Why does everyone complain about STORY based MMO's?

[TaleraRistain]

No, removing the MSQ's isn't necessary - and isn't what many of us would like to see happen. I do think the approach TESO takes would be beneficial moving forward, though. Where each new expansion is basically self contained, scales to the player character and can be explored in whatever order they so choose.

The problem with that design in ESO and most other MMOs before and after it are that there's no inter-connected story so it's very easy for the world to feel disjointed. One story can't reference events from another, because they can't guarantee that you did that part yet. It's like when XIV doesn't make things part of the MSQ so it can't comment on events in the MSQ unless it's special dialogue, but they've stopped doing that as much. It also contributes to the idea that elsewhere in the world doesn't exist and isn't important.

In regards to another comment about XIV being a glorified visual novel, I have to ask what you think is missing?

When playing a JRPG, you go somewhere and talk to an NPC to get some information on opening a temple and that NPC sends you on a quest to go get the Golden MacGuffin from a dungeon before they will tell you what you need to know. So you go through the dungeon and have eleventy million random battles and then a boss fight and you get the Golden MacGuffin then you go back to the NPC. And that NPC says go talk to this other NPC but oh that's on the other side of the world so you'll have to go through the tunnel and its eleventy million random battles and maybe a boss fight and then through the forest and eleventy million random battles and then you go do a fetch quest so you can use a canoe to get across the lake with its eleventy million random battles to the place where the other NPC is. Then they give you half the information and say another NPC in the original town has the rest. So you go all the way back to the original town across the lake and its eleventy million random battles, through the forest and its eleventy million random battles, through the tunnel and its eleventy million random battles and maybe a new boss and then you get to the new NPC who says they'll tell you how to open the temple but you have to go find them materials to bake a cake first oh and you'll also need the Golden MacGuffin or the temple guardians will destroy you.

But when you strip out the eleventy million random battles and grinding for levels, any JPRG is just a succession of cutscenes, fetch quests, and go here and there and back again. And that's exactly the same as what we do in XIV. If anything, XIV streamlines the process because you don't have eleventy million random battles and you don't have to grind for levels to continue the story. But all the other elements are general issue JRPG elements.

[ZedxKayn]

The problem with that design in ESO and most other MMOs before and after it are that there's no inter-connected story so it's very easy for the world to feel disjointed. One story can't reference events from another, because they can't guarantee that you did that part yet. It's like when XIV doesn't make things part of the MSQ so it can't comment on events in the MSQ unless it's special dialogue, but they've stopped doing that as much. It also contributes to the idea that elsewhere in the world doesn't exist and isn't important.

ESO does reference past events whether the player has done them or not, and I actually think it does a terrible job at guiding players towards the right zone order.
That aside though it's just stories happening on a smaller scale, it doesn't make sense for the rest of the world to have relevance in a story about how the lord of this region is terrorizing his people because of a daedric prince or something like that. Kind of like I don't expect Koreans to care about some regional German political scandal. And I personally prefer this because it puts more of an emphasis on and makes for a richer lore and world building, (and I really do think it does make the world feel more connected because of recurrent actors such as the daedric princes or gods, they're mentioned everywhere and are omnipresent without necessarily having a direct interaction with the player) over following the main character and his crew on an epic story across the world.

In one the player comes into a zone's story and experiences the world, in the other the story follows the player and the world experiences the player, if that makes sense.
Basically as long as care is being put into the lore and world-building, I think it's very much possible to feel that everything is connected even if it's not a single continuous story.