MSQ

[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!"

[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. .

[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.

[MajinSoul]

I can definitely relate to that haha