2020 and I suspect a non-trivial portion of the playerbase never knew a pre-Cataclysm time unless perhaps they used the Classic servers. Likewise, it's completely believable to me that people who just spam click through the quests and mindlessly follow the objective markers on their maps would never have taken the time to notice it.

[Vyrerus]

It's probably worth knowing and keeping in mind that I started playing WoW in 2007 and generally made a point of doing everything there was to do and seeing everything there was to see in it. Like I did both versions of Loremaster just because it was there to do, and the pre-Cataclysm version of it basically required downloading an addon and tracking down every single last quest in vanilla content to accomplish, some of which I had never encountered, despite leveling 8 characters to cap in that time and prioritizing new experiences. In 2010, Cataclysm happened and detonated virtually all of vanilla WoW, replacing it with a more streamlined and modern questing experience that was much more hand-holdy than what I had started with. Now it's 2020 and I suspect a non-trivial portion of the playerbase never knew a pre-Cataclysm time unless perhaps they used the Classic servers. Likewise, it's completely believable to me that people who just spam click through the quests and mindlessly follow the objective markers on their maps would never have taken the time to notice it.

Sounds like questing in FFXI. Go to the websites that datamined the quests, determine quest NPC and objective, shout for help cause ain't no way your level 55 ass is making it alone against those level 59~68 orcs, proceed to area. Though FFXI only had flavour text on non-gear items( Key items and other quest related items usually and food).

[Nixxe]

Sounds like questing in FFXI. Go to the websites that datamined the quests, determine quest NPC and objective, shout for help cause ain't no way your level 55 ass is making it alone against those level 59~68 orcs, proceed to area. Though FFXI only had flavour text on non-gear items( Key items and other quest related items usually and food).

I think XI was a lot more hardcore than WoW ever was, but yeah, WoW didn't have any of the quest tracking we take for granted in this game. No object highlights, no map markers, no nothing. You needed an addon for that. The quests were written to give you some idea where to go and you went and looked around until you found what you needed. There were uninstanced dungeons too, areas with limited access that were filled with elite NPCs that you didn't want to touch without a group or severely overleveling the content. I loved that stuff. Really helped the world feel real and immersive to not have everything revolve around my character.

[DPZ2]

I think XI was a lot more hardcore than WoW ever was, but yeah, WoW didn't have any of the quest tracking we take for granted in this game. No object highlights, no map markers, no nothing. You needed an addon for that. The quests were written to give you some idea where to go and you went and looked around until you found what you needed. There were uninstanced dungeons too, areas with limited access that were filled with elite NPCs that you didn't want to touch without a group or severely overleveling the content. I loved that stuff. Really helped the world feel real and immersive to not have everything revolve around my character.

In reality, if you didn't know how to use the Allakhazam website you were more or less out of luck when it came to finding quest objectives in many of the early leveling areas -- especially things like obtaining the Druid water form.

Getting lost attempting to find a quest objective in a mountainous area was both real and exceedingly immersive. And frustrating.

Running around Azuremyst Isle when starting out as a Draenei certainly felt compelling and immersive, until you ran into those elite NPCs by accident, and then on purpose. Having to actually battle them towards the end of your stay in the starting area wasn't particularly fun. Oh the joys of an instanced area with nobody else sticking around long enough to finish the quest chains!

[EmmetOtter]

Swtor should be #1.

Can't disagree with you. SWTOR just obliterates most other games for the quality of the story, and how the game allows players to interact and proceed through it in game.

I don't think wow should be #1, it's latest xpac writing was just awful overall, but WoW does a great job in giving players choices in how they interact with the main story and give characters meaningful ways of being part of the story.

FFXIV has good story writing but without a doubt the worst mechanism of incorporating the player into the story. Its rigidly linear. There are no alternatives or choices involved. The story is essentially told to you with minimal importance given to your character. 99% of the MSQ steps are going somewhere and talking to someone. You're not the "Warrior of Light" but a "Messager of light". You're not entrusted to get Alphy his coffee, you're only entrusted to pass the message along to the guy who actually makes it. Occasionally you fight or do something but really you're not important.